When the rebel army swallowed up 20,000 people, a problem arose: food and fodder were in short supply.

Li Mengxi had never heard Liu, Guan, and Zhang say how the food and grass were. He always thought that the food and grass were plentiful. Now that the food and grass were not available, Li Mengxi was unexpected.

Even if you don't have weapons, it's easy to handle without weapons. There is always a way to turn a pole into a flag and chop down trees into soldiers.

If the enemy is strong, there is a way. Use the thirty-six tactics once. If you don't believe it, you won't be able to defeat the enemy's force. If you don't believe it, you won't be able to change offensive and defensive positions.

If there are not enough cars, you can cut down wood on the spot to make a car. If you don't have enough straw sandals, you can mobilize the peasants to make straw sandals. It is not difficult.

But there is not enough food and grass, and there is no way to solve this problem.

Once the food and grass are exhausted, all the efforts of the rebels will be in vain in an instant.

Without food, the prisoners will rebel. At best, the rebels will act benevolently and the prisoners will feel Liu Xuande's kindness and will not rebel. In order to find something to eat and survive, the Yellow Turbans will leave the rebels and become thieves again.

At this time, if it is for the sake of the people and important events, the cruel approach is to slaughter the superfluous people if there is not enough food. Kill all the old and weak, including the sick and disabled. Those who only know how to farm but are not good at riding and crossbows will be killed.

Useless people are also killed, leaving only a small number of elite manpower. In this way, if tens of thousands are killed, tens of thousands of mouths will be missing, and the food problem will be solved immediately.

However, Liu Bei and Guan Yu flatly refused to commit the atrocity of entrapping prisoners, and Li Mengxi did not want to do so. Even Zhang Fei would feel that killing prisoners was unknown and was unwilling to do such a cruel thing.

When Li Mengxi knew that the army's rations were no longer available, he was in the carpentry camp. The carpentry camp had just made new carts, so Li Mengxi went to the Zizhong Brigade to get food as usual.

It happened that Liu Bei was also counting grain in the Zizhong team. Liu Bei watched the carpenters carrying several large bags of grain away without saying anything, but kept Li Mengxi.

"Xi'er, our army now has more than 20,000 people. If there are more people, the food and grass may not be able to continue. Do you think the food reward for the craftsmen is..." Liu Bei stopped mid-sentence, and said:

The idea is to ask Li Mengxi not to give food to the carpenters for the time being.

The carpenters had a quota of rations, so they could not go hungry. If the food given to the carpenters was placed in their hands, they would not be able to finish it all, which meant that the food was not used to its full potential.

Li Mengxi was shocked when he heard Liu Bei say that there was not enough military rations.

Later, Li Mengxi realized that at this critical moment, food should indeed be used in key areas.

However, food was given to the carpenters as a reward. If they were not given food, the carpenters should be considerate of the difficulties in the army. However, Li Mengxi felt that something was wrong.

If a person has no trust, he will not be established. Li Mengxi personally set up the reward system and then abandoned it with his own hands, thus damaging his credibility.

(I have to give it, but I can’t give it all...) Li Mengxi frowned and thought, and suddenly his eyes widened, (Yes!)

When we improved the incentive law earlier, we considered that the emphasis on incentives is timeliness, that is to say, whoever meets the reward conditions should be rewarded immediately. If not, if it is accumulated to one year and calculated once a year, it will be a routine salary.

No, it’s not a reward.

If a craftsman comes up with a good idea and rewards him with food immediately, then the craftsman will be full of energy and creativity in the next few days.

If the craftsman comes up with a good idea, agrees that it is good, writes it down, and rewards him with grain after a year, the craftsman will be expressionless and leave with a sigh. There is no reward effect.

Therefore, the reward method cannot be expensive, and the delay method cannot be used. Timeliness should still be emphasized.

Li Mengxi thought of a compromise method of combining both the time limit for incentives and the postponement of payment.

The specific method is that if any of the craftsmen comes up with a good method, if this method is worth fifty catties of grain, then the craftsman will be rewarded with one catty of grain, and at the same time, he will be given a check for forty-nine catties of grain.

In this way, the craftsmen can still get food from time to time and have a good meal from time to time, so the reward is still valid. When the craftsmen get the food, they will be motivated for a period of time.

In the same way, if the method proposed by a carpenter is worth two hundred catties of grain, he will still be rewarded with only one catty of grain, and the remaining one hundred and ninety nine catties of grain will be paid by check.

Spending one pound of grain is not much and will not affect military grain reserves.

Li Mengxi solved the problem after thinking for a moment.

Li Mengxi informed Liu Bei of his idea, and Liu Bei smiled, "That's very good."

Next, we had to solve the check problem. The first thing Li Mengxi thought of was to tear up a piece of cloth and write on the cloth how many kilograms of grain he needed to give to the carpenter.

But then I thought about it deeply and realized that there was an oversight in doing so.

Li Mengxi didn't record how much food was rewarded, and he didn't count it in his mind. In addition, there were so many things to do every day, and he couldn't remember who proposed what method and how much food was rewarded.

If a cunning person secretly obtains a piece of linen cloth, write down the number of kilograms of grain, and use it to fish in troubled waters.

The loss of some food is nothing, but if this sneaky and sneaky behavior ruins the atmosphere of the craftsman camp, it will be more than worth the loss.

