To the northeast of Hangzhou, Yuhang, Tongxiang and Jiaxing are located, and Deqing County is farther to the northwest. After Liu Chengdong and Han Shizhong rested for two days, their troops went south in two ways, and Han Shizhong, who was the envoy of recruitment, ordered Yao Pingzhong of Jiaxing and Liu Guangshi stationed in Shaoxing, southeast of Hangzhou, to march into the army, and strive to advance to the city of Hangzhou in the cold winter.

Liu Chengdong led 3,000 Nanyang Xiang troops and more than 3,000 township soldiers and archers gathered in Guangde and other places, plus nearly 4,000 young and strong soldiers with the army, to attack Deqing County, north of Hangzhou. Han Shizhong appreciated Liu Chengdong's full cooperation, and gave Liu Chengdong's department a few three-sentry guns and bed crossbows, but Han Shizhong's henchmen and generals wanted to take hundreds of people to control them, and Liu Chengdong expressed his understanding.

Han Shizhong led 10,000 foot soldiers and 800 cavalry, plus a large number of siege equipment and baggage, as well as nearly 10,000 young and strong people, and attacked directly to the south, breaking through three checkpoints and two ambushes. There are many hungry people on both sides of the Grand Canal, many hungry people follow the army, trying to mix something to fill their stomachs, and the burned countryside can be seen everywhere. Han Shizhong could only select some people from the homeless people to accompany the army, and the rest of the people could not be taken care of.

Yao Pingzhong went down to Jiaxing Jiancheng in one fell swoop, and Fang Tianding, who was guarding Jiaxing, did not fight hard, and decisively gave up the dilapidated "Jiancheng" and joined forces with Shi Bao, who came secretly. Yao Pingzhong's control of the few thousand men at first robbed only those large households who had surrendered to Fangla, but soon it spread to all the common people, and some people, especially the soldiers of the Western Army, began to insult women. Along the way, the people who were arrested with the army also joined the ranks of looting, and the once prosperous Jiaxing was on fire everywhere...... After receiving Han Shizhong's strict order, Yao Pingzhong took two days to gather his troops, and rushed towards Tongxiang to show his face again, completely forgetting Han Shizhong's order to march carefully.

In his eyes, there was not much difference between boatmen, farmers, ruffians and homeless people, and he always thought that as long as there were more people and a few more battles, an army would naturally appear. After appeasing the stricken gentry and clearing out the rogues around Shaoxing, Liu Guangshi pulled a cart full of food and supplies in the praise of the family, and led tens of thousands of homeless people to the north to continue to walk his road to the famous general.

The Hangzhou Navy and the Zhoushan Water Army, which had fled to the mouth of Hangzhou Bay a few months earlier, also began to march west along the river, attacking the camps on both sides of the river and cleaning the waterways at the same time, intending to advance to the city of Hangzhou in the cold winter. The Hangzhou navy has worked very hard against the past, perhaps due to the pressure of making meritorious contributions and covering up the defeat, and the navy army that has been raised by the Great Zhou Dynasty for more than 100 years was actually defeated by a group of shore thieves, which is unjustifiable.

Soon it will be the winter solstice, but Huinan and Liangzhejiang have been destroyed by the displaced people and the Fangla army, and the prosperity and prosperity of the past have long been gone. Although the winter south of the Yangtze River is not as cold as in the north, the wet cooling of the drill bones brings a different feeling, and the places with more water vapor are more serious.

Looking into the distance from the road from Jiaxing to Tongxiang, the ruined stone bridges, the ruined paddy fields, the flying fallen leaves and the bleak hills form a strange picture, as if some kind of great force removed many people overnight. Passing by the burning tea shop, Fang Lajun, who was marching, only glanced at the corpses of the tea shop owner and his wife, and then withdrew his gaze.

Ye Yuzhen also saw the corpse of Bai Huahua, the proprietress of the tea shop, and he held the spear in his hand tighter. Ye Yuzhen's hometown is in Huainan, two years ago his family still had ten acres of paddy fields, the family worked hard, plus his wife and two younger siblings spinning and weaving, it was also a rare kind little rich family.

The flood destroyed everything Ye Yuzhen fought for, and together with Ye Yuzhen's understanding of this world, it became illusory in the fire and screams. Ye Yuzhen didn't understand, it was just a flood, but it was a little bigger, why did everything change? There are still gentry families who set up porridge sheds, and their own families have donated tens of thousands of catties of food, and some disasters every two or three years in the past have been suppressed like this, but why can't it work?

The Great Zhou Dynasty had official warehouses in strategic places and state capitals, and the people of the Great Zhou Dynasty, especially in the wealthy places, had righteous warehouses, and the wealthy families also had their own private collections. The canals and water conservancy of the Great Zhou Dynasty are the most in the past dynasties, and the floods are also the same status, and there are floods almost every year in the Jianghuai land. At this time, the gentry and wealthy merchants in various places began to give porridge and relief, and the official family would also issue a decree to reduce or exempt the money and grain in a certain place, plus the parity of the grain in the official warehouse...... The people of the affected areas are digested quickly and do not cause major disasters.

