The disaster area was not the most serious in Sha County, Yanping Prefecture, but the people sent by Chen Jian to go the farthest place. When he heard the name again, Jian Chen's first thought was the famous snacks here, but at this time, this place was associated with words such as death, plague, and family destruction.

It's not the hardest-hit area, but it's a place that has been hit hard and has easy access to transportation.

Further north, Jianning was the hardest hit, but it was already mountainous and could not go deeper. If nothing had changed, it would still be one of the poorest places, so much so that it was once the seat of the government of the Fujian-Jiangxi Soviet District.

From Jianning to Yanpingfu, the most severely affected places in these disaster areas, and also the most unstable places in the Fujian region of the Ming Dynasty, there is no one. From the Orthodox Rebellion a hundred years ago to the White Lotus Sect a few years ago, the people here have killed one stubble after another, slaughtered over and over again, and grown stubble after stubble, and continue to survive in this place where disasters are frequent.

The torrential rain that had not seen the sun for more than ten days finally stopped, and after more than half a month, the water slowly subsided, and those who survived the torrential rain and floods returned to their homes that had been razed to the ground in small boats carrying all the belongings they had looted.

Many people lay on the tree for a month and eat the leaves from the tree. Sometimes, these people wish they were a worm, like a silkworm spinning silk or a disgusting caterpillar, or at least that thing could survive by eating leaves.

The village was no longer visible, and a few children were squatting there with their bellies swollen from eating soil and leaves. It seems that these children were lucky, at least not in the flood or in the raging plague, but in fact they were not dead for the time being, and they were not far from death.

The children squatted there in pain, their stomachs swollen, but they couldn't pull them out. The two men worked together, picking and prying each other hard with small sticks, trying to get the dry stuff out. If you get it out, you can live, and if you can't get it, you will suffocate to death.

The adults watched all this blankly, and sometimes there was a sudden loosening of their feet and sinking into something soft, followed by a foul stench and the buzzing sound of flies flying.

You don't need to look down, and you don't need to step on the dead person's chest or stomach. Maybe it's your own relatives, or maybe it's not, but it doesn't matter anymore.

The living are not far from death, and who can take care of these dead people? People who were washed away by the water were bitten by fish, shrimp and crabs to expose half of their bones; Those that were not washed away by the water were also full of maggots, wriggling on the corpses with green mold, white flowers. A few hungry men picked maggots from the dead bodies, and those with long tails were discarded, leaving only the white ones without tails.

It's alive today, and it's still picky, but no one thinks about what to do in the future. It's not that I don't want to think about it, but I don't dare to think about it.

The rice planted has been harvested, the sweet potatoes for famine relief have not yet reached this side, most of the family has been washed away, and only one life has been recovered, the taxes to be paid must continue to be paid, and the loan sharks borrowed still have to be repaid.

The most annoying thing is that you have to eat, otherwise you will starve to death.

In order to eat, homesteaders with a few acres of thin fields sell the last bit of their money at the cheapest price. Rao is like this, it is still necessary to pick and choose, and those who can buy land in disaster years will also be called good people.

A random calamity can turn yeoman farmers into tenant farmers. The homesteaders are kind and kind and diligent in farming and become landlords, and it is precisely because of the scarcity that it has become an inspirational chicken soup story.

And those who have no land in the first place, or who have very little land, can only choose to live one day at a time after this disaster, and if they can survive until the next planting, they may be able to find some work to do, so that they can live for another year.

Hundreds of hungry people are trying to survive, but only to survive. If the people of the White Lotus Sect stand up at this time and say that this is the last day of the struggle between light and darkness, as long as they promise to let these people eat a mouthful of food, these people will not care when the light comes, and will only do all kinds of things that their ancestors did for this bite of food, which may be killed.

It's just that a few years ago, the White Lotus Sect had just been killed, the grassroots organizations had been basically destroyed, and most of the backbone had been killed.

What's more, it is said that there is another option, and there is no need to do this kind of killing to live for a few more years: there are rumors in the vicinity of Shaxian County that in some places there are people who choose to give soup porridge, and if they are young and strong, they will be hired to work for three or five years, and after three or five years, they will be allocated some land.

Things that sound good are sometimes full of deception. It's just that after all these years, no one has ever given them a promise of some land, and that promise sounds a little intoxicating.

