In the eleventh month of the old calendar, it was not too far away from the ninth midwinter. The cold wind blows across the barren land after the autumn harvest, bringing a ghostly roar even near noon, and the vast fields are deserted, making it seem as if it is not in the heart of Gyeonggi but in the northwest in the cold winter.

After Xiao Xuan's 1,700 men and horses left the capital from Andingmen, they only made a very short stay in the vicinity of the capital. Then they turned their backs to the bitter north wind and headed south, which seemed to save the physical strength of the horses when traveling against the north wind to a certain extent.

With a round of large and small breaks every sixteen miles or so, and in the case of wasting too much physical strength to dig fortifications in relatively open places and not during the large and small breaks outside the night, it was soon more than 200 miles south in about three days.

As for which area to inspect the Huangzhuang, Xiao Xuan had already had an idea after learning a little about the situation from Pang Tianshou before setting off. Of course, it is the Huangzhuang in the area of Baoding Mansion, and because it is far away from the capital, it is the most likely place for malpractice and concealment. In addition, even during the Anti-Japanese War, the output of land in the area of Baoding Prefecture was significantly higher than that of other places in Beizhili, so it was the key point of the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese army in history.

However, judging from the autumn harvest account book, it is very strange that the yield per mu of Huangzhuang is more than six buckets, even if there is a slight difference, it is not far behind, which makes Xiao Xuan feel a little tired. Where is there such a uniform force in the world? In addition, Gaoyang County, Baoding Prefecture, is also the hometown of Sun Chengzong, an important minister in the court, who at this time had been living at home since he was deposed by Wei Zhongxian during the Apocalypse and had been living at home since the Battle of Ningjin. This person's reputation in later generations is not bad, and Xiao Xuan also has some ideas that he plans to discuss with Sun Chengzong.

However, the team did not stay directly in Gaoyang County, but Qingyuan County in the southeast of Baoding Prefecture. Comparatively speaking, Baoding is poor in the west and rich in the east, so many Huangzhuang are also located in the southeast plain of Fucheng, which is a certain distance from Taihang Mountain, and it can be regarded as the anointing place of the entire North Zhili. What made Xiao Xuan a little surprising was that not long after the team temporarily camped in a rural place in Qingyuan County, the ranger young officers and soldiers who went out to buy horses and forage bought and sold at the parity of the Beijing division, and their attitudes were very different from those of other "military masters", which attracted a lot of local villagers who were quite bold.

These villagers don't feel like ordinary people in the richest area of the entire Beizhili at all, and they are completely similar to those skinny homeless people during the famine of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. And he didn't come to sell, he was so bold that he begged directly from Xiao Xuan's southbound team.

In order to learn more about the real situation, Xiao Xuan did not refuse to give alms, anyway, the wool came out of the sheep. Soon after giving the money to the people, Xiao Xuan planned to regain it from the "own people" who exploited the people.

Such a benevolent and righteous army, which had never seen it before, and even paid for water on the spot, quickly attracted thousands of people within a radius of dozens of miles to escape the cold in this cold winter season. It was only at this time that Xiao Xuan was convinced that the poor people who looked frightened before were not a few poor people, but most of the villagers in the entire Huangzhuang area had reached such a situation.

"Are all the people in your hometown the same?" Xiao Xuan asked some people in the guard camp at this time, and at the same time, he also found that many young officers and soldiers from the civilian area of Beizhili around him were also a little surprised. But after thinking about it carefully, Xiao Xuan also understood the joints. Even if the teenagers in his team are from poor backgrounds, most of them are poor citizens in the best place in the capital. And the teenagers selected by Huang Degong and Zhou Yuji from all over the country, although there are also many poor ordinary people, they are also in decent health. The countryside of the old times was a more predatory world, and if a person was not too bad, it could be inferred that he must not be a person who was oppressed, and it was likely that his family was not too small. It is not surprising that people who do not know what the most miserable situation of the people is like.

In order to prevent possible unexpected risks, Xiao Xuan certainly did not plan to follow the emperors in film and television for private interviews. At the same time, when the security technology did not have the level of a modern power, even if the bodyguards were around, they did not dare to "go deep into the masses", but directly ordered the officers and soldiers to select more than a dozen ordinary people of all directions and all ages to come to the commander of the Chinese military battalion where they were for questioning. At least this is not necessarily worse than the so-called "micro-service private interview".

"Baoding Mansion is directly affiliated to Fuzhou in the north, and Qingyuan County is a fair place in Baoding Prefecture, how can it be so poor?" Xiao Xuan did not put on the clothes of ordinary young officers and soldiers in his camp, but unabashedly showed his identity as the Son of Heaven. The young officers and soldiers also made a statement when they invited these local people from Qingyuan County to come in.

When they asked about this, the poor people who looked a little numb began to cry: "Holy! The Holy One has to decide for us! Let's get out of this village and find another way out... ”

These lower-class people were not able to organize too good words in a hurry, but under Xiao Xuan's careful interrogation, they also roughly figured out one or two: it turned out that Pang Tianshou's so-called "seventy percent theory" was not much said in the area of Baoding Huangzhuang. On average, the fields in this area also have a yield of about 100 catties per mu in the middle and lower years, but the proportion of exploitation here is not only seventy, but eighty. With more than 10 acres of land per capita, the raw grain left to the local people is only about 200 catties per capita. If it is similar to the lower-class poor hired peasants in the north during the Republic of China, and the ration is about 200 catties a year, then even if the usual work is heavier, it can barely survive. However, the Huangzhuang in the area of Baoding Mansion seems to be far from the level of ethics of the Han landlords during the "Golden Decade" when the class contradictions were the most serious during the Republic of China.

If we draw an analogy, it seems that this is not at all a feudal relationship of production in the traditional conceptual sense, but more similar to the old Tibetan serfs. The daily exploitation of the head of the village does not need or disdain any usury or holding birthday banquets and wedding banquets.

After listening to these people's narratives, Xiao Xuan pondered for a long time, but made a decision that some of the pro-soldiers around him were also a little puzzled. When the chief eunuch in the imperial village led the armed men of the village to rush over, Xiao Xuan ordered the people who came to beg outside the camp to disperse. After asking about the situation, the dozen or so people who had been questioned before directly asked the young officers and soldiers to hand over the dozen or so people to the chief eunuchs and the village leaders who came.

"Holy? Why? These people in charge of the imperial village are so deceitful and deceitful, why is the saint... Why do you do this ... Those dozen or so people will surely die tragically because of this. And if you don't deter these people, even those shallow imperial favors that you got before will all be plundered by the people here... ”

"Yes, Holy One? Why is this so ... ”

In the impression of the teenagers, as a high-ranking person, when he goes on patrol, he encounters such a thing, of course, to uphold justice, eliminate violence, and peace, how can he be like a bad guy and a fellow party to let these people who originally have great expectations be wronged?

Xiao Xuan said coldly and helplessly: "Why is this so? Hehe, that's why I have to do this because of you now?"