In the autumn wilderness, the sky is high and the clouds are light, and on the official road by the Yellow River, the fleeing crowd is bustling, and they are heading south in an endless stream.

A horse came from the south with smoke and dust, and the refugees saw it from afar, and made way of a passage early, and the horses, together with the knights in the saddle, ran as if they were cleaving the waves, and went all the way north, unhindered.

"Xiao Zhi, Xiao Zhi!" Ma Er saw the conspicuous carriages and ash poles in the crowd from a distance, and before he could reach him, he couldn't wait to shout loudly.

"What's wrong?" Zhiwen was sitting in one of the carriages, waiting for Ma Er to come in front of him, and when he came to his side, he asked, seeing that he was so excited, was there any great new discovery?

Not many days after the Hukou Waterfall of the Yellow River recruited people for the second time, and the number of corpse families reached 150, totaling more than 600 people, Zhiwen expanded the scale of recruitment again.

Now there are about 2,000 people who directly or indirectly help Zhiwen, and the process of disinfection of the corpse has been greatly accelerated, and the speed of rushing has also been continuously improved.

Among them, there are 18 people who are closest to them, including seven people from Lian Zhiwen himself at the beginning of the escape, two people from the Sun family, one from Dingguo, seven people from Xiaolin's group, and one person from Li Zhi.

One hundred and twenty-five orphans were recruited, six of them and Zhiwen, Xiao Jie and Xiao Yingniang formed a treasure digging team, eleven people and Xiaolin and seven of them formed two nine-person squads, which were specially responsible for driving carriages and guards, Kewang and Dingguo each brought forty-four people, each formed five nine-person squads, respectively as the vanguard and the rearguard, and twenty reserve personnel in the center to prepare for accidents.

The number of families with the corpses was fixed at 150 households, and if there were those who were left behind or otherwise reduced, they were temporarily replenished, and now there are 612 people.

The above 755 people received rations directly from Zhiwen and them, but Zhiwen himself and 17 orphans were directly guaranteed rations, and the 150 families were distributed according to the number of their corpses.

By the way, Ma Er and his ten men are a bit special, which is the basic ration plus an extra bonus.

As for the remaining more than 1,000 people, they are considered peripheral personnel, and they are people who indirectly seek a way to survive from Zhiwen and them.

If you want to talk about this trick, Zhiwen still learned it from Aunt Zhang's two sons (Huahua's parents).

After the two of them were rescued by Dingguo, they followed to help bury the corpses, and the rations were naturally distributed according to the amount they completed every day, and there were only two of them in one household, with few people and not much work to do, and the rations they got at the beginning were not enough.

I don't want Aunt Zhang to open her mind in a few days, not as many refugees as selected, she found two families to help her, so that she did more work, and the food he and his wife took also rose, as for how to distribute it to these two families in private, it is unknown.

For Huahua's sake, Zhiwen turned a blind eye and didn't care, knowing that Aunt Zhang would definitely deduct some of the food, otherwise there would be no benefit, what did she want? However, one is willing to fight, and the other is willing to suffer, and Zhiwen can't take care of it.

When other people saw it, they all felt that it was because Aunt Zhang and Zhiwen were familiar with each other and did not dare to follow suit.

When Zhiwen announced the second search for people in Hukou of the Yellow River, he remembered Aunt Zhang's trick and decided to do it the next time he needed manpower, and the manpower increased, but only a small amount of work was increased, and the statistical work was mainly for these 150 households, and the secondary distribution of grain became the business of these 150 households.

When Zhiwen felt that he could increase the manpower for the third time, he first secretly instigated two families with few people to follow Aunt Zhang'er's example.

With these three examples, and no one punished for it, the one hundred and fifty families followed suit, and soon each of them found someone to help, and the size of the team grew to about two thousand people in one fell swoop.

It's just that these people who help are not very fixed, and secondly, there are no statistics, so they can only estimate an approximate number.

Now in the range of two miles before and after, not Zhiwen and their people are also very familiar with them, so when they saw Ma Er galloping on horseback, they all took the initiative to give way.

As for the lime problem that Dr. Sun was worried about, dozens of families who could burn lime were recruited for the second time to find a stone mountain, and it took five days to solve it easily, and even the private goods of stones and firewood collected by Zhiwen were not used.

And Sun Songling, people call him, has risen from "Dr. Sun" to "Dr. Sun", although he does not have a very good way to cure the plague, but other diseases are basically cured.

Coupled with the behavior of corpse burial and disinfection led by Li Zhi on the surface, led by him, the number of plague patients gradually decreased, and the density of dead bodies was also greatly reduced compared with the initial outbreak of the plague - and this is one of the reasons why Zhiwen had to increase manpower and expand the scope.

Dr. Sun's prestige has increased unprecedentedly, and because of his surname Sun, the refugees firmly believe that he is a descendant of Sun Simiao, the medicine king of the Tang Dynasty, and he has always been honored as a "miracle doctor".

"Xiaozhi, it's almost there, it's almost there!" In Ma Er's voice, there was irrepressible excitement.

"Slowly, where is it going?"

"It's almost time to get to the ferry, the ferry with boats, good guys, I'm afraid there are hundreds of boats."

"How far is it?"

"Well, with our footsteps, there will be another three or four days of work, before the Mid-Autumn Festival, how can we get there."

"Did you hear that? The ferry is almost here! Kobayashi howled beside him.

The chaotic noise spread from near and far, and soon, bursts of cheers could be heard in the distance.

There is a ferry with a boat, which is where the hope of the refugees lies, as long as they cross the Yellow River by boat, they can leave this hellish place.

In the hearts of the refugees, the other side of the river is paradise, the hope of their survival, even if there is no land, they can still seek refuge with relatives and friends, they can work, they can beg for food, even if they peel tree bark and dig wild vegetables, I am afraid it will be easier to survive than here.

......

It was the second year of Chongzhen, the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhiwen and his entourage finally rushed to the big ferry where Ma Er said that there was a boat.

The road leading to the ferry was only a small road, and Zhiwen was a little skeptical at first.

After walking for a while, I believed.

I didn't see the river, I only heard the sound of rushing water, and as far as I could see, the wilderness on both sides of the path was full of dense crowds and messy shacks, and if you couldn't cross the river, there was no reason why so many people gathered here.

The "creaking" sound of the carriage attracted thousands of pairs of eyes, and when they saw Zhiwen's carriage and the food on it, their numb and dull gaze instantly took on a faint madness.

Not good! Zhiwen was stared at by these eyes, his heart was full of unease, and he couldn't help but think of the night when the snow was falling in the rescue of Nannan, when he went out of the city during the day in the Zhang Mansion team, the eyes of those refugees were similar to the eyes of these people now.

As soon as his thoughts turned here, Zhiwen, who was standing in the carriage, saw smoke and dust billowing in front of him, and it seemed that something had happened.

And as the striker, it was Kewang and his five-man team of nine who opened the way.