On June 30 of the second year of Longdao, the Governor's Office issued an emergency mobilization order to the whole province, demanding that the province do a good job in eliminating locusts.

The mobilization order was issued to every household at the prefectural, county, and village levels, and the mobilization department and the propaganda department, which are directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of War, were dispatched at the same time to begin to mobilize manpower and material resources throughout the province to prepare for the battle against locusts by taking advantage of the militia mobilization system that had already taken shape.

The personnel of the mobilization department are responsible for going to each tunpu in their jurisdiction, assisted by the head of the tun and village, to check the mobilization of manpower and spot check the preparation of locust control tools.

The Propaganda Department dispatched a large number of propaganda teams to carry out reincarnation performances in the five prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Office to publicize the importance of locust control work and the correct means of eliminating locusts.

Xu Shiyang also specially told Gu Hengbo to find a way to write a few popular songs to promote the concept of uniting to defend the homeland to the people.

At least at this time, the young Qi provincial governorate was still very dynamic, and through the militia mobilization system, with the assistance of local government agencies, the whole Qi province gradually took action.

All the counties under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Office have set up locust extermination headquarters, and the county commander himself serves as the commander-in-chief.

Each village under the jurisdiction of the county should set up a locust extermination brigade, and each brigade should have three squadrons under its jurisdiction:

The 1st Squadron, which is mainly composed of capable registered militia, is responsible for mobile locust extermination.

The 2nd Squadron, which is mainly composed of women and the elderly, is responsible for defending the village, digging up insect eggs, and providing logistical support for the 1st Squadron.

The 3rd Squadron, which is mainly composed of children and teenagers, is responsible for assisting the 1st and 2nd Squadrons.

In order to avoid a beggar-thy-neighbor situation, the Metropolitan Governor's Office required all brigades in each county to form a locust extermination regiment, and all locust extermination regiments in each prefecture to form a locust extermination army, and the Metropolitan Governor directly appointed the prefect as the commander of the locust extermination corps.

At the same time, the metropolitan governor Xu Muhe himself set up a general headquarters for the extermination of locusts in Quancheng and considered himself the president.

Xu Shiyang, who is also the secretary of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry, is the vice president.

The General Headquarters has the right to mobilize the forces of the whole province to concentrate on striking locusts in a certain prefecture, and armies and regiments at all levels naturally have the ability to concentrate mobile forces in their own prefectures and counties to concentrate on attacking the main force of locusts.

Since it is men, women, and children in the whole province, and workers, farmers, academics, and businessmen are all in battle, the army, the most powerful mobile force, is naturally no exception.

Xu Shiyang, in his capacity as the secretary of the military department and the commander-in-chief of the new army, ordered:

Fuzhou, Changshengdao, Jinzhou, and Lushun in southern Liaoning each retained half of the field brigade to be responsible for the defense, and the other half of the brigade formed a mobile unit in rotation and returned to Qi Province to participate in the locust eradication work.

In addition to the troops left behind in southern Liaoning, the rest of the field army system, including the cavalry troops, the Blue Army troops, the trapped camp and Xu Shiyang's guards, all participated in the locust eradication work.

At the same time, Xu Shiyang also ordered all ministries to suppress the soldiers and cooperate with the propaganda department and the county public security department to carry out the propaganda work of cracking down on superstition throughout the province.

Before the warning of the locust plague is lifted, no one is allowed to sacrifice to the "divine insects", and the locust temples built by the common people in various places must be destroyed, and any witches and gods who dare to publicize that grasshoppers are "divine insects" and that the locust plague is "punished by heaven" are all arrested on the spot, and the suppression soldiers even have the privilege of directly executing the organizers of superstitious activities!

In addition to the strict punishment of the pacifying soldiers and the vigorous propaganda of the propaganda team, in order to ensure the people's enthusiasm for exterminating locusts, Xu Muhe, the governor in charge of the household department, announced the policy of exchanging locusts for grain according to Xu Shiyang's suggestion.

