Captain Chai Ping rode a jujube red horse and walked on the ridge near Guangzhou, but his mind was full of thoughts; Recently, under the rule of the rebels, there is still no peace, all kinds of traitors and criminals are always prohibited, and from time to time there are evil things that kill people and oversell goods, but the remnants of the official army are still ghostly in all kinds of dark corners, and create endless rumors and rumors, which have caused a lot of right and wrong and hindrance to the follow-up benefits of the rebels and the people's livelihood.

He used to be the son of a peasant family in the countryside of Ruzhou, Henan, and was born in a poor peasant family that had relied on the soil for food for generations, and he also had a decent family; Father Chai Tie Niu is a well-known crop in Sili and Eight Townships, who has the strength to see no discomfort to provoke a thumbs up and praise "real iron Niu", therefore, there have been people who sighed, with this strength not to join the army a good background, but to stay in the township buried in the soil is a pity. However, he has a simple temperament that is indisputable, and he is silent about it.

And his mother was a very diligent and hard-working woman, who was able to go down to the field and the stove, and was not much inferior to the man in many things; Therefore, relying on the diligence and hard work of his parents, he not only planted more than a dozen acres of hillside land, but also owned the land of the big families in the village at the same time, and he could always dig out more things in the soil than other families in the same land; And let him, a small and cramped broken family, add up little by little, and also hit the saplings, and open up more corners of the vegetable bed.

However, his efforts as a family have never been able to change or keep up with the drastic changes and circulation momentum of the entire current situation.

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Since the imperial court implemented the two-tax law of keeping out and out, the life of these ordinary people has become more and more difficult, because under the performance appraisal of the government, the household registration and taxes can only be increased but not decreased, but the loss and reduction of the household registration caused by famine and turmoil cannot appear on the official face, so as not to damage the kindness of the Tang Dynasty.

However, the number of fugitives is increasing, and the corresponding taxes cannot be reduced in the slightest, but also as the political achievements and evaluations of the officials and lords are increasing day by day, so more and more shortages are apportioned to these households that have not yet fled; Of course, after the amount of additional taxes levied by the government is apportioned, those powerful clans and the people related to the officials will not lose any money, but will still share the benefits and profits in it;

Then, under the urging and exploitation of the upper and lower hands, this constitutes a vicious circle of death, the heavier the tax, the more fleeing, the more fleeing, and the heavier the tax on the remaining households. Therefore, as the most diligent and hard-working model in the village, Chai Tieniu's family inevitably encountered difficulties and embarrassments.

In order to provide the wine and food needed by the officials in the countryside, they almost tossed up the little foundation they had saved so hard, and then in order not to hurt the so-called "arrears over the years", they had to hand over the eldest sister to Renyazi with tears in their eyes; Next, when the Son of Heaven was born and the government "called" the people to dedicate their hearts, his little sister had to be sent to the city as a maid who sold out of the death deed.

Relying on the turnover of selling my sister and little sister before and after, it was easy to pass such a bleak and lonely year, and God turned his face again when he was young and yellow in the coming year. Thousands of miles of red land, there is no harvest under the fire, but the taxes and forced labor levied by the government are not missing at all, coupled with the numerous miscellaneous branches and filial piety on the other side, wave after wave of officials and miscellaneous hands who go to the countryside to urge, like a grate that sweeps through the field, harvest stubble after stubble, take away pigs and sheep, cut down trees, tear down house beams, and even chickens and ducks have not been spared.

