Hearing that Dong Zhuo was the biggest official in Bingzhou, the eyes of the people looking at Dong Zhuo changed.

Different from the previous image of Dong Zhuo's fierce and vicious spirit, everyone looking at Dong Zhuo at this moment is a domineering and heroic image.

These people have no idea how big the state is, and many of them have never even been out of this village, but the words "the biggest official" carry a lot of weight, which is enough to dispel all their doubts.

How could such a big official come to catch the strong man in person! It's not logical at all, even though they don't know what logic is.

"General, you have to call the shots for us! We were all miserable by those who were soldiers. ”

"Yes, General Dong, my three sons were all taken away by them, and none of them came back!"

"General, my son and grandson have been taken away, and they have not returned, whether they are alive or dead, there is no news, General!"

"General, please make decisions for us, my son and daughter-in-law have been taken away, and my grandson and I are left, there is no food at home, the child has not eaten for a day, and he is about to starve to death."

"General, my family is the worst, my son was arrested, and my daughter and daughter-in-law were also ruined by those soldiers!"

……

A group of old people knelt forward and crawled to Dong Zhuo's feet, crying and sad, each telling their own tragic events.

Later, even some of the young women who had been hiding ran out and filed a complaint against Dong Zhuo, and their father, husband, brother and younger brother were all arrested.

For a moment, the sound of crying wafted over the entire village, even drowning out the crows on the big trees at the entrance of the village.

Until nightfall.

…………

At night, Dong Zhuo and the four of them lived in the house of one of the eldest old men in the village, with three thatched huts in a small courtyard.

However, there is no one in the old man's family, according to the old man's complaint, he has two sons, the eldest son joined the army in his early years, and died in the war with the Xianbei people, and the second son also joined the army, wanting to get ahead, but died in the war with the Huns.

The old man also has five five grandsons, only the eldest grandson is married, leaving a son, this year and the state assassin Shi ordered a large-scale arrest of Zhuang Ding, the eldest grandson left only three years old son and old grandfather, fled to another country with his wife, and the remaining four grandsons were all arrested by the soldiers sent by the Assassin Shi Fu to arrest Zhuang Ding.

Now in a huge family, there is only an old man and a great-grandson who depend on each other, there is no labor, there is no land, and the government taxes are heavy, so they can only rely on the old man to dig some wild vegetables with his grandson to live, and the life is not miserable.

This time, there was no need for Dong Zhuo's order, Dong Huang and the three of them gave all the dry food and money they carried with them to the villagers.

"General, don't you know, when I was young, this village was a big village with a radius of 100 miles, and the whole village was surnamed Zhao, with hundreds of families and a population of nearly 1,000.

But later, the war began, with the Huns, with the Xianbei people, and the Yellow Turban Rebel Army in the previous two years, one battle after another, the people in the village were captured and sent to serve as soldiers, those who starved to death, and those who fled fled, leaving us with a hundred or so old guys and children who couldn't run, thinking that we could live one day at a time.

But just like that, those who were officials, soldiers, and bandits didn't let us go, and they came to us for three days to make us pay taxes, catch strong men, spoil women, and steal food, forcing us old and weak women and children to have no way to live! ”

Old man Zhao burst into tears at the end of his speech.

When the time passed, Dong Huang and the three of them had already slept in another room, and Dong Zhuo was alone in a thatched hut, but because he saw and heard it at night, he thought about the suffering of the people in the village, tossed and turned, and really couldn't sleep.

In desperation, Dong Zhuo got up and ran to the courtyard, looking at the dim stars in the sky thoughtfully.

Old man Zhao and his great-grandson live in a room, but the old man is old, he feels less at night, and the old man gets up in the middle of the night, and sees Dong Zhuo's mountain-like figure standing lonely in the courtyard, looking up at the starry sky and sighing, the old man chatted with Dong Zhuo, and Dong Zhuo also took the opportunity to learn about the situation in Bingzhou.

"Don't worry, old man, when I take office tomorrow, I will severely punish these corrupt officials and corrupt officials." Dong Zhuo slapped his fist on the stone table in the courtyard, and actually dug out a crack on the stone table where the big bluestone was polished.

The night was dark, the ugly time had passed, the old man had already gone back to sleep, but Dong Zhuo was still standing in the courtyard, letting the autumn wind and white dew hit his body, and he didn't move.

The old man's words lingered in his ears, but in just a few decades, a prosperous village of thousands of people became only a group of old and weak women and children, barely breathing.

In this way, Dong Zhuo, who was born in the era of peace, has a deeper understanding of the cruelty of the troubled times, and no longer stays in the previous data stage.

Every division and war in China's history directly led to the extinction of a large number of people and the accompanying destruction of huge material wealth, and the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Han Dynasty was a low point for the Chinese population.

According to historical records, in the second year of Emperor Huan's eternal life in the Eastern Han Dynasty (that is, in 156 AD), there were about 56 million people across the country, but after the division of the princes at the end of the Han Dynasty to the century-long war of the Three Kingdoms, until the late Three Kingdoms 260-280 AD, the total population of Wei, Shu and Wu may be only more than 7.6 million, less than one-seventh of the original.

After many wars during the Three Kingdoms period, the number of people who died, fled, and went into hiding was quite high.

Even after the end of the war, the imperial court supported the people's livelihood and vigorously encouraged family planning, and by the early years of Taikang in the Western Jin Dynasty (181 AD), the household registration statistics showed that there were only 2.46 million households in the country, with a population of more than 16 million.

What a terrifying number, just a hundred years, 56 million people, only a fraction of the remaining, only more than 7 million, under the careful consideration, people are frightened.

During the Wuhu Rebellion, the Han people were reduced to the meat and military rations of the Hu people in the north, and if it were not for the three times the "Hu Slaughter Order" issued by Ran Min, the king of Wumourning, and rose up to resist, the Han people would have been killed. After the Wuhu Rebellion, only a million people were slaughtered by the Han people in the north.

It's not just because people are killed in the war, it's more about massacres, mass killings, and starvation.

It is recognized in the history books that Cao Cao alone broke through Xuzhou, and killed hundreds of thousands of Jianghuai refugees at one time, so that "the Jianghuai is empty, and the people cannibalize each other".

In 192 A.D., Dong Zhuo's troops Li Yu and Guo Yan broke through Chang'an, "when the three auxiliary people were still hundreds of thousands of households, Yu and others released troops to rob the strategy, attacked the city, the people were hungry, and they ate a little bit in two years." In the past two years, hundreds of thousands of households have lived in a prosperous area, and there is very little left of it, and it is desolate.

After Emperor Liu Xie of the Han Dynasty escaped from Chang'an, his residence was a portal made of thorns, and the palace maids lacked food and clothing, and many of them starved to death on the way.

Not only the common people, but even the army often did not have enough to eat, and Yuan Shao's army was in Hebei, and sometimes had to rely on mulberries for food. And Yuan Shu's army was in the rich land of Yangzhou, Jianghuai, but had to feed their hunger with clams.

This is not the worst, the most terrible thing is that people eat people, the people cannibalize each other, and Liu Bei was once treated by the people who killed their wives and offered food.

What's more, Kong Rong, a descendant of Confucius, once created a theoretical basis for cannibalism. He said that eating people he didn't know was like eating an orangutan and eating a parrot. And the military rations provided by Cheng Yu to Cao Cao contained a lot of dried human flesh.

For decades, the entire Eastern Han Dynasty was empty in all parts of the country.

As Cao Cao's poem said, the white bones are exposed in the wild, there is no rooster crow for thousands of miles, the people are left behind, and the surname is dead.