The local government's efforts to implement disaster relief policies are not as strong as year after year, but the ability of the Great Zhou to absorb the displaced people is sometimes high and sometimes low, because it is supported by industry and commerce, maritime trade, workshops and mines. To a certain extent, it is precisely because of the large number of cheap labor brought about by the catastrophe that the industry and commerce of the Great Zhou Dynasty have flourished today.

The process of diverting the victims and giving relief to the people is naturally a proof of the benevolence of the officials, the efforts of the imperial court, and the gratitude of the people in the reports of officials in various places, but from the perspective of the victims, it is a long and strange journey of life.

The flood took everything away from the family, and the people, who did not have much food reserves, could only sell the land handed down from their ancestors at a fraction of the actual value, and then go to buy food that was as expensive as heaven.

God knows why the price of land has been suppressed so low, and God knows why the imperial court and officials did not rush to provide disaster relief, but asked them to sell their ancestral property to buy the grain they had grown all their lives. God knows why the price of grain is so high only in the affected areas, but the roads around the affected areas are often full of grain trucks without doors, and the bloody conflicts caused by this are never seen in the county annals.

Ye Yuzhen took out his own food inventory under the inspiration or coercion of the official gentry, and wanted to take refuge in the city when he found that something was wrong, but found that he had also become a "homeless person" and could not enter the city. God knows how a person with a surplus of money can be called a homeless? Ye Yuzhen's family guarded the courtyard and did not leave, and the remaining food was saved, which was enough for their family to save their lives. Many of the victims who had no food to eat were people who knew Ye Yuzhen and shouted outside, "Ye Yuzhen, everyone is hungry, only your family has food, what about your conscience?" ”

"This Ye family has a lot of food, and I took out tens of thousands of catties last time, so I must not let it go."

"The county seat is not allowed to enter, either hand over the grain, or become a displaced person with us!"

"My family has donated tens of thousands of catties of food, all of which have been filled into the dog's belly? The Zhang family next door, the Ying family donated most of the food, and their own families were starving, but you ate other people's food, and finally broke down the door and killed people, are you still human? Ye Yuzhen held a fork in his hand and shouted at the homeless people surrounding him, feeling stunned and wondering at the same time, why did the county suddenly close its doors?

The door of the Ye family was knocked open, and Ye Yuzhen, who was bleeding all over his head, fell to the ground, and saw his parents, wife and children being killed in the ringing ears, and the female dependents were screaming without exception, and their consciousness fell into a drowsy. After Ye Yuzhen woke up, he closed his wife's frightened eyes, collected the bodies of several children, put the bodies of the other two rooms into the ancestral house, and then set a fire.

When Ye Yuzhen followed the displaced people past the edge of the county seat, the gentry at the head of the city were discussing how much land they could occupy this time, how many tenant slaves and maids they could recruit from the displaced people elsewhere, and how to conceal these fields and not pay taxes. The county magistrate on the side sighed for a long time, feeling that this time he had gone too far and violated the way of the saints. But the county order immediately touched the bill of exchange in the cuff, and only the thousands of acres of land in the future can make this Confucian disciple feel at ease, "I can't do anything, I share the world with the scholars in Da Zhou, and the weight of my county order is really limited......"

The Huainan flood has changed the fate of many people, and if hundreds of thousands of people affected by the disaster receive relief in time, it will not cause much disaster. If the righteous gentlemen, big families and wealthy families in the south of Jianghuai can be more active in disaster relief and have a more restrained appetite, there will be no rise of Fang La. So the civil contradictions between Huainan and Jiangnan ended like this.

However, the affairs of the Great Zhou Dynasty have their own strong inertia, and according to the market of the Great Zhou, only two to three percent of the relief grain sent by the court has reached the mouths of the victims, which is a good proportion in the previous dynasties, after all, the Great Zhou has enjoyed the country for more than 100 years. The government's will to reduce taxes was only received by the gentry and large households, and before they had enough to eat the land, there would only be more and more small people who sold land at low prices, bought grain at high prices, and even sold their children and daughters, and became homeless people.

The victims soon became homeless, and in order to avoid incidents, other repertoire programs began to be staged. The soup kitchens, which are the façade and the source of word-of-mouth, are lined up all the way, and in the relay of the gentry, the homeless people are constantly digested and then diverted to the surrounding areas. The squire and the county magistrate breathed a sigh of relief, according to common sense, the displaced people sent out would continue to be digested, and finally the world would be peaceful. Some businessmen who donated large sums of money and food breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that they could always eat some land this time, and then took a few plaques of "House of Benevolence" to defend themselves, and marched towards the road of gentlemen in the scholarly family. It is the consensus that a wealthy businessman with a fortune of 100,000 yuan may not have a fortune of 1,000 yuan in the Great Zhou Dynasty.

Ye Yuzhen went all the way south in this kind of affectionate digestion process, which made countless small people grateful, but in fact terrifying, and people continued to sell themselves as slaves or sell their sons and daughters along the way. There are also standards for the old men to pick people, the homeless people who are too close to their hometowns must not be, young women and female dolls are picked up as soon as possible, and the young and strong people who are not dragged down by their wives and children are very favored. Every old man who goes to the porridge shed and the roadside to pick people will burst into tears when he leaves, and come up with touching words such as "I can't help the lonely people in the world, but I can't do anything about it", and shed tears in the cry of the homeless people who can't sell themselves.

