As the saying goes, 'the bleak autumn wind is now again, and the world has changed'.

The weather in the autumn and winter of these years is particularly cold, even in the southern border of Hangzhou. is also like this Ming world, which makes people's hearts cold. The year jumps from 1617 to 1618.

Before the New Year's Festival, Ouyang Jun and Luo Lie went all the way from the capital to Jiangnan. The two originally wanted to see the scenery of the south of the Yangtze River with 'heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below', but they were disappointed. They were driven to work.

"Alas...... now that the state affairs are difficult, Hangzhou is no longer a paradise on earth." Ouyang Jun stood in the temporary school field outside the city, and in front of him was the lazy and lazy recruits of Bailai. He was originally a Jinyi guard, and since the rise of the 'revolutionary army', he has always been thrilling but has no merits. This time I came to Hangzhou to take refuge.

The Ouyang family has some power in the capital, but they also know that the Ming Dynasty is getting worse and worse. In the past year, the 'revolutionary army' has only been engaged in commerce and trade in Tianjin, and it has been stunned that it has destroyed the Ming army in the north by doing business alone.

Moreover, after nearly a year of construction, the wooden rail line connecting Tianjin and Tangshan by the 'Revolutionary Army' slowly began to open to traffic. Tangshan's coal and iron ore production is getting bigger and bigger, and the blind can feel that the 'revolutionary army' has more and more iron weapons in their hands, and the prices are getting cheaper and cheaper. This is the embodiment of strength.

Although there are still many loyal people who want to be loyal to the Ming Dynasty, the Ouyang family feels that they should send more of their children out. Since the 'revolutionary army' generally did not trust people from old bureaucratic families, the Ouyang family sent Ouyang Junyuan to Hangzhou, which is now the strongest place for counter-revolutionary forces.

"Bah......, strong fart!" Ouyang Jun squatted on a side van, holding a newspaper in his hand and scolded: "This Jiangnan literati is really shameless, and he still boasts that the 'Yangtze River Defense Line' is impregnable. What a hell, is it all the waste in front of me? ”

It is difficult to find a sun in the winter, and the recruits squatted on the school field to bask in their moldy bodies. A lot of people are catching lice from each other, and they don't have plastic surgery. Luo Lie stood on the sidelines of the school yard in his own number 100 people, waving whips and shouting at the soldiers, learning how to march in line.

Ouyang Jun glanced at his friend, shook his head and continued to read the newspaper.

The newspaper run by the 'revolutionary army' was very successful, and the propaganda effect was excellent, which also aroused the imitation of many forces. There are many wealthy businessmen in Hangzhou, and it is easy to raise some money to build a printing workshop and hire some people to write articles.

But this 'painting skin and flesh is difficult to draw bones', this Jiangnan Times is nondescript. The above article looks like the handwriting of an old pedant, full of people, obscure, and especially likes to drop the bookbag to dig up some allusions that ordinary people don't understand. For example, the last time someone showed that there were several ways to write the word 'hui', and the angry Ouyang Jun wiped the newspaper on his ass......

Ouyang Jun went to the Qinglou at night to be chic, and as soon as he took off his pants, the maid who helped him push his ass couldn't stop laughing. His ass was covered in black ink, which at first glance was scary, but on closer look funny. The Oiran lady of the twenty-two and one-night nights is known and interesting on weekdays, like a flower interpreting words, but she can't hold back the silly music that night. It hurt Ouyang Jun to spend twice the price to seal this matter.

Hateful......

Ouyang Jun was arranged by his family to go to Jiangnan to find an errand, and the result was that he was sent to train soldiers. The Ming army in the north has completely lost hope, and if you don't cooperate with the enemy, you will be very loyal, and you can only count on Jiangnan to train a strong army - for example, Grandpa Qi's Qi family army is dominated by Zhejiang soldiers, and the gentry in Jiangnan decided to take medicine according to the prescription and also build a strong Zhejiang army.

In order to train a strong army for the Northern Expedition, the merchants in the south of the Yangtze River have donated generously. The cloth merchants in Songjiang Prefecture and the salt merchants in Yangzhou were cut off from their financial routes, and they all had a deep hatred with the 'revolutionary army'. They have money to pay, some people to pay, and at the end of last year, they raised a huge amount of 'one million taels'.

And then there was no follow-up......

"Snort...... what is a million taels?" Ouyang Jun saw that the newspaper was still boasting about how united the Jiangnan scholars were, and he used this 'one million taels' to talk about it when he came back. However, he had been in the north for a long time, and he had seen a lot of the huge consumption of the Ming army, as well as the budget receipts and expenditures in the newspapers of the 'revolutionary army', and knew that the formation of the army was really costly.

"This Jiangnan scholar was happy when he collected one million taels of silver, as if he had made a great vision. But it's less than 1.5 million silver dollars, what is this money for? Zhou Dashuai took North Korea, so he invested 50 million silver dollars into it. Ouyang Jun pinched the newspaper and complained vigorously, and when he looked at Luo Lie, who was training soldiers, he shouted loudly: "Don't practice, it's useless." ”

Luo Lie broke a few sticks in his hand, but he still couldn't teach his soldiers how to line up. He threw away the stick angrily, ran back to Ouyang Jun, grabbed a booklet, and shouted frantically: "I obviously practiced according to this "Militia Training Manual". This is the secret book of the 'Revolutionary Army' military science, which I bought for eight taels of silver. Why can't it? ”

Ouyang Jun looked at Luo Lie with a sympathetic gaze and said in a low voice: "This "Militia Training Manual" was pirated by my family. ”

