How can I bow my head and serve the powerful officials?

One day, Xie Chengze returned to Jiangdu County and found Liang Wanda.

At that time, Liang Wanda was dealing with the files with great difficulty, but the Privy Councilor Shen suddenly had the idea to help him solve the long-standing backlog of old cases in Yizhou. He even sat by the desk every day to supervise him and taught him how to judge the cases.

Poor old man, he is nearly fifty years old. Every day when he wakes up and sees the mountains of files, his eyes go dark and he can't see his future clearly.

So when Xie Chengze came, he immediately rushed over as if he had found a life-saving straw, crying and wiping his nose, "Your Highness! My Second Prince! Woo woo woo, you are finally here! I missed you so much!"

Xie Chengze dodged to the side with a hint of disgust, and when he looked up, his gaze met Shen Yuan's. The moment their eyes met, the man's eyes flashed, and then he withdrew his gaze naturally.

Xie Chengze couldn't help but roll his eyes, then turned to Liang Wanda and said, "Old Liang, pack up our people, it's time to prepare to split the river!"

Liang Wanda looked up blankly after hearing this, “Ah? Second Prince, are you really going to split the river?”

"What else? Do you think I'm kidding you?" Xie Chengze waved his hand, signaling him to make arrangements immediately.

When Liang Wanda was handing over to the grain merchants, he revealed that Yizhou was going to dig mountains and rivers. The experienced businessmen were able to smell the business opportunity immediately and had a rough idea of ​​the gap in Yizhou's commercial goods.

Therefore, in the past two months, many merchants from other places have settled in Yizhou and started to supply high-quality and low-priced goods here.

For example, shovels for digging canals, wooden boats for carrying canal sand, bamboo basket carts for transporting stones, etc., are all indispensable hard goods for Yizhou in the next few years. They are very suitable for opening up trade routes, gaining steady foothold in Yizhou, and establishing new merchant forces.

For Yizhou, where supplies were abundant and the currency chain began to operate normally, it was no longer difficult for the province to dive into the river.

Hearing that the river was going to be split, the students who were temporarily living in Jiangdu County threw down their books and followed the villagers to the junction of the Minjiang River and the Jiangdu Plain.

According to Prefect Liang, it would be most appropriate to start splitting the river from here.

When the students arrived, the river workers had already rolled up their trousers and went into the water. Following the foreman's instructions, they began digging river sand with shovels and transported it to a location to the west that was level with the Yujishan River mouth.

"Aren't we going to split the river? Why are we digging river sand?" Some students couldn't help but wonder.

They had privately thought that the so-called splitting of the river should be to use the stones left over from the previous mountain excavation to build a high stone wall in the middle of the Minjiang River, which would forcibly divert the flood of the Minjiang River into two paths. The water from one of the paths would then be buffered by the river mouth dug out from Yuji Mountain, turned into irrigation water and flow into the Jiangdu Plain. Several branch rivers would then be dug out from this main river to irrigate the fields in various counties.

But when they came over to take a look, they found that the river workers were digging river sand instead of building high stone walls.

Seeing that Prefect Liang was also there, some students couldn't help but step forward, bowed slightly and asked, "Prefect, can you help us solve our doubts?"

Bian Yangchun and others were also there. Ji Songhua also stepped forward and asked, "Yes, why are you digging river sand? I really don't understand what this has to do with splitting the river."

Until now, he still felt that splitting the river was an impossible fantasy. Even the students' discussion of building a high stone wall to divert the river seemed ridiculous to him.

When a flash flood breaks out, the river embankment will be washed away. How can a mere pile of stones possibly stop the flash flood?

Seeing that many students had questions, Liang Wanda coughed lightly, clapped his hands and shouted, "Xiao Zhu, come here."

Xiao Zhu?

Everyone looked curiously, only to see a slightly plump man carrying a large wooden barrel walking towards them. His face looked somewhat familiar.

Someone with sharp eyes recognized him immediately, "It's Brother Zhu! The Brother Zhu who talked about Yugong moving the mountain before!"

Everyone looked at him again, and hey, it really was Zhu Xiaobiao!

I haven't seen him for two months, and I didn't expect that he has lost so much weight!

"My dear friends, long time no see." Zhu Xiaobiao came over with a smile. The thin man's originally fair and plump skin was dyed a healthy wheat yellow. He inherited 70% of his mother's beauty. When he smiled, he was very handsome and kind. Coupled with his innate official temperament, he looked a bit like a parent official.

"Hey, Brother Zhu, the prefect asked you to come over. Is he going to ask you to tell the story of splitting the river?" A student couldn't help but joked.

The last time we talked about Yugong moving the mountain, we only talked about digging the mountain but didn't talk about splitting the river. At that time, Zhu Xiaobiao said that we would have to wait until the dry season of the Minjiang River before he would tell you the method of splitting the river.

Looks like today is the day.

"Yes, today we are talking about this splitting!" Zhu Xiaobiao smiled mysteriously and showed the wooden barrel in his hand to everyone, "Look, what's so different about this wooden barrel?"

When everyone looked over, they saw that the wooden barrel he brought had two rectangular gaps in the middle of the barrel.

The two notches are of the same length, but one is located at the top of the left side of the barrel and is much wider, while the other is located at the bottom of the right side of the barrel, a little lower than the top notch and half as wide.

"Brother Zhu, what do these two gaps mean?" a student couldn't help but ask.

Zhu Xiaobiao smiled and said, "The river."

River?

The students were puzzled and looked at the two gaps in confusion. Zhu Xiaobiao clapped his hands, and several yamen runners came over with several buckets full of river water. A closer look revealed that there was a lot of river sand mixed in the water, making it look a little turbid.

One of the yamen runners lifted the wooden barrel in his hand and began to slowly pour water into the broken barrel on the ground.

As the water level in the bucket rose, river water gradually flowed out of the low and narrow gap on the right, while no water flowed out of the high gap.

Zhu Xiaobiao asked, "Did you see anything?"

A student immediately said, "This gap is low, so the water flows out from here first!"

Zhu Xiaobiao nodded, and signaled the two yamen runners to pour two buckets of river water mixed with river sand into the wooden barrels on the ground at a rapid speed.

Now, water even flowed out of the high gap.

He asked again, "What about this time? Can you see anything?"

Now everyone was confused.

"You may all come forward one by one and observe carefully." Zhu Xiaobiao placed a wooden basin diagonally below the two gaps, and then asked the yamen runners to continue pouring large amounts of water into the wooden barrel quickly.

The river water gushed out from the two gaps and fell into the wooden basin on the ground.

The students gathered around and tried to guess the meaning of the metaphor, but they racked their brains and still couldn't figure out what it was trying to express.

"Are you saying that when the water is full, it will overflow?"

"Impossible, Brother Zhu said the gap is a river, so this must be related to the river."

"The river has ups and downs and wide and narrows. The overflowing water falls into the wooden basin. What does the wooden basin represent? What does the water in the wooden basin represent? What does the river sand represent?"

The students felt like their heads were about to smoke. Finally, at a certain moment, Ouyang Jiu clapped his hands suddenly, his face full of surprise, "I know!"