Lu Ming

Then Zuo Baoliu got on the road.

When they first saw the smoking pillars flying slowly, Zuo Baoliu and his group of warriors standing in the front row collectively expressed their contempt for this behavior: When can the second kicker be used for weapon fighting? ?If all these things can be successful, then there will be no need for people to die when fighting for water and land in the countryside.

Then the second kicker exploded above Zuo Baoliu's head.

If Zuo Baoliu came from later generations, he would definitely humiliate his opponent now: "It's another fake from Taobao"... because the sound and light effects of firecracker explosions are very poor.Not only is the sound low, but thick smoke is blowing, which looks like a stink bomb flooding the tide.

The next moment, Zuo Baoliu took a deep breath of acrid and stimulating air like thousands of fine needles.After the sound of "boom" in the brain, except for the ears, the other five orifices of Zuo Bao gushed out liquid at the same time: tears flowed from the eyes, saliva came out of the mouth, and the nasal mucus also came out at the same time. Time flowed out.

Zuo Baoliu, who didn't know what happened at all, his brain was down at the moment - the nerve signals frantically coming from all over his body were too fast and too intense, and he couldn't handle it at all.So at this moment, he could only bend down instinctively, and began to cough loudly.

Then he knelt down again.The burning sensation in his lungs and the violent coughing made him paralyzed and unable to see, and he had completely lost his ability to move.

At the same time, the large army wandering in the dense fog of capsaicin also started a triple movement of violent coughing, crying, and kneeling.The warriors didn't react correctly at all, and just knelt in the smoke and continued to cough.

It cannot be blamed on them.Although chili peppers were introduced to Ming Dynasty from Mexico during this period, chili peppers at this time, like corn, were only ornamental plants in a few maritime gardens, and Ming people had no contact with this thing at all. Only then began to be eaten by the Chinese as a vegetable.

Fortunately, the base is large, and someone will always be able to react.After going through the initial confusion and panic, soon the well-informed man coughed and shouted: "It's Wolf Smoke, cover your mouth and nose, hide!"

However, the tear gas bomb is useless just by covering the nose and mouth. You have to cover your eyes just like Illidan.So the crowd is still in chaos, and there is a stampede: if they are blind, they can't tell the direction.

Mingren standing on the dirt slope at the entrance of the village was also speechless.Yu Bende and the bastards under him were pushing forward one by one with their necks stretched out and their feet on their feet, as if they were not the ones who planned to run away just now.

"This thing is very wonderful!" After Yu Bende understood the situation, he couldn't help being elated, and he twirled his beard and calmed down again: "It can not only defeat the enemy, but also avoid the burden of execution, it is really a thing that kills two birds with one stone!"

"Hmm..." To be honest, this is the first actual battle of tear gas bombs today, so including the members of the launching team, all members of the Intelligence Bureau did not expect the scene to turn into this quickly.What supported their confidence before was actually the guns in their hands.

The tenants of the Zuo family are doomed to be unlucky today.In fact, except for those troublemakers who often make parades in later generations, people in other countries will also kneel when they encounter this thing-a little slow reaction will cause a big loss. This is not as simple as cutting onions and getting choked. If you stay longer, many people will be sent to the hospital.

Seeing that the opponent had started to be confused, Squad Leader Wu, who directed the launch, ordered his subordinates to launch two rounds of "two kicks" to test the data in accordance with the requirements of the drill.Subsequent shells are less accurate due to the extended range of nearly 30 meters per round.

But it doesn't matter.The launch team does not need to hit the machine gun nest as accurately as the Japanese army. These second kickers only need to fall within a circle of tens of meters.

The reason why we chose to fight on the dirt slope at the entrance of the village was not because it was convenient to run, but because the terrain was high and it was easy to aim.Another most important point is that today's wind is blowing from behind the slope.

So when the next ten pods fell into the crowd, the smoke obediently enveloped the crowd.

……

Zuo Baoliu felt like he was going to die.