Honestly, there is a pair of body and strength of the Chai Tie Niu, but he can only knock out his teeth and swallow blood to endure and endure silently, even if those who have fled from the countryside have come to invite again and again, and even, but he was timid and afraid of things and his homeland is difficult to leave the meaning of the refusal, he will always say "endure a little longer", "endure and pass", "there will always be a better day", and persuade in turn

Fortunately, at this time, the village was once a model of a cropper among firewood and iron cattle, and Zhuangzi of Cui Taigong's family, who was mentioned from time to time, took the initiative to give his family a chance, and needed to use his strength to load, unload and transport grain to the state city for "preparation"; As a result, Chai Tie Niu was able to bring back a miscellaneous cake saved from between his teeth every day, and let the difficult days continue. Chai Tieniu, who is tired of stinky sweat and tired every day, will also take this as an example, muttering "Good people will always have a good reward" and "Old hard work has a chance to be valued by others. ”

However, the good times did not last long, because there were too many shipments in the Zhuangzi during the transportation of the state capital, a grain cart suddenly broke its axle when it was going uphill, and the golden wheat grains and chestnut rice broke through the bags and scattered all over the ground; Then, in the pleading and crying of the firewood and iron oxen that jumped to their feet in a hurry, these scattered grains were coaxed away by the nearby homeless people who were waiting to be killed; Even the soil on the ground was scraped away three points thick and could never be recovered. As a result, the charge of "being a thief and destroying official property" fell on Chai Tieniu's head out of thin air, and he was arrested and sent to the official by the waiting person before he turned back into the village.

For Chai Ping's mother and son, it was as if the sky had fallen all of a sudden; Because the villagers ran back in advance to report the news, the two of them could only hide in the grass in the wild with red eyes and tears, watching the grass and trees, bricks and tiles built by themselves in the broken family, just like that, in the hands of those public servants brought by the Cui family, they were smashed and looted, and even the vegetable seedlings in the furrow were not spared, and then they were ignited and disappeared into the steaming fireworks and scattered black ashes.

Then, they had to embark on the road of escape, they were not able to get out of existence, or were sniffed out by the dog released by Cui Zhuang, in the lifeless escape, he lost his mother again, in order to lure away the vicious dog that caught up, she deliberately cut her hand and ran to the river, and then with the last bit of courage and determination in her life, she fell into the rolling Daqing River together with the vicious dog that pounced on and bited.

"Brother Cun, let's go."

Chai Ping still remembers that moment, sad and sad, and the last goodbye. Then, as the night stopped, nature began to show a terrifying and cruel side to him, a peasant boy.

At night, the sky was so dark, the wind was so strong, and the dew in the grass was so cold, and the countryside and mountains and forests, which were once incomparably familiar, were like strange ghosts at night, roaring in the midst of countless shadows and winds, and intimidating him, a young man who was alone; His hands were worn out, and his body was scraped with bloody wisps, but he didn't dare to stop at the feet of the tart, because he was afraid that if he stopped, he would be dragged away and devoured by some unknown force;

But the real danger came from the dawn, because he was thirsty and tired and found that he had been carried by many wild dogs; These creatures, who had eaten corpses and were not afraid of people at all, followed him not far behind him unhurriedly, and followed him very patiently; As if waiting for the next moment, this exhausted and withered feast, he fell to the ground and the feast began.

At the last moment of his last breath, Chai Ping finally met someone, it was a wandering monk with an iron staff covered with patches, not only waved his staff to drive away these unwilling wild dogs, but also fed him a few mouthfuls of water from the gourd, and broke half a piece of bran cake from his arms for him.

Relying on the support of a few mouthfuls of water and half a piece of bran cake, he finally bumped into the villager who had invited his family to escape the famine before he passed out, and it is said that he actually went to join the rebels to eat a big family; Only then did he have the opportunity to be under the command of General Wang, who was known as wanting to make up for the peace of the heavens; Therefore, he also left a certain unforgettable impression on this monk who met in Pingshui

It's just that at the beginning, because he was too young, people didn't accept it at all, but just gave a little copper money and dry food and made a fortune; This also strengthened his determination and will to join the rebel army, and finally followed all the way in vain, before he was accepted as a "newspaper boy", that is, using his young and inconspicuous identity to infiltrate the city controlled by the official army to find out the news and spread rumors.

