In the blink of an eye, the time has reached the third year of Guangshun (the twelfth year of Tang Baoda), according to Zhao Dezhao's understanding, the land south of the Yangtze River is mostly barren, and the land of ointment is concentrated in Suzhou and Hangzhou, as well as the Jiangning Prefecture area, where most of the Southern Tang and Wu Yue rule.

In June, the land of the Huai River, the sun is like fire, the heat wave hits people, the people of the Tang Kingdom are not ordinary to such weather, at the beginning, the crops are growing gratifying, the farmers are working hard in the fields, looking forward to a good harvest when the autumn harvest comes. This June season is not ordinary, the days go by day after day, but I see that the water level in the river channel is slowly dropping, and there is only a shallow layer of water left in the riverbed, and cracks are beginning to appear on the surface of the fields. The common people didn't care, thinking that it was because of the hot weather, and that the place of the Huai River was usually the rainy season, but no one cared about this.

After a few days, but then the leaves of the crops turned yellow, the leaves felt a little brittle, such a situation appeared, naturally in the eyes of people is insignificant, but when the same situation appeared in the crops, the farmers began to be anxious, some farmers began to ask the gods to pray for rain, the sky is not beautiful, everything is in vain, the situation in the crops is more serious, the leaves of the crops began to show signs of yellowing, some have appeared the phenomenon of falling leaves, and after a few days, the days have turned to July, In the south, which has been going on for a month, the crops are dead, the fields are cracked into furrows, the hot wind blows the dust, and the sun shines brightly.

At this time, it had been rainless for a month in the south.

How's that? The situation was out of control, and the plants fell to the ground one after another in the fields, and Xia He died, and the red land was thousands of miles. The peasants wanted to find a water source to irrigate the fields, but found that the well water and spring water were exhausted, and the people on both sides of the Huai River could wade through the water, wanting to cry without tears, begging for the day that was not spiritual, asking for the land to be ineffective, and the family also had to bear the fierce tax of this year.

Fleeing to the north has a life, but to the south is a dead end, burdened with forced labor, and having to flee to the north, which is a bit like the stick country in later generations. In the past year, the Southern Tang Dynasty sent troops to the Chu State, conscripted troops to destroy the Chu State, and then the Chu State was resurrected again.

Moreover, the common people in the Huaihe region heard that last year, Liaoyingzhou (now Hejian, Hebei), Mo (now Renqiubei, Hebei), and Youzhou (now southwest of Beijing) were flooded, and hundreds of thousands of displaced people flocked to the Hebei region of the Later Zhou River. In these years, there were frequent wars and heavy military service, and the common people only wanted to be satisfied with a mouthful of food in the troubled times, and lived in peace and stability, and pursued few other things.

At that time, the 14 states in Jiangbei (Huaihe Hebei) were all under the rule of the Southern Tang Dynasty, the officials oppressed the people, the taxes were cleverly set up, the people were exploited, the labor was heavy, the people's hungry chest was attached to the back, all of them were as thin as firewood, and their eyes collapsed.

The people of the time recorded: the Southern Tang Dynasty Baoda 12 years, after Zhou Guangshun 3 years from June to July, the Southern Tang Dynasty did not rain, the big drought, the well spring dried up, and the Huai River could wade through. The hungry people crossed into the realm of the Later Zhou one after another.

The road was full of fleeing people, starving for thousands of miles, crying for thousands of miles, with the scorching sun on their heads, the broken mud under their feet, the lifeless villages, fields, and rivers. From time to time, you can see the corpses of starving people, vultures and buzzing flies hovering in the sky, a foul stench, drifting in the wind, and smelling sick.

"Child, you have to take good care of yourself...... ......"A woman fell down in the dead grass on the side of the road, and said in a hoarse voice, her whole body was weak, and then her life came to an end, and her eyes were deeply concerned about her child, and her pupils were dilated, and finally she could not even see the shadow of the child.

