warring states careerist

Chapter 917 The Outside World

Three months later.

Liu Zhan was standing at the gate of Qichun Supply and Marketing Cooperative, listening to the people from the Propaganda Department reading last month's newspaper.

"The Marquis of Gaocai renounced all fiefdoms and princely powers, and declared that Gaocai's land was owned by the people in accordance with the three generations of ancient times. He thought that he had stolen the people's land and returned it to himself as a great thief..."

Many people nearby were listening with their ears sideways. Liu Zhan thought to himself, this Marquis Gao Cai understands the truth.

At the entrance of the supply and marketing cooperative, several people were buying salt there. The supply and marketing cooperative refused to exchange grain directly.

Several people are repaying installment loans for ironware, agricultural tools, and seeds. Some of them are illiterate, but they already know the face value of banknotes.

The sound of Lang Lang's reading is heard in the elementary school next to it, which is decorated with 璆林门. Many children don't have paper and pens, but just take a cheap bluestone board and scribble on it with talc.

The local dialects of Song, Chu, Qi, Yue and Yayin are integrated in Sishang, and the taste has changed here, but listening to the children reading aloud the voices of sun and moon, fish and shrimp, rice and rice can still be understood .

The order to enlist for military service has been issued, and it does not seem to have caused much impact. The distributed new farm tools and new planting techniques, as well as the banning of feudal labor, are full of hope for the future life of the villagers, and given that the service policy is The transitional policy is only for one person per family, which does not have much impact on families with four or five children at this time.

At the entrance of the supply and marketing cooperative, Liu Zhan saw a somewhat familiar man, selling a piece of crocodile skin for money, and carrying a big matchlock gun on his back.

When this person's family drew a surname, they picked the surname Liu. There were not many people with the surname Liu in the village, so Liu Zhan had some impressions.

This person is the third child in the family, so after having a surname, he was named Liu San.

Later, the county organized a crocodile hunting activity. This man was quite brave and killed two crocodiles in a row. The county rewarded him with a matchlock gun and some money.

It was only later that Liu Zhan found out that this man was not involved in production at home. After the land was distributed to each household, every family was busy planting and reclamation, but he was lazy whenever he could. He didn't like working in the farmland, so he was quite unpopular at home.

His brothers and sisters-in-law had great opinions on him, and no one in the village was willing to marry his daughter to him. However, considering that he would have to serve in the army for a while, the brothers finally did not drive him out.

After getting the matchlock gun, he often went to the mountains and rivers, and did not cultivate. He only hunted and exchanged money with a few "non-productive, idle" people in the nearby villages, and his life was good.

But although he doesn't like productive work, this person likes to listen to the outside world, and is full of curiosity about the distant Sishang and the world beyond.

After the order to serve in the military was issued, he was the most cheerful one, thinking that he should go out and have a look instead of farming at home for the rest of his life.

Liu San sold the crocodile skin, bought some wine from the supply and marketing agency, and bought half a catty of gunpowder. After thinking about it, he asked about the price of the iron pot, and sighed through gritted teeth.

Seeing Liu Zhan standing beside him, he went over to say hello, "County magistrate, he will be serving in the army in a few days. Can a warrior like me in the Mohist army be a company commander?"

He has heard a lot about Sishang these days and knows the establishment of Sishang's army.The policy also deliberately broke the previous tradition of respect and order, so Liu San was not afraid of the county magistrate who was in charge of thousands of households.

Liu Zhan thought to himself, Jie Xuanjun is not what you think, anyone with courage will do.

Besides, those of you who serve are not going to the combat troops, the conscripts recruited by the county are going to the construction of Eyi, so he said: "It's not your turn to fight. But you have to serve as if you are serving. It's not that the Jiexuan Army has won consecutive victories." Rely on people like you."

"Sishang is not full of brave and desperate people, but there is not a single crocodile or tiger in Sishang now."

Liu San smiled and asked, "What are you doing in the military and not fighting?"

Before Liu Zhan could answer, someone called him, so he said goodbye and left in a hurry.

A few days later, servicemen from various villages under the jurisdiction of the county gathered in Qichun, and the next day Liu San and these men crossed the river by boat and went to the south bank of the river.

When we arrived at the south bank of the river, there was a military depot there, and we took a bath there, and each of us was given a military uniform, a set of soap, a bristle toothbrush, and a little tooth powder.

Liu San looked at the black and white foam on his hair in a daze. He had seen this thing in the village commune. In fact, the supply and marketing cooperative also sold it, but the people in the village commune would not choose to buy these things.

Although they preached morality, new life hygiene and other things every two days, they still haven't reached the point where everyone accepts it.

Everyone in Sishang can accept it, because Sishang was a large barracks a few years ago, literacy, health campaigns, new living habits, new names, etc., were basically solved during the service period, and it took 30 years to form a culture .

Liu San didn't expect that these things would be distributed in the army, which was completely different from what he had imagined.Imagination always comes from reality, and the previous village system and military system formed the basis of his imagination.

Liu San knew that the Jiexuan Army could fight, so according to his imagination, he must choose warriors to serve, but now it seems that it is not what he thought.

