Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 85

Wuyang County is located at the junction of Nanyang, Luohe and Pingdingshan. The cultivated farmland area is as much as 77 acres. The potential for agricultural development is considerable, and the development potential for the steel industry is also good. The modern Wugang City under the jurisdiction of Pingdingshan is located in Wuyang Iron and Steel Company. It is the only city in China named after a company.In addition, it also has a very large rock salt mine with reserves of more than 400 billion tons, ranking first in grade and second in reserves in the country, which can be called a cornucopia.Yang Menglong had visited the Wuyang Salt Field before, and was dazzled by the snow-white salt mountains and seas more than once. The salt as white as snow is just like the white flowers of silver. The people of Wuyang are standing on the Silver Mountain, thinking Not getting rich is a problem.Yang Menglong was deeply satisfied that he was sent to Wuyang to be a high-ranking official. This territory was really suitable for him.

However, the current Wuyang gives him a very strange feeling: it has nothing to do with the word rich, and as far as the eye can see, it is a wasteland full of weeds, crooked wheat seedlings, tattered It feels like entering a slum!There were several corpses on the side of the road, all of them were so hungry that they were out of shape, leaving only a piece of dirty skin loosely stuck to the bones, but with a big belly like a pregnant woman, the mouth was slightly opened, and the gap between the teeth The space is full of bark fibers or grass roots, obviously starving, eating Guanyin clay and being bloated to death.There are even many people staggering between the villages like walking dead, their eyes flickering, peeping at every house with malicious intentions, and they don't need to guess, but they know that if they have the opportunity, they will sneak in without hesitation. Swept away.The farmers here are also dressed in rags, carrying loads of water to shuttle between the ridges of the field, while the tanned peasant women pour ladles of water on the wheat seedlings.Wuyang County is relatively lucky. There are more than a dozen rivers in the territory, and the Shaying River and Li River run through the whole area. Coupled with the abundant rainfall, Wuyang County has sufficient water resources. However, it is now a fatal small glacier. During this period, the water level of the river bed has been declining, and the irrigation capacity has been greatly reduced. The land that is more convenient for irrigation has been occupied by the landlord. The little water leaked out before reaching the field, so I had to pick it up with a pole.Xiao Yufang looked sad and sighed: "I thought Xiaojiazhuang was difficult enough, but I didn't expect it to be much more difficult than Xiaojiazhuang!"

Yang Menglong said: "It won't be like this forever!"

Seeing a large group of people passing by, the farmer working in the field raised his head and took a look, then bent down to tend his crops with an indifferent expression.It is rare for nearly 2000 people to arrive in a small place like Wuyang at once, but they are indifferent to this. The difficult life has stripped away their last bit of curiosity. They only care about the crops in their fields.However, there was a guy who looked like a land manager standing on the side of the road, pointing at the mighty army passing by, and said contemptuously: "These Qiu Ba people are not all dead yet?" Fortunately, Yang Menglong did not hear this sentence. Otherwise, you will definitely not be able to escape after a beating.

When the sun was setting to the west, Yang Menglong and others came to Wuquan, where the Wuyang Thousand Households House is located.It was still far away from the Qianhusuo, and there was the sound of firecrackers bursting like beans, crackling non-stop, so lively, Yang Menglong grinned: "They are welcoming us home!" Wuyang Qianhusuo The soldiers cheered loudly and quickened their pace.Sure enough, the crowd in front of them was full of people, men, women and children, all in ragged clothes, yellow and skinny, dirty and disheveled. They were all family members of military households who went to war. Men, women and children stood outside the town and waited eagerly. Looking anxious, seeing the army approaching, there were thousands of voices calling, with a crying voice:

"My son, my son, where are you?"

"Dad, dad, where are you?"

"You are heartless, you are willing to come back!"

"Brother! Brother!"

"Uncle! Uncle!"

When the soldiers from Wuyang Qianhu Station heard the call, they threw away the things in their hands and rushed to their relatives. When they found them, they hugged each other and cried loudly. Those who couldn't find them turned around anxiously and called their relatives' names loudly. , and those family members are also trying to find their relatives, and the scene is extremely chaotic.From time to time, there were sounds of mourning. Many family members were desperate to learn that the mainstay of their family could not come back. What came back was only a box of ashes. You can imagine the despair and pain. I don’t know how many people were holding the ashes. Ashes, crying heartbroken, heartbreaking.Yang Menglong looked at those poor people who were in pain for a long time, and then sighed: "I...did I do something wrong? If I hadn't forced them to defend Dingxing County, maybe so many people wouldn't have died in Dingxing County. Dingxing, their relatives won’t have to suffer so much..."

Wang Tiechui said: "I don't understand the truth, all I know is that if you hadn't forced them to stick to Dingxing, none of the tens of thousands of people in Dingxing County would be able to survive, and there would be more than tens of thousands of bloody and tearful people."

