After separating from Mi Xuan who went to Shouchun (now Shou County, Huainan City, Anhui Province), Mi Huang and they embarked on the road to the eastern suburbs, but after going out of the city, the potholed road was not easy to walk, and it was newly opened at a glance, the trees on both sides of the road were thick, and from time to time some wild beasts would come out of the forest and run to the road, and then there was basically no one except them.

Cheng Jia controlled the reins of the horse and pointed to the uneven newly opened road and said to Mi Huang sitting on the horse and Pan Taishi in the car, "Teacher, this road may have to be repaired again next year, and after the grain harvest is good this year, we will find a way to smooth it out, but now the manpower is limited and can only be like this." ”

Fortunately, when the army was outside, the wild roads without roads were all walked, and the roads were uneven, so it was better to abandon the car and ride a horse like Cheng Jia.

But Taishi Pan, who hadn't been out for a long time, was already old, and he was fainted all the way by the top of the twilight, and he couldn't speak at all, and Anu who came with him was no better, and he had to rest for a while.

Mi Huang rode the phoenix snow and walked slowly, took a deep breath of the free air outside the palace, looked at the outside world with bright eyes, and was in a very good mood, even if he went out of the east gate of Yingdu all the way to the east was very desolate, few and uninhabited, either a jungle or a wasteland, and there were no complaints.

Occasionally, they saw a few shack civilians cultivating a few acres of wasteland in the wilderness, but the bean seedlings or seedlings in the field were obviously not very good from a distance, crooked, and some farmers were trying to save the crops washed by the flood, so as to save the hard work of this year.

Sometimes I come across crops that can be saved.

They will stop.

Cheng Jia would order Su Cong to bring people over to instruct them on how to deal with the soaked farmland after the flood, while Mi Huang would listen to them, paying attention to what they said from time to time, and keeping it in mind.

They go and stop like this.

Even Pan Chong gradually recovered.

Although Cheng Jia stopped the flooding, there were still some villages that were washed away by the flood, and the people who lost their homes became homeless, so they could only take their children and the elderly to beg all the way, and then along the way they also distributed some food to these displaced people, at noon, they stopped and rested briefly, Siqin and the vegetables they brought stewed into lunch, and Mi Huang was in the carriage asking Cheng Jia about the eastern suburbs, and suddenly there was a commotion outside the car.

"You thieves, you dare to steal your Grandpa Huo's meat!"

When the two of them heard the reputation, they saw Huo Dao holding a thirteen or fourteen-year-old little hairy child in his hand, and some were even only eight or nine years old, looking like they were brain-dirty, and they were desperately struggling to shout, "We are not thieves, we are just hungry!"

"Then you can steal when you're hungry?"

Ouyang Nai held the scabbard and knocked on the head of the child who was desperately stuffing a piece of meat into his mouth without honestly grabbing a piece of meat.

"Hmm...... Hmmm......" swallowed sounds.

The little hairy boy didn't speak, just desperately grabbed the time to eat, looking very hungry.

A few others were also pulled in the hands of Huang Yuwei, and they all looked like they had been hungry for several days.

Cheng Jia frowned slightly, he was a homeless again.

"Sure enough, the road is not smooth, and it seems that I can't say it again. Mi Huang retracted her gaze, closed her book, and sighed slightly.

Cheng Jia smiled, "Don't be in a hurry, some things won't be able to be done in a while." "It's not going to be a moment to understand.

"Hmm. Mi Huang nodded slightly.

She also knew that it would not take a day to reform the "Ida System" into a "Public Land Responsibility Contracting System", but now she desperately wants to become stronger.

I want to seize all possibilities.

Just as he was about to order Ouyang Nai and Huo Dao to release a few children, twenty or thirty big men with big sticks suddenly burst out of the forest next to them, shouting, "A few little cubs, you actually dare to run!

Then I saw that the little hairy children who had stolen things looked frightened when they saw the big men, "Don't, don't arrest us back!"

"Let's not be slaves!"

"Let's not sell to other countries!"

A few hairy children let out a frightened cry, holding Huo Dao and Ouyang Nai and their hands and feet, and they didn't let go even if they dragged on.

Hearing this, the big men said angrily, "You have all signed a deed of sale for us, and you dare to run, see if I don't break your legs, let you escape!"

After that, the big man waved the wooden stick in his hand and was about to swing it at the leg of a hairy child, but Cheng Jia, who approached at some point, pulled out a sword and quickly blocked it, "Even if they are slaves, it will not be your turn to shout and kill!"