At this moment, the hoe in his hand has long disappeared, and he is unable to move due to violent coughing.In order not to let himself be choked to death by saliva and snot, he had difficulty breathing and could only kneel on the ground, raised his butt high, and made a kowtow motion of "grabbing his head to his ear".

There was a burning pain in his chest and abdomen, his throat and eyes seemed to be scratched with a knife, his eyes were already red and swollen and he couldn't see, and there were horrific howls from the clansmen in his ears, mixed with intensive coughing...

Zuo Baoliu felt that he was going to die.

I don't know how long it took, but when he felt a little better, there was a burst of shouting from far and near.The shouts were followed by footsteps, the crackling of sticks into flesh, and screams.

The sound of footsteps soon came to Zuo Baoliu's ears.The next moment, someone stomped on his upturned butt, and at the same time he was kicked to the ground, an iron ruler was still slammed on Zuo Baoliu's back. He stabbed his ass with a stick...so Zuo Baoliu passed out.

When he woke up, he was already lying on his broken wooden bed.In fact, Zuo Baoliu was lying on the bed, his back was exposed, and there was a bruise on his back.

Seeing the crying woman and baby beside him, it took Zuo Baoliu a long time to regain his senses, and it took him out to figure out what happened after he fell into a coma.

...After the large army of the Zuo family was dealt with by the wolf smoke, after a while, the thugs with wet cloths on their muzzles and noses rushed down from the slope, and those white servants led the way.

This gang of white servants was unable to fight properly, but when dealing with the villagers who had lost the ability to fight back, they were all strong and brave.

Then the battle is over.

In this battle, the Zuo family lost a lot.Hundreds of people were unconscious after the incident, and the rest were all wounded, and everyone was injured... Not only were they beaten by the white servants, but many of them were also trampled by their own family members.

Zuo Baoliu was dragged back by his wife with the door panel amidst crying and shouting.Fortunately, he woke up not long after he went back, which made the woman feel relieved - if he died, the woman would have to remarry, and it would be nice if one of the three children could finally become an adult.

After waking up, Zuo Baoliu couldn't care about the severe pain all over his body. He closed his red and swollen eyes tightly, endured the stinging pain in his throat, and told the woman in a hoarse voice: Hurry up and ask for news.

…Since the weapon fight is defeated, the consequences must be borne, Zuo Baoliu is very clear about this.The benefits promised to him by the clan before have all turned into nothingness now. What scares him the most is that he is the tenant of the mulberry garden, and the title deed of the mulberry garden is in the hands of the renter.

To some extent, Zuo Baoliu's behavior is called "eating the inside out".

If the fight with weapons is won, then of course it will be fine, and it is impossible for the renter to do anything to him, a small tenant.However, now that the Zuo family is completely defeated, Zuo Baoliu's protection is gone, maybe people will take him under the knife, even if they use only one method of forcing debts and seizing tenants, Zuo Baoliu will be finished on the spot.

This is what he is most afraid of. In comparison, he has ignored the chrysanthemum and the injury on his back.

Afterwards, while Zuo Baoliu was recovering from his wounds, the news continued to spread back home: the official sentry entered the big house of the Zuo family, the official sentry took away Zuo Hongwu, the official sentry began to confiscate the hidden land, the official sentry began to chase after the owed grain, the old lady of the fourth room Hanged...

Just when Zuo Baoliu was terrified, the official came to the door.

Chapter 352 Opening of Port ([-])

The grade of the small courtyard of the Zuobao Liujia is pretty good.Although there are no blue bricks and green tiles, the outer layer of the rammed earth wall is also painted with white ash, and the gray tiles on the roof look neat.

However, it was all purchased during a good year, and the Zuo family has gone from bad to worse in the past few years, so even repairs are a bit powerless.

On the third day after Zuo Baoliu was carried home, his dilapidated lintel was kicked open.

Accompanied by the swaying door panel, several ferocious men walked in with all kinds of weapons, surrounded by a man who looked like a shopkeeper in a long robe.

"Are you out of breath, get out!"

