Yang Xianmao heard the clue in his words just now, because what the official said was that it was forbidden to open the palace gate, which was right. Because now the city is full of floods, open the palace gates, the flood will definitely rush into the palace, it will be miserable. If they do not open the gates, but hang them through the city in baskets, they should be able to get the emperor's permission.

Sure enough, the city guard who guarded the palace soon returned, brought a few large baskets, and said, "The official family has a decree that only King Run, the princess, and the county lord are allowed to enter, and no one else is allowed to enter." ”

As soon as these words came out, there were joys and sorrows. Because the Runwang family is a big family, there are many relatives in the family, as well as diners, including the princess, who also have many relatives who live in the palace. Now only the prince and princess and the lord of the county will be allowed to enter, and no one else will be allowed to enter, and they will have to be in the midst of floods and possible riots. This is extremely terrifying, but now you can only obey the will of the emperor.

The basket hung down, Yang Xianmao ordered the boat to be docked to the edge of the palace, and King Run, the princess and the county lord got on the basket and were hoisted to the city tower.

The county lord of Yaoxiang, who was standing on the city tower, looked at Yang Xianmao below worriedly and said, "Brother Yang, you must always be careful, but you must not take risks. ”

Yang Xianmao waved at her. He could not say anything more in this situation, and the soldiers on the tower had already bent their bows and arrows, and shouted at them to leave immediately, and not to lean on the edge of the imperial city. So Yang Xianmao ordered to turn around, and the target of this time was to rely on the palace of King Wu, which was not far away.

King Wu and the princess, as well as his nieces, did not heed Yang Xianmao's previous warning, and as a result, they had to use ladders to climb to the roof of the palace hall. Because it was the highest place in the whole palace. Seeing that the flood around them surrounded them, and they couldn't see the edge, all of them were rolling turbid waves, and King Wu was very afraid.

And they have no way to move where they can go. Just in the midst of the panic, Yang Xianmao's big ship came.

After Yang Xianmao picked them up on the boat, King Wu was very happy. Holding Yang Xianmao's hand and shaking it, he praised him for being a good son-in-law, and rushed to save them when he needed help the most.

The county lord of Bai Zhi stepped forward to meet his father and mother, and they were both happy and sad.

Yang Xianmao also sent them to the edge of the imperial city, and after informing them of their identities, the city guards put down the basket and hung the king of Wu, the princess, and their children, and the others were forbidden to enter. The county lord of Bai Zhi chose to stay and accompany her husband Yang Xianmao.

After sending these two most critical figures, Yang Xianmao breathed a sigh of relief. Then he commanded the great ships to go to the city wall and bring the rescued people from the ships to the city tower.

Many of the people of the city fled to the towers for refuge, and the walls were densely packed with people. Their ship leaned against the stairs of the upper tower and carried them up with a pedal.

These people gratefully surrendered and bowed to Yang Xianmao, and these people thought that as long as they climbed the tower, they would reach the other side of safety. But when they went up to the tower, they found that the other side was far away from them, because from the city wall, there was only a surging flood, and there was no end in sight. All the trees and houses outside the city were submerged in the water. And the flood water outside the city wall is more than a zhang high from the top of the city tower. - The flood level outside the city is much higher than that inside the city.

It's no wonder, because the water in the capital is basically poured in from the city gate hole in the north city, and later the city gate hole in the north city was blocked by the city gate official with the death squad, and now the water is relatively small, so the water level is relatively much lower, and the outside of the city has become a vast ocean.

Yang Xianmao sent this boatload of people to the city tower, and he did not let his godmother Tang, Liu Dongyan and his wife Bai Zhi go to the city tower. Because the people on the tower were very chaotic and mixed, and it was evident that many fled to the tower without food.

The flood could not have receded in a day or two, and there would be an even more terrible famine. Therefore, it would have been safer for them to stay on the ship with him.

For this purpose, Yang Xianmao built an independent wooden house on the ship, which was unusually strong. Their living facilities are all accessible to the cabin through the passage under this wooden house, which is the bottom of the ship. Their food, clean drinking water, including medicinal herbs, were placed at the bottom of the cabin.

Yang Xianmao did not appoint this ship to rush to the rescue, because most of the houses in the city were not flooded now. Although the ship was reinforced, if the bottom of the ship hit something like a rockery and smashed the cabin, the ship would have sunk.

This is what he saves his life, and he must first ensure his own safety, and then help others when he can.

There was also a small boat on this boat, which served as a lifeboat and could carry seven or eight people. Yang Xianmao asked two servants who could row boats to row small wooden boats to the rooftops of each house to rescue people, while his large boat docked on a main street not far from the imperial city.

