Chapter 9, the twenty-seven moments of Chongzhen's four years (9)

The ninth moment: When the traverser meets the traverser

On the East China Sea in December of the fourth year of Chongzhen, the morning light in winter is very dark.

By the time the sun crept over the horizon, it had long since lost its radiance. The gray glow was more like a sunset that had lost its luster than a vibrant morning sun, as if it was about to fall below the horizon again.

The salty sea breeze swept the bitter cold, Li Meng wore a thick cotton coat with very coarse fabric, leaned on the side of the "Lichun", looked at the sea and sky that gradually spread from light purple to light blue in the distance, and couldn't help but sigh melancholy, and a white mist came out.

Although it was cold and windy outside, Li Meng still climbed out of the dirty bilge and breathed in the fresh air. In the days of drifting at sea, except for a short period of time every day, only those who had their turn to empty the urine bucket could climb up to the deck to breathe, and everyone else could only nest in a small part of the bilge, and was not allowed to move at will, and after a long time, the disgusting and unpleasant smell was really not to mention.

Therefore, no matter how strong the wind on the deck of the "Lichun" was, and how cold the weather was outside, he was still reluctant to let go of this rare breathable gap.

Breathing in the cold air and closing his eyes, the past year seemed to have appeared in front of Li Meng's eyes again, all vividly.

-- First, when I was swimming in the Qingdao Beach in Shandong Province, I was unlucky enough to meet a certain immoral tourist who littered, and as a result, he was smashed head-on by a wine bottle in the water, and immediately fainted...... When he woke up, Li Meng's swimming trunks had turned into tattered cloth clothes, and he was still holding a heavy iron pot in his hand, and his identity had also become a child of a military family in Jiaozhou, Shandong whose parents died during the Chongzhen period in the late Ming Dynasty.

Since the tuntian of the various military guards in the late Ming Dynasty had already been occupied by all the officers and gentry, if the poor military households in the various guards in Jiaozhou wanted to survive, the only way was to rely on the sea to eat the sea, and boil seawater to smuggle salt and sell it to improve their lives a little. It's a pity that this business has long been occupied by someone -- in the late Ming Dynasty, the official servants were usually the biggest robbers and bandits, so they were generally the largest local smugglers in charge of patrolling and inspecting illicit salt. For example, in the city of Jiaozhou, not far from Li Meng's house, there lived a salt inspector Mou Laozhong, who was investigating illegal salt, and this Mou Laozhong gathered hundreds of ruffians under his hands, and ran rampant between several counties in Jiaozhou, basically not making much salt himself, but only snatched salt from the homes of military and civilian households in various places in three days, and sold it to salt merchants, so as to make huge profits, and by the way, he also had to kill people, set fires and grab things, making the people miserable.

Li Meng didn't plan to fight at the beginning, but the way of the world in the late Ming Dynasty has always been "killing people and setting fire to gold belts, repairing bridges and repairing roads without bones", and these salt rods under the salt inspection are not producing, but specialized in plundering, just like blood-sucking mosquitoes, birds and beasts, and their sense of smell is particularly sensitive. Li Mengcai led the people in the village to sell illegal salt once, so he had to fight with the salt inspectors on the way and cut seven people; After selling the salt, when I returned home, the village was copied by Mu Laozhong's doglegs...... In desperation, as the leader of the village, Li Meng had no choice but to make a cameo appearance in Rambo, sneaked into Jiaozhou City alone with a knife, and assassinated Mu Laozhong at night.

Taking advantage of this very precious respite, as well as the silver taels earned from trafficking in illicit salt, Li Meng finally pulled up his team and trained a so-so pikeman, known as the "salt pole", and then fought viciously with officials from all walks of life, bandits, bandits, and salt dealers and road tyrants, and won many victories, gradually monopolizing the illegal salt trade in Jiaozhou. Li Meng also got the bandit name "Erlang Zhenjun", and his life was quite moist for a while.

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long, and after the position of the salt inspection in Mu Laozhong was vacant for several months, a new salt inspection inspector who was finally parachuted down from the field and said to have a very deep background took office. Li Meng didn't want to tear his face with the government immediately-after all, the current Da Ming didn't seem to be messy enough, and it was not a good time for the traverser to raise the flag and rebel, so he asked someone to make peace with this new inspector and gift, and planned to spend some money to buy peace.

Who knew that the new salt inspector was a smiling tiger, Li Meng could tolerate him, and he couldn't tolerate Li Meng, the "Erlang Zhenjun", so he accepted the gift and made peace on the surface, saying that he still has a lot to rely on Li Meng's "salt pole" in the future, and everyone might as well get along. Behind the scenes, he set up a Hongmen banquet in an attempt to lure Li Meng and others into the set; On the other hand, he invited a team of officers and soldiers to raid the nest of Li Meng's gang.

