The grade of the small courtyard of Zuobao's six families is still quite good. Although there are no blue bricks and blue tiles, the outer layer of the rammed earth wall is also whitewashed, and the gray tiles on the roof look neat.

However, this was all purchased when the previous year was good, and the Zuo family has been getting worse in recent years, so even the repair is a little powerless.

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

Accompanied by the swaying door panel, several fierce men with various weapons in their hands, surrounded by a man wearing a robe and looking like a shopkeeper, walked in.

"Are you panting, get out of here!"

Zuo Baoliu, who had been worried for the past few days, couldn't help but tremble in his heart after hearing the shouts in the house, he knew that the job was coming. Stretching out his hand to signal the woman to be optimistic about her baby, after Zuo Baoliu sighed, he lowered his head and went out to hide, he couldn't hide, he was already mentally prepared.

Three days was enough time for Zuo Baoliu's eyes and throat to return to normal, but the trauma on his back and Kikube hadn't healed yet, so he walked with a stick today.

Seeing him staggering out of the house, the shopkeeper first sneered: "This is an injury, didn't you go to find Sister Yao and be beaten by his wife?" ”

"Hahaha" As the shopkeeper laughed, the gang around him laughed at the same time.

And Zuo Baoliu could only lower his head at this time, ignore the humiliation, and honestly wait for others to finish laughing.

"Is the mulberry garden in the north owned by you?" After laughing a few times, the shopkeeper asked about business.

"Back to the master, it's a villain's tenant."

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

"Digging?" Zuo Bao was shocked and speechless for a while.

"Why, you have the strength to make the owner rebel, but you don't have the strength to dig up trees?" The shopkeeper would look at him with contempt and slanted his eyes.

"It's not small" Zuo Baoliu was already a little incoherent: "This, these are all good mulberries that are coming out of the leaves, what are you doing when you dig them?" ”

"Dig up something else." The shopkeeper is already impatient.

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

"Master, this garden is tenant to the villain, the tree is dug up, how can the villain live!" Zuo Baoliu was already full of grief and indignation at this time, and according to the ancient tenant relationship, the owner had no right to ask the tenant to change the planting structure. Therefore, the shopkeeper's request is "out of boundary" in Zuo Baoliu's eyes.

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

So when the shopkeeper heard this, he was immediately furious: "Call me!" ”

Before the words fell, Zuo Baoliu was kicked to the ground and whipped up.

"Master, it's okay, spare his life!" When the woman in the house saw this scene, she burst out crying and threw herself on Zuo Baoliu, and a living drama of a bully landlord bullying the working people was vividly demonstrated.

The shopkeeper saw the adult crying and howling, and the fat on his face trembled. He first flipped through the account book in his hand, then bent down and pointed at Zuo Baoliu and said, "You bastard, you still owe thirty-seven taels of silver in the bank." ”

"Hmph, just like this, you dare to take it big." When the shopkeeper said this, he looked up at the slightly dilapidated courtyard: "You listen to me, if you don't go to work tomorrow, I will send you to the official, first beat the slave status, and then sell your wife and cub to pay off the debt, do you understand!?" ”

Zuo Baoliu, who struggled to protect the mulberry garden, finally came to his senses after being whipped: yes, it's not as good as before, he can't even save his own life now, and he can still take care of those mulberry trees?

So in the woman's complaint, Zuo Baoliu went to the mulberry garden with a hoe early the next morning.

Walking on the sidewalk in the village, all he saw along the way was desolation. Dressed in linen and wearing filial piety, the crying funeral procession is slowly walking towards the grave outside the village at this moment.

In that fight a few days ago, four or five people were killed by wolf smoke on the spot, and a few were trampled to death by their own people. Dozens of villagers in Zuojia Village were seriously injured in one day, and more than a dozen people were killed.

After that, the official messenger broke into the big house, and after giving the governor Zuo Hongwu a charge of "resisting taxes and attacking officials", he was sent to the county jail.

Then came the apocalyptic scenario: the grain and the white servants went through a sieve in the village and found all the hidden fields.

Hundreds of acres of hidden land 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 deed, 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: the sale of land is a windfall, and since it has been registered, there will be a grain tax that can be collected every year.

In feudal society, in fact, the only task of the magistrate was to pay the grain and pay taxes, which was the first and overriding political task. The rest of the people are educated, and the bridges and roads are all piggybacked, and the bottom line of the imperial court is not n.