Starting today, anyone who catches a pound of locusts can exchange it for a pound of food stamps at a local bank.

If you dig up a pound of insect eggs, you can exchange it for a pound and a half!

The Governor's Office hoped to stimulate the enthusiasm of the masses to exterminate locusts as a means of generating income, rather than being fooled by witches and gods and focusing on useless activities such as worshipping clay statues.

In addition to the direct extermination of locusts, the Governor's Office also ordered a reward for the collection of methods for exterminating locusts among the people, and if it was useful, those who proposed the methods would be rewarded with hundreds or thousands of catties of food stamps.

At the same time, the Governor's Office announced that a locust extermination competition would be launched between prefectures, counties and villages, and that cadres with the most locust exterminations would be given priority and their subordinate members would be given financial rewards.

The combination of various methods and the general mobilization of the entire Qi Province resulted in the fact that the locust plague in other places had not yet come, and the local locusts in Qi Province fell into bad luck first.

From the beginning of July to the beginning of July, in just 30 days in July, the five prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Government have reported the extermination of more than 80,000 catties of locusts, more than 30,000 catties of insect eggs, and by the way, more than 20,000 catties of other pests (such as mosquitoes, flies, bed bugs, etc.) that have been unlucky!

At first, the bank was a little worried about the food, and only planned to pay for the locusts and eggs.

When Xu Shiyang found out, he immediately asked them to correct their practices, as long as they were pests, they could all exchange food stamps according to the ratio of one pound of insects to one pound of grain.

On July 25, the light cavalry of the New Army stationed on the side of the canal sent an urgent report that the vanguard of the locust plague in Henan Province had arrived at the border!

On the same day, the Yanzhou Prefecture Headquarters mobilized 100,000 people and waited for the canal.

This really became a war, and the locusts formed a dark cloud of tens of miles in length and width, and the black pressure rushed over, like a sandstorm, and even if people were only ten steps apart, they could not see each other's figures clearly.

The Yanzhou garrison even dispatched artillery to fire packets of shotguns composed of bags of fine sand at the black-pressed locust swarm, which could bombard hundreds or thousands of locusts with a single shot.

The men and women of Yanzhou, old and young, marched together, women, children and the elderly, each holding a broom, a wooden stick and even straw sandals, standing in a huge phalanx in the place where the locusts passed.

Mobile units of young people chased the swarms, and even the cavalry of the New Army rode horses, beating gongs and drums to scare the locusts and prevent them from landing.

If a locust fell in the field, so as not to hurt the crops, they could not fight indiscriminately, so the women and children took bags and hunted them carefully.

On July 27, Xu Shiyang arrived at the front line of Yanzhou locust extermination, he set up a pot on the side of the canal, and ate locusts for two consecutive days - the first day he ate fried locusts, twisted off the head of the captured locust, took out the intestines by the way, and then removed the locust legs and wings, and the rest of the part could be eaten, which tasted like chicken and had five times the protein of beef.

Unfortunately, an old farmer told Xu Shiyang that day that his family didn't have so much oil to fry locusts to eat.

So the next day, Xu Shiyang switched to roasted locusts, and the taste was far worse than fried.

However, no matter what, Xu Shiyang proved to the people that locusts are not sinned by heaven, and there is no need to ask God to worship Buddha and ask for forgiveness, they should be destroyed if they harm the crops!

Led by Xu Shiyang, locusts have also become a popular dish in Qi Province, and after a long time, there are even people who specialize in selling locusts, of course, this is all a later story.

While preying on locusts, some people think that there are actually many animals that like to eat insects, so many people try to drive out their own chickens and ducks and let them catch locusts and eat them themselves.

It turned out that chickens and ducks really liked to eat this thing, and soon after each chicken went out, the chickens could be stuffed with locusts.

This eliminates locusts and saves food for the poultry, killing two birds with one stone.

Unfortunately, there is no way to confirm who first released the chickens and ducks to peck at the locusts, so it can only be a village that divides the first locust extermination bounty worth 1,000 catties of food stamps.