It's been almost a year since I came out, and I haven't adapted to my current life until recently.

At first, I woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, and I couldn't tell whether it was in the Central Plains or Chang'an. It was pitch black and consciousness blurred.

I fumbled around. I touched the soft bed and bedding, the desk and the lamp, the light of which stinged the eyes. I saw the spacious room, the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and the white woolen curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I walked out of the room. The dormitory area of the palace was full of dense rooms, and the rooms were densely populated with inferior eunuchs. Walking in the long and empty corridor, there are occasionally eunuchs who get up to pee, and at both ends of the corridor are guards who are lazy and sleeping. The snoring and dreaming of the rooms on either side of the room made the palace even more silent.

Walking to the end of the corridor, the late night imperial capital appeared at my feet.

Chang'an is a city with a curfew, but it is also a city that never sleeps. Countless street lamps illuminate the wide and empty streets, and searchlights placed on the ground illuminate the portraits of the emperors on each tall building, and a series of colored lights outline the outline of the tall buildings. Even though this is a reality, it's more of a nightmare.

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At this time, it was late autumn, and the temperature outside was already very low.

The temperature in the palace is constant at 26 degrees all year round, and people are always wearing single clothes and flowers, as if they are living in heaven; The slaves outside the palace were weathered as if they were living in hell.

Many slaves came out to clean under the supervision of Chang'an guards. They stamped their feet, breathed, and held all kinds of tools.

They lay on the ground and cleaned every crack in the streets of the capital, washed every stone brick, and picked up every leaf and weed. They fell to their knees, soaking wet, and moved forward earnestly, little by little; Chang'an guards in blue uniforms were watching them, kicking and whipping them from time to time.

A thin teenage girl looked up at me.

At her feet was a searchlight, and the pillar of light that rushed to the sky illuminated her delicate face, falling on the portrait of the emperor and his wife in a tall building, and her head shadow obscured the portrait of the emperor.

She was wearing a yellow prison uniform, which was so tattered that it could not even cover her body.

She looked at me—too far away for me to see her eyes, but I could imagine her despair, or even despair.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

We didn't have a relationship, but at this moment, we had a relationship.

Seeing her in a daze, a whip hit her on the head, and she fell to the ground. The person next to him didn't react. The guards continued to kick her, and she slowly got up and continued to lean down and scrub the streets.

They squirmed slowly, and the line was so long that no head could be seen, no tail could be seen.

My eyes were so confused that I couldn't tell where the girl was.

I don't know where she came from, I don't know her future, we just glanced at each other at some point.

For them, it is cruel to have consciousness, and a cruel life should not have consciousness.

In this happy and prosperous world, being a chair is also happier than being a slave.

Everyone says that Chang'an is good, but how did they know that Chang'an's night was like this!

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I can't save them, but I have to help my family and friends as much as I can.

In the past few months, I have been in constant correspondence with my hometown in Luobei.

The laws of the Ming Empire already spelled out in great detail the prohibition of county-to-county contact, let alone more distant contacts. Civilians were not allowed to leave the county, and the nobles had to rely on their own servants to deliver communications.

The Imperial Court actually had its own telegraph system, but I was obviously not qualified to use it, and those telegraphs were reserved for the exclusive use of the Royal Secret Service. How powerful was the royal telegraph system? Tens of thousands of kilometers away, just a second! Therefore, information is power, and the royal family can rule the entire Ming Empire with these.

And I had to go find someone to deliver it. Fortunately, there are black markets in Chang'an County and Xi'an County. There, as long as you have money, there's nothing you can't do. Aren't you going to send a letter to the Central Plains? As long as you contribute enough money, there will always be a gentleman who pulls down the ropes to help you run errands.

It costs about 100 gold dollars to send a letter to Luobei County. One hundred gold dollars! That's enough to buy a hundred horses! I guess you won't believe it, so I'll do the math carefully.

The second son of a broken scholar in Chang'an County who helped me deliver the letter took a hundred gold yuan, first spent one gold yuan to buy a horse, and then ran to the Central Plains with my letter. Every time he passed through a county, he had to bribe a gold dollar for tolls. He arrived in Luobei County, lived in the county seat for a while, and when the dog leftovers wrote a reply, he returned to Chang'an with the reply, and continued to repeat the bribe on the way. Counting his own food, clothing, housing and transportation, he only earns a few gold dollars for a round trip, and when he encounters black-hearted soldiers, he even has to lose money, so I have to give him more money at this time, otherwise he won't let me read the reply.

