Huainan Province is located at the southern end of the Jianghuai Plain, and the river network is all over the territory of Gaoyou County.

With the loud sound of whipping and the spinning wheels and herds, towering wooden booms danced in the air, shifting and dumping large pieces of stone, or buckets of mixed mortar, into their designated positions.

Tu Saburo, who looked a little old and decrepit, and was tanned and skinned, held a pickaxe and stood in the muddy ground and waist-deep water at the mouth of the small river ditch, giving the new freshmen behind him how to save more effort, how to protect their waist and legs, and how to use the simplest actions to complete more live measurements.

Of course, after all these years of sweating and hard work, it is enough to make him a good style; As for those who are not hard enough, not diligent enough, and not good enough to learn, they have been naturally eliminated.

He is the son of a typical Huainan farmer, and the eldest son who is responsible for the most things in the family; It was only to commemorate the first two brothers who died early that such a San Lang name was given.

You must know that this Huainan is obviously a good place, with fertile soil and abundant products, and fish and rice towns all over the water network and rivers abound;

Therefore, in the years remembered by the older generation, even if there were always large families who took the bulk of their harvest, and there were all kinds of heavy taxes spread on their bodies, the little food left in the end, plus the fish, shrimp and vegetables everywhere, could always make people barely persevere in the most difficult years;

also raised several brothers including him who were yellow-faced and thin-skinned, and couldn't eat enough.

It's a pity that in his memory, there are only constant wars and fires, which make people unable to live, and they are constantly tossing and turning on the road to escape from the famine. And when he became an adult, there was no place to go even where he had fled the famine and begged for food.

Then a flood of the Huai River completely changed their homes beyond recognition, and also destroyed the last hope in their fields. But the scourge of the flood was much more than that, and even many towns and towns were not spared; When the water receded, the field was almost full of swollen and rotting corpses of people and animals;

Then came the rapidly spreading plague, and many of the displaced people suddenly collapsed as they walked, and died in a stinking struggle.

Even the remnants of the city, or the only remaining large families, did not have much surplus to buy them up, but were quite vigilant and vigilant with clubs, knives, and guns to guard against the endless stream of starvation, and then perhaps the next time they passed, there would be only a ruin and ruins that had just burned out.

And he could only watch the dozen or so people in the family who came out to flee the famine, from old to young, starved to death in front of him one by one, and then a few adult laborers who were the pillars of the family; In the end, he and the eldest brother also lay on the stalk and were dying, and they even made a dismal agreement that no matter which one died first, they would create some chances for the one who had not died later.

Then the officers and soldiers in the south finally came, and brought him and his younger brother back to life with a mouthful of rancid rice soup, and then they were dragged to a tun enclosure occupied by the officials and soldiers, and they worked in the tuntian, and it became one of the Laimin tunkou under the so-called Huainan camp.

It's a pity that his last relative didn't have this blessed life, and soon became a member of the mass grave because of blood in the urine during the work.

Then he survived half-starvation, and being able to join the official army, even if it was a miscellaneous status, meant that he could get more food and clothing, and it became the only target that they could count on for the rest of their lives.

Then the good times did not last long, only two years later, those officers and soldiers under the banner of the Huainan camp left one after another, and finally even their tunhu, who had just settled down, were gradually forgotten and ignored, and no one paid attention to and took care of them anymore.

As a result, many people ran out to find another livelihood, and there were also honest people who stayed where they were, relying on a little of the melon and vegetable seeds that had been planted in the field to harvest and barely survive. When they ran out, they couldn't get any longer, so they turned around and came back with more people to rob them, pulled out the seedlings and rhizomes in the field, and chewed them clean, and even the little seeds they hid were not spared under severe torture.

66 After more than half a year of suffering from starvation and disease, an officer from the other side of the Huaishui River finally took over the garrison and abandoned facilities of the Huainan camp again, and reassembled these scattered people in the surrounding area;

When the new rules were announced, they were driven to work everywhere.

From reclaiming roads, to digging riverbeds, to building embankments, to building fortifications, and repairing moats; During this period, some people were exhausted to death, and some people could not bear the toil and pain and died of illness, but no one starved to death directly, and he was glad that he survived again.

And then in the process, they also quickly saw other things, such as those who ran out to act as thieves and rob passers-by to do evil, and those dead heads soon hung on the wooden poles erected along the way.

Because unlike the original Huainan camp, these new officers and soldiers from Huaidi did not accept the recruitment and surrender of these bandits to the formation at all, but insisted on killing them all to make an example, or to eliminate the evil after unconditional surrender, and to break up the remnants to reinvent themselves.

And only those who have been held hostage for a short time, and who have no traces of crime or blood in their hands, will be settled in the local area, and will work all day long with them, the old tun households.

As the dense reeds and grass along the river were burned and harvested one by one, all kinds of people hiding in them had to be driven out and became part of the supervision of the various quarantine camps.

If it is a woman and a child, the treatment will be better, and after a few days of full food, they will be loaded on a ship and sent to the other side of the Huaishui to enjoy happiness. It's a good day

And the man can only struggle in this place. According to the words sent by the officials and soldiers to supervise, Huaidi has neither a shortage of people nor idlers and lazy men, and only those who are innocent and of good character, and the most diligent and hard-working, have the opportunity to be selected as one or two short-term helpers in the past.

Therefore, the only wish is to perform well in the work, to be able to be transferred to work in Huai, and even to stay in the local area for a long time, and after five years, obtain the qualification of a primary household, and live a better life from then on.

