Xinhui City, which has been besieged for several months, looks lifeless from above, because of the lack of wood for fire, most of the houses in the city have been demolished by the Taiping army to make firewood, and now only a few areas of the west and south cities remain intact buildings, and the rest of the place is full of ruins at a glance, and it is also delusional to find a green shade or two in these ruins.

In addition to the shortage of firewood, the city is also facing a water shortage crisis. At the beginning of the siege, the Taiping army and the people in the city were drinking water from several large wells in the city, which were enough to meet the drinking needs of nearly 10,000 people in the city, but since June, the water from the three deep wells near the city wall can no longer be drunk.

The first to discover that the well water was undrinkable was Li Fuguo, a test hundred households of the Guards Battalion, who was about to put a bucket of well water to take a shower, but after the bucket was brought up, he found that the originally clear well water had become black, and there was a disgusting smell in the water.

The news that the well water could not be drunk naturally alarmed Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong, and the two of them coincidentally wondered if there was a spy of the Qing army who sneaked into the city to poison the well water.

Zhou Shixiang personally led people to check the reason why the three wells could not be drunk, but he did not know the reason after looking at the wellhead for a long time, and a team of soldiers of the Guards Battalion spent most of the day scooping up the well water, and no abnormalities were found at the bottom of the well.

The reason for the deterioration of the well water could not be found, and the water that seeped out again after scooping it up was still spoiled, which made Zhou Shixiang anxious.

There are only seven wells available in the city, and together with the remaining Xinhui people, there are nearly 10,000 people living in the city, and the daily water demand is amazing, so these seven wells can only barely ensure the minimum water demand of each person per day, and not a drop of water can be wasted.

In order to prevent the camp and the people of Xinhui from making trouble because of the competition for water, Song Xianggong specially asked Zhou Shixiang for an order, and set aside four wells for the old and weak women and children in the rear camp and those Xinhui people to drink. Originally, it was barely used in a hurry, but now there are two less mouthfuls at once, which means that the daily drinking water of the campers and the people has been reduced by half, how can people still live? The Taiping army was not much better. Three wells become two, how can a soldier live?

"Check, check for me, check to the end!"

Zhou Shixiang, who could not find the reason, blamed the deterioration of the well water on someone poisoning. However, after the hundreds of households in each battalion were ordered to examine the sergeants on duty last night one by one, they all reported that there was no problem with their subordinates, and Jiang He and Ge Zheng even had to use their own heads to guarantee that their subordinates had no problems.

It's not that people are poisoned, how can this well water become poisonous water when it is so good?

Just when Zhou Shixiang and the other officers racked their brains for this and couldn't think of a reason, a battalion elder in the back camp who had specialized in helping people dig wells when he was young asked Song Xianggong for an order after hearing about this. He looked at the three wells one by one, and then had someone help him up the city wall, and after walking down the city wall, he explained to Zhou Shixiang why the well water deteriorated.

These three wells have one thing in common, they are all very close to the city wall, the nearest one is even less than three zhang away from the city wall, and they are all newly dug wells, which were temporarily dug for convenience when the Qing army rebuilt Xinhui City. Later, after the city was built, these three wells were not filled, but continued to provide drinking water for the Qing army defending the city. In addition, there is the need for fire prevention. (Note, one zhang is three meters three)

What is the direct relationship between the proximity of the well to the city wall and the deterioration of the water source?

Zhou Shixiang still didn't understand what the camp elder wanted to say, and he only suddenly realized that the root was here after the camp boss went out of the city to bury the corpses, it turned out that the root was here!

At the beginning, after Shang Kexi personally commanded the Qing army to attack the city, more than 3,000 corpses of the Qing army were left under the city. After the war, Zhou Shixiang ordered people to shoot arrows at the Qing army and asked them to collect the corpses, but I don't know whether the Qing army did not receive this letter or the Qing army deliberately did not accept the corpses.

It was a scorching hot weather, where could the corpse stand up! On this day alone, the city could already smell the stench of rancidity. The green-headed flies were even more black, and maggots could be seen turning on many of the flesh-cut corpses.

There was no way, the Qing army did not collect the corpses, and Zhou Shixiang could only order the Taiping army to collect the corpses. Otherwise, let these corpses be placed for another day or two, without the Qing army fighting, the Taiping army and the old and weak women and children in the city will collectively be infected with the plague and die. Last year, Li Dingguo's army was forced to withdraw its troops from the siege of the city, on the one hand, because of the arrival of reinforcements from the Manchu and Han Eight Banners from Beijing, and on the other hand, because of the epidemic in the army, there was no way to stay under this Xinhui city.

Lesson. Li Dingguo still has tens of thousands of troops in hand, even if the army is infected with the epidemic, he can't hurt his muscles and bones, but the Taiping army is so good, if there is an epidemic in the city, the banner that has just been raised will fall by itself.

In this way, the Taiping army and a part of the young Zhuang climbed along the city wall and went down the city to bury the corpses of these Qing soldiers. After discovering that the Taiping army had descended the city, the Qing army seemed to know what they were going to do, and did not take advantage of the situation to launch an attack, but watched the Taiping army bury the corpses.