This main street is very wide and leads directly to the Palace City Gatehouse. Equivalent to a main channel. The houses on both sides of the street are far away from them, and it is relatively safe for large ships to park in such areas. And it is not far from the imperial city, and it remains outside the cordon of the imperial city. It is also far away from the imperial city, and if you encounter any danger, you can also use the relationship between King Wu and King Run in the imperial city to get the help of the Imperial Forest Army.

The rescue lasted all day, and the big and small boats of Yang Xianmao played an extremely important role. Most of the people who were rescued were rescued on his ship.

The people who were rescued to the city tower asked each other, only to learn that the owner of the ship that rescued them was the young man Yang Xianmao who married the county lord, and Yang Xianmao's fame was further spread at this moment.

Of course, this is just a by-product, Yang Xianmao is not doing this for fame, but really saving people, and fame is born with it.

Hua Wuxiang's family, as well as Fei Shuyun and her father Fei Shenyi, after discovering the flood, their reaction was not as hesitant as the prince, but quickly fled to the top of the city tower with the most important things. So when Yang Xianmao drove the big boat to their residence to meet them, he found that they were not there and had already gone up to the castle tower.

The people who should be saved were all saved, and Yang Xianmao breathed a sigh of relief. He stood on the deck of the ship, looking at the flooded Bianliang Castle in Tokyo, and his heart was really heavy.

Not all the rice buckets in the court were there, and many ministers came up with a way to save them, that is, to pour all the water from the city outside the city. There are 100,000 Imperial Forest troops in the city, and the labor is sufficient, but most of these 100,000 Royal Forest troops are stationed in the imperial city. The palace was surrounded by a high wall that separated the Imperial Forest Army from the Emperor's true home, the Imperial City.

When the emperor found out that the flood had hit the city, he quickly issued an order that 20,000 people of the 100,000 Imperial Forest Army defending the imperial city should use boats and rafts built of planks temporarily removed from the houses in the imperial city, carry countless buckets and flat poles, go out of the imperial city, climb the outer city tower, and then begin to carry the flood water in the city up the city tower and dump it outside the city.

Because of the appropriate measures taken, the North Gate Gate successfully blocked the North Gate that entered the water, and at the same time, the flood came too suddenly, which is understandable. Therefore, the emperor ordered him to make meritorious contributions, and the city gate officials were immediately grateful, and took thousands of men and horses guarding the city to participate in the drainage of the flood using various tools that could hold water.

However, the capital is too big, there are millions of people living in it, and there are more than 20,000 people in this area, how can the flood water that has overflowed the eaves of the city be drained outside the city, it is obviously unrealistic, and the water they poured out is not as much as the water that God poured into the city through the torrential rain, so the water level has not dropped. If you want to drain the water, you have to put in more labor.

The person who led the completion of this arduous task turned out to be Cai Jing, a traitor thirty years later.

Cai Jing has just become the official of Kaifeng, and he is very diligent in his work. When the flood rushed into the city, he did not rush to run for his life. Because he discovered the flood entering the city in time, he immediately organized all the officials and people of the Yamen, mobilized all the people who could be mobilized, and immediately packed all the important documents and materials of Kaifeng Mansion and transferred them to a high place, so that the important materials of Kaifeng Mansion could be preserved. This point was highly praised by Kaifeng Mansion Yin.

This is not counting, Cai Jing has a very strong organizational ability, after seeing that the Imperial Forest Army and the officers and soldiers defending the city began to drain the water but the results were not obvious, he immediately organized a group of officials and people with good water quality, and promised a heavy reward, let them dive into the flooded houses to find buckets.

After finding a lot of buckets, Cai Jing presided over the government officials and asked the officials to organize the people to line up on the stairs of the city tower as a human wall and carry water by passing them one by one. This method is faster and less laborious than an individual carrying water when the bucket is limited.

People were mobilized to get involved in the fight for their own return to their homes as soon as possible. This method of transporting water, similar to a teleportation chain, was organized on the steps of each city gate tower, and finally, the Imperial Forest Army also learned Cai Jing's method and used manpower to pass the bucket.

And the sailors who salvaged the buckets organized by Cai Jing also found the buckets from the flooded houses and sent them to the top of the city tower. As a result, the number of people carrying water has increased rapidly, the capacity to carry water has increased rapidly, and the receding of the water level has also been significantly accelerated.

Cai Jing also wrote a memora, and found a way to deliver it to the imperial city and handed it to the official family. Ask the official family to transport part of the grain in the imperial city to the people on the city wall, otherwise it will easily lead to civil rebellion after the people have no food.

However, this piece of food was deducted by the officials who examined it, because the things in the imperial city belonged to the emperor, so how could it be possible to distribute the emperor's things to the people? Moreover, the amount of grain in the imperial city was not much. Who knows when this flood will have to subside, and it is impossible for the emperor, his relatives, and important ministers of the court to have nothing to eat at that time. This was a clear violation of the rules, so it was not able to be delivered to Song Shenzong.