(Thank you for the tip from Amnesia LOVE Min, thank you!) ）

Zhao Shun walked by the moat outside the city with a switch, and at night, the city was brightly lit and the wine and food were fragrant. Outside the city, however, it was dark and gloomy with frogs chirping and insects chirping.

There were no lights on the road, Zhao Shun walked on the road with one foot and one foot low in the dim moonlight, it had just rained yesterday, and there were puddles on the ground, and he accidentally stepped on the mud.

Finally, a few dim lights appeared in the distance, and a little yellow dog came out from afar, but instead of barking, he ran to Zhao Shun's feet wagging his tail and sniffing.

"Brother Zhao is back?" A figure came out of the shack in front, but it was the neighbor Lao Liu. Lao Liu's family, like him, also fled south from Shandong, last winter Tartars invaded the Guannei, all the way into the Shandong border, and finally even Jinan Mansion was broken, and even several clan princes in Jinan City were killed by Tartars.

Zhao Shun was originally a craftsman in the city of Jinan, and opened a blacksmith shop in the city, and his life was not bad. But as soon as the Tartar came, he finally fled with his family in a hurry and went all the way south. I endured all the hardships along the way, and finally came to Macheng, the capital of Huangzhou, originally to vote for a distant relative, but when I arrived, I found that the relative had moved to Shuzhong two years earlier.

At this time, he couldn't join his family, and the money on his body was almost spent, so he could only settle down by the moat in the outer city of Macheng County, and set up a shack like other refugees who were displaced here.

In the south of the city, there are many shacks, gathering hundreds of displaced people, and it has become a refugee village. Usually, all men go to the city to carry jobs and do all kinds of hard work to earn some money. The women do some female work, or go to the suburbs to do some odd jobs for the landlords' families, and the young old ones go to the streets and villages to beg for food, in short, if they don't die for a day, they have to eat and drink.

Zhao Shun has a family of five, in addition to him, there is a wife and three children, the three children are not very old, don't look at Zhao Shun's half-old appearance, in fact, he is only in his thirties this year, three children, two girls and one boy, two girls are nine and eight years old, and the son is only four years old.

After settling here, Zhao Shun also carried work for people at first, and later bought a few simple tools, and also made a simple blacksmith shop in the shack, and usually did some simple work, which was much better than carrying work, but it was barely able to maintain the life of the family.

Originally, he also wanted to work in the blacksmith shop in the county, but he was not a local, and the shops were generally reluctant to accept him. If you want to collect it, you just want him to be a young man, and there is no salary at all to be a man, and a person with a wife and children like him can't do it at all.

Zhao Shun also wants to wait until he works in the shack like this, accumulates a little capital, and then reopens a shop by himself. But the house leak happened to rain overnight, and my son suddenly fell ill, so I invited a doctor to come and see him, but a few doses of medicine did not get better, but the little money in the family was used up.

Without money, he couldn't get medicine, and his son's illness couldn't be cured.

Zhao Shun was in a hurry, and finally remembered what he had heard about the recent popularity of the nine-headed bird, how powerful the two sons were in the bandits, how fierce their firearms were, and so on. Zhao took it to heart by the way, speaking of which, he was no stranger to firearms. His father was a disciple of Zhao Shizhen, a famous firearms master in the early imperial court, and learned many new firearms manufacturing methods from Zhao Shizhen, which were later passed on to him.

The last time he fled, he brought out two firecrackers from home, one Lumi and the other with electricity, both of which he had made with his father. After arriving in Macheng, his most valuable things were these two firearms.

In order to treat his son, Zhao Shun took two guns to find the two sons of the nine-headed bird, and wanted to sell the guns to them, in exchange for some silver for his son to catch medicine and cure the disease, he heard that the two sons of the nine-headed bird like firearms, and the son of Chunjiang is also the nephew of Li Gong, the fourth secretary of the Macheng clan.

It's a pity that he didn't even see anyone, leaving a handful of Lu Mi guns, only hoping to see them tomorrow.

Zhao Shun was not good, and just nodded at Lao Liu.

Back in his shack, Zhao Shun found his wife sitting by his son's shop wiping tears.

"Still hot?"

"Well, it seems to be a little heavier after stopping the medicine, his father, has the fire gun been sold?"

Zhao Shun shook his head, his wife's face was full of disappointment, "Didn't you say that those two guns are treasures, but no one wants them at all." ”

"Someone has to know the baby." Zhao Shun replied, "I happened to meet them today and they were not available, and they already said that they could see me tomorrow." ”

"But how can the child's illness be delayed until tomorrow?"

