The Marquis' Wife
Dike project begins

The next day after resting, Lu Xiang's family gotong royong together tidied up the items that Lu Tao and Lu Cai's family brought or cleaned all the houses and decorated them neatly and beautifully.

Lu Cheng and Lu Shan moved to the east house closest to the main house after a day of living together with Adelia and Lu Xiang in the main house.

The Meng surname board was lowered and replaced by the Lu surname board written by Lu Xiang himself with a firm writing style and a brush showing his personality.

Adelia also took out the items she had stored in the lotus space. The main house has 4 rooms, he made one room for his bedroom with Lu Xiang, one study room and two rooms for his children later.

His lips smiled at the thought of cute and adorable children like Lu Cheng and Lu Shan running around the house making the atmosphere crowded, he stroked his stomach proudly..

"You're gonna grow up to be a funny kid"

Lu Xiang who had just finished his task of writing the signboard back and saw his wife's affectionate smile. She hugged Adelia from behind. "What do you think of until you smile like that?".

Adelia leaned against Lu Xiang's field chest. "Our son, they'll definitely be so adorable".

"Pulse. Our son will be beautiful like you".

"Hehe, and handsome like you".

Both of them enjoyed the warm togetherness for a while until lunch time.

In the afternoon, yamen officers came to Lu Xiang's house and told him that Prefect Zhong wanted to meet.

"Lu Xiang's. Sorry uncle called you when you just got to Fucheng".

"It's okay uncle. Did uncle get my letter?".

"Haha. Uncle called you because he wanted to talk about the idea. You have a brilliant idea, do you work in the Prefect's office? With your idea you'll be a great employee in my office".

Lu Xiang cupped his hands towards the Prefect. "Thank you for the offer uncle, Lu Xiang is very happy to get it but right now I want to focus on studying uncle because I want to add knowledge and experience. And the idea was from my wife Adelia, she heard that corvee was a tough job and wanted to donate some money to relieve the corvee workers"

"That was your wife's idea?!" Prefect Zhong did not believe that an idea he had never thought of could be thought of by a woman.

"Yes uncle. Our family will donate 10,000 silver coins for this project, we want to add the corvee workers' food so that no one gets sick from lack of food".

Prefect Zhong was stunned, the amount of donations Lu Xian gave was quite large, he heard reports that his wife was earning a lot of money after selling the leaked cake recipes to the businessmen and minimizing the losses. Indeed, it seemed like Lu Xiang's wife was a woman who had a great idea of being able to take the opportunity to side with him. He was very curious about the figure of Adelia that Lu Xiang told him about.

"I'm so glad you donated your money and with you being an example I'm sure that many business people will donate to this project and make this project successful without anyone being victimized"

Prefect Zhong then let out a long sigh. "Corvee is indeed very tiring even some died but due to lack of budget every corvee, uncle as Prefect can not do more. Your wife has a noble soul, uncle wants to take you and your wife to dinner at home".

"Uncle chose Shu village for the first experiment, Shu village is the closest village to the dam. Do you want to watch him?".

"I'll go watch him uncle".

"Hahaha" Prefect Zhong was delighted to hear that Lu Xiang was also overseeing the project.

The two talked about what the corvee workers would do and from which direction the project would be built first.

Lu Xiang listened carefully and occasionally expressed his opinion until dinner arrived, Prefect Zhong invited him to dinner together but he refused it subtly. He wanted to go home and tell Adelia this.

&&&

Lu Xiang enrolled in Wangxie academy before leaving for Shu village with prefect Zhong and other servants.

Lu Xiang introduced himself and all the employees knew that the plan came from him and built a close relationship with him.

They reached Shu village two hours later, thousands of corvee workers who could not pay taxes had arrived the day before and were waiting for orders about the tasks they had to do.

Lu Xiang looked at the simple clothes and frail bodies of the corvee workers then frowned. He sighed and realized that many workers died because they could no longer work in the family. Although not all of them are like that, but there are some families who are willing to send people to corvee just to be sacrificed.

It did sound cruel but Lu Xiang was able to understand it. Each family has many family members because all children and grandchildren gather in one house, and it becomes difficult to feed everything if the person who is able to work is sent then no one can work for the family so that the head of the family is forced to choose someone who is not productive to be a corvee worker for not having the money to pay. It is the circumstances that force them to do so.

"Before you work, there are a few things I want to explain. First is the corvee this time for yourselves, you will build a dike, a large ditch to hold water from the dam and will drain it into your fields through irrigation so that you no longer need to lift water from the well or wait for rain". Prefect Zhong began his speech with excitement.

The words of Prefect Zhong churned out the corvee workers who were average farmers. They do not believe that this time the corvee instead adds thickness to the wall of the dam or makes a trench to the sea so that the dam water will flow into the sea when it is no longer very heavy with water.

"Secondly, someone with a heart starts donating their money to your food so you don't get sick easily and can go home with your family again. Third, you must maintain safety at work".

Everyone who joined the corvee was deeply moved to hear the words of Prefect Zhong who was still thinking about the fate of those who were only commoners. The workers became enthusiastic and impatient to want to work immediately.

Prefect Zhong got another idea after talking to Lu Xiang two days ago: hiring inmates to corvee to make up for his prison term.

Inmates became one of the things that also confused Prefect Zhong because most of them did not commit serious crimes and that made the prison full. The number of inmates will also make the number of people who will be fed the budget for inmates is very large every year.

If he can make inmates as corvee workers then he not only uses people who just sit in prison but also minimizes the number of prisoners and can save the budget. Yup, one paddle three islands exceeded.

But to do that he must prepare it carefully so that something does not happen that he does not want.

The workers began to build levees from the dam bit by bit.