Li Gang, a man from Yanshi County, dressed in a cyan official robe, took a few officials to the river beach to inspect and found that under the mobilization of the government, the river beach was full of official surnames, everyone was enthusiastic, and the whole family went into battle together, digging excitedly.

Li Gang walked around with a dark face, stopping from time to time to look and ask.

The more he looked at it, the more frightened he became, on the beach of the Yellow River, there were really a lot of locust eggs dug up, and almost a hoe went down, and he could dig up several or even seven or eight locust egg masses.

Shocking.

It was not yet noon, and many families had already dug up half a bucket of locust eggs, and a rough estimate estimated that there must be at least five or six catties.

On this river beach, there are no less than four or five thousand people digging in more than a dozen villages in Piling Township alone, and they have to dig thousands of catties.

Looking at the buckets of locust eggs, Li Gang's heart became heavier and heavier, and he began to realize that this time he might really face a big locust plague, just such a few thousand acres of river beach, and thousands of catties of locust eggs were dug up in half a day.

There must be 10,000 or 20,000 locust eggs per catty, if they are all hatched, think about 10,000 or 20,000 flying locusts, then it can directly destroy the crops in a large area, and a few thousand catties of locust eggs will not be able to hatch tens of millions of locusts?

Thinking of the flying locusts that covered the sky and the sun, and the appearance of not leaving an inch of grass everywhere he passed, Li Gang's scalp was numb.

It seems that what the emperor said at the previous meeting was indeed not exaggerated.

An old official said beside him, "In the past, there would always be locust plagues here every few years, but I have lived for most of my life, and I have never seen so many locust eggs. ”

Li Gang was silent.

Continue to turn, at the end of the day, he turned around the thousands of acres of river beaches, and found that everything was the same, full of dense holes, and the people could dig up many egg masses with a hoe, and it was quite easy to dig up eggs.

Regardless of being tired, Li Gang said to the old officials beside him, "You must inform everyone, don't dig clean, don't try to be fast, just carelessly omitted, this misses an egg mass, and you can give birth to dozens of flying locusts when you turn around, and eliminate the evil!" ”

Sitting on the beach of the Yellow River, Li Gang felt very heavy.

At the end of the day, he only ate two steamed cakes, but he couldn't care about being tired and hungry.

The officials persuaded him to go back to the county seat, but he insisted that he planned not to go back for the time being, and that he would keep an eye on this river beach these days.

Lunch.

The families were busy digging eggs and didn't have time to go back, so they hurriedly ate some dry food brought by the family, drank some cold boiled water, and continued digging.

Everyone digs eggs to rest, and they will go to the neighbors next to them to see the harvest and compare the results.

Ding Laosan dug very hard, for him, in fact, digging locust eggs is not too tiring, he used to have several brothers, but some died of famine, some died of war, and still died of famine in the war.

In order to eat a bite, he went up the mountain to hunt, went down to the river to touch the fish, and even ate the bark of grass roots and trees during the famine.

Now life is better, but there is also a large family to raise, the old and the young, the family has three sons and two daughters, and three died in the past, the eldest pillar is a buddy in the county, the second Heiwa is studying in the school, and the youngest son is just three years old. The daughter-in-law always says that she wants to have two more, and the poorer the family, the more she always wants to have a few more, and there is no one else to rely on, so she will think about relying on her children in the future, and if you have more children, your brothers and sisters will also rely on them.

There are dozens of acres of land at home, all of which have been divided in recent years, there are paddy fields, mountains and mulberry woodlands, but they live in the north of Pishan Mountain, close to the Yellow River, the harvest is unstable, and some fields are often flooded.

When the third child has free time, he will go to catch fish and hunt, and sometimes go to the county seat or Luoyang with the villagers to find work, and work for a period of time to supplement the family.

He also thought that when the days were better, the family would save some money, and then borrow some more, renovate the old house of the family, build a few more rooms, and add a backyard, and the son would be getting older day by day, and he would have to prepare a place for them to live in after marriage.

It was getting dark.

The sun is gone.

But everyone was reluctant to leave.

"How many have you dug up?" Lao Ding put down the hoe and asked his wife Li.

Li wiped his sweat and handed the bucket to the third child. Lao Ben carried the bucket and estimated it, "It is estimated that there must be fifteen or sixteen catties." ”

"Are there really so many?"

"I know how much I know when I mention it, and I can't be wrong."

"Fifteen catties, wouldn't that be able to exchange for forty-five catties of millet?" Ding Laosan has a family of eight, the eldest son works as a partner in a shop in the county town, and the two daughters also work in the workshop in Luoyang to earn salaries, and there are two sons and three adults in the family, but the second son usually goes to school and eats at school at noon.

There are three families and one small, and there are only three liters of food a day.

"Save some food, enough for our family to eat for half a month."

The price of rice in Luoyang, 20 yuan for rice, and corn grain is cheaper, but a bucket also costs more than 10 yuan.

The third said that it was not counted like this, locusts arose, famine came, and gold could not buy food in the famine years.

"I just don't know if I'll actually accept it."

Seeing that it was getting late, and I would have to walk back in a while, the village chief and the militia captain were already shouting for everyone to go home, afraid that it would be too late for a wild beast and a wolf.

Everyone packed up their tools and went home together.

On the way, they were all discussing the exchange of locusts for food.

"It's so late, I guess no one will come to collect it today, so I hope someone will come to collect it tomorrow."

"It's okay if someone comes to collect it the day after tomorrow."

When I arrived at the village in the dark, I found that there were people waiting at the entrance of the village.

"Zhang Zuoshi, why are you here, it's so late."

"The newly arrived Li Xiancheng has issued an order, asking us to go down to all townships and villages no matter how late it is today, and register the dug locust eggs for grain.

When everyone saw that there were two large truckloads of grain, they couldn't help but get excited.

"Hurry up and ask the village."

Only a few people with handicaps remained in the village, and the rest of the people who were able to move went to the river beach to dig eggs during the day.

The village chief welcomed Zhang Zuo and a few of them into the village.

"I'll call my mother-in-law to Zhang Luo's meal!"

"We ate dry food on the way, let's do business first, I guess everyone is waiting to change food, please get torches and oil lamps, let's go to this village to change the locust eggs first."

Everyone was very excited, many people ran to get lamps, and some people started to burn the fire directly at the head of the village.

Zhang Zuoyan is still very serious about his work, the new county is too big, and the bachelor who has just been demoted is still the prince's teacher, although it is only the eighth grade county after all, but after all, he has been the prince's teacher, who knows when he will go up again. Therefore, everyone didn't dare to oppose Zhang Xiancheng's obviously unreasonable order, so they just ran hard.

"Let's line up and come one by one."

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