Seeing that the person who came was wearing a purple bamboo brocade robe and jade crown, he was obviously a nobleman, so he immediately put on a fierce look, and said flatteringly, "This nobleman, you don't know, we spent money to buy them, but these guys are disobedient, and they have escaped several times, and we are easy to find." ”

Huo Dao grabbed the biggest boy in his hand and plucked up the courage and said, "Obviously, we were captured by you to be slaves, and we didn't sell ourselves to you at all!"

The old doctor who was watching the excitement on the side shook his head, "In this world, the big ones bully the small, and the white ones are said to be black, it's chaotic!"

The big man who heard the words scolded at him, "Fart, they all have fingerprints with us one by one!"

At the same time, another big man suddenly slapped a whip on the face of the half-grown boy who spoke, fast and ruthless, Cheng Jia and Huo Dao didn't have time to make a move, and the talking kid suddenly had a mouth full of blood and teeth falling out, and he couldn't argue anymore.

"Big Brother ......"

Several children let out an exclamation of surprise, and then were whipped at the same time.

Cheng Jia's eyebrows sank when he saw this, obviously this group of people was used to forcing good people to be slaves, so even if they encountered someone meddling in their affairs, they would use the fastest speed to silence these fugitive slaves.

Mi Huang, who had been standing behind Cheng Jia, glanced at the ruthless men, and said to Huo Dao with one look, "Huo Dao, call some brothers, send all these abducted traffickers back to the county Yin of Yingdu, and be sure to find out the master behind them!"

They have seen this kind of person a lot outside, and it is useless to talk about it.

"Yes!" Huo Dao beckoned, too lazy to talk to these big men.

Countering violence with violence is the quickest solution.

Suddenly, twenty or thirty men were twisted and tied up, "Do you know who we are?"

"You'll dare to arrest us!"

"We're the ones who take care of the old man!"

"Who does my Grandpa Huo care who you are? Today it is in my hands, so that you can't eat and walk around!" Huo Dao laughed, a few slaps were rounded, and the kid they beat just now was pulled back.

A small commotion ended, and the children were released, and after a simple lunch, the children continued on the road, but then followed them all the way to the eastern suburbs.

"Big brother, if we follow behind like this, will these nobles take us in?"

The youngest child pulled the sleeve of the eldest kid and looked carefully at the brigade in front of him and asked.

The eldest boy had blood in his mouth, but he rolled up his sleeves and wiped the blood from his mouth, and said with difficulty, "I don't know, but it's better to follow these nobles than to be caught again!"

"Hmm!"

A few children deliberate.

Make sure to follow them.

When a big man who had come late because of a stomachache arrived again, he only had time to see his eldest and his brothers being twisted and sent back to the city, while the little bastards who had escaped and made it easy for them to find were released by a few nobles, and the other party was outnumbered, and the little bastards followed them.

He saw that the opportunity was wrong, so he quietly followed behind Mi Huang to find an opportunity to go back and report the news.

"Does anyone follow us?"

Su Cong rode on his horse and looked back at the dodging figures in the forest and asked Mi Huang and Cheng Jia in front.

"It's just a few thugs, and it's the old man who really supports them. ”

Mi Huang didn't care, she was thinking about who was the person who was known as "Master Guan", and said with a slight brow, "It's a little useful to arrest him." ”

Cheng Jia also bowed slightly, "In fact, this kind of forced civilians to be slaves has existed for a long time, and some big businessmen even secretly classified all these displaced civilians as slaves through the year of the disaster, and then sold them to the nobles of various countries as slaves to make huge profits. ”

And slaves are used for many purposes.

Serving (slaves), farming, raising horses, accompanying battles, engineering construction, handicraft production, etc., as well as burial, and to some extent concubines are also a type of slave.

Even the Cheng clan has a lot of slaves of unknown origin, if you want to check their origins one by one, there is no way to find out, and these traffickers can't be caught, and the fundamental way is to change the system and ideology, otherwise you can only save one or two people, not everyone.

This period was a slave society.

A slave for a day, a slave for life, life and death are not up to oneself.

Slaves are equivalent to, but different from, goods.

Why can the slave trade make huge profits?

Because in this era, although the land is unlimited, the population is limited.

Some slave owners or big nobles need to purchase slaves to open up wasteland for them if they want to reclaim more wasteland to earn greater profits, so slaves have become a resource for nobles, slaves, and large landowners of various countries compete to buy, and although his migration of displaced people is an act under the leadership of the court, it is also an act of entrapment of the population in disguise.

