Up until now, we have had nearly five or six hundred thousand people arriving every day. The pressure is immense, and we can barely keep up with the food supply. In the end, we had to exhaust our grain reserves and implement strict rationing; we could no longer afford to let people eat as freely as they once did.
To stop the panic among the crowds, I immediately selected several hundred thousand people to begin farming. We worked through the night to get the water pumps running and ordered everyone to dig irrigation canals.
Most of these people were experienced farmers. With just a little instruction, they became skilled, though they weren’t familiar with our method of flooding the fields. They were used to growing wheat—they would just plow the land and plant.
Chapter 138