Therefore, in the matter of land requisition, the reason why the Jiading County Government acquiesced to Yu Bende to come through the official skin Hu was not only because Xiong Dao asked someone to say hello, but the most important point was that Xiong Dao had promised in advance: all the hidden fields pulled out of the land would be deeded, and all the arrears recovered would be shared with the county government

With this commitment, the county order, which is extremely concerned about the performance evaluation, will naturally silently support Xiong Dao. Anyway, you don't have to come out at home, there is a little bit of discord between businessmen and people, 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" in the spring sowing season, and mobilize a large number of officials and white servants to collect taxes against the season.

And today, when Zuo Baoliu went to work, Zuojia Village had already changed because of the fight, and all the hidden fields had been investigated.

found the hidden field, then the hidden family naturally appeared. Of course, for a certain force that regards labor as particularly important, these hermits do not need to be registered: it is the right solution to transport them all overseas, and they will go quietly without taking a cloud with them, anyway, the Ming Dynasty has never registered these people.

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

"God, what kind of sin is this going to make?" Zuo Baoliu now knows that he is not alone in the fight: in the fields he passes along the way, everyone is ploughing the ground. yes, in the field where the seed had been sown, the ground was turned up again.

With deep doubts and despair for the future, Zuo Baoliu came to the mulberry garden. It didn't take long for the shopkeeper from yesterday to come with someone.

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

"Honestly dig up all the trees, and then dare to come out with a moth, and send you to the official with every shot!" After two sentences of the shopkeeper's threat, he left, leaving Zuo Baoliu with a few hidden households to start digging trees.

Trees are not so easy to dig: Zuo Baoliu and they have to prune the branches and leaves of the mulberry tree first, then dig the tree out of the ground with the soil, and finally tie the semi-circular soil and roots with hemp rope.

After that, they had to take the packed mulberry trees to the river port outside the village, where a boat was already waiting.

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

Then they were given a new task: to pick up soil and fill the pit in the distance, and then connect the mulberry orchard with the surrounding cotton fields to prepare for planting.

In fact, there are no cotton fields left around the mulberry garden. Before this, most of Zuojia Village was cotton fields, but in this week's time, all the land that was rented and handed down was heavily cultivated, whether it was cotton fields, rice fields or mulberry fields, and now they have all become N fields, and there are no crops in them.

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

The first is those who are recluses. These people who were not registered were the best to handle, so most of them were sent to work in Zhangsutan, which was by the river.

It is said that a large port was to be built, so the gang dug sand and picked up soil there every day. The good thing is that the main family has a salary and takes care of the food. Because the food is not bad, these hermits are now in a stable mood.

As for the fields they left behind, they are now connected to the rest of the fields. This kind of field, which has no dense ridge roads, has not appeared in the Jiangnan area for a long time, but I didn't expect it to be revived in Zuojia Village.

Only a quarter of the people who tended with these fields were the same as before. You must know that in ancient times, if a family of prime-aged laborers and cattle were ploughed, it was completely possible to manipulate fifty acres of land, so a lot of labor was saved in this way.

In addition, while consolidating the acres of land, the landlord class in Zuojia Village was also rapidly dying out, and the action of collecting tax arrears also began.

This time it will cost the landlords their lives. Having lost their last resort to violence, these rich people in the countryside are no different from chickens.

The wolf-like official easily extorted a large sum of money from them: if they didn't pay it, they would wait for the confiscation of their fields and houses, and then go to the county government office. Regardless of whether it is cage or imprisonment, there is always a way to kill people quickly.

This era is not the next generation, and the blanket star tax evasion and payment penalty points are over, but this era is an unlimited responsibility system, and if you don't pay the account, you have to take 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 tax arrears in advance. However, it is easy to owe taxes, but it is not so easy to pay taxes. In the previous years of arrears, Yu Bende has all the account books.

Including the previous programs that colluded with the grain poors, such as the tax and grain that escaped after using the taxes paid by the small people to offset the accounts of the landlords, now the landlords have to pay for it. In this way, even if the expropriation does not count the interest, it empties all the floating wealth of the landlords and takes some real estate with them.

So after the old lady in the fourth room hanged herself, in just one week, two more landlords who were taken away from their family property hanged.

However, the reality is so cruel: after paying the tax amount, the landlords who have been badly injured have to honestly sell their land to the rented stack with a knife, and this time it is not so lucky, and the purchase price of the land has dropped to the parity level of the surrounding land, and the preferential period has passed. 11