The shrill whistle of the train brought Jiang Guolin back to his senses, when he first got on the train, he was still startled by such a steel monster that swallowed carbon and spitted smoke, but after sitting in the carriage for a while, the novelty passed, and he still looked at the other books given by Tao Enpei.

They stayed in Shanghai for two days, and in addition to seeing Shanghai's increasingly prosperous industry and commerce, they also saw the powerful military backs of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and they felt sad that groups of soldiers and people who enthusiastically joined the army, and that tens of millions of people in several provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang had completely become supporters of the anti-thieves.

The books in their hands are really sold openly in major bookstores and bookstores in Shanghai, and most of the people who come to buy books are readers, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have always been rich, so there are many readers, Jiang Guolin knows that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is doing this to win the hearts of the world's readers, although these books do not allow readers to fully support the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but Jiang Guolin believes that even if the official army comes back in the future, the readers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will not be able to be as obedient as before. There seems to be no better way than to kill all the scholars here.

And the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not destroy Buddhism and Confucianism as in Hunan and Hubei, in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and other places, he also saw temples and Taoist temples that were still flourishing, and people began to pursue the neo-Confucianism that rose under the leadership of the Western Wang Niang. This neo-Confucianism is to restore the old concept of Confucianism before the end of the Ming Dynasty, get rid of the servile shackles imposed on Confucianism by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and advocate the theory of applying it to the world.

At the same time, the rise of industrial, commercial and private capital in Shanghai and other places made Jiang Guolin see that Confucian scholars such as Yu Songnian or famous families were investing in industry and commerce, and these Confucian students did not have the slightest concept of agriculture and industry. They are not ashamed of doing business, on the contrary, many people actually apply the essence of Confucianism to doing business, and regard themselves as Confucian businessmen.

The only thing that makes Jiang Guolin feel gratified is that there are many schools in Shanghai. The Book of Sages is listed here as a national study, and the children who study here are completely free, which makes Jiang Guolin feel that these thieves can no longer be called bandits, and what they are doing is to claim to be a new country, and they are raising the people, not robbing like bandits.

Through the car window, Jiang Guolin saw the traditional scenery of the land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River between Jiangsu and Shanghai. Between the rivers and rivers are large expanses of endless rice fields, and now the summer rice is about to be harvested, and the heavy ears of rice represent another harvest. Many places in Jiangsu and Shanghai can already grow twice or three times a year, and such a rich scene makes Jiang Guolin feel that the official army may never be able to fight back.

When the train arrived in Suzhou, it was as prosperous as Shanghai, and all kinds of goods transferred from the mainland were transported to Shanghai through here. Imported goods from Shanghai are sold to the mainland through here. As the original base camp of the Taiping Army in the West Temple. What is even more intense here than Shanghai is the political atmosphere. Jiang Guolin heard that hundreds of gentry in Suzhou had jointly written to the king of the west, asking the king of the west to return to Suzhou to govern, give up Jinling City, and establish Suzhou as the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This surprised Jiang Guolin, the gentry here actually supported the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom so much that they had completely abandoned the Qing court.

Compared with the rule of the Manchu Dynasty, Jiang Guolin could not see the mourning of the wilderness, although there were the same poor people under the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. But the kingdom of heaven always gives the poor a place to work, building roads, mining and working in factories. In short, no one can get something for nothing. And the Chinese people are known for their patience, as long as they can have food and warm clothing, they will not rebel, Jiang Guolin knows this very well, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom seems to be doing better, every place has a local minimum wage system, stipulating that the wages received by the workers cannot be less than this amount, and it is clearly stipulated that the daily working hours of the workers shall not exceed five hours.

Jiang Guolin felt that the military and civilians under the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did live better than the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not fully implement the so-called practice of land and farming, Jiang Guolin found that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom drove most of the landless people to factories, mines, or to build bridges and pave roads. What I see most in various places are job recruitment notices and night classes for a certain type of work, where people who do not have skills can learn the craft and then start to work in factories and mines.

Jiang Guolin couldn't help but secretly wonder, why couldn't this be done under the rule of the Manchu Dynasty? He immediately realized that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had always emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce, and the preferential policies for industry and commerce here in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were unimaginable, and all the rich gentry who had spare money in their families were investing in industry and commerce to make money. However, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom restricted the purchase and sale of land, and the wealthy gentry here could not make money to buy large tracts of land as they did under the Manchu Dynasty, and there was very little land available in the market, so they invested the money they earned in new factories or mines.

Suzhou, Wuxi, Zhenjiang and then to Tianjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin walked around the richest place in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the more they walked, the more confused Jiang Guolin became. Could it be that the Manchu Qing Qi has been exhausted, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom should replace it?

After arriving in Tianjing, the so-called sacrifice ceremony was not arranged to humiliate them, Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin were secretly relieved, the most important thing for scholars is face, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom retained their face. They were placed under house arrest in a house, but no one summoned them, and they had to pass the time by reading books and newspapers sent by the guards all day.