In this era when there are no means of production, people are the greatest productive force of labor.

In the "plow" After the production, the value of slaves began to decrease, and after the production of iron smelting technology, iron farming tools will replace wooden, bronze tools, originally a slave can plough an acre of land, with an iron plough can plough ten acres of land, of course, now he has begun to use ox-drawn plows, which will be faster than a slave hand plow, Su Cong does not know these details, now their speed of reclamation is not only because of the change in the way of land reclamation, but also the continuous upgrading of production tools, the continuous improvement of productivity, in the later stage, it is foreseeable that the slaves of the entire slave society will begin to have a surplus, so he did not allow Su Cong to continue to collect the displaced people。

Because the eastern suburbs are only so big, there are not so many homeless people, and one day, slave owners and big nobles will no longer need so many slaves.

This competition for labor would be greatly reduced, and slavery would be dismantled.

It's just a matter of time.

They walked peacefully for most of the day, and at last after crossing the last barren land, climbing a small dirt slope, and arriving at the eastern outskirts of a nameless river at dusk and sunset.

At this time, Pan Chong sat in the carriage, looking out the window at the ten thousand acres of fertile fields with fine yellow rice flowers among the green waves, which made people unable to take their eyes off the beautiful land, and formed a sharp contrast with the desolate people who came to see along the way.

The pale yellow rice flowers fluttered lightly in the sky, a faint fragrance of rice flowers drifted into the car window with the slight summer breeze, and gently fell on the palm of the hand stretched out by the phoenix, riding a horse, she raised her hand close to the tip of her nose and sniffed lightly, as if she had smelled the fragrance of the ripe rice in August.

In the carriage behind, Siqin Sihua and the others had already erupted into bursts of surprise exclamations.

"Girl, it's so beautiful here!"

"I've never seen such a good rice field when I'm so big!"

"The tragic scene after the flood in previous years is unbearable!"

"It's so beautiful here!"

……

Even the children who followed them burst out with a burst of joy and cheer, and they couldn't help but spread their feet and rush into the rice fields, but they were stopped by the farmers patrolling the fields with tridents, "Go, go, don't trample on the fields." ”

"Haha, okay!" the dirty children nodded and retreated to the ridge, "Big brother, we're not mistaken, right?"

"How can there be such a good place?"

"I don't know, I've just heard from everyone that there is a fairyland in the east, and it must be here. The kid who took the lead looked at the eastern suburbs with fiery eyes, as if he had arrived at the holy place in his mind.

……

Yes, compared to Ruo Ao Ziyan's cultivation of precious peonies, the beauty here is like a paradise, a fairyland on earth.

There are farmers who are driving oxen to pull plows in the fields in the fields, and children are running around on the field stalks to protect the fields and remove insects, there seems to be some treasures hidden in the greenhouses waiting for the people to explore, and a huge water wheel is towering on the edge of the river pond in the distance, the waterfall of the upper reaches falls down and smashes on the waterwheel to sprinkle the crystal splash, driving the waterwheel to rotate slowly, making a "boom" sound carrying the water in the downstream river to the upstream.

Rows of green brick and green tiled houses were built along the water wheels, and from the chimneys at the top of the houses rose from the smoke of cooking, and peasant women came out of the house to call their husbands and children, who had worked hard all day, to come home for dinner.

Even Pan Chong was shocked, took the old slave's hand and got out of the carriage, and asked with his mouth half open, "Does my Chu country really have such a good field?"

He was very clear about the annual harvest of his fiefdom, even if he had not gone to the field to cultivate, he had seen the scene of the rice field, how could he have half of the current weather, and in his early years in politics, he was even more clear about the grain output handed over by various localities according to the "well field system": the reports from various places were pitiful.

If this weather is based on this weather, how much grain will this 100,000 acres of land produce this year?

He thought quickly in his mind.

His fiery gaze rose and fell with the rolling waves of rice, urging the old slave to quickly help him out of the carriage and rush into the field to take a look.

Cheng Jia smiled and looked back at the woman who landed her eyes on her thoughtfully, and slowly stretched out a hand, "I know you still have a lot of questions, but when you come here, everything will have answers." ”

Mi Huang frowned and nodded, and slowly turned over and dismounted as he slowly turned over.

The two walked side by side on the field stalks, the breeze blew through the hem of their clothes, fluttering, and the setting sun fell on them, pulling out two black shadows in the rice waves of the rice flowers.