"What?" Luo Lie immediately became furious, "Didn't I ask you to buy me a genuine version?" ”

"Actually, it's not bad. The genuine version costs 100 taels, and my family prints and sells only 8 taels. Actually, what is written in it is the same. Ouyang Jun said, "Anyway, it's all words, I promise it's right." ”

"How can this be the same? The words are the same, but the spirit is certainly different. I can't train this military formation, it must be because of the pirated copies you sold. Luo Lie was even more furious. He suddenly remembered something, turned to the back cover of the booklet and asked, "This is obviously printed with five taels per book, why do you charge me eight taels?" ”

This ......, Ouyang Jun is a little difficult to answer. He moved away a little and said softly, "Float." ”

Luo Lie jumped three feet high, stretched out his hand to grab Ouyang Jun's neck, and scolded in his mouth: "You dare to even float my silver? ”

I didn't catch this grasp at all, Ouyang Jun couldn't do anything else, but his light skills were first-class. He rushed out in the blink of an eye, and when he saw that Luo Lie was about to chase after him, he shouted loudly: "My father said that pork must be slapped with oil." If the money is passed out of our hands, we have to leave some money, this is the rule of officialdom. ”

"You're such a villain, don't run." Luo Lie's cultivation is higher than Ouyang Jun, but he can't catch up with the latter. Seeing that Ouyang Jun was gone, he could only return to the school in anger after scolding a few words.

On the school field, Ouyang Jun's soldiers in charge of training were listless. The soldiers trained by Luo Lie were all stupid. The latter sighed and flipped through the pamphlet in his hand, not understanding why he could not train a strong soldier like the 'revolutionary army' that was neatly formed and forbidden.

In order to show off its strength, the 'revolutionary army' often conducts open military drills in Tianjin, which can attract a large crowd of spectators to watch each time. Although it is only the most basic queue training, as long as you feel the neatness of the entire phalanx marching in unison, everyone will be fascinated.

'Its Xu is like a forest, its speed is like the wind, its aggression is like fire, and it is not moving like a mountain', Luo Lie and Ouyang Jun also secretly went to see the drills of the guards. It's just that after watching it, the reactions of the two are different. Ouyang Jun completely dispelled his idea of joining the army, and he felt that it was impossible for him to train such a strong army in his life. Luo Lie wanted to copy the infantry phalanx of the Guards.

One was that he didn't want to train his troops, but he was driven to Hangzhou to train his troops. One is that he wants to train but can't. Both of them are a stomach full of troubles. Ouyang Jun ran away, and Luo Lie lost the momentum to train. He asked his soldiers to line up and stand in a military posture, and he grabbed the 'Jiangnan Times' that Ouyang Jun had just dropped.

Not to mention that Ouyang Jun looks down on these Jiangnan scholars, even Luo Lie looks down on them, "These poor and sour people can't run a newspaper." The 'Revolutionary Times' does not shy away from good and bad things, and there are special reporters to interview the people, so that the situation can be conveyed and the world will know. But this Jiangnan Times is full of fake news, and there is not even a meat joke. ”

Probably the only thing that can be trusted in this newspaper is the advertisements of the merchants. Luo Lie knew that prices in the north were generally falling, and it was said that there was no need to transport grain this year, and the price of grain in the south of the Yangtze River should fall. But when he glanced at it, he found that the price of grain, cloth and salt in Hangzhou had risen instead of falling. It's weird......

"How much is a stone for you to buy food on weekdays?" Luo Lie asked the soldiers on the school ground. The answer I got was about two or five dollars a stone. But usually, the price of grain in Jiangnan in winter is about one or two or five yuan. As for the north, it has now fallen below one tael. "Why is the price of your food still rising?"

"I heard that this time, all the wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan pooled money to build an army, and everyone felt that they had made a lot of efforts, and they all wanted to make money back on food."

"The cloth merchants and salt merchants didn't make any money last year, and they would rather not sell than lower the price. He said that even if he burned it, he didn't want to cheapen us poor ghosts. ”

"There are also people who would rather sell all the grain to the north at a low price, and then sell some popular commercial goods from the north to come back, which is more profitable."

Listening to the words of the soldiers, Luo Lie seemed to have an understanding, but he was even more confused. The price of goods is high, the people are miserable, and the land south of the Yangtze River is not the opponent of the 'revolutionary army'. How come those scholars don't understand such a simple truth?

The 'revolutionary army' would rather lose money than keep the people's food rations, and desperately try to keep prices down. If anyone dares to raise the price of grain, a crime of 'speculation' can arrest the profiteer and put him in prison. This gang worked hard to operate, so that the people did not want the Ming army to fight over in exchange for life or death, and even the Ming army itself surrendered to Tianjin.

"These officials and gentry are full of benevolence, righteousness and morality, and the newspapers they run are all splendid articles, and everything they can do is all fucked up by the bastards." Luo Lie thought that he was also discouraged in the end. He threw away the newspaper, and then looked at the 100 trembling soldiers who were trained by himself, so he could only wave his hand to let them rest.

After a while, Ouyang Jun, who had just run away, slipped back and beckoned the soldiers he had trained to gather. Luo Lie didn't care about what happened to him just now, so he asked, "What are you going to do?" ”

"Business, big business." Ouyang Junle said. When his subordinates heard that they were doing business, their original lazy and lazy appearance immediately became energetic, and they lined up and lined up, and let them step right, which was better than Luo Lie's tired and tired training.

This man is more angry than a man.