During this period, the population of the Eastern Han Empire was more than 50 million, which is already a very large number in today's world, and the absolute first in the world.

But this number is still small compared to the generations he knows well.

Especially scattered in such a vast land, except for a few densely populated areas, most of Shenzhou at this time is in a state of thousands of miles without rooster crowing.

Moreover, during this period, the agricultural development of the vast land was quite insufficient, and undeveloped wasteland, barren mountains and barren forests abounded.

Looking up, Guo Peng couldn't see much farmland, only weeds and trees everywhere, a primitive landscape.

So Guo Peng understood what he heard from the Cao family, about how many celebrities left the capital and fled to the Quartet when they encountered ****.

It's just that the land is not well developed, there are wasteland and forests everywhere, and wild fruits everywhere.

And those places are often sparsely populated, and no one eats the wild game that spreads all over the mountains.

Celebrities and gentlemen dragged their families along the way to pick, ate wild fruits and game, caught some fish in rivers and lakes, settled in places with few people, relied on mountains to eat mountains and water to draft, and survived without farming, like primitive people.

Guanzhong and the Central Plains are reasonably well-developed areas, with relatively dense populations, but you can still see the scene of thousands of miles of wilderness.

This is still the case around the Yellow River, not to mention the unexplored Jiangnan and even more distant Lingnan, which is still a truly primitive era.

And along the way, in addition to the original landscape, Guo Peng also saw many groups of people fleeing from the famine.

Ragged clothes, dragging his family, gray face, blank eyes, staggering step by step, often walking and walking, someone pounced forward, and could not get up again.

The elderly, children, men, women, abound.

They also seemed to be accustomed to death, and when they saw someone fall, someone else stepped forward to carry the body away, threw it into the jungle by the roadside, and then returned to leave.

If there are relatives, they will cry a few times, and if they have no relatives, they will only expose the corpses in the wilderness, which will become the nourishment of the land and the source of deadly germ infection.

Some of them also showed a ruthless killing intent and impulse in their eyes when they saw Guo Peng's convoy.

But when he saw the fierce knight on horseback and leather armor with swords, guns, swords, halberds, and bows and arrows, he showed timidity, bowed his head, and did not dare to raise it again.

Guo Peng was once soft-hearted and wanted to take out some food for the emaciated children who only had a handful of bones left, but was stopped by the Cao guide who followed him.

"It's useless, even if you give it, you will die in the back, those who want to die will always die, and there are a lot of lucky people who eat this bite, and if Da Lang gives, our convoy will not want to leave, one person will receive it, and other people will also reach out to ask for food."

There will be more and more people, blocking our convoy, and when the time comes, when the food is finished, the people who have not received it will still have resentment, thinking that we have food but not giving it, and if they are slightly incited, they will attack in groups, and we are not the opponents of so many people, and it is best to treat them. ”

The guide gestured at the steel knife in his hand and held it tightly with a cautious expression.

Guo Peng was speechless.

It seems that the guide is familiar with this.

On the one hand, there is an abundant life and carefree family children, and on the other hand, there is astonishing poverty and miserable death, and the gap between the rich and the poor is so wide that it is the scene of the last days.

In this way, it is not difficult to imagine why Zhang Jiao's Taiping Road has so many believers.

While living and dying, life is easy, death is simple, and the lives of grass people seem to be so worthless.

Indeed, their lives are worthless, they are illiterate, they have no land, they cannot manage them, and they cannot do anything to produce.

High-ranking officials and magnates are busy fighting infighting, busy fighting for power and profit, where can they care about the life and death of the grass people?

Anyway, as long as it's not that too many people on their manor are dying.

As for the bankrupt yeoman farmers, they love to die, they just plunder the land.

However, people facing death and elimination are always full of the spirit of rebellion and rebellion, and the opportunity to change the dynasty is brewing in it.

Nowadays, the orders of the central government of the Han Empire are no longer so effective and unable to exert their ability of macroeconomic control, and the whole country is decaying little by little, and is divided and eaten by the powerful clans that have swarmed in the local area, causing a tragic riot.

There are no winners, the losers are the whole nation.

From the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the Return of the Three Kingdoms to Jin, most of the more than 50 million people in the late Han Dynasty were lost.

Modern people seem to be just a string of numbers, but in that era, Guo Peng saw decomposing corpses and white bones.

Famine leads to flight, flight leads to death, death leads to larger, more terrible bacterial infections and plagues, and tens of millions of people die tragically in this way, combined with war and starvation.

After arriving in Chenliu County, Guo Peng's convoy set off in the northwest direction, and it was better to walk on the official road, but Guo Peng could always hear the guards who went to the barren grassland on the side of the road to whisper how many corpses and how many bones they saw.

Between the words, it seems that he doesn't think it's strange, but he is used to it, and Guo Peng can only order that when he sees the bones that no one has collected, he will set fire to burn those corpses, and they can't be buried.

What kind of world is this?

When he fell asleep in the dead of night, Guo Peng would ask himself like this, he was a little panicked at first, but soon he figured it out.

From ancient times to the present, China or foreign countries, the world has never changed, no matter which corner, there is a thing of "Zhumen wine and meat stinks, and there are frozen bones on the road" all the time.

It really hasn't changed.

Now he can't do anything.

So Guo Peng quickly learned to be a cold observer.

Occasionally, when he saw a group of famine refugees walking past him, he would only have a cold face, clench the weapons in his hands, and put on a vigilant posture with the guards, telling these refugees to be afraid, frightened, and speed up their passage.

And he never thought that he would also be robbed by bandits on the road.

People who can't survive don't want to starve to death, so they fall into the grass and rob the merchants on the road, which can be said to be the norm.

But in the face of so many knight guards of the Cao family, Guo Peng didn't expect that there were still people who dared to rob.

The robbers are quite courageous, and they have a little calculation, and when they robbed, they probably saw the weapons in the hands of the Cao guards, and felt that these people were not easy to mess with, but they felt that there must be a lot of treasures, so they really couldn't bear the greed in their hearts.

They attacked suddenly.

There were no regular weapons, so they attacked with stones that were readily available, and one by one fist-sized stones smashed towards the convoy from all directions, which was quite dense, and for a time the convoy was greatly confused.

Some were smashed in the head, some were smashed on the body, and some horses were smashed so frightened that they threw off the guards and ran away.

Guo Peng was caught off guard, seeing a stone flying towards the door in front of him, he didn't react.

Fortunately, Guo Jin beside him reacted quickly, shouted "Young Master", pounced on Guo Peng, dodged a blow, and then protected Guo Peng with his body.