"Mother, wake up...... Don't go......" A ragged, yellow-skinned, skinny child desperately shook his relatives, but God was ruthless, and his mother starved to death. The pain of losing a loved one was heartbreaking, and the child wiped her tears and waited by the corpse of her loved one.

The people who fled were too busy to take care of themselves, and this scene was seen more and more every day, and the corpses of many innocent people fell on the roadside, and most of them looked at it with a blank eye, and continued to flee north.

Prosperity, the people suffer, death, the people suffer.

There are still good people in this world, and at this time, a simple peasant woman stepped forward and comforted: "Child, people can't be resurrected after death, and your mother also wants you to live." ”

The child heard the voice beside him, turned his head, opened his big eyes, and those sad eyes flashed a confused look, and said, "Auntie, my mother is dead...... I don't have any relatives now......"

"Silly boy, come with us, although your mother is gone, you have to live well, you know?" The peasant woman bent down and pulled the child up from his mother's side.

"Yes." The child wiped away his tears, nodded, and then with the peasant woman, he laid the body in a pit, buried earth on it, and placed some stones so that he could find a place to go to the grave later.

Thousands of miles of lonely graves,

Hold the clothes and stop crying,

The cry went up to the sky,

God, you don't open your eyes

Where are you, dear?

"Son, let's get on the road quickly, we can eat enough when we go to Zhou Kingdom."

"It's my aunt."

……

"Where is the eldest lady Zhou Guo?"

"After crossing this big river, we will enter the Zhou State, and the Emperor of the Zhou State will be merciful, and we will not starve at that time."

"Oh!" The child's eyes were dumbfounded, but he thought in his heart that if his mother was still alive, then the two of them would be able to live better in Zhou Kingdom.

"Baby, let's go."

"Yes!" The child replied and reluctantly followed the famine people to the direction of Kaifeng, and after more than half a month, the hungry people fleeing the famine on the south bank of the Huai River finally entered the periphery.

……

At the moment, there is no rain in the north, as in the south, but there is no widespread drought. Under Guo Wei's efforts to eliminate the accumulated shortcomings since the end of the Tang Dynasty, reuse talented and virtuous civil servants, and change the ugly image of the military regime since the Later Liang Dynasty, the Great Zhou showed signs of national prosperity and strong people in a short period of three years, and the Great Zhou Dynasty's national strength was thriving.

When the bureaucracy in the Tang State witnessed this scene, there was bureaucratic action. Tian Jingzhu, the assassin of Chuzhou, asked for instructions to repair the white pond to irrigate the fields to enrich the frontier, and the prime minister Feng Yanji thought it was advantageous. Therefore, Li Deming asked for instructions to vigorously open up the vacant land as a tuntian, and repair the local irrigation canal ponds that had been buried and abandoned. In October, the Southern Tang Emperor was invited by Tian Jingzhu of Chu Prefecture to build a white pond in Chu Prefecture to irrigate Tuntian, and Zhaozhou County to restore the obliterated Pitang.

However, the Southern Tang Dynasty was in charge of its service with the close attendant car Yangui, and sent the people of Hong, Rao, Ji, and Yun Prefectures in Jiangxi Province and cattle to Chu, and the local officials took the opportunity to harass the people, seized the fields of the common people, and greatly promoted forced labor and forced civil service.

The local people have nowhere to complain about their resentment. Xu Xuan reported the situation to the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, who ordered Xu Xuan to inspect and inspect it, and Xu Xuan confiscated the land that the officials had embezzled and returned all of them to the owner. However, some people slandered that Seo Hyun was in charge of his own actions and indiscriminately used his grace. Li Jing of the Southern Tang Dynasty was angry and sent Xu Xuan to Shuzhou.

The white pond fell short.

Hearing about this, some people were upset.