Yang Menglong smiled wryly: "Crying all the way is worse than crying all over the place, crying by one name is worse than crying as a family, isn't it?"

Jiang Zheng squeezed his way out from among the crying military households, came to Yang Menglong and knelt down.Yang Menglong jumped off the horse with a whoosh, supported him, and said with an unhappy face: "If you have something to say, let's talk about it. Why kneel? Are your bones so soft? Just do it as you did before!" When he was in Dingxing, he He would never let soldiers kneel to him. He couldn't bear to see a grown man kneel down at every turn.

Jiang Zheng said: "My lord, this is not allowed! You used to be a commoner, so naturally you don't need to talk about these etiquettes, but now you are a thousand households, you can't be like before!"

Yang Menglong said: "If I say you don't need to kneel, you don't need to kneel. If you can't do it, get out of here! By the way, how are you doing with what you were asked to do?"

Jiang Zheng said: "Zhang Qianhu's family has been expelled from Wuyang. The fields and mines under his name are well preserved, and they are waiting for the adults to come and take them over. My lord, the military households of the Wuyang Qianhu Office look forward to your lord like a severe drought." Hope Yunni!"

Yang Menglong punched him and smiled: "Good boy, I haven't seen you for two months, and you have become glib!"

Jiang Zheng chuckled, turned around and shouted at everyone: "Everyone be quiet!"

Zhang Qianhu's family was expelled from Wuyang County by the imperial court a month ago. In the past month, everything in the Wuyang Qianhu Office has been managed by Jiang, and he has accumulated a small reputation among the military households. Hearing his call, everyone fell silent.Jiang Zheng bowed his hands to Yang Menglong and said, "This is Mr. Yang whom I often mention to you, the new Qianhu of our Wuyang Qianhu Institute, why don't you hurry up and salute?"

The military households immediately knelt down on the ground and kowtowed: "Greetings, Mr. Qianhu, Mr. Qianhu!"

Yang Menglong looked helpless, please, I'm not dead yet, what are you praying for!Helpless and helpless, he had no choice but to accept that there were thousands of people, and he couldn't help them up one by one.After everyone kowtowed, he said impatiently, "Get up quickly, and don't just kneel down in the future!"

The military households were obsequious and took pictures one after another.

Yang Menglong waved his hand: "Come on, let's enter the guard." Under the leadership of Jiang Zheng, he rode into the guard.

The entire Qianhusuo is similar to a small city, surrounded by an earthen wall, densely packed with houses, and several streets run through the east, west, north, south, and divide these houses to prevent them from being merged into one piece.There are barracks, wells, workshops, grain depots and ordnance stores in the guardhouse to store food and ordnance. To put it bluntly, it is a small military fortress.However, over the past 200 years of Taiping, those military facilities are almost dilapidated. The crucial earthen wall has been demolished, and there are holes everywhere. Children can easily come in and out, and the playground has become a playground. The grain drying ground and the place where firewood is piled up, as for the grain depot, it is estimated that rats will not enter, and only starve to death if they enter.The armory is better, at least there is still a little stock in stock, such as bows and arrows, spears, swords, shields, muskets, gunpowder, etc., all of which are more or less stored, but when Zhang Qianhu was forced to send troops by the commander of the Nanyang Guard They ransacked all the barely usable ordnance in the arsenal, leaving only some broken copper and iron, and even dismissed the broken ones.In Yang Menglong’s view, the entire Thousand-Households House is more like a slum than a military camp. Looking around, there are thousands of houses, and few of them are decent. Most of them are earthen wall structures, and the walls are cracked like turtle shells. It is riddled with holes, and it must be very convenient for mice to get in.Only the residences of the officers Qianhu, Zhenfu, and Baihu still look decent, especially the Qianhu house, with blue tiles and white walls, is very grand, in stark contrast to those crumbling houses.

Some sloppy guys in the Thousand Households stayed under the eaves, looking at Yang Menglong and the others. Their clothes were nothing more than a pile of rags strung together with ropes, and their skinny faces could not see a trace of vividness. The traces of life, just looking at them blankly, can't see any emotional fluctuations.Jiang Zheng said that these military households are all bachelors, the kind where one person feeds the whole family and the whole family is not hungry. The military households are poor enough, and they are the poorest among the military households. When someone comes to take over his class, when they die, the establishment of Wuyang Qianhu Office will lose a lot of people.The whole Qianhu House was lifeless, filled with the atmosphere of dilapidation and decay. Yang Menglong was almost suffocated by it, and rushed into the Qianhu House as if escaping. Is his mother still a soldier? Even a beggar is not so miserable!"

Officials of the Ming Dynasty are also capable of raising military households into beggars.

(End of this chapter)