Expenses

Earth.

After returning from Pingshui City, Fang Weiyan packed his things and immediately went down the mountain.

The incense in the Daoist temple was still Incense Offerings continuously.

Fang Weiyan hurriedly arrived in the city, first exchanging the lottery winnings. While exchanging the winnings, Fang Weiyan also made a phone call to purchase a batch of supplies.

After purchasing large quantities of oil, grains, rice, and flour, Fang Weiyan then called the landlord of the previous warehouse.

Fang Weiyan felt that the procurement of supplies would likely continue indefinitely, so it might be better to just buy the warehouse outright.

Anyway, he has money on hand now.

The landlord was quite easy to talk to, seeing that Fang Weiyan was interested in buying the warehouse, and considering that the warehouse's location wasn't particularly good.

They acted without hesitation.

Soon after exchanging his winnings, Fang Weiyan hurriedly went to the warehouse and signed a contract with the landlord.

Then they received batches of rice, flour, fertilizer, and so on.

As batches of supplies arrived, Fang Weiyan categorized them in the warehouse, piling up similar supplies in one place.

Even after working until dark, a large batch of supplies still hadn't been delivered.

After agreeing to continue delivering the next day, Fang Weiyan locked the warehouse door and returned to Pingshui City with several bags of fertilizer.

Next time, find an opportunity to make an agreement with some factories that the packaging bags used for purchasing supplies such as rice, flour, and fertilizer cannot have any printed text.

To avoid having to erase the writing on the packaging when moving supplies around later, which would be exhausting.

Fang Weiyan noted this down and prepared to contact the manufacturer later.

"Give."

Fang Weiyan handed the fertilizer he had brought back to Tao Lingluo, who had been waiting for a long time.

Upon seeing the fertilizer in front of her, Tao Lingluo's eyes instantly brightened, and she immediately closed them to begin absorbing it.

Fang Weiyan glanced at it only once and then ignored it.

After summoning the constables and learning that they had not yet returned, Fang Weiyan was not in a hurry.

He then went to the desk and wrote down some plans for the future.

The Pingshui City has been successfully pacified; the next step is to begin overall governance.

The entire Pingshui City has about 10,000 households, and they recruited 500 people, who were paid salaries.

These five hundred people will no longer have to worry about not having food in their homes.

However, that's not enough. We still need to implement work-for-relief programs to ensure the basic livelihood of the people here.

The fields cannot be left to lie fallow; they must continue to be cultivated.

Fang Weiyan has killed almost all of the wealthy landowners from before, and now all the fields outside have been confiscated.

In this way, Fang Weiyan could then freely use these fields.

In addition, Pingshui City also needs some improvement.

Although there hasn't been any conflict with the Dragon King yet, what if he goes berserk and stirs up trouble?

We must ensure that Pingshui City is not flooded.

In that case, Pingshui City will need to be renovated immediately.

Yes, Fang Weiyan now has the money to do this through work relief.

Fang Weiyan began to scribble and draw on the paper, roughly finalizing some of the plans for the next step.

As night deepened, Fang Weiyan yawned and found a room to sleep.

The next day.

After getting up, Fang Weiyan hurriedly gave a few instructions and then returned to the Earth warehouse.

Earth.

After Fang Weiyan arrived, he began contacting some manufacturers, requesting to purchase a batch of supplies, specifying that the packaging should not have any words or trademarks.

For these factories, this requirement, though somewhat strange, was also very simple: if there was money to be made, no one would refuse.

After finalizing some details, Fang Weiyan paid a deposit, and the matter was pretty much settled.

Fang Weiyan then dealt with some other matters, and after everything was finished, he hurriedly returned to Pingshui City.

"Recruit."

Fang Weiyan began writing the recruitment notice.

This time, the number of people to be recruited is too large; it's essentially mobilizing all the people of Pingshui City.

However, the main purpose was to ensure that the local people had something to eat and to make Pingshui City a little more prosperous.

The work-for-relief program was the initial stage; other methods would follow to ensure that people had their own livelihoods.

Following the previous practice in Linbei County, manual laborers could receive 1.8 jin of grain per day, while others would receive slightly less.

On average, each person would receive about 1.5 jin (approximately 0.75 catties) of grain.

If 10,000 people participate, then the daily grain expenditure will reach 15,000 catties, with 50 catties calculated at 129.

That would require an expenditure of 38,700 yuan per day.

The monthly expenditure is 1,161,000 yuan.

When people from other counties arrive in Pingshui City, the number may reach 15,000, or even more.

It would be normal for monthly expenses to exceed two million at that time.

Besides this, Fang Weiyan also needs to purchase materials such as cement, which will further increase his expenses.

Fang Weiyan has over five million now, so he should be able to keep going for a month without any problem.

Looking back, I'll try to make more money through other means.

Governing this prefecture was indeed very expensive.

After Fang Weiyan finished calculating the accounts, he couldn't help but shake his head.

Fortunately, the large amount of silver seized earlier can be used to pay some of the salary.

We'll use rice as wages first, and then use the captured silver as wages later. It'll be more convenient and reduce expenses.

It would be easier to calculate if we used rice as the payment method.

Apart from that, the previous wealthy landowners were all beheaded, and there aren't many rice shops left in Pingshui City.

Fang Weiyan needs to restart this.

Otherwise, Fang Weiyan pays the salaries with silver later, the people will have money but nowhere to spend it, which would be troublesome.

We also need to find some people to do some accounting and statistics work.

Paying salaries to more than 10,000 people requires a considerable number of people, and they need to be people with basic arithmetic skills.

However, there's no need to panic. We can still manage by transferring some people from the accounting departments.

That said, if it weren't for the food shortage here, Fang Weiyan could have paid all these salaries with just 130,000 taels of silver.

After all, even the yamen runners didn't earn a single tael of silver a month.

This sum of 130,000 taels of silver could make the entire population of Pingshui City work for him for thirteen months.

However, if people from other places were to arrive in droves, it would be impossible to sustain the effort for thirteen months.

Fortunately, with these 130,000 taels of silver, plus the more than 5 million in Fang Weiyan's possession, governing Jiangling Commandery well would be no problem at all.