In Chaoyang City, the sound of public trials in public for several days echoed in the square in front of the inner city government office one after another.

"Thank you, General Wang."

"Thank you for the virtual master book...

"May the immortal plaque be set up to remember it."

This is the continuous voice and testimonials of the families of those parties who gathered and wandered in the state yamen waiting to be recognized, and then sent out batch by batch.

And as the driving force behind all this, Zhou Huai'an is also listening to Zuo Jin's report, about the results of the recent raid and arrest, as well as some things that have been brought out of the surprise torture; As for the scenery and reputation of the public trial of sinners and the mastery of the people, it was at his suggestion that the head Wang Pan was given to face and accepted; It can be regarded as a reward for its consistent support behind the scenes.

From time to time, the corresponding names and locations of new torture are sent along with the confessions as further screening and deciding on the next course of action; Occasionally, a certain stronghold and hiding place were found and discovered, and then the news that it had been raided or breached was fed back, and Shui Wanghan, a former guest who had just decided to make a crime anyway, stood aside and listened and waited for consultation at any time.

As a well-known land of poor mountains and bad waters, in the coastal areas from Fujian to Lingnan, it is no longer a news thing for wealthy and powerful families to go out privately to kidnap people as slaves, and even rob and kill past business travelers and pedestrians. In the historical books and local chronicles of later generations, there are even records of officials colluding with large households to abduct and sell children and castrate them for personal gain.

And in front of these traffickers who are greedy for profit and have intricate relationships, even if they are like the first eunuch in the world in the Kaiyuan period - Gao Lishi, a descendant of the Feng family of the Lingnan giant clan born in his childhood, and an official eunuch who was born as a local county lieutenant, it is difficult to be spared.

He was a young man who was regarded as a specialty of Lingnan and was dedicated to the palace with King Huo, and only then began to make his career in Li Longji's Linzi Palace, and finally waited until he was in power to the world, so that he was able to re-recognize his ancestors and return to his ancestors with a crippled body, and posthumously gave away several generations of lintels, but the resentment and tragedy caused by this have lasted for many years.

You must know that his great-great-grandfather Feng Ang was already a figure like the emperor of Lingnan during the Nanchen period, that is, the prototype of the Lingnan Song family, one of the four major lords in the world, in the martial arts fantasy masterpiece "The Legend of Double Dragons of the Tang Dynasty", which was once all the rage; Even in the history textbooks of later generations, he was a positive figure who promoted the unification of the country together with Mrs. Xian.

The fact that his descendants would have fallen to this point shows how rampant human traffickers were in Lingnan at that time.

Zhou Huai'an always thought that this was just a joke in a historical allusion, but he didn't expect it to happen to him, and he experienced it himself. Although the government no longer exists, the big families who colluded with it are still left; And taking advantage of the short chaotic period brought about by the tug-of-war between the officials and the army, the rebels wantonly abducted and plundered people for profit.

Thus now they have hoarded young children and young men who are ready to be castrated for confessions, and the women they have taken from other places, have numbered more than a thousand; It occupies more than one-thirtieth of the permanent population of this state city, involving thousands of households; Coupled with the fact that their various relatives and friends are old, more people are indirectly involved.

Moreover, even some of the original solid or middle-aged families are not immune to the results; Because the quality of the goods produced by these families is higher and the sins are more in between, it is really full of evil and heinous guilt.

And as the mastermind and general backstage behind all this, it is the Yu family, which is known as the three mountains and five associations of the tide and the underground of the states, and the head of the nine societies and fifteen lines on the surface; On the surface, those Xingdong and Huishou who are quite valuable or imposing are not outdated, the old wealthy family who has been entrenched in the state city for many years, and the agents or peripheral relations supported by them.

It is said that their ancestor was the eunuch and the eunuch in the Qianyuan period, and Yu Chaoen, who was known as "the Son of Heaven but lives in the forbidden middle, and pays for foreign affairs as an old slave", one of the additional adopted sons; Later, after Yu Chaoen lost power, he was killed in a dung pit for the assassins, and his adopted sons were also liquidated, and one of them was exiled to Lingnan, and after several generations became the veritable leader of this Chao Circle.

Therefore, as a big local tiger, this clan not only extracts profits from all kinds of open businesses on the surface, but also controls and monopolizes huge interests and channels in various underground businesses that will not be dishonored.

This large-scale human abduction and trafficking campaign, which has lasted for many years, as well as the production of private confessions behind the scenes, is one of the major items; It goes even beyond the smuggling of imported goods and the distribution and trafficking of illicit salt along the coast; It is also an important means for them to collude with the government and curry favor with the people in the court. The war and turmoil brought by the rebel army's southward sweep of Lingnan also gave these underground forces all kinds of space and opportunities to take advantage of the chaos to make profits.