So I learned about my hometown.

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The peaceful and tranquil hometown in my memory is now on the front line of the war, because my home is on the south bank of the Yellow River, and the north bank of the Yellow River is Zhao Zhengbao's Hebei rebel province.

In the past, although the law of the Ming Dynasty forbade civilians to leave the village, but after a long time, we were a small remote county, so the villagers could actually visit the township. If you give a little money to the county soldiers guarding the gate, you can even get into the county magistrate's knowledge.

When the war came, everything became strict. The village guards every village entrance, and any unfamiliar face must be sent to the county government. In the beginning, the villagers didn't take it seriously and still went to other villages to buy and sell things. But after the county people killed them several times, the villagers finally realized the seriousness of the problem, so they had to stay in their own villages. Their respective things could not be exchanged at all, and the village became more and more embarrassed.

The situation became more and more serious, and conscription began.

The capital gave orders to the Central Plains, and the Central Plains gave orders to the counties, and the counties gave orders to the counties, and the counties gave orders to the villages, and the townships gave orders to the villages.

The small Luobei County actually wanted to recruit 20,000 soldiers, and Zhaojiazhuang spread the quota of 30 people. Theoretically, all males between the ages of 16 and 60 must serve, but fortunately there were only 30 men on it.

The village head, Zhao Sanye, collected money one by one, and anyone who did not give money was directly arrested and sent to become a soldier. In fact, it is not that Zhao Sanye wants to be greedy for money, but that he wants to be filial to the township, and the same township must be filial to the county, and the county is filial to the county, etc., all the way to the imperial court. I don't know who has the most oil and water in the court, and I'm not at the level where I can know the inside story.

The dog leftovers they paid some money and hid from military service. In the end, Zhao Sanye arrested thirty disabled, beggars, eunuchs, desperate households, and mentally handicapped and sent them up.

In other words, although the Ming Empire has 100 million troops in terms of establishment, the army is full of such cripples, beggars, eunuchs, desperate households, and mentally retarded! It's just this soldier, who has no ability and no morale, and it's hell if he can win!

Let's put it this way, the "King James Royal Military Law" stipulates that there are five million troops in the Central Plains Province alone, but how many are there? Million? Million? Half a million? Lakh? Haha, you want to go yourself!

People avoided military service, as well as military taxes. The county must pay for the additional troops, the county will also pay for the troops transferred from other places, and the county will also pay for the troops going out to fight. And even if the county gave money to the army, most of the money was swallowed by the commander, so the army had to rob it itself. The order in the county is getting worse and worse, there are more and more bandits, and it is said that even demon cults (cults) have appeared.

Dongfang Rong, the county magistrate, is not a person inside and out now. The people in the county said that he was cruel, arresting people and greedy for money; The people in the county said that he was cowardly, and he had little money to catch.

Dongfang Rong expressed his distress in a letter to me. When he came to work a few months ago, how much he wanted to benefit one party, but found that there was no way at all. If he does not become cruel, not only will those above him bully him, but also those under him; If he is not greedy for money and does not confess, the people above will dismiss him at any time, and the people below will tear down his platform at any time.

"In less than six months," he wrote, "I became the person I had ever looked down upon. In a few years, who knows what I can become! Ay! ”

I wrote: "Don't worry! I'm familiar with the people in the secret department, and I will definitely help our county! It's my county after all! I've wanted to help them since I was a kid! This is my ideal! ”

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Although the situation in the county is urgent, the village seems to be calm.

Zhao Xingyue finally married a wife, and her husband was Zhao Dakuo.

Zhao Dakuo is almost the second richest family in Zhaojiazhuang, second only to the landlord and village head Zhao Sanye.

I'm glad for her.

She even mailed me a wedding photo of her – photos are extremely expensive, and a large wedding photo is almost the only photo of people (except for the photo of the household registration certificate that is mandatory by the imperial court).

Staring at that black-and-white photo, I can imagine that Zhao Xingyue, who blushed from shyness, was wearing a red cheongsam, red leather shoes, a yellow ribbon around her waist, a green hairpin on her head, and yellow earrings on her earlobes. It's exactly the same as I've imagined it countless times before - except that the husband standing next to me is not me.

I touched the white pendant and thought: What am I missing?!

I wanted to give her a sum of money, but then I thought she was a stubborn girl, so I had to give up. To love someone is to let go, to acquire a woman's flesh is not to really love her, you can't even have any connection with her in thought.