A month after the family was broken, Ye Yuzhen saw the sale of children and daughters; Two months after the death of the family, Ye Yuzhen saw a big attack on food; Three months after the family was broken and people died, Ye Yuzhen saw cannibalism. It was also on that bright night that Ye Yuzhen picked up a sharpened wooden stick and stabbed it into the eyes of the big man next to the stone pot, I don't know if it was murder or the stimulation of the bones next to him, after vomiting, Ye Yuzhen killed several people in a row and became a small leader.

When approaching the Yangtze River, Ye Yuzhen finally saw the legendary Hungry Death, he was very suspicious of what people would look like when they were extremely hungry, and then he saw the Hungry Death. The human body, which is usually severely deficient in protein and fat intake, will not simply become thin after losing its food source, but will become a terrifying appearance of skin and bones within ten days, and become the source of countless horror books. Ye Yuzhen held a spear in his hand to force back the starvation who wanted to get on the raft, and crossed the Yangtze River with more than a dozen brothers. He heard that there was a Mani Holy Father named Fang La in Hangzhou who was fighting for the poor people, and he wanted to go over and ask for a way to live.

The displaced people who were able to cross the Yangtze River, many of them were more powerful than Ye Yuzhen, or they killed more people. Most people start out killing people as a last resort, and gradually, some people become obsessed with the sense of conquest of killing. The croppers were so stimulated by the abuse of them that they were accustomed to using force to obtain goods, food, and even women, and few of them wanted to return to their former life of hard work. Ye Yu really wanted to live a normal life as soon as possible, it was better to go to the battlefield and fight hard than to suffocate in the sinking, he didn't want to be like some people. The Yangtze River gradually faded away, and finally on that day, Ye Yuzhen met Fang Tianding.

Fang Tianding silver helmet and silver armor, holding Fang Tian's halberd in his hand, after understanding the specific tragic situation in Huainan, he patted Ye Yuzhen on the shoulder and said, "I will lead you and others to fight a bloody road!" ”

Xu felt that the scene was a little deserted, Fang Tianding raised his arms and shouted, "Follow the Holy Father, and die without spinning." It is the equality of the law, and there is no superiority! ”

"The law is equal, and no one is superior!" After Fang Tian was fixed, thousands of blood-stained Fang La's elites raised their knives and shouted.

"The law is equal, and no one is superior!" Ye Yuzhen saw the brothers around him shouting loudly, and he could only point his spear at the sky and shout hard. In this exciting scene, Ye Yuzhen shed the most tears in his life. Somehow, he suddenly felt that Fang Lajun was not a good place to go.

Fang Tianding looked at the newly joined Huainan refugees with satisfaction. There were ragged men running on the horizon in the distance, Fang Tianding became more and more excited, and greeted a cronie, "Quickly report to the Holy Father, there is a good source of soldiers here, Hangzhou is not to be afraid!" ”

Fang La, who was anxious under the city of Hangzhou, received Fang Tianding's summons and applauded repeatedly. He first sent people to receive Huainan young men such as Ye Yuzhen, who were able to survive and cross the Yangtze River, which was already an excellent source of soldiers, and then launched a hard attack on Hangzhou, and then feigned a retreat. The defenders of Hangzhou went out of the city under the strict orders of the Hangzhou prefect and the two senior officials of the "Judgment Jiangnan East Road Civil Judgment" to beat the water dogs.

Fang La lined up on the edge of the West Lake, staring at the 20,000 Huainan young men who went south from the north of the Yangtze River, "The Great Zhou court didn't give you a way to live, so your family was ruined, and now you are in the south of the Yangtze River." There was food, women, gold and silver, and weapons in the city of Hangzhou...... Lay down Hangzhou, Ren Er and others are ...... Whether it is life or death, victory or defeat, just look at today, below the self square, the retreat is beheaded! ”

Fang La raised troops with the backbone of Manichaeism and the heroes of the township, and met under the city of Hangzhou, and the surrounding Xiang troops gradually gathered...... At this time, a large number of young people who struggled out of the Huainan flood crossed the river to the south, and were absorbed and used by Fang La, and the Hangzhou defenders lined up on the edge of the West Lake were defeated in one fell swoop, and Fang La took the Hangzhou Mansion with millions of people.

The Fang La army that entered the city, especially the Huainan Qingzhuang in the Fang La army, wantonly vented their grievances and anger, in order to fill the emptiness in their hearts and soothe the flames in their hearts. Ye Yuzhen locked himself in a small black room, he didn't want to completely forget his family, so he could only hide. Ye Yuzhen, who was not appreciated by Shangguan, still led dozens of people to work under Fang Tianding after his meritorious service.

After passing the burned tea shop, Ye Yuzhen led his men to the ambush battlefield set up by Fang Tianding and Shi Bao, preparing to defeat the "Little Captain" Yao Pingzhong in one fell swoop.