Outside a small relief station near Shaxian County, more than 2,000 people were crowded, and some people were holding sticks to maintain order, taking turns in batches to help those who might survive.

Each person has two bowls of porridge or a handful of fried rice a day to make sure that these people don't starve to death.

A few miles away from this almshouse was a depression full of people waiting to die.

Mobilizing the masses is only a means and a tool, and the purpose is not necessarily to do anything, and the cult uprising also uses this tool. And the purpose of using this tool here is to isolate those who are infected with the disease.

After these victims arrived here, after eating the first bowl of hot porridge in the past two months, some people stood up and told them that the epidemic is contagious, and everyone will die if they are infected with the disease, and they hope that everyone will report the infected people to each other and expel them from here.

The person who gave the order knew the consequences of doing so, and knew that in this case it would be to let those people die, and that it would expose the ugliest side of human nature.

But there is no way, it can't be saved. There are no medicines, there are not enough doctors, and there are no means of prevention or disinfection, and even if there are, they can't afford to use them.

In just two days, there were many cries in the relief station.

Sick children are reported or thrown into depressions miles away, giving the mother a choice to survive or leave; The sick old man was driven away, and one of them gave them a white phosphorus match, and told them that when they were hungry or sick, they should swallow the match, and they would die at once so that they would not suffer so many sins; In order to protect the husband of his sick wife, he was beaten to death by a group of people and thrown into a lime field far away and burned clean.

The first to come, and not sickly, was quickly organized, and by the strength of eating two more bowls of porridge, he became the most faithful person to carry out these orders.

The three entrances were guarded by such men, who were not allowed to enter without permission, and if necessary, they had to carry the dead or throw the living out so that they could exchange for an extra bowl of porridge.

These people, who were victims of the disaster not long ago, are holding bamboo poles to maintain order, like the dividing line between clouds and sunlight on cloudy weather. One step forward is light, one step back is darkness.

Scenes of human tragedy continue to be staged like this.

In just 10 days, two of the party comrades sent by Chen Jian to the relief station had a nervous breakdown and fled back to Fuzhou, and the person in charge of the relief station committed suicide by swallowing a gun after seeing the maggot-strewn corpses in the depressions.

The new person in charge was sent here, and after seeing the situation here, and having gone to the depression with his own eyes, he called these people who had never experienced such a scene together for a meeting that night, because if there was no meeting to strengthen the minds of these people, I am afraid that it would leave indelible wounds on these people.

It's not that these people haven't seen death, it's that they've never seen such death. People who have had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide by swallowing a gun have gone to sea, seen shipwrecks, organized miners' movements, and gone to the battlefield, but when they really see those rotten, moldy, and half-dead piled up, they still can't bear it after all.

When the new person in charge arrived, the morale of the relief station was low, and many people complained, and there were many grievances and complaints in the internal meeting that night, and some felt that it was inhumane and cruel. This is not the emotion of one or two people, no matter how strong a person is, there will be times when he can't bear it.

The new person in charge is a miner, who has seen many accidents in the mines in Nan'an, and has also shared the story of being trapped in the mine and eating the corpses of dead workers, and his psychology is far more tenacious than ordinary people.

Hearing all kinds of questions, he asked rhetorically, "I have the same doubts of yours, but the key is to solve the problem, not to discuss whether these decisions are cruel or not." Can you come up with a better solution? If not, we can only make decisions for these people and live for more people. Now, I ask, who has the means? Say it! ”

They didn't think about it, but they knew that there was really no way.

After a long time, a man got up and said, "But Jian Chen said, let's not be God, Buddha or Allah, and come with a saving mentality. Supposedly, if it weren't for God, it wouldn't be able to decide whether these people would live or die. I just think, are we taking ourselves as gods by doing this? Whoever we let live can live, and whoever we let die, who will die? ”

The new person in charge spread his hands and said: "We don't want to have it, but that's the reality of what we do." If it is their own choice, they can save themselves, grab grain, organize production, and if the official does not release grain, they will grab the granary. But they didn't do it, they wouldn't do it, and it was hard to even organize together. What can I do at this time? We can save thousands, but we can't save tens of thousands. The purpose of saving these people is to teach these people how to organize, save themselves, and reproduce in the future, so that this situation will not happen again. ”