Zuo Baoliu, who had been on tenterhooks for the past few days, couldn't help trembling when he heard the yelling in the room. He knew that the job was coming.Stretching out his hand to signal the woman to keep an eye on his baby, Zuo Baoliu sighed, then bowed his head and went out the door—hiding is impossible, he had already been mentally prepared.

Three days is enough for Zuo Baoliu's eyes and throat to return to normal, but the trauma on his back and chrysanthemum has not healed yet, so he walked on a stick today.

Seeing him staggering out of the house, the shopkeeper sneered at first: "This is an injury. Could it be that she was beaten by her wife when she went to see sister kiln?"

"Hahaha..." Following the shopkeeper's teasing, the crowd around him burst into laughter at the same time.

At this moment, Zuo Baoliu could only lower his head, ignore the humiliation, and honestly wait for him to finish laughing.

"Does the mulberry garden in Beitou belong to you?" After laughing a few times, the shopkeeper asked about the business.

"Master, it belongs to the villain."

"Well, go to work tomorrow and dig up all the mulberry trees."

"Dig...?" Zuo Baoliu was stupefied, unable to speak for a while.

"Why, you have the energy to rebel against your boss, but you don't have the energy to dig up trees?" The shopkeeper looked at him with disdain, and squinted at him.

"It's not... the little one..." Zuo Baoliu was a little incoherent: "Well, these are all good mulberries that are just blooming. Why did you dig them up?"

"I dug up something else." The shopkeeper was already very impatient.

But Zuo Baoliu didn't think so.For a fruit farmer who has been playing with mulberry trees for half his life, almost all the trees in the garden are his adopted sons, so how can he just dig them?

"Master, this garden is tenanted to villains. If the tree is dug up, how can villains live!" Zuo Baoliu was already full of grief and indignation at this time—according to the ancient tenancy relationship, the owner has no right to ask the tenants to change the planting. structured.Therefore, in Zuo Baoliu's eyes, the shopkeeper's request is "out of bounds".

However, Zuo Baoliu forgot that what he was facing was not an ordinary boss at all.

So the shopkeeper was furious immediately after hearing the sound: "Call me!"

Before he could finish speaking, Zuo Baoliu was kicked to the ground and whipped.

"Master, please do me a favor and spare his life!" Seeing this scene, the woman in the house burst out crying and threw herself on Zuo Baoliu. The image is shown.

When the shopkeeper saw the grown-up crying, the fat on his face trembled.He first flipped through the ledger in his hand, then bent down and pointed at Zuo Baoliu and said, "You bastard, you still owe the bank 37 taels of silver."

"Hmph, you dare to take big money even if you have such a shabby hukou." Having said this, the shopkeeper raised his head and looked at the slightly dilapidated courtyard: "Listen to me, if you don't go to work tomorrow, I will send you to the official." , you will be a slave first, and then you will sell your wife and son to repay the debt, do you understand!?"

……

Zuo Baoliu, who worked hard to protect the mulberry garden, finally came to his senses after being whipped: Yes, it’s not the same now, he can’t even save his own life, so how can he care about those mulberry trees?

So amidst the woman's complaints, Zuo Baoliu went to the mulberry field with a hoe the next morning.

Walking on the sidewalk in the village, all he saw along the way was desolation.Dressed in hemp and filial piety, the weeping funeral procession is slowly walking towards the grave outside the village.

In the fight with weapons a few days ago, four or five people were killed by the wolf smoke on the spot, and several of them were trampled to death by their own people.In one day, dozens of villagers in Zuojia Village were seriously injured and dozens of people died.

After that, the officials broke into the big house, accused the village chief Zuo Hongwu of "resisting taxes and attacking officials", and put him in the county government jail.

What followed was a doomsday scene: the grain messenger and the white servant went through the sieve in the village and found out all the hidden fields.

Hundreds of acres of hidden fields were confiscated by the government without incident.What Zuo Baoliu didn't know was that after the measurement and registration were completed, the county government would re-issue the title deeds for these acres, and then sell them all to Xiongdao at the price of inferior land.