After taking a bath, I ate.Food is worse than life in the village, at least he eats meat occasionally, but it is not a problem to get full here.

Each person has a bowl of coarse rice, sweet potatoes and pumpkins are enough, the dish is radish that he has never seen before, there are some beans and peanuts in the coarse rice, and there is also some vegetable oil in the dish that he does not know.

The next two months were painful and exhausting.

Liu San learned a lot in this military depot.

For example, you have to wash your face and brush your teeth every day, you have to wash your clothes every few days, you can't pee anywhere in the toilet, you have to go to the toilet, and you have to call each other comrades.

For example, after eating lunch every day, you must learn to read and sing; you must practice running in queue; you must understand discipline and obedience; you must understand equality and universal love; you must understand the meaning of the existence of this army.

For example, some people specifically talk about some simple natural principles, and show some experiments that seem to be miraculous but are now easy to do.

For at least two months, everything Liu San could see was something he could still understand.

Two months later, when thousands of reborn people stand on the wasteland again, at least they can stand up straight, stand firmly, and understand various commands.

When someone read his name, he almost subconsciously shouted "Yes", and then stood up with the password.

The two-month drill was over. Liu San thought he would get a musket, but what he didn't expect was that he got a shovel.

He was assigned to a unit called the "Third Division of the Construction Corps" and served as a soldier of the Construction Corps in a company.

Some of the people from the same village who came with him were assigned to the "fishing company" and some to the "logging company". After all, it didn't sound like they were going to fight.

Only now did Liu San understand how he got the fish he ate and the house he lived in during these two months of training.

He thought to himself that this kind of service would be interesting. Instead of fighting, he had to fish;

Although I was puzzled in my heart, I could only accept such an arrangement, thinking that this is not the same as the previous labor?But it's not the same, at least it's in charge of the food, and in the past when farming for the fief owner, it was necessary for the family to send food.

Soon, the company elected the soldiers' committee. Because he was smart, he had learned a few words and could calculate some simple numbers before, and became a member of the soldiers' committee, mainly to supervise the distribution of pocket money.

Although it is usually a supply system and meals are eaten three times a day, some money is still sent to the company every month.

He didn't know that the purpose of this is to let the people in the company realize that money can buy things; the second is to cultivate the soldiers in the company's understanding of equality and supervision. cognition of this era.

The money can be used to buy some things from the supply and marketing cooperatives and military vendors near the military camp, such as cotton cloth, dried meat, sugar, tea and other things.

And the same money is exactly the same as the money they saw in the village commune. Many people know that they can buy ironware, cotton cloth and other things they need at home, so they usually save as much as possible and wait for a few months. Release them together and save them.

Not long after they were incorporated into the company, in May, the army ate a strange meal: polished rice wrapped in big leaves or bamboo leaves, and there were some things called jujubes that are rare here. To commemorate the comrades who sacrificed for the benefit of the world in the Jiangkou water battle.

Later, Liu San learned that these things were called zongzi, and it became a habit after they retired and returned to the village a few years later, and every family has this habit every year.

But at this time, after Liu San ate the zongzi, the company issued an order, saying that everyone should pack up their bedding and personal belongings and set off for Eyi tomorrow.

He had heard of Eyi, but it was actually only a few tens of miles away from here, and his village was only across the Yangtze River, but it used to be an extremely distant place for him.

In fact, they did not go directly to Eyi on the second day, but to the riverside in the southeast of Eyi, where there are already some simple houses, and many companies are temporarily stationed there.

Early in the morning of the second day, their company received a mission to carry some goods to the pier by the river.

He had seen boats, and although the boat he saw the next day was slightly larger, it was still a boat with sails and a rudder behind, only slightly larger.

But while unloading, he saw something he had never seen before.

A long one is as long as seven or eight people, heavy and needs many people to lift it, strange in shape, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, and made of iron.

After asking boldly and curiously, I realized that this thing is called a "rail". After it is repaired, a special carriage can be used to pull goods on it.

I heard that some iron-producing places in Sishang have replaced roads with this kind of thing. Because horses can pull more, they can produce more iron, and then build more rails, and then pull more mines, and then produce more iron.

He couldn't figure out what kind of carriage could run on it.

After two days of loading and unloading, these ships continued to go north. I heard that there were still a lot of iron farm tools in the ships, which were to be sent upstream to transport the upstream rice grains here.

After the things to be loaded and unloaded on the third day appeared, he couldn't understand even more.

It was a pile of strange-looking iron objects. He recognized it as iron, but he couldn't understand what it was.

After asking, he found out that this thing can draw water by burning a kind of black stone, and the large copper mine near Eyi had already been dug below the waterline more than ten years ago, making a large number of slaves and slaves Workers put a lot of energy into draining water every day.

Liu San racked his brains and couldn't figure out how these strange iron things could lift water.

Of course, he couldn't even think of how those mines below the waterline were mined before, but he knew that this thing might save a lot of people, and those saved drainage workers could dig more mines, and even more More copper, more guns—the kind of thing that scared them on the battlefield.

Liu San suddenly felt that from now on, he would see many strange things that he might never have seen in his previous village.So he was even more curious about what the outside world looked like.

(End of this chapter)