According to the descriptions and statements of those who had been recruited to the north of Huaishui in the early years, it was simply the best place to see in the world, full of fine watered fields and neat and new villages, and those who walked on the road, even if they were doing farm work, could wear bright and decent.

Even those who were temporarily dispatched to work in the past could see the oil, water and meat flavors every now and then, and instead of mush and jicama, they ate real brown rice and mixed noodles, as well as melons and vegetables with salt sauce to eat.

If you can be transferred to the six states of Huaidong, or Xuzhou and Yanzhou, you will simply fall into a honey pot. The second is to go to the three states of Denglai Jiao in the east, which is also a place where stable and abnormal salted fish and rotten shrimp are enough; Otherwise, you can go to the Yanbian prefectures in the north and west, and you can also ensure that you have enough food and clothing, as well as soup and cakes from time to time.

The worst is to go to Sizhou and Suzhou on the other side of Huaishui, although the work is no different from Huainan, but there is a subsidy for work and materials, and you can go to the local collection to trade needs.

As long as you can become the first class of households in Huaishang, it means that the houses and belongings given by the public are still stable and abundant, and you don't have to worry about food, clothing, housing and transportation anymore.

It's a pity that after the opportunity to come over from Huaibei to pull people in the first few years of the wrong year, Yu Jian was no longer given the opportunity to become naturalized. Tu Saburo could only watch with greed as the former fellow villagers who had transformed into red-faced and neatly dressed people in the past few years, and gave them all kinds of appearances as group leaders and supervisors.

It's just that there have been some sudden changes recently, which have also affected Tu Saburo's unchanged daily life.

First of all, the old yellow sheep who signed a contract for the big guy and pumped water in private has been arrested by the people of the Suppression Society, and it is said that he cried profusely at that time, like a weak child, but no one will sympathize with him at all.

This guy took advantage of the identity of a small foreman and custodian, but tried every means to scrape away a lot of benefits from these poor people who were desperate, and through the loan of a small amount of materials in secret, many people privately owed him debts.

However, as if it were the beginning, more men 6 continued to enter the labor camp where they were located.

This anger took away more than a dozen people from the bottom up, such as the group leader, the custodian, the supervisor, and the secretary, all of whom were those who did not dare to look up and face each other, and they were stripped naked like a lost dog, and they were taken away with ropes and shackles without dignity.

In addition, there were dozens of miscellaneous servants and arrangers in the battalion who claimed to be working for them, and they were also pulled out of their pants on the spot, and they were dragged to other places to supervise.

But it is a bit surprising that another document nicknamed "Chen Laoshi" was also caught in it and taken away.

He is a kind and kind old man who is regarded by everyone in the camp, and often takes the initiative to guide them to the rules and precautions of those who have just entered the camp; For some small mistakes they have made, give them the forgiveness and meeting as much as they can; They will even give them a lecture on the reason and the reason after the severe punishment.

But according to the charges openly proclaimed by the comer, it was such a good man who would privately appropriate and withhold the rations, and mixed the sand and lime into the paste eaten by the laborers to make a sufficient amount, and replaced the coarse gray salt rationed according to the head with the salt brine, which was left over from the salt production;

Then he supported the large and small overseers, custodians, and group leaders under him, and debit the materials that had been withheld privately to those newcomers who had just entered the camp in their personal names, and then manipulated and coerced them to form groups one by one, and even personally blackmailed and enjoyed some women who had entered the camp.

Fortunately, under the leadership of the incomparably wise Luo Shuai, Huai Zhen would not allow this kind of thing to continue, and the Suppression Society, which was personally responsible for and led by Qin Xiansi, the Qin Imperial History, responded to people's calls in time and caught these moths and rats, and exchanged everyone for a clear and bright sky.

The eyes and spies of the Suppression Society are known to be omnipresent and omnipotent, and for them, the editors and managers, they also have a sense of power over life and death.

So, he became one of the two helpers of the new group of twenty people, responsible for keeping, tidying up and sorting out the tools needed for everyone's work, and he could drink half a bowl of mixed vegetable paste more than others every day.

Don't underestimate this half bowl of mush, which is the thickest part of the silk scraped out of the bottom of the pot, and after eating enough for several days in a row, he consciously even spoke louder and louder. Not to mention that the new head of the steward called them the day before yesterday, and each of them gave them a piece of meat substitute.

The salty and oily taste made him drool constantly when he thought about it, compared to his childhood memories of going down to the river to catch fish, catch shrimp and dig snails, and mix his stomach with a half-cooked and light taste roasted over a fire, I don't know how many times more beautiful.

The people who were working suddenly shouted one after another, and some people abandoned their tools and fled to the high places on the shore; But in the distance there was some faint rumbling sound in the river, which startled them; Then, under the scolding and scolding of the foreman and the general, the fleeing people were driven back, and the scene of the work was calmed down again.

It was only after a moment that they could see where the noise was coming from.

It was a steamboat spewing gray smoke and spinning a huge paddle wheel, rolling through the waves of the river, full of sturdy sergeants with armor and cross-swords, and beside the boat were scaly, continuous curved baffles, and the thick black pipes protruding from the gaps in the baffles made people shudder just by looking at them.

And behind the car and boat, there are all kinds of boats towed with one hanging, like a long dragon on the water that winds back and forth and cannot see the head and tail, which makes people a little dizzying.

Finally, it is a large group of people and horses walking side by side on the road, fluttering under the banner of purple lightning and red flame wind and thunder, which is majestic and intimidating.