Dressed as the best old lady in the famine years, I suddenly became rich

Chapter 192 Southern Plague
"Go away! You bad guys want to capture us and sell us!" A child behind the boy yelled at Ke Muqing.

"Hey, no." Ke Muqing patted her butt and stood up supporting the tree, "I'm not short of money. Why should I sell you?"

"Then you are going to capture us, cook us and eat us!" Another child shouted, "You adults eat children! You are all devils!"

"I'm not short of food either. I was just passing by here. My family was collecting firewood in the mountains and had to go down to cook for a while. I went up the mountain to wander around when I had nothing to do. Before I came up, I didn't know that there were still a bunch of little ones like you hiding in the mountains. ?" Ke Muqing explained dumbfounded.

The group of children stared at Ke Muqing for a long time. One of them said to the leading eldest child, "Brother, look at this old woman who is fat. She seems to have no shortage of food."

"What if she ate a lot of children and got fat?" The leading child still refused to let the children behind him get close to Ke Muqing, "Adults are very good at lying."

"No...where am I fat?" Ke Muqing pointed at herself. These children are getting fatter each time. Are they polite?
Where did she gain weight? She is just a little rich.

This is not fat, everything about her is just the right amount of wealth and blessing, okay?

Ke Muqing is really not fat, but after eating well and drinking well along the way, plus not exercising, he is indeed a few kilograms heavier than when he was back home in Wangshan Town, but in good conscience, it is not to the point of being chubby.

"Compared to us, you are fat!" the child responded.

Ke Muqing was speechless. If she were compared with these children, she would indeed be fat.

After living to this age, a child is choked to the point of being speechless. This is not his own child yet, and he cannot be beaten or scolded.

But Ke Muqing didn't care about these children. These children were not bad, they were just like frightened birds.

They heard that some people would divide the children and eat them, or that some people would sell them. Judging from their alert looks, it was obvious that such things were not just hearsay, but were actually happening.

"I'm just passing by here. My whole family is still down the mountain. I also have children half your age. I even have grandchildren, so I promise I won't eat you or sell you." Ke Muqing didn't show off. He was very friendly and took out some candies from his sleeve.

"Why did you give us such a precious thing for no reason? You said you didn't want to sell us!" Unexpectedly, the child holding the stick became more wary when he saw the candy, and Ke Muqing looked more like a bad guy.

"The children in my family love to eat. I see that you are also children, so I thought that you should also like to eat." Ke Muqing said, "Since you are afraid of me, then I will not come close to you. I will step back and let's talk at a distance." ,feasible?"

Ke Muqing guessed that these children had no real food to eat while hiding in the mountains. They relied on wild vegetables and fruits in the mountains to survive, so they were all so thin.

"Why are there so many of you children hiding in the mountains? Why don't you go into the city? It's better to beg in the city than to eat leaves and wild vegetables in the mountains, right?" Ke Muqing asked.

"We can't get into the city. If we could, we would have done it by now." The leading boy cursed. "The dog officials don't treat us refugees as human beings. The city gates are locked. Entry and exit are based on household registration. Anyone with a non-Zhuang County household registration It is impossible to enter any city in Zhuang County, not even to beg at the city gate."

This surprised Ke Muqing.

"People from Feizhuang County can't enter the city? What about passers-by and merchants? Not even?" Ke Muqing asked. "Of course you can't, but if you have money, if you have enough money, you can bribe the man guarding the city gate to secretly get you a fake household registration." The boy said, "Those people are all obsessed with money. ”

"You are not from Zhuang County, where did you come from? Why are you all a group of children? Where are the adults at home?" Ke Muqing continued to ask.

"We basically came from the south. There was a flood in our hometown, and everyone fled." The boy said, "Some of us were beggars, some of us were separated from our families on the way to escape, and some of us were abandoned by the adults in the family. Unwanted child.”

"There were many people trying to catch children and sell them. There were also hungry refugees who caught children and cooked them for meat. We brothers and sisters got together to protect each other, and then we fled all the way here and hid in the mountains."

"We originally wanted to enter Chen County and then move forward, but we heard that once you enter Chen County, you can't come out. We also heard that Chen County, Liang County, and Yan County are experiencing famine, and we also encountered some people who ran away from these three counties. refugees, so we didn’t enter Chen County.”

"There are mountains here. We can hide and eat some wild vegetables to keep us from starving to death. When we enter Chen County, we can't even find wild vegetables and can only wait to die."

"Even if I have to starve to death, I would rather starve to death in a mountain like Zhuang County, where there are grass and flowers, than to starve to death in Chen County, where I can't even eat tree bark. Can't even chew it."

A group of children were chattering away.

The leading child continued, "Prince Zhuang and the county guard of Zhuang County said that our refugees who fled from the south were all carrying diseases and that we would infect them with the plague, so they closed the city and did not allow refugees like us at all. Enter."

Ke Muqing was startled when he heard about the plague and asked quickly, "But is there a plague in your hometown?"

The leading boy nodded, "I heard that there is a plague, and the people who will stay in their hometowns are getting sick in one village and then dying in one village after another."

Speaking of which, the boy rubbed his eyes and said, "The government then started burning villages one by one. No matter how many people in a village got the plague or how many didn't, the government just ordered a burn and burned everyone alive."

Ke Muqing was horrified when he heard this. For the government, burning to death was the most effective way to control the spread of the plague.

They are just poor people in the village. What do these people's lives mean to them?
They were only afraid that these people would run out of the village and infect them, and they wished they could burn the plague-infected villages to death as soon as possible to avoid future troubles.

"At first, Zhuang County was like this. When they heard the refugees from the south, as long as someone coughed, they would be taken away and burned. Later, when there were more refugees, the Zhuang County people couldn't burn them anymore, so they immediately closed the city gate and refused to let anyone in. Don’t let me in or let you out.”

"The city gates were locked for about ten days. Half of the refugees died of starvation, half of them died of illness, and some of the remaining people continued to flee and find a way to survive."

There will be plague after the flood. This was something that was difficult to avoid in ancient times.

Whether it is floods or plagues, they are like punishments from God.
Even in the 21st century, flood-stricken areas will still have to spend a lot of manpower and money on disinfection after the water recedes.

"What about you? Are you all okay?" Ke Muqing glanced at the group of children in front of him and asked with concern.