"In July, there are mantis coming from Huo Tai Mountain in the northwest, covering the sky like a cloudy sun, passing through the Tongqi Palace...... "The old Tai Shimo recorded these words on the book, and sighed long: "Sheji is about to die, and there will be disasters......

In the early autumn of this year, huge swarms of locusts were seen taking off in the north wind and rushing southward from the Daluze area in the south of Taiyuan. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 They were divided into two by the Huotai Mountains, one group went west into the Fenshui Valley, and the other group rushed to Shangdang and the eldest son.

For a while, as the temporary capital of the Jin Kingdom, the small city of Tonglu seemed to rain insects, and the willow trees outside the city, the millet ears in the fields, and the streets were crawling with dense locusts.

The Chinese people are no strangers to the locust plague, for example, there is a "mantis" in the Book of Songs, and Lu Chunqiu also recorded that "the first tax mu, winter, mantis are born ......"

The birthplace of the locust plague in the Jin Kingdom is basically Huze, such as the big brine in Taiyuan, the giant Luze between the rivers, this place is the Ludang area, the weather is wet and drought, which is extremely conducive to the reproduction of locusts, and so on after the locusts multiply in large numbers for two or three generations, the area can not accommodate it, and it will migrate outward, causing the locust plague.

Generally speaking, locusts are common after a long drought, and locust plagues are often followed by major droughts, because locusts are warm, dry insects, and arid environments have many benefits for their development and survival.

And locust plagues are more intractable than droughts, which can be alleviated by waiting for rains. But the locust plague is different, the locusts swarm in groups, migrating and flying along the wind and air currents, and can travel hundreds of miles a day, and there is no time to be on guard in advance.

Everywhere they go, the three-light policy is implemented, because locusts are mostly omnivorous, and eat everything, not only for the sake of crops, weeds and woody leaves can be used as its feed, where they pass, the grass and trees are left behind, the ears of grass and bamboo leaves are gnawed clean, hungry locusts, and even the hair of livestock can be chewed into the mouth......

Even the erudite Shi Mo thought that the locust plague was the prevention and control, and he was worried, once the locust plague was raging, I was afraid that the entire Jin Kingdom would fall into a famine for several years and could not be cured!

This time the locust plague was menacing, the number of insect swarms was huge, and the small Tongqi County could not satisfy their appetite, because of the barrier of the Taihang Mountains, they could not go to the Hebei region, so the locusts continued to march south, and the destination was Han Wei's Hedong territory, as well as Zhao's eldest son county.

This time it was Wei's turn to write in horror: "In the middle of July, the mantis rose from the north, approached the east of the river, flew away from the Fenshui, and fell into Xinjiang, Anyi, and Quwo, all harming the crops and ......."

……

The daughter of the salt clan dreamed that it was raining heavily, and the raindrops the size of her fingertips fell so violently that the roof was staggering, and even the rubble was shaking......

She woke up frowning in this strange dream, and in a daze she heard her mother scream.

"Mantis! Mantis! ”

She had never heard her mother shout so loudly, and she hissed like the sorrowful cry of a cowardly little finch when it saw a natural predator.

She hurriedly got out of the house, pushed the door and looked, and was immediately stunned by the situation in front of her.

Their whole family, as well as the whole of Yanchi-eup, came out, and they all looked up at the sky. But where the sky could still be seen, the dense swarm of locusts was the sky, a flowing, sizzling sky.

The sun had risen, but it was obscured by locusts, and the morning sun was like a big bread crawling with black flies. The swarm of locusts swirled in the sky with the wind, descending and rising like a black whirlwind.

When the old woman with a broken mouth was weaving or washing together, she often told her a gruesome description: "Wherever the mantis flies, it is as bare as the head of a tortured man, and there is not a blade of grass left!" "Having said that, the daughter of the salt clan still has a deep sense of distance from the locust plague.

The daughter of the Yan clan was in a good era, and for more than twenty years, Hedong had not suffered a major locust plague, at least she had never encountered it in her place. The locusts she understood were weak and humble insects that crawled on the blades of grass, and when a person stepped down, she didn't know how much she would trample to death, and her chickens and ducks didn't know how much they had swallowed.

At this moment, she seemed to understand a little, a single locust is not comparable to a swarm of locusts, and if this locust swarm falls, it will be terrible!

There are not only salt workers who make a living from salt mining in Yanchi-eup, but also many families who grow crops, and the salt workers exchange salt for money and silk, and then exchange with farmers who grow grain, and this relationship has been maintained for hundreds of years.

Therefore, the crops that have just survived the drought are the lifeblood of many families, who have been drinking porridge for three months, and have no strength to work, and they are counting on this corn field for food and clothing in winter!

It is not yet the best time for the autumn harvest, and the millet is only a little bit away from ripening, so the grain is still in the ground. Looking at the yellow crops, the people of Yanchiyi prayed in their hearts a thousand times: Let the locusts fly away! Let the locusts fly somewhere else, even to the neighboring eup.

Some even knelt down, but the swarm of locusts showed no mercy, they were gradually descending.

The daughter of the Yan clan suddenly remembered that the old people had said in small talk that locusts like to fly with the wind, and the stronger the wind, the more they like to fly, but once they encounter a headwind, they will fall.

Now it's blowing a headwind......

The fluttering of the wings of the insect swarm became louder and louder, and when it reached a height of a few feet above the ground, it was so loud that it was unbearable for the ears, like a large group of musicians plucking the reeds on the piano, but playing the most unpleasant music.

In a few moments, like dense raindrops, they fell on the roofs, on the branches, on the crops, and the sound that the daughter of the salt clan heard in her sleep came from this.

When these earthy yellow insects fly, they all show a kind of scarlet inner wings, like blood spots floating in the air, and like thousands of tiny red flowers. It falls on the dirt and is almost exactly the same as the dirt. They seem to be starving, and as soon as they hit the ground, they start to bite whatever they want, without any choice.

The people in the gathering could not stand still, and ran to their fields, and as soon as they got there, the daughter of the salt clan saw that the fields were crawling with insects, and they were munching on the beans.

She had a headache and bled blood, and there was not much land at home, so her father and brother went to the salt pond to collect salt, and the fields were tended by her and her younger brothers. The locusts are not eating the crops, but their hard work!

"I don't have to eat!"

The daughter of the salt clan was suddenly anxious, and ran in the rain of locusts, trying to save her own crops, but the locusts kept hitting her face, like raindrops falling on her body, painful, until numb.

She wielded her scythe weakly, but she couldn't match the speed of the locusts: they were still so small when they looked at them individually, but they seemed to have a clear division of labor on the millet leaves, who bit this side, who bit the other, and then gradually converged in the middle, and in the blink of an eye, the good end of the leaf was gone. In addition to the leaves, the ears of millet were not spared, their jagged mouths were filled with fresh juice, their buttocks pouted from time to time, and the black-green shit came out like pills.

"I don't have to eat my corn!"

The eldest brother of the daughter of the salt clan was furious, took a large broom, and fluttered it in the air.

Other families are trying to keep their crops. The people of the whole town, young and old, wielding brooms and clothes, and shouting and shouting, did their best to drive away the locusts.

"Can't pounce, can't pounce!"

However, a villager came over and stopped them in a panic.

"These are the locusts!"

PS: There will be one more chapter in a moment (to be continued.) )