Because after the people in various places responded to the uprising of the rebels one after another, the cities where the officials and soldiers were stationed also stepped up the investigation and expulsion of the homeless young and strong, and even killed them from time to time.

Relying on the ingenuity and adaptability he honed in the countryside since he was a child, he completed the tasks of inquiry, investigation and transmission of messages in the territory of the official army many times without danger, and finally won the favor and recognition of the upper echelons of the rebel army, and began to let him lead a team of young people alone, and made many achievements for the cause of the rebel army to fight in the world.

After following the rebels for a long time, he finally ushered in the day when the rebels from all walks of life joined forces to attack the city of Ruzhou; After finally defeating the officials and troops from outside the city after several twists and turns, and after the city was broken with the help of the righteous people who echoed the city, he couldn't wait to rush into the prison in the city, and he couldn't wait to take his hard-suffering father out to recuperate and enjoy happiness for a while; But he was greeted by an empty and filthy and mottled fence.

In the end, he only found a broken shoe covered in black blood in the hollow pile of rotten grass; Because then he learned that in the days before the rebels began to attack Ruzhou, the local lord, who was known for being harsh officials, cleared the prison on the grounds of "preparing for the police" and "police retaining the chaotic party in the city", that is, all the officials and criminals in custody were dragged to the streets of the door to kill them, regardless of whether the crime was minor or small; And Chai Ping's honest father was used as an example of killing chickens and monkeys because he had no money to take care of the prison guards, and he was tortured to death in prison, and finally only got a sentence of "fear of crime and self-harm, escape from education" in the public case.

And for these prisoners, who are sometimes imprisoned by devastation, to remain in the city is to defile and desecrate the eyes, ears and nose of most nobles and good families; Therefore, the mass graves outside the city, which have been used for years to throw nameless corpses and starving deaths, are the best places for these lowly ant-like sinners.

He finally knelt there at the pillow corpse, which had been torn apart by wild dogs, and could not be recognized at all, and after howling all night, he wept like a lost wild dog, and when he came back at dawn, he was surprised to find that his whole head had turned gray; He really hated the world where this good man could not survive, so he abandoned the name of "Chai Cun, Cun Ge'er", the simple hope given by his parents to "live well without illness and disaster", and renamed it Chai Ping, taking the meaning of following the general at that time to average the world;

As a result, on the hanging list of the official army, he created the name of a "gray-headed general" with a price of 24,000 yuan. With a group of little brothers, with the begging army searching for and hunting down those suspected officials and soldiers everywhere, especially those big families and squires who have a deep collusion with the Jade Official Mansion, they are almost afraid of this rumored "gray ghost", and they are afraid to avoid it.

Now in his opinion, as long as he follows the Yellow King and kills all the corrupt officials in the world, as well as the big and powerful families who collude with them, maybe he can get a way to live from these poor backgrounds. But after taking Guangzhou this time and having time to settle down and recuperate, some things that happened afterwards began to make him a little confused and suspicious.

Because, he saw that among the rebel generals who had lived and died together and walked through the sea of corpses and blood, many of them began to become strange and unknown to him;

For when they entered the city, they could not wait to take off their blood-stained robes and armor, and put on the beautiful silk and satin, and moved from the crowded barracks to the nearby mansions, and purchased a large number of servants for themselves to serve; In this way, a heavy guard was set up for his residence, and even the closest old subordinates had to be informed several times before they could see it; And began to drive the soldiers wearing armor and armor, holding flags and flags in front of them to open the way and clear the road, as an indispensable pomp and honor guard for daily access.

Even learn from those who were once despised and despised by him, decent people including officials and wealthy families and so-called high-class people, and their daily speech and demeanor.

It's like he looked at the corrupt officials and corrupt officials who came down with his own hands, or the powerful families who knocked on the bones and sucked the marrow and ate people without seeing blood, and resurrected or possessed these good brothers and sons of the past.

Chai Ping was riding slowly in thoughts and remembrance, and saw that the location of his destination had been vaguely revealed in front of him.