Zhao Shun squatted beside his son, his face gloomy and he didn't speak, he was in a heavy mood and didn't know what to say at all. It costs two cents of silver to catch a pair of medicines, which is only the money of a pound of pork, but he can't come up with half a penny of silver. Even he borrowed from his refugee neighbors, and everyone helped to scrape together a few pieces of silver, which was very helpful.

He also knew that everyone had no money, and there was no overnight food at home, and men went out to work, worked for a day, and were tired and half dead, and only earned a few cents of silver.

The wife began to cry in despair, crying heartbreakingly.

Zhao Shun's heart was like a pinprick when he heard this, he got up, picked up the electric switch from the side, turned around and walked outside the house.

"Where are you going?"

"Go find the money!" Zhao Shun didn't say a word back, and his figure disappeared in the darkness.

Zhao Shun, who was one foot deep and one foot shallow, returned to the city, fortunately, although there is chaos in various places now, but Macheng has always been fine, a few days ago the Lin family village was slaughtered by bandits, and the city gate of Macheng was closed for a few days at night. However, after the bandits were suppressed, the city gates remained closed at night. When he passed by the city gate, the soldiers guarding the city just glanced at him, and saw that it was a man in a refugee den by the moat, so they lost even interest in coming up to inquire about him, and let him enter the city.

Zhao Shun has no place to go, there are no relatives or friends here, and no one will kindly lend him money.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and entered the pawn shop at the crossroads.

"Shopkeeper, pawn something." Zhao Shun walked into the shop, the high counter was in front, and an old shopkeeper wearing a melon skin hat was sitting in the back and pulling the abacus.

The shopkeeper raised his eyelids and looked at him, and replied lightly, "What should you do, bring it up." ”

Zhao Shun put the electric gun on the counter, untied the cloth strip, and revealed one large and six small inside, the big one was the main gun of the electric switch, the six small ones were the sub-guns, and there were several accessories such as the stabbing bar.

The shopkeeper glanced at it with some surprise, and then said in a long tone, "A weird tattered fire gun, dead as five coins of silver!" ~”

Zhao Shun's face turned red all of a sudden, "This is not a tattered firearm, this is the most sophisticated rear-loading firearm, called the electric gun, which was originally invented by Zhao Shizhen, a firearms master, and later presented to the Wanli Emperor, which was appreciated by the Son of Heaven, and was once equipped to the guards of the Beijing camp, which is the most sophisticated firearm!" ”

The shopkeeper didn't pay attention to him at all, just raised his eyelids and asked, "Are you still inappropriate, dead or alive?" ”

"I deserve it, but my gun is quite sophisticated, far more than the bird's gun, and the cost of making it is more than three times that of the average bird's gun. At present, the Ministry of Industry needs at least five taels of materials and labor money to make a bird gun. If you want to buy it outside, the price is more expensive, and the nine-headed bird bought a batch of bird guns last time, each with twenty taels of silver. My electric gun is far more than the bird's gun, and the light materials and labor also have a dozen taels, and I now live as ten taels of silver, and when I have money, I will come to redeem it. ”

The shopkeeper just looked at him as if he was looking at a joke, "I'm a pawn shop here, not a nine-headed bird town, if you want to sell birds, you look for them, if you want to pawn, don't be verbose, I'll give you a tael of silver to live for, if it's dead, I can give you five taels." ”

It's not that the shopkeeper is illiterate, on the contrary, he is very familiar with weapons such as birds. In the pawn shop, there are often those soldiers who are poor and can't eat, so they pawn their fat jackets, waist knives and fire guns for money.

Although he had never seen the actual electric bolt, he had heard the name of this thing, and seeing that it was kept as good as new, he knew that this thing was still worth some money. But the price of a pawn shop is different.

Zhao Shun was angry in his heart, but there was no way. There is still a son at home waiting to get medicine and see a doctor, and he can't afford to delay. Only one tael is given for life, and five taels for death. Zhao Shun thought for a while, and finally gritted his teeth, "I'll die." ”

The shopkeeper had a smile on his face, and another good deal had been made.

picked up the pen and began to write the pawn ticket, and handed it to Zhao Shun with five taels of silver.

"Sign and take the money according to your fingerprint."

Zhao Shun was anxious, and hurriedly signed his name and pressed his handprint, and took the money.

"Look at it, five taels of silver, silver money out of the cabinet, no responsibility!"

Zhao Xin took the silver, glanced at it a few times under the lamp, and didn't pay much attention to it, so he hurriedly left the shop. The shopkeeper watched the man go and scolded in a low voice, "Idiot." Then he carefully took the firearm in his hand and looked at it carefully.

With five taels of silver on his body, Zhao Shun went straight to the pharmacy.

