Yesterday, I brokered the night between this woman and the herald. I heard this morning that the herald rode away in the middle of the night, and I thought they both knew the truth. Now it seems that the soldier may know that he went to the wrong bed, but the woman is still in the dark.

Looking at the woman's expectant eyes, I felt a little guilty. After so many years of Auntie's death, I still don't know what my father's name is, if she has a child this time, the child should always have a name that can be imagined and missed.

But I can't say these words of the Zhao family of the Jin Kingdom, and I don't know what the herald's name is, so in the end I can only find out the two-foot fine kudzu cloth that the herald gave me and stuff it into the woman's hand, and whispered: "Sister-in-law, my eldest brother's name is Ah Yu, and he asked me to give it to you." If you really have a baby, your sister-in-law will keep it for the baby to be swaddled. ”

"Eh, it's written! Ah Yu ...... "The woman took the Gebu I gave and showed a rare hint of shyness, she glanced at the shirtless under the wall, and whispered, "It was hot last night, and it is cold this morning." A hunter, with a name but a fish. You're a weirdo, brother. ”

"Oh, my eldest brother is a little strange." My face was hot, and I replied indiscriminately, thinking to myself, if Ah Yu knew that I had made a nominal daddy for him in Qi State, I don't know whether I would be happy or unhappy.

"Ah Shi, let's go—" At this time, Wuxian called me behind my back after eating breakfast.

"It's coming!" I agreed, turned to the woman, and said, "Sister-in-law, we're leaving, take care!" ”

"Hmm. Big brother, I have time to see my sister! Remember the same door as last night! The woman nodded, raising two feet of Gebu and shouting at Wuxian.

At this moment, the men around Wuxian all laughed.

"Oh - it turns out that the big brother went to the door last night!" Someone in the Orion tore out of his voice and screamed.

I ran to Wuxian with my head down, and Wuxian glared at me with a cold face, "What the hell are you doing again?" ”

"Uh, I did a good thing and can't tell you."

After Li Zai took his little grandson by the hand and got into the ox cart, the convoy quickly set off.

Rizai was a seventy-year-old man, his snow-white beard almost hung down to his waist, and his two eyebrows were dark and shiny. When I first saw him, I thought his black eyebrows and white beard were a little strange, but after looking at him for a long time, I felt a little happy.

Lao Lizai is a native of the Song Kingdom, and this time he said that he was going to take his grandson back to the Song Kingdom to visit relatives. It was the first time I had heard of visiting relatives during the civil strife, but the affairs of the Song Kingdom had nothing to do with us, so I didn't think much about it.

The convoy left the village and walked slowly up the hillside. The mountain road that must be passed through this pass is much wider than I imagined, and we once encountered a caravan from Lu to Qi halfway up the mountain, and two ox carts could still pass side by side on the mountain road.

Half an hour later, we finally arrived at the pass with the ox cart pushing.

Compared with the tall and majestic bluestone pass I saw when I entered Qi before, this is just a two-story mud fortress built with loess ramming on the Great Wall of Qi. The first floor of the mud fort can pass people and cars, and the second floor is the place where the border guards guard the sentry.

"Hongyun'er, what are they doing here?" At the checkpoint not far from me, several people dressed as commoners were being inspected by the guards. Among them, the men had almost been stripped of their clothes, and the women had been stripped down to a small coat. A few of the hunters standing beside me looked at the woman, then looked back at me, and smiled very ambiguously.

"You weren't allowed to take off your clothes when you came? Why do you have to strip naked when you go out? Innocent also came up at this time.

Wuxian patted me on the shoulder and whispered to reassure: "Don't worry, they are investigating the person who sells illicit salt, and it shouldn't matter if we follow Lizai." ”

I have heard that Qi people will inspect illegal salt at the place where they leave the customs, but I didn't expect it to be so strict.

During the reign of Duke Qi Huan, Guan Zhong took the sale of sea salt into public ownership in order to enrich the state treasury, and private individuals could only cook salt in their spare time, and the sea salt produced could only be sold to the state. More than half of the people in the world eat sea salt from Qi State, and after Qi State controlled the production of sea salt, it sent officials to sell salt to other countries at a price 40 times higher than before. It can be said that the hegemony of Duke Qi Huan back then and the current wealth of Qi State were all piled up with this white sea salt.

"Someone—bring this woman down to me!" I was thinking about it when suddenly there was a loud shouting at the level, followed by a woman's cry.

When I looked up, I saw a leading soldier in the garrison shouting and cursing with a white pocket the size of a palm, and the woman who was slumped at his feet, her hair like a cloud had been torn into pieces.

"Grandpa, selling illicit salt is a felony, doesn't that woman know?" The little grandson sitting in the ox cart asked Rizai next to him curiously.

Lao Lizai raised his drooping eyelids and glanced at it, touched his little grandson's head and said slowly: "She knows...... The doll remembers what her grandfather said, if a person can't live, no matter how heavy the criminal law is, he can't be afraid. Whether the life of the Qi people is good or not, don't count the number of carriages on the official road, just see if this card is strictly checked. ”

"Well, Grandpa Xie taught, and my grandson understood." After listening to this, the little one gave Lizai a proper salute on the ox cart.

Qi State is short of money, so the price of salt will be raised, and the price of salt will be strictly investigated; The common people of Qi are poor, and they are so poor that they can't survive, so they sell salt, and there are more people who sell smuggled salt, so this checkpoint is more strict. The words that the old man taught his grandson have exhausted the inner part of the decay under the gorgeous appearance of the Qi country. I looked at Li Zai, who was closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep beside me, and I couldn't help but secretly say that a country official shaped like a tree can have such knowledge, and it seems that he is not an ordinary person.