There are too many corpses, the best way is to choose to bury them under the city wall, otherwise, how can there be so many manpower to drive, if you really pull the corpses into the distance, not to mention that Zhou Shixiang is unwilling, even the soldiers below will not be willing, and the Qing army is eyeing in the distance, how dare Zhou Shixiang risk letting his soldiers run under the nose of the enemy.

More than 3,000 corpses dug more than ten long pits before they were buried, because of the heat of the weather, coupled with the majesty of the buried corpses and the Hujie battalion, as well as those young and strong, captives were afraid of being infected with the plague, so the pits for burying the corpses were not deep, but they buried the people. Most of the pits where the bodies are buried are in the east city, and there are three or four at the south gate.

Not long after burying the corpses, the Qing army, under the command of the deputy capital Wang Guohui, launched another siege of the city, and returned in vain after throwing down hundreds of corpses. Similarly, the corpses of these Qing soldiers who died in battle were also buried by the Taiping army.

At first, these burial pits had no effect on the city, and the plague that Zhou Shixiang feared did not occur, but who would have thought that after more than half a month, the rotting corpses in these corpse pits would actually pollute the wells near the city walls.

According to the camp elders, the corpses in the pit will decompose and flow out a large amount of poisonous corpse water, which will gradually corrode the soil in the ground, and it is good that it does not rain, and if it rains, the rain will soak into the pit, and the corpse water will quickly extend to the surroundings. No, the three wells, which were too close to the city walls, bore the brunt of the corpse water. This process is not visible to the human eye, and ordinary people will not pay attention to it, and when something happens, it can no longer be saved.

Listening to the words of the camp elder, Song Xianggong also had an epiphany, thinking of the neighbor's well when he was at home in his early years, and the well was originally not far from the thatched house, but after a few years, the well water began to smell because of the seepage of the thatched pit. Now that I think about it, I really regret that I didn't think of this section earlier, so that the good well could not be used.

Ge Zheng and the others listened to the camp elder's explanation, but they scolded the Qing Demon King bastard, it seems that the Qing Demon Bacheng also had the calculation of polluting the well in the city, so he didn't come to collect the corpse.

Zhou Shixiang thought about it, Xinhui City is so big, all the Qing troops in the city must have a clear insight, the siege of the city is not only to cut off the food of the defenders, but also to cut off the water source of the defenders.

Although Xinhui City is located on the riverside plain, most of the parts of the city cannot make wells that can be directly drunk, and most of them are saline-alkali water, and only the water from these seven wells can be drunk. In the past, there was no siege, and the people in the city could naturally go outside the city to carry water, or there was a special person responsible for delivering the water truck, and then they would buy it with copper plates, but now the city is besieged, and the water outside the city cannot enter the city, relying on these seven wells alone to support nearly 10,000 people to drink, it is really a clever daughter-in-law who is also embarrassed by the rice cooking. If the corpse water pollutes a few more wells, I am afraid that the city will really be jumped.

If you have no food to eat, you can last for a few days, and you have no water to drink, but in a place like Guangdong, you are afraid that you won't be able to last a day.

Now, there is no way to regret it, but to find a way to save it. Fortunately, the battalion elder pointed out that the speed of infiltration of underground corpse water is not fast, except for several days of heavy rain, which increases the groundwater, otherwise the corpse water will not seep into the other wells for a while and a half. And there is no need to think of any way to block the infiltration of corpse water underground, because as early as when Wang Guohui, the deputy commander of the Qing army, commanded the Qing army to dig into the ground, the Taiping army dug isolation ditches in the city, and the existence of these deep ditches just blocked the infiltration of corpse water. However, for the sake of safety, the battalion elder still suggested that Zhou Shixiang let people dig the deep ditch deeper, and it would not be wrong to be careful, after all, there are only four wells available in the whole city now.

Zhou Shi did it according to the old method of this battalion, and asked Jiang He to lead people to dig the deep ditch deeper, and let people completely block the three deteriorated wells, and after doing all this, he discussed with Song Xianggong the distribution of the remaining four wells. There is no good way to discuss and discuss, there are only four wells, there are more points on the front camp, and there is naturally no drink on the back camp. Many of the families of the officers and soldiers of the front battalion are in the rear camp, and if they really want their wives and children to have no water to drink, I am afraid that the catastrophe will not be far away.

In the end, Zhou and Song divided the four wells equally, two in the front camp and two in the back camp. The young men and captives requisitioned by the county government provided water from the front camp, and the back camp supplied water to the more than 2,000 Xinhui people.

The well is divided, but the amount of water is definitely much worse than before, because there are a lot of things that have caused trouble in the water competition, and the front camp is naturally presided over by Zhou Shixiang, and Song Xianggong is responsible for the back camp. In order to save water as much as possible, Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong thought of any way, and tried to dig a few more wells in the city, but unfortunately they were all useless, and in the end they had to be unable to do so. Since then, every rainy day, the city has been filled with large and small tanks, and all the people who can move have gone to collect rainwater.

There is not enough firewood to burn, and the house is demolished. The water was not enough to drink, so I made do. Although these two things are indispensable, as long as there are still them, they can always be boiled, but if there is no salt to eat, people will have no strength, no strength, Hugh said that defending the city, even if they do some work on weekdays, it is not good. (To be continued.) )