Great Wei Overlord

Chapter 353 The Root of Troubled Times
Chapter 356

The yamen servant smiled and said, "Except during the war, the government has no right to expropriate people's power. Your Majesty has said that during the war, all Wei people must unconditionally respond to the imperial court's call. Those who excuse themselves will be punished."

Xie An felt a little unbelievable.He said in disbelief: "If you don't recruit civilians, how will the city walls be built? Don't you care about how the roads will be built?"

But after thinking about it, since he landed in Wei State in Buqicheng, the roads he passed were three points smoother than the roads in Jiankang City.

The yamen servant was also a chatterbox, looked at Xie An and explained: "Repair, of course, but we have many captives in Wei State, and there are also many criminals. They have committed crimes, so they have to use their own labor to atone for their sins! "

Of course Xie An knew where Wei's captives came from, no need to guess, they must be prisoners of Yan and Dai.They were not killed or let go, but were kept alive in Wei State in this way.

"Dangdang..." At this moment, there was a sound of gongs in the distance.

Xie An asked curiously, "What's going on?"

"Oh, it's time for dinner. It's time for dinner." The yamen servant smiled helplessly and said, "I can't take you to see the county magistrate now. I'll take you to dinner. You must be hungry too!"

Xie An was not hungry at all, and he also guessed that the food for the refugees must not be much better, maybe worse than pig food.Thinking of asking myself Xie Anshi to eat pig food, it was more uncomfortable than killing him.

He shirked, "But, I, I don't have any money!"

The yamen servant said: "No money, it's free."

"It's free?" Xie An was even more surprised.

With an attitude of giving it a try, Xie An followed the yamen servants to the place where the refugees concentrated.

At this time, Xie An was taken to a wide place, which was as big as three or four hundred mu of land. The ground was compacted with lime and soil and was very flat.

A wall was also surrounded by mud and wood, and five to six thousand people gathered here.

The 6000 people were divided into more than [-] teams, waiting neatly.

There are buzzing sounds everywhere in this square, and there are excited conversations.

Xie An suddenly discovered that many of these refugees were skinny and skinny, and some children had extremely large heads, which were obviously out of proportion to their bodies.

Dozens of yamen servants maintained order at the scene, and they shouted: "Don't squeeze, don't squeeze, and don't worry, when you come to Wei, your heart will be put in your stomach. Before you are resettled, all your food will be The government is responsible for it. You don’t need to pay for it.”

Beside Xie An, a little girl with yellow hair and malnutrition smiled excitedly: "Mother, they said that they don't need money for food!"

A similarly thin woman coughed from time to time, patted the little girl's head and said, "Ni'er, don't worry, you'll be full later!"

This scene made Xie An feel very sad.

Finally, the people who received the food in the front row started to turn around, looking for a place to eat under the leadership of the yamen servants.

Xie An saw that these people did not have bowls in their hands, but a wooden box like a tray, with four compartments, inside the compartments were porridge, two steamed buns, or three, and a small pile of unknown dishes .There is also a palm-sized black fish.

Xie An suddenly remembered this green vegetable, which seemed to be the kelp that Ran Ming mentioned.

Steamed buns are not white flour, but made of miscellaneous grains. This kind of food is not too bad for ordinary people, but giving these refugees free food makes Xie An have to say that Ran Min has really worked hard to win people's hearts.

These people have been hungry for too long, and they have not been given something rich in oil, otherwise they will definitely have diarrhea.

Those people who received the food were muttering something, Xie An vaguely heard it saying: "Thank you, Your Majesty, long live Your Majesty."

From time to time, a yamen servant shouted loudly: "Don't move around, everyone will have food, don't worry about not getting your food. Don't throw away food at will, you must know that it is shameful to waste it."

Xie An laughed dumbfounded. This sentence is obviously superfluous. The refugees wandered here from the state of Jin. They suffered a lot along the way. Not to mention that they would waste it, even if they put a knife on their necks, they might not throw it away. Rice in hand.

When Xie An received the meal, the cook who delivered the meal looked at Xie An's attire of a down-and-out scholar, and asked, "Are you a scholar?"

Xie An smiled and nodded.

The cook sang: "One Confucian scholar, four taels of rice, half a catty of porridge, enough steamed buns, and two servings of vegetables."

Xie An was so surprised that he was numb, he nodded in gratitude, and took his meal, which was rice, a small pile of fried pork with fungus, shredded kelp, and a fish that weighed about seven or eight.

The yamen servant brought Xie An instead of squatting on the ground to eat like other refugees, but turned into a simple tent next to it. The tent basically had no furnishings. It was a table eight feet wide and more than three feet long, and there were beds around it. .

At this time, there were many down-and-out scholars in the tent who were staring at the food in a daze.

Xie An said in amazement: "Why is the food not to your liking!"

An elderly scholar with gray hair choked up and said, "I thought I would never have the chance to eat meat again in this life!"

Then the old scholar began to gobble it up.

Xie An said: "You guys have been hungry for too long, don't eat too fast."