Although Li Zai was a petty official in the government of the Qi State, the place where we went out this time happened to be within his jurisdiction, so the defenders were polite to us, asked a few random questions, and let the convoy pass after a brief inspection.

The kingdoms of Qi, Lu, and Song, these three kingdoms are arranged in order from northeast to southwest. I went east with Wuxian and Wuxian to Yishui, and Lizai and his entourage crossed the Great Wall of Qi to go west, to Bodi, and then took a boat along Wenshui and Dayozawa through the waterway through the Lu country and directly entered the Song Kingdom. This meant that we had to find a suitable opportunity to leave the team as soon as possible.

On this night, the team stopped at a village house at the foot of Yishan Mountain.

The village was deserted, the sun was setting, and there was no one on the road.

The houses we stayed in were more spacious than those in other villages, but the walls were empty, and the only ones that could be used as beds were reeds all over the floor.

At night, the family had no lamp oil, and the man borrowed money from the east of the village to light a small lamp in Lizai's house. It was a hot day, and the people who accompanied them did not want to make a fire to get light, so after dinner, everyone went back to the house early and slept on the reed poles.

Soon, snoring began in the courtyard.

I packed up my bags with Shirtless and Innocent and tiptoed out the door. That's when something unlucky happened. At the door of the main house where Rijae and his grandson were staying, there were actually six sneaky masked men who were probing their brains. We found them, and they found us. Without saying a word, a few people rushed up with sticks and stone sickles and waved at us.

If you want to kill these people, it will be easy for the innocent and innocent. But these people don't look like bandits and more like ordinary farmers. Therefore, the two of them did not kill them, but just made a move to knock down the weapons in their hands.

There was such a commotion that all the hunters in the house woke up, and they all ran out with bows and arrows and axes.

Soon, the six men were sent into the main house. Lao Lizai took the oil lamp and found the man of the house inside. After some inquiries, we learned that these six people were all farmers in the village, because after paying the taxes on public and private fields this summer, they could not pay the land taxes collected by the Ji Sun family, so we started the idea of a few bags of grain on the ox cart.

"What is the use of fields?" I whispered to the shirtless beside me. As far as I know, although there are different systems of land endowment between countries, no matter what the rules say, as long as the peasants cultivate the land of the public nobles, they must pay the tax on the public land. As for the theory of private land, it originated from a field tax system called "initial tax per mu" promulgated by the Lu State more than 100 years ago, that is, the private land obtained by peasant households from reclamation was recognized, but taxes must be paid to the state according to a certain proportion of the harvest. Obviously, these people planted both public and private land, but the surplus grain they received was not enough to pay for this additional "land endowment".

Wuxian leaned into my ear and whispered: "The countrymen have to serve in the military, and the savages are not qualified to serve in the army, so they have to do some labor." This land endowment was first proposed by Ji Sun, the head of the 'Three Huan', two years ago, that is, not to allow the savages to serve as laborers, but to ask them to pay directly with grain in kind. ”

"How can there be such a tax?" The surplus grain obtained by the peasants who get up early in the morning and work hard is only enough to make a living, like these additional taxes, if they encounter a good year, they may be able to barely cope with it, and if they are in a disaster year, where can they still pay it.

While I was talking to Wuxian, the hunters were clamoring to punish the six as robbers, but Lao Lizai asked the servants to give each of the six people a small bag of millet and let them go.

Rizai's action made the hunters angry, but I couldn't help but have a little more respect for him in my heart.

"Where are the three of you going with your bags in the middle of the night?" After sending everyone away, Rizai left only the three of us.

Wuxian put the two small bags in front of Li Zai, and raised his hand to salute: "These are the ten knife coins that I received from Li Zai the day before yesterday, and I will return them all now." My brother and sister can't go to the Song Kingdom with Li Zai, please forgive me! ”

"If you don't go to Song Kingdom, where are you going?" In the dim light, the old man looked at us with half-squinted eyes and a long beard.

"I want to take my younger brother and sister to Ludu Qufu to meet Dr. Kong." Wuxian glanced at me and bowed his head in reply.

"Oh!" Hearing this, Li Zai raised his eyebrows and smiled happily, "You say, you want to take these two children to Qufu to listen to Dr. Kong's lectures?" ”

"Exactly."

"Goodness, great goodness! A gentleman has no food to eat, no shelter to seek peace, is sensitive to things and cautious in words, has the right way and righteousness, and can be said to be studious (1). The old man nodded his head at Wuxian, and then bent down and put the two bags of coins back next to Wuxian, "The old man also had the honor to study under the master's door back then. Regardless of whether the master accepts apprentices, regardless of their background, it is rare for you to hunt in the mountains and forests and live in poverty, but you have this heart of learning. This money is considered to be the passage money that the old decay gave you. In other years, if you can understand the study of Confucianism, you will definitely be able to make a difference. ”

"Sherizai!" No shirt did not shirk and bowed.

"Go ahead, be careful on the road."

Remark (1): "A gentleman has no food to eat, no place to live, is sensitive to things and cautious in words, has the way and is right, and can be said to be studious." This sentence comes from the Analects, to the effect that "a gentleman does not seek to be full of food, does not seek comfort in his housing, is diligent and agile in his work, cautious in his speech, and will go to a virtuous person to correct himself." In this way, it can be said that he is a studious person. ”

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