Fortunately, the pharmacy was still open at night, so I took out the prescription and asked the guy to fold five pairs of medicines directly, and asked the doctor to grab a little ginseng, a total of one or two silver.

Zhao Shun handed over the silver ingot, and the man took it and handed it to the bookkeeper.

"Huh!" The bookkeeper snorted unexpectedly, carefully examined the silver, "Call the king's head over." ”

"What's wrong, sir?" Zhao Shun felt that something was wrong and hurriedly asked.

The account room had a bad face, and looked at him vigilantly, "You wait first." ”

A moment later, the guy returned with one of them.

"Wangtou, look at this silver, it seems that there is a problem." The bookkeeper is humane to the man.

The person who came was a silversmith specially invited by the pharmacy to identify silver and anti-counterfeiting silver. Pharmacy usually has a lot of money exchanges, but now there is counterfeit silver circulation everywhere, and you will receive counterfeit silver accidentally, and some counterfeit silver is even 90% adulterated with copper and lead, and the real silver is less than 10%.

If you accidentally receive fake silver, you will lose all your capital. Therefore, in this large pharmacy, a silversmith was specially hired to prevent counterfeiting silver.

The silversmith examined it carefully, then took out a few items and began to examine them in detail.

"Fake silver, fake can't be fake, a layer of silver on the outside, basically lead on the inside, this ingot is only worth five taels of silver."

When the bookkeeper heard this, he immediately became angry.

This man bought a tael of medicine, and gave five taels of false silver, and if they did not find it, they were to return the four denarii.

Collect five coins of silver, give one tael of silver medicine and four taels of real silver, then he really doesn't make any money in this business, and he has a big loss, if he doesn't find out, the final loss will be counted on his head.

"Come on, take this guy down for me and send it to the official, you dare to deceive us with fake silver, you don't ask who opened our pharmacy, looking at your honest appearance, I can't imagine that you are still such a treacherous villain." The bookkeeper shouted angrily.

A group of pharmacy guys had already gathered around with pestles, guillotines, scissors, etc.

"This can't be, my silver was just pawned from the pawnshop, how can it be fake?" Zhao Shun shouted in panic.

The silversmith sneered, took the silver scissors, and cut the silver ingot in a few clicks, and the silver ingot turned into several small pieces, and it was clearly seen that there was a layer of silver on the outside, but black lead on the inside.

When the bookkeeper of the pharmacy heard that the silver was taken from the pawn shop, his expression changed slightly.

"Is it the one at the intersection in front of you?"

Zhao Shun nodded.

The bookkeeper sighed, "You old man, why don't you have more snacks." Forget it, seeing that you didn't come to deceive us on purpose, I won't tie you up and send you to the official, take this fake silver and go, we can't sell you medicine. ”

The surrounding guys and silversmiths also shook their heads when they heard the pawn shop at the crossroads. This shop in Macheng County, which one doesn't know some of the pawnshop's bad deeds now. Secretly invited a group of silversmiths to make counterfeit silver, not to mention, but also specially through a pawnshop to release the counterfeit silver.

It's better for the locals in those counties, and they don't dare to do it too obviously, and sometimes they change the fake, but only for some counterfeit silver with a higher content. And if this man looks at outsiders like him, or is a poor person, he will often go to death, just like this silver ingot, five taels of silver ingots, in fact, the silver is less than one percent, and it is worth five dollars at most.

Looking at the expressions of the people in the pharmacy, Zhao Shun also understood in his heart that he had been pitted and cheated by the pawnshop. Not to mention that his electric hammer worth twenty or thirty taels was killed as five taels of silver, and his mother was a fake piece of silver, and his electric hammer was actually only used as five taels of silver.

"I'm going to fight them!" Zhao Shun shouted angrily while putting away the fake silver.

"Big brother, listen to my advice, this time you should suffer a loss and buy a lesson, you didn't find it at the time, now you look for it, they won't admit it at all, and the pawn shop has a backer, you go like this, not only will you not be able to get back the money, if you don't get it right, you will be beaten up, and if you don't do it, you will be beaten upside down, and if you don't do it, you will be put in prison, it's not worth it." The bookkeeper's kind advice, he has seen too many things. The pawn shop belongs to the butcher, and there are also the cadres of the county and the officials in the county secretly, how can you fight them if you have no money and no power.

Zhao Shun couldn't listen to it at all, at this time he was completely angry in his heart, the Tatars invaded his home, destroyed his house and his shop, he fled all the way to join his relatives, but his relatives moved away, and now he has become a refugee living in a shack, and as a result, his son is sick and has no money to get medicine. took out the family heirloom treasure and pawned it, but was cheated.

All of this made this Shandong man finally angry, his heart erupted like a volcano, and the whole person was furious.