In a sense, since Zhou Huai'an seized and controlled Fengling Port, the largest port on the coast, he inevitably had to directly have a corresponding antagonistic interest with the Yu family, which had a large part of the gray interests in it; As a result, the people, goods and other resources they had hoarded could not be transferred out, and a large number of them were stranded; So in the dark, there are really some inexplicable and inexplicable coincidences.

Despite this, these underground forces found shelter among the rebels within a short period of time, as a means of daily cover; For example, they have eyeliners and partners inside the city gates, and they ventilate the daily movement of the rebels.

Therefore, what makes Zhou Huaian a little sad is that some people in this righteous army are corrupt and degenerate too quickly, and they only came back from going around outside, and the righteous army has become like this.

However, this is the scope of Wang Pan's authority to deal with the aftermath, as for whether he will crack down on other unstable existences in the army by the way, or unstable factors, it is not a problem that Zhou Huaian needs to consider. Regardless of the complexity of the ideas of the leaders, most of the ordinary soldiers were obviously quite welcoming to this kind of eating and subsequent public trials.

He is more concerned about the practical benefits of making a fortune in silence. Because of the copying of these nine societies and fifteen lines and the income behind the scenes, it is a great harvest, and it is not even less than the great plunder when the city was broken. Although most of them will be confiscated, it is also a pleasure and a sense of accomplishment to watch so many things pass by.

It also involves dozens of industries and corresponding facilities in the city, as well as their related practitioners; And when raiding some hidden strongholds, they will even encounter different levels of resistance, or different degrees of destruction of evidence and signs of escape. It is further proof of this, the energy and power of the other party in this city for many years are not as simple as they can be seen on the surface.

Although there is a fly in the ointment that although most people were controlled on the night of the night banquet in the merchant hall, the biggest culprit behind the scenes, the patriarch and head of the Yu clan, Yu Zhanxian, who has the title of Feng Weng, ran out of the secret door reserved by the side wall and disappeared under the desperate cover of the same party;

However, this has nothing to do with the overall situation, with this thunderous sweeping momentum launched with all its might, most of the clansmen and backbone members of the Yu clan who are still in the city have been captured in one fell swoop, and they have been sent to the beheading platform of the execution ground one after another, or they have been incorporated into the hard labor team to atone for their crimes.

With their death or imprisonment, the underground networks and channels controlled by the Yu clan, as well as their local control and influence, were destroyed and destroyed from the roots. After all, without the manpower of these middle and lower classes who can be driven to act, and the specific affairs they are responsible for and the channels for maintenance, it is impossible to make any big waves for a while just by escaping a bare pole and a few fish that slip through the net.

Moreover, Zhou Huai'an also symbolically asked people at the execution scene to solemnly go through the formal punishment process of the Ming Dynasty, and executed a stand-in left by the other party to cover people's eyes; This completed the death of this fish master and fish official known as "Half of the City" in legal principles and people's hearts.

In this way, even if this one has the opportunity to emerge in the future, he will find that the fear and awe that his family has woven with wealth and power for generations, and that shrouded most people's psychology, have long since disappeared. And it is no longer possible to be a "dead man", or to get more help and influence.

In addition, Zhou Huai'an also had an unexpected side gain, that is, he was supplemented by a large number of craftsmen and apprentices in the baggage team; Mainly from these guilds that have been controlled in disguise, those who have been enslaved and oppressed for a long time. Although there are almost no experienced and experienced craftsmen, they are all young and strong who are really dissatisfied with the status quo, which is more convenient for subsequent transformation and re-education.

Through the performance and feedback of the three teams of exploration, census and work, Zhou Huai'an also preliminarily summed up new experience and mature models; For example, the mobilization and recruitment of the common people in these cities is very different from that in the predominantly agricultural villages, or in the towns and cities where circulation is concentrated.

Except for the undifferentiated rough coolies at the lowest level, even the porters and hired laborers who relied on hard work to eat, in fact, had corresponding guilds and merchants, or gang-like associations, or village party gangs, which exercised varying degrees of personal control.

Therefore, if you want to mobilize and use their power, you have to do it through compromise and exchange with the existence of these vested interests, in the name of cooperation; But now there's a better opportunity. By liquidating these guilds and related people, it is completely possible to justifiably shatter the shackles that have been built on them by controlling the daily livelihood and the inertia of exploitation that they have been accustomed to for a long time.

(End of chapter)