A young scholar said with emotion: "The rice porridge is thick but not pourable. There are also fragrant side dishes, meat and fish. This happens every day. How much food does Licheng spend every year? Although the state of Wei is poor, it is so poor that people are speechless." gone."

"There is no free lunch in the world, but I finally got a free lunch today."

At this time, Xie An saw a well-dressed Confucian scholar next to him. Although he looked downcast, he was not too helpless.

Xie An put down the lunch box and cupped his hands, "Didn't you ask your brother?"

The scholar who ate very politely raised his head and said, "My surname is Xiao, my first name is Jing, and I call it Lanling."

Xie An thought for a while and said, "Lanling Xiao Clan? I don't know why your brother came here?"

Xiao Jing sighed and said: "We don't suffer from poverty, but we suffer from anxiety. Although our Xiao family in Lanling County is not a rich and powerful family, we can get by. However, there is always a feeling of being on pins and needles, afraid that one day, our own The home was robbed by starving people and bandits, that kind of danger always accompanied him, so he had no choice but to abandon his home.”

One of the root causes of troubled times is the loss of order, and anarchism is rampant, and bandits are a typical representative.

"I don't know why brother Boqiu insisted on leaving Lanling. Did he just think that he was worried about being attacked by bandits?" Xie An was very upset when he heard that even the Xiao family in Lanling had left their hometown.Although he went north alone, his affection for the Jin Dynasty was not easy to give up.

The gentry can no longer get the sense of security they want in the Jin Dynasty.

This was really beyond Xie An's expectations.

In fact, the gentry are also divided into three, six, and nine classes.Behind the current glory of the first-class wealthy families, there is a history of blood and tears of the small nobles and poor families.

This can't be blamed on Xie An, the Xie family from Chen Jun was the first-class wealthy family in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, along with the Langya Wang family and the Sima family. No matter if they are ordinary corrupt officials or powerful bullies, they dare not touch Xie's bad luck. .

Because of the different locations, Xie An actually didn't know the filth and filth here.

"Who can say otherwise?!" Then, Xiao Jing sighed deeply, and said, "There is no way to do this. If you can survive, who wants to leave your hometown."

Xiao Jing told his story.

In the Jin Dynasty, every July (lunar calendar) will assess household products.Although the Xiao family in Lanling is a gentry, they are only the last class of gentry. Originally, Xiao Jing's father had been a county magistrate for 12 years, and he was ranked in the sixth rank.Gao's father has died of illness now, and in the entire Xiao clan, Xiao Jing, there is no one who is an official.

Xiao Jing's father left Xiao Jing with fifty acres of good fertile land and ten acres of paddy fields. Without Father Gao's protection, the land of more than [-] acres immediately became a delicacy in the eyes of the Xiao clan and the local government.

Last year, Xiao was not rated as a household product, so he became as white as a poor family.

Without the privileges of the gentry, Xiao Jing lost the right to be exempted from handymen and shady households.Xiao Jing originally had more than one hundred cute households that were all deprived, and he was also conscripted as a handyman for forty days.

Xiao was actually a child who grew up with a golden spoon in his mouth.His body is very weak, and in order to occupy Xiao's property, the government made things difficult for Xiao.After only serving three days of corvee, Xiao Jing couldn't take it anymore.

Xiao Jing naturally thought of using money to redeem his corvee, but the government did not agree.

Originally, if ordinary people were unwilling to perform 3000 days of hard labor, they would spend at most more than [-] yuan, but the government, which was so mad at Xiangtian, opened its mouth and asked Xiao for [-] million yuan.

In the eyes of Xie An, 3000 million yuan is nothing more than an extremely small sum of money, but in the eyes of a small gentry like Xiao Jing, it is a huge amount of money.

In order to save himself from this inhuman torture, Xiao Jing gritted his teeth and took out all the living money at home.At last this disaster was averted.

He Chou couldn't find an excuse for the wolf to eat the lamb. He didn't occupy Xiao Jing's property, and the government came up with another plan after failing to do so.There is a vicious bandit in Lanling. They occupy the mountain as king and make a living by robbing the people in the past.The bandits kidnapped Xiao Jing's only three-year-old son and extorted huge sums of money.

Xiao Jing had no choice but to report to the official.

He didn't know that he was the target of the government gangsters' joint calculations, and the government naturally couldn't get the gangsters, and so repeatedly, the gangsters increased the ransom to ten thousand gold.

Xiao Jing couldn't bear to see his son killed, so he had no choice but to sell twenty Qingtian, and finally redeemed his son.

A loyal servant accidentally discovered that the robbers were freely entering and leaving the county government office, and told Xiao Jing about it.

As a scholar, Xiao Jing is not stupid, so he naturally associates this series of events, and naturally finds the tricks in it.He didn't want to live in worry and fear anymore, so he just sold his property and fled to Wei State with his family.

When Xie An heard these secrets, his lungs almost exploded.

PS: I recommend a book "Cosmic Mastery"

(End of this chapter)