What is the Craftsman Camp? The Craftsman Camp is now almost a scientific research and production unit with a strong research and technical atmosphere. The craftsmen are all thinking about improving technology so that they can get rewards.

Anyone who doesn't use any brains and just makes some fakes gets a lot of food. When others look at it, they feel that their stupid brain is a bit stupid, so they follow suit and use the energy spent on thinking about technology to steal money.

The trick was put to use and the city was destroyed by an anthill.

Linen doesn't work. Linen is too easy to find. Carpenters can easily find linen.

Checks should be made of scarce fabric, such as silk.

It's not like the entire camp is filled with silk.

However, Li Mengxi thought again, the silk was really all over the camp.

Liu Xuande regarded money as dung, so did Guan Yu, so did Zhang Fei, and so did Li Mengxi. A lot of silk was seized in the army. Li Mengxi also discovered that satin had a dense texture and was much better than burlap as a bandage, so satin was used in various ways.

Cut it into bandages, or pull out some silk to make clothes for a naked child in the women's and children's camp.

As a result, the silk now scattered in the army is everywhere.

The craftsmen had difficulty finding silk, but it was not impossible to find it at all.

Silk is not necessarily completely safe either.

To make things more complicated, you can find several pieces of silk of different colors and sew them into a multi-material fabric.

No one can collect such a colorful piece of cloth with so many luxurious fabrics.

As he said, Li Mengxi went to rummage through the fabrics. He specifically selected the rare and luxurious ones, and finally picked five pieces of silk of different colors.

I took the silk to the women's and children's camp and found the embroiderer Lady Liu. After a few words of explanation, Lady Liu understood what to do.

Using five different colors of silk, she cut out a long strip each, and then sewed it together into a strip as wide as a palm. The workload was not large. In two quarters of an hour, Liu sewed a long strip of five colors that was as long as her arm.

Some of them were used, so Li Mengxi went to find pen and ink, thought for a while, and decided to imitate the denominations of coins, such as ten catties, five catties, twenty catties, and one hundred catties. This is convenient for use.

After writing a piece, Li Mengxi took scissors and cut it. After doing this for two times, Li Mengxi suddenly realized something was wrong.

You shouldn't just write "one catty or two catties", you should use variant characters like one, two, three, like in a passbook.

Because [one] is easy to be tampered with. If you add a horizontal line at random, it becomes two, and if you add a vertical line, it becomes ten.

Carpenters have ink cartridges in their hands. It is easy to tamper with the ink in their hands. If someone does tamper with it, it will be difficult to detect.

Therefore, variant characters should be used.

When it got dark, Li Mengxi made a lot of cloth pieces of various denominations. Then, Li Mengxi went to the carpenters' camp to gather everyone. After some words, the carpenters put down their work and dispersed.

After a while, Lu Li brought a large scale and a pole to lift the scale, and the carpenters came carrying large and small bags of grain.

The grain was weighed here, and Li Mengxi gave the carpenter a ticket for how many kilograms he weighed.

The carpenters took the ticket and found that it was colorful and beautiful. There were words written on the ticket. The font was very complicated and the carpenters could not recognize it.

Although they had doubts in their hearts, the carpenters did not doubt whether the food could be delivered in the future, and Li Mengxi still had credibility.

In the end, Li Mengxi exchanged all the food hoarded by the carpenters from the carpenter camp.

According to statistics, more than 2,900 kilograms of grain were harvested, which is an astonishing amount.

From this we can see how prosperous the carpenter camp was, how many carpenters came up with ways to improve production, and how many carts the carpenters produced to get so much reward.

After harvesting the grain, Li Mengxi went to Liu Bei and told him that he had collected nearly three thousand kilograms of grain from the craftsmen's business. Liu Bei didn't know what to say.

Li Mengxi is really capable of doing things.

According to Liu Bei's idea, he would not give so much food to the Jiangying camp in the future. Unexpectedly, Li Mengxi not only changed the reward policy, but also took away all the food stored in the Jiangying camp.

Li Mengxi talked about the voting system, and Liu Bei was very interested.

Finally, Liu Bei asked for some five-color cloth from Li Mengxi, and planned to use tickets instead of real items to reward the soldiers.

There have been many battles recently, and soldiers who have performed meritorious services often need rewards. However, the army is currently short of supplies, and there is not much food and wine. When it comes to rewarding meritorious soldiers after the war, Liu Bei feels that he can't afford even a little bit of meat.

Now that Li Mengxi proposed using tickets in lieu of rewards, Liu Bei suddenly had an idea.

At the time of reward, although there is not much meat, ten or one hundred catties of meat can be rewarded in the form of receipts, which can be exchanged in the future.

In other words, using money, food, and meat in the future to reward those who have made meritorious deeds now can greatly enhance the effect of rewards.

When there was no bill law, when Liu Bei was rewarding the soldiers, he saw that the meritorious soldiers only had a small piece of meat in their bowls. Liu Bei had to comfort him and said dryly, "Now there is no wine and no meat in the army, so everyone is suffering."

Brother, in the future, everyone will drink wine from large bowls and eat meat with large mouthfuls. Liu Bei will find it difficult to speak.

Now that we have the bill method, it is appropriate. If we reward the meritorious people with ten catties or one hundred catties of meat invoices, wouldn't it be grand? Wouldn't the rewards be generous? Wouldn't all the people be high-spirited?

Bills, which Li Mengxi called military bills, began to be widely used in the military from this day on.
Chapter completed!