What Is This Thing?

As he spoke, he asked Zhao Ruxi, "Lord Zhao, when will the officials from the Ministry of Works arrive?"

"It'll probably be noon soon. Let's ignore them for now and get to work," Zhao Ruxi said.

Shi Jingcheng had followed her instructions, assembling two hundred men for corvée labor into two lines, arranged according to height and build. After rotating a few men and roughly distributing the labor evenly between the two sides, he said, "Team A, go to the left to get the tools; Team B, go to the right to get the tools."

Due to iron rationing, iron farm tools were relatively expensive, and some extremely poor families simply couldn't afford them. In addition, land reclamation easily damaged farm tools, so the government would provide these people with land reclamation tools.

Without giving it much thought, everyone took their tools as Shi Jingcheng instructed.

When Team A received the farm tools, they all frowned. Turning to look at Team B, they saw that the tools they had were the ones they were used to, unlike the strange-looking ones in their hands.

A bold middle-aged man shouted at his team's constables, "Officers, why are our tools different from theirs? Is the work we do different from theirs?"

The yamen runners couldn't very well say that it was invented by their Lord Zhao and that he was using it for their experiments.

It's important to understand that the time allotted for corvée labor is fixed, and the amount of work is also fixed. You have to complete that much work within the limited time to fulfill your duty. This applies not only to those performing corvée labor but also to everyone else. Failure to complete the task will result in punishment.

At first, neither Lord Zhao nor Shi Jingcheng mentioned who would use these new farm tools, so they didn't think much of it. Now that they realized they were unlucky enough to be the ones using the new farm tools, the four yamen runners in charge of the Jia team were quite Gao Xing.

However, with all the officials watching from the sidelines, and knowing that Lord Zhao was a member of the royal family with powerful backing, even Lord Liu and Lord Cai couldn't afford to offend him, so they couldn't question him.

Therefore, their anger flared up against the middle-aged man. "Why are you talking so much nonsense? Just do what you're told, and stop babbling!"

The middle-aged man dared not utter a sound, and followed the constables to their assigned territory, carrying his farm tools.

"Start digging from here. We need to reclaim thirty acres of land today," the constable ordered.

Although the terrain here is flat, it was originally covered with many miscellaneous trees and some rocks, and the soil is quite hard. Although they had previously organized some people to cut down the miscellaneous trees and move the large rocks, the tree roots remained, and there were still many small stones. For one hundred people to cultivate thirty acres of land a day was still a rather arduous task.

Upon hearing that it was land reclamation, and then looking up to see Team B in the distance also preparing to cultivate the land with hoes, everyone looked down at their own tools, and their expressions turned grim.

"Officer, why aren't we given hoes for clearing land? Why do all the other teams have hoes, but we have to use these things? How are we supposed to dig like this?" another person shouted.

When the middle-aged man questioned things earlier, no one knew what they were going to do, so they didn't pay much attention. But now that they knew they had to cultivate thirty acres of land today, and the tools weren't very handy, more people started to agree with him.

"Yes, yes, even if there aren't many hoes, the two teams should divide them equally. How can we let them take them all while we get these weird-looking things? If we don't complete the task, please don't punish us, officer. It's not our fault."

They appeared to be speaking to the yamen runners, but in reality, they were raising their voices so that the officials standing some distance away could hear them and prevent them from being punished again for failing to complete their tasks that night.

This is obviously unfair.

"Shut up, or I'll teach you a lesson!" The constable was furious when he saw that these people were not only speaking rudely, but also deliberately raising their voices as if they wanted Zhao Ruxi to hear them. "If you keep talking nonsense, it won't just be thirty mu today. How about I add another ten mu?"

In the Great Jin Dynasty, one could buy corvée labor with money. In other words, if you wanted to avoid corvée labor, you had to pay a sum of money to hire someone to perform the labor for your family at a high price. Therefore, those who came to perform corvée labor were all the poorest people.

In these people's eyes, the yamen runners are all big shots, and you can't afford to offend anyone.

Seeing the constables' harsh words, their faces as black as the bottom of a pot, no one dared to speak anymore. They all picked up their strange-looking objects and started digging in the ground.

The first middle-aged man to raise objections was named Wang Fugui, and he was assigned a nail pickaxe.

When he dug down, he found it was different from usual. The ground seemed quite hard, but when he dug down, the nails on the hoe went all the way into the ground, and when he lifted it up, the soil was turned upside down.

"Hey, this thing is actually pretty useful."

Undeterred, he dug again with his hoe and found that it was indeed easier and he could dig a larger area.

By this time, the hoe had appeared. To save effort, the hoe head was made into a long strip shape. It was easier to dig than the wide-area flat hoe or weed hoe, and it could dig deeper, but it didn't lift up much soil.

But now, using the same amount of force to dig, he dug out more than Youyu soil as with a hoe. Wang Fugui, who had spent half his life doing farm work, immediately realized the advantage of this nail hoe.

The young man next to him, holding the same tool, also dug with a hoe. Seeing Wang Fugui praising the hoe in his hand, he said dismissively, "Is the soil here softer than the one we dug last year?"

Upon hearing this, the old man from the same village laughed, "Zhang Niu'er, you're still too young. You haven't done enough corvée labor and haven't dug this kind of ground much, have you? The ground here is quite hard. If you use a hoe, you can't dig this deep at all, and you won't stir up much soil. If you don't believe me, try it with a different hoe later."

Upon hearing the old man's words, Zhang Niu'er dared not say anything more.

These two are seasoned farmers who have spent their entire lives cultivating the land, performing corvée labor and tilling the soil year after year. They've dug all kinds of soil. Since everyone says this hoe is good, it must be good. And he himself finds it very easy to use. He just said those things to make himself seem more clear-headed and intelligent than the others.

"Your stuff works so well, how do I use this one?" the others with nail shovels cried out with long faces.

They held this thing and gestured at it for a long time, but they still didn't know how to use it.

There were shovels in ancient times, but they were used to shovel soil rather than lift it. The shovel blades were wide and flat with a shallow groove in the middle, which was very different from the one they were holding. These people couldn't quite grasp it at first and felt that the thing in their hands looked strange. They had no idea how to use it.

Wang Fugui was quick-witted. He looked at what they were holding and said, "That should be a shovel. Try shoveling a handful of dirt."

"A shovel? How do you shovel dirt with that?" Everyone was a little confused.