The county government has already made a lot of money on this: selling land is a windfall, and since it is registered after that, there will be a grain tax to be collected every year.

In feudal society, in fact, the only task of magistrates was to pay the grain and pay taxes—this was the first and overriding political task.Other things to educate the people, such as building bridges and paving roads, are all incidental. The bottom line of the court is not to rebel.

Therefore, in the matter of land expropriation, the reason why the Jiading county government acquiesced to Yu Bende's use of the official skin was not only because Xiong Dao asked someone to say hello, but the most important point was that Xiong Dao had made a promise beforehand: all the people who were picked up would come out. All the hidden fields will be deeded, and all the outstanding debts recovered will be shared with the county government...

With this promise, Lai Da County Magistrate, who is extremely concerned about performance appraisal, will naturally support Xiong Dao silently.Anyway, you don't need to be your own boss, and there are some discords between businessmen and people, so why not give it a try?

The tacit understanding behind these is the fundamental reason why Yu Bende can be unscrupulous, forcefully "spare his life" during the spring sowing season, and mobilize a large number of official servants and white servants to collect taxes against the season.

And today, when Zuo Baoliu started working, Zuojia Village has changed because of that weapon fight—all hidden fields have been found out.

After finding Hidden Field, Hidden House will naturally appear.Of course, for a certain force that regards labor as extremely important, these hidden households do not need to register: the correct solution is to ship all of them overseas, and go quietly without taking a cloud. Anyway, the Ming Dynasty has always No accounts were registered for these people.

So when Zuo Baoliu went to work, he not only saw the funeral procession, but also the hermits in the fields who were moaning and plowing the ground.

"God, what kind of evil is this going to do?" Zuo Baoliu now knew that he was not fighting alone: ​​in the fields passing by along the way, everyone was plowing the ground.Yes, in the field where the seed has been sown, the ground is turned up again.

With deep doubts and despair about the future, Zuo Baoliu came to the mulberry garden.Not long after, the shopkeeper from yesterday also came with someone.

Behind the shopkeeper were not only thugs, but also ten hidden households from the same village.

"Dig up all the trees honestly, and if you dare to find any moths, you will all be sent to the government!" The shopkeeper left after a few threats, leaving Zuo Baoliu with a few hermits to start digging. Great cause.

The tree is not so easy to dig: Zuo Baoliu and the others have to trim the branches and leaves of the mulberry tree according to the requirements, then dig the tree out of the ground and the soil, and finally tie the semicircular soil and tree roots with hemp rope.

After that, they have to take the packed mulberry trees to Hebutou outside the village by cart—a boat is already waiting there.

It was very slow for a dozen or so people to dig and pack trees, so it took Zuo Baoliu and others a whole week to send away all the hundreds of trees in the mulberry garden.

Then they received a new task: go to the distance to pick up soil to fill the pit, and then connect the mulberry garden with the surrounding cotton fields to prepare for planting crops.

In fact, there are no cotton fields around the mulberry garden.Before this, most of the Zuojia Village was cotton fields, but in this week, all the land that was rented out had been plowed again, no matter whether it was cotton fields, rice fields or mulberry fields, all of them had now become virgins. Field, there are no crops in it.

And in this week, the villagers of Zuojia Village finally figured out the way of these outsiders.

The first is those hidden households.Those who are not on the list are the best to deal with, so most of them were sent to work in Zhangsu Beach by the river.

It is said that a large port is to be built, so these people dig sand and pick soil there every day.The good thing is that the host family pays wages and takes care of meals.Because the food is not bad, the hermits now say they are emotionally stable.

As for the fields they left behind, they have now joined other fields to form a large area.This kind of large field without dense ridges has not appeared in the Jiangnan area for a long time, and it was unexpectedly revived in Zuojia Village.

There are only a quarter of the number of people working the fields.We must know that in ancient times, with the labor force of a middle-aged family plus cattle, it is completely possible to manipulate [-] acres of land, so a lot of labor is saved in this way.