In the city of Jiangning Mansion, in the courtyard, middle-aged people, I heard that in the Tang Kingdom, the hungry people of the Huai River did not go to the Tang Kingdom, but waded into the shallow water north into the Zhou Kingdom, and the middle-aged people scolded and threw things, and at this moment they hung their heads and chests, and the clothes on their bodies were in chaos, and after a long time, they also smiled bitterly. "Hahaha......"

And Wan Song, who was standing outside the window, also saw his father-in-law's expression, and also understood the pain in his heart and the pain in his heart. But at this time, it was indeed unwise for him to go up and persuade his father-in-law to eliminate the anger in his heart, because his father-in-law had the world in his heart, and it was his luck to save himself back then. Hearing that the people of the Huai River are now living in dire straits, I can't think of any way, if my father-in-law could sit in that position, how could there be so many skinny, hungry and hungry people in this world, like jackal-like officials and court lackeys...... had to let his father-in-law vent his resentment. It's like being alone in the house and out the window.

At this time, in the city of Tokyo, this year's weather is abnormal, in the autumn, the weather in Tokyo is simply hell, the weather was originally very hot, suddenly a few days and nights even downpouring, there is no sign of stopping.

In the inner city of Kaifeng, Guo Wei received a report that it had rained for a month in the north from Ziqing (now Yidu, Shandong), Xu, west to Dan (now Yichuan, Shaanxi), Ci (now Jixian, Shanxi), and north to Bei (now southeast of Nangong, Hebei) and Zhen (now Zhengding, Hebei). At this time, these places were flooded, causing the water level in the upper reaches of the Yellow River to rise sharply.

However, this situation also appeared in Kaifeng City, since that day, it has rained heavily in Beijing, and it has not stopped for ten days and nights. At this time, the water of the Bianhe River has exceeded the usual water level, and in some places the water has even overflowed the embankment, and the roads are soaked in water. Some families on both sides of the river have seen a situation in which river water has entered their homes, and the water outside the Suzaku Gate is very heavy, and the barracks are bad, and many people have been crushed to death.

In the last dynasty, officials talked about it in the temple every day, and Guo Wei had a headache for it. Because of the heavy rain caused by the flooding of the Yellow River, the worst time is the breach, so that the river embankment has the possibility of being washed down, remember because of the heavy rain, Kaifeng was flooded several times, this situation is very common, but the emperor himself also felt a headache for this, and hurriedly asked the officials to discuss how to relieve the disaster.

In Kaifeng, Zhao Dezhao heard that the land of the Huai River was dry, but the Tang lord Li Jing was not effective in disaster relief, and it rained heavily in the north, and the Yellow River was about to burst. sighed: "This year is really El Niño extreme weather, drought in the south and flooding in the north, if this is in modern times, then drought and flood relief can be carried out very smoothly, but after all, it is a matter of five generations and ten countries, who can solve it, he is just a small one, and the power used is almost the same." If you do too much, I'm afraid it will arouse the suspicion of the Emperor of Kaifeng in Tokyo, hehe... What should I do? How? How? ”

Zhao Dezhao knows that Kaifeng is located in the eastern Henan Plain, the plain is thousands of miles, there are not high mountains and mountains for the danger, once the sky rains heavily, the water potential soars, and Kaifeng is located on the south bank of the Yellow River, across the city of Kaifeng Bianhe through the Yellow River, once the Yellow River water level rises, the Yellow River water is turbid, mixed with a large amount of sediment, sediment water is easy to deposit, for a time it is difficult to drain the Yellow River to the Bianhe River, the formation of the Yellow River backfilling, the Bianhe River attack the city, sand and water deposits, the situation of Kaifeng blocking, Kaifeng's geographical location is very bad, several times in history have been flooded.

Alas, the embankment of the Bianhe River is very unsolid, and the embankment may not be able to block this sudden flood, I am afraid that half of Kaifeng City will be flooded, Zhao Dezhao sighed in his heart. This, Kaifeng has been raining heavily for many days, and it is the common people who are suffering.