Jiang Guolin's favorite thing to read is "Declaration", although this newspaper was not as early as "Su Fu Xin Pao", but this newspaper often criticizes the maladministration of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which is an eye-opener for Jiang Guolin. If it had been under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, this kind of newspaper would have been investigated and dealt with as a major case long ago, and at first Jiang Guolin was worried about the safety of the person who wrote these articles, but for several days, the newspapers continued to publish articles about this person, and it was obvious that this person was still alive and kicking.

Recently, the most read is the case of factory encroachment on private land published in the current affairs column of the "Declaration", which revealed that many local officials under the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom colluded with the local gentry to occupy, forcibly buy and sell, and forcibly requisition civilian land as factory land, causing many Shengdou small people to lose their land and no source of income.

At first, Jiang Guolin thought that since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom encouraged industry and commerce, he would definitely turn a blind eye to such matters, and might even not go to the end, but a few days later, the "Declaration" published a report that several localities had been jointly investigated and dealt with by the Department of Industry and the Department of Agriculture, and that the cases of encroachment on people's land had been dealt with, that several lawless gentry had been severely punished, and that several officials had been dismissed from their posts and investigated. The "Declaration" originally used a passage from the Western King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: "The encouragement of industry and commerce by the state is limited to the national policy and law, and no one is allowed to trample on the private property under the protection of the national law, and there is a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for a day, and this law is ......valid."

Jiang Guolin tasted it for a while, and then realized that this was the Yang conspiracy of the King of the West, he nakedly tied nearly 100 million people of the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime, and with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he could protect the people and their private property, but if the Manchu Qing Dynasty fought back, everything that everyone has now may no longer exist. How bright and upright the Western King's hand is and there is no trace, Jiang Guolin is even more sure that it is impossible for the Manchu Qing to defeat the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The house arrest for several days Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin became more and more depressed and irritable, whether it was killing or chopping was a matter of one sentence, what kind of thing is this? On the eighth day, the two were finally taken out and boarded in a carriage, reportedly to go to the Prosecutor's Department of the Criminal Department next to the Confucius Temple in Tianjing to hear the trial.

Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin are very strange, who is this for the two to hear? When I arrived outside the Yamen of the Procuratorial Department, it was already crowded with people, many of whom were ordinary people. Entering the yamen, a large courtyard was full of people hearing the trial, and several tables were arranged in it, with tables and chairs on each side, and the word "trial" was written on the table in the center, the word prosecution on the right side, and the word defendant on the left side.

Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin stood under the porch, and recognized at a glance that Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui were sitting in the defendant's seat. Later, more than a dozen officials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom arrived, each seated, and several foreigners in suits sat aside to listen to the trial. Jiang Guolin secretly thought that he was going to interrogate Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui, but what did the people of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom let the foreigners do?

Wang Kai, who brought them over, said with some indignation: "I heard that in the past few days, the ministers of Britain, France, the United States and other countries have sent notes one after another, saying that they are asking for their friends Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui to be lightly dismissed. ”

Jiang Guolin suddenly realized, but he didn't feel strange that Britain, France, the United States and other foreigners came out to protect Ye Mingchen, Ye Du cooperated with foreigners in Guangzhou and was finally intimate, and it was not surprising that he was in trouble at this time.

Then the trial began, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officials standing in the prosecution seat stood up and read out a complaint of nearly 30,000 words, which mentioned Ye Mingchen's crime of indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of innocent people when he rebelled in the Tiandihui in Guangdong, and then the prosecutor summoned dozens of survivors of the massacre who rushed from Guangdong and Fujian as witnesses, and at the same time presented more than 10 black-and-white photos taken by British reporters, as well as the testimony and testimony of dozens of Qing army generals and soldiers.

In the face of the tearful accusations of the surviving people, Ye Mingchen's face was pale, he couldn't stop trembling as he sat there, Bai Gui was no better, and the people who were at the scene shouted angrily: "Kill these two dog officials!" At that moment, Bai Gui suddenly collapsed in his seat.

Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin both felt a little unbearable to watch, remembering that at that time, both of them had persuaded Ye Du not to expand the killing, and many innocent people were also killed just because they were neighbors with the thieves. But at that time, Ye Tu was very resolute, and only said that he would rather kill a hundred wrong people than let one go, so in addition to the families of the rebels, tens of thousands of innocent people died under the purge of the Qing army. For this reason, Jiang Guolin and Zhou Qibin also went to the recital to impeach Ye Mingchen, but the recital was lost in the sea and there was no news.

In the face of the shouts of many ordinary people, the foreigners who heard the trial also felt very embarrassed, and in the face of a large amount of detailed evidence and witness testimony, they had nothing to say, and the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent people in their own country was an unimaginable felony in Britain, France, the United States and other countries, and they could not mention anything more, this was a fair trial, and there was nothing to blame.

Later, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui were sentenced to execution on the spot, Jiang Guolin didn't feel inappropriate, he only thought of four words, that is, this should be reported...... (To be continued......)