In addition, while the land was being consolidated, the landlord class in Zuojia Village was also rapidly disappearing—an action to call for tax arrears also began.

This will kill the landlords.After losing the last resort of violence, these rich peasants in the countryside are no different from chickens.

The wolf-like officials took a large sum of money from them easily: if they didn't pay, their land and houses would be confiscated, and then they would go to the county government.Whether caged or imprisoned, there is always a way to kill someone quickly.

This era is not a future generation, and the penalty point for tax evasion and payment of blanket stars will pass... This era has an unlimited liability system, and if you don't pay the bill, you have to use your wife and daughter to pay off the debt.

Therefore, in order not to be ruined, the landlords had to take out their wealth and pay the owed taxes first.However, it is easy to owe taxes, but not so easy to pay taxes.Yu Bende has all the ledgers for the arrears accumulated over the years.

Including programs that colluded with food messengers before, such as sly posting (using the taxes paid by ordinary people to offset the accounts of the landlords), the landlords now have to pay for the tax and grain that escaped.In this way, even if the confiscation action does not count interest, it will also empty out all the floating wealth of the landlords and take away some real estate.

So after the fourth-bedroom old man hanged himself, in just one week, two more landlords who had their property taken away hanged themselves.

However, the reality is so cruel: After paying the tax, the debilitated landowners have to honestly sell their land to the leasehold with a knife... This time it is not so lucky, the purchase price of the land by the leasehold It has been reduced to the parity level of the surrounding land, and the preferential period has passed.

Chapter 353 Opening of Port (XIX)

The Zuojia Village in the traditional sense just died out.

Those self-cultivating farmers and rich peasants were the happiest.Not only did they escape the blow, but they also expanded their family business a bit, and now they have started a new life.

However, they were handsome for only three seconds. Under the impact of the extinction climate in the late Ming Dynasty, this group of people was estimated to face bankruptcy again in two or three years.At that time, they will have to sell the land to the farm opened by the cross-country people next to them, and then take a boat to the vast new world to start a truly happy life.

The middle class escaped a catastrophe for the time being, but the landlords in Zuojia Village were faced with a catastrophe.Even if they honestly only pursued the tax arrears over the years, it would be enough to shrink the family property of these people by more than half.

After being forced to sell the land, these landlords lost the means of production that they relied on to exploit others, and became people who were sitting and eating.

So after going around in a big circle, this group of people started to migrate again: they need to buy land elsewhere to survive.In fact, some of them have become rich peasants, and the title of landlord can no longer be worn.

Naturally, Xiong Dao and the Land Requisition Office under his leadership would not take care of the life and death of these people, it would be best to get out of the way, and it would be too troublesome to find a way to deal with them if they stayed.

After crowding out the upper class and luring the middle class away, what is left is the lower proletariat, which occupies most of the population.This part is the favorite population of a certain force: revolutionary bricks, you can move anywhere you want.

Thousands of tenant farmers in Zuojia Village have already started the transformation process: two-thirds of the strong labor force and some women are driven to Zhangsu Beach, where the men build the port and the women cook.They have actually changed from tenant farmers to hired workers, and in the future, after these people are transported away one after another, they will be transformed into industrial workers.

The old, weak, sick and disabled and some of the labor force left in the village began to re-level the land and prepare to sow the new crops brought by the master's family - the surrounding area has become a rare contiguous large farm in the Ming Dynasty, so the remaining people are enough to cope farm work.

These people who stayed behind lost the right to manage the land, and also lost the right of the tenants to make independent accounts.In fact, they are now in the same nature as those workers in Taiwan. They are all paid employees in the "state farm".

Although they are very uncomfortable and can't figure out the stakes, but for the poor and the bottom, they have no choice right now-if they don't do things according to the new owner's wishes, they will be driven out and become refugees , or be captured and turned into slaves to pay off debts.

But this confusion will disappear sooner or later: although farmers are illiterate, they can feel the improvement of living conditions in the future.Not to mention that at the end of the year, when they see the miserable appearance of the tenants around them, they will turn around and brag about the new owners.