So I gave the dog a few hundred gold dollars.

Gou Yu'er took my money and is doing a big business in the county. He no longer makes chickens and ducks, and has started selling pork and mutton.

I'm a little worried about his safety in the county seat, after all, his household registration is in Zhaojiazhuang, not in the county seat, and he is a chicken household, not a pig household.

However, he has climbed the big tree of the county magistrate Dongfang Rong, so he should be fine.

In the letter to me, he was full of excitement between the lines, and even could smell the smell of mutton.

I know that everything is impermanent, and although I don't care about my life or death, I still emphasize to him not to stand out and not to care too much about things outside of me. I told him that once there is a war, run away first, and then talk about it, and he must not be stupid.

But in the past few months, my biggest concern is my father's whereabouts.

He has not been heard from since. In the past few months, I have sometimes missed him so much, and sometimes I have forgotten him. In less than a year, his story began to blur. I don't know if many things really happened, or if I imagined them, or if my father told me.

His image is also blurred, is he capable or incompetent? Is he lazy or diligent? What was going on in his mind? The Ming Empire is so harshly managed, where can he go?

But one thing is for sure, he loves me very much. Even when I think back to how he hit me, I feel very warm.

I prayed with great concern for his safety and looked forward to hearing from him.

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From the correspondence of Gou Yuer, Zhao Xingyue, and Dongfang Rong, I slowly learned the story of the Northern Expedition of the Central Plains Army.

It is completely different from the Central Plains Governor's recital to the emperor!

The royal recital reads:

The Royal Army's troops stationed in the Central Plains, the Central Plains Army, under the leadership of the Governor of the Central Plains and the Overseers of the Central Plains, fought so bravely that the corpses of both sides were strewn all over the field!

In the end, the Hebei Army gradually lost its support, and the victory of our Central Plains Army was in sight!

Seeing that the Central Plains Army was about to hit the north of the Yellow River, the despicable Hebei Army actually blew up the Yellow River Bridge!

As a result, the conscientious Central Plains Army Engineer Corps has been braving the harassment of the Hebei Army since then, building bridges day and night.

In the battle, the Hebei Army lost 100,000 casualties, and the Central Plains Army lost 80,000 casualties.

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Dongfang Rong's letter reads:

One million troops from the Central Plains province gathered on the south bank of the Yellow River, claiming to be five million, ready to attack Hebei.

There are more than 100,000 foreign troops in Luobei County, and these troops are stealing chickens and dogs all day long, bullying men and women. Not only did they not kill a single person, but they also created a lot of people. These armies have been inking for months, and they are finally ready to fight.

Before the attack, the commander of the Central Plains Army stationed in Luobei shouted in the direction of Hebei with a wooden horn across the Yellow River bridge: "The Hebei rebels surrender immediately, otherwise they will ......."

At this time, a cannonball fell from the north bank of the Yellow River, which happened to fall on the head of the chief, and dozens of people in the chief's party were killed.

The Central Plains Army was angry, and countless people picked up swords and axes and ran to the Yellow River Bridge.

As soon as they ran onto the Yellow River Bridge, the pre-planted explosives were detonated, and the entire steel bridge was blown to pieces.

In the battle, not a single person from the Hebei Army died, and the Central Plains Army lost hundreds of people and hundreds of people were missing.

So the two armies scolded across the Yellow River, this side is the Henan dialect, and the other side is the Hebei dialect. Here scolded the "rebellious traitor", and the other side scolded the "court lackey".

The new commander of the Central Plains Army stationed in Luobei shouted to Hebei: "Don't run, there is a kind of waiting for us to pass, arrange a good formation and have a good fight." ”

So the Central Plains Army began to build bridges, the previous steel bridges were built hundreds of years ago, they were not good at technology, they could only build pontoon bridges, but the Hebei Army often threw a bomb or rocket at the construction site, and it couldn't be built at all.

Although the two armies numbered several million people, there was not a single tank, there were few machine guns, and artillery shells were even more rare, so they were extremely economical.

Although one bomb a day can't kill people, it's annoying!

One day, I don't know if the Hebei army forgot or something, and they didn't drop the bomb in the evening. So the people here in the Central Plains shouted: "Brothers from Hebei, hurry up and throw bombs, after throwing them, we will go to the river to bathe!" ”

After the shells were thrown, the two armies began to happily go down to the river to fish, bathe, swim, and frolic.

This is the real Great War of the Two Rivers (Henan, Hebei).