After a melee at the Hongmen banquet, Li Meng and his cronies finally broke out of the encirclement, but now the village has been washed out of blood, so they resolutely rose up in rebellion under grief and indignation, and broke the public officials, officials, inspectors and miscellaneous officers and soldiers sent by Jiaozhou City to encircle and suppress several times, and also captured the new salt inspector. Li Meng took this culprit to the front of the mourning hall, cut off his head and dug out his heart to pay tribute to his relatives, and he was very angry, but he also pierced the hornet's nest -- the chaotic battle in Jiaozhou finally attracted the attention of the Beijing court, and he ordered Dengzhou Town to send troops to suppress the ......

As a result, under the long guns, strict phalanxes, and roaring cannons of the Dengzhou army, hundreds of "salt poles" under Li Meng's command who were rampant in Jiaozhou were defeated and returned defeated, making him truly feel the power of the first-class regular army in this era. Then, before he could come up with a countermeasure, the pursuing Dengzhou army broke through the stockade, and Li Meng had to lead people to grab a few fishing boats to go to sea, preparing to escape from the ground in Shandong, and since then he has died in the world.

(Because he vaguely knew that Sun Yuanhua, the "Western-style faction" in the late Ming Dynasty, cast artillery in Dengzhou, hired Portuguese instructors, and trained troops with "Western Law", Li Meng at this time had not yet linked the Dengzhou army that came to crusade with the traversers, and only regarded it as the "foreign gun team" under Sun Yuanhua.) ）

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Then, under the stormy waves of the Yellow Sea in winter, Li Meng's small fleet of fugitives was quickly dispersed. Some ships were sunk by the wind and waves, some ships never knew their whereabouts, only two boats drifted to Huaguo Mountain outside Haizhou City in a daze, and were rescued after being stranded on the beach, but there were only a dozen people left with Li Mengwei, and all of them were frozen and hungry, half dead, and a small amount of silver money and weapons they carried with them were lost in the storm at sea, and everyone's appearance was also very sluggish.

Therefore, as soon as the "deer owner" at the foot of Huaguo Mountain showed his intention to solicit, Li Meng and the others, who were already so hungry that they could even walk, immediately agreed in a hurry, even if they sold themselves as slaves - otherwise they estimated that they would die right now: if the cold ground is freezing today, and the price of grain is skyrocketing, why should people support you in vain? Anyway, if the treatment of the main family is too harsh, it will not be too late to flee when the time comes......

Next, these smugglers were in the manor at the foot of Huaguo Mountain, and they suffered a strange living crime: for the quarantine of the newly imported population, often referred to simply as "purification", the Lingao Senate authorities had figured out a mature process, even in a stronghold behind enemy lines thousands of miles away, as long as conditions permitted...... Therefore, under the reprimand of the manor steward, Li Meng and the others stripped naked in a shed, as if buying and selling livestock, let people look at their bodies, and then were looked at their teeth, asked a few simple questions such as age and name, and then stamped their handprints on a piece of paper as required - Li Meng thought it was a document such as a deed of sale, and then was forced to shave his head for the reason of epidemic prevention, and took a careful bath, and finally got a new dress made of blue cloth, so that he could be regarded as a member of the "new immigrants". According to the people who manage them, as newcomers, they will have to continue to train for a few months before they can be considered officially "joined".

Regarding the matter of shaving their heads, the Jiaozhou refugees were naturally reluctant, but with the current desperate situation, they had to admit it. However, they were amazed to have new clothes immediately after they were inhabited - they had also worked as servants in large families before, and knew that even those gentry who were kind and generous would generally only dress the new servants in old clothes, and the new clothes were indigo, and the texture was coarse, but they were clean and soft. It's just that the appearance is really weird, like a bell worn by a monk. Because it was winter, they were given an old cotton robe to protect them from the cold.

After surviving such a set of "purification" procedures, the steward of the manor was originally going to give them rules and assign work, but at noon the next day, a big ship docked at the private dock of the manor at the foot of Huaguo Mountain, and then Li Meng and the others were all driven into the cabin, saying that they were going to be transported to the south to farm and live...... Although the Chinese peasants had a tradition of relocating to their land and not wanting to leave their homeland lightly, it didn't matter to Li Meng and others, who had fled from the army, -- since they had already been sold into slavery, they could only obey the orders of their masters.

But the problem is, this big ship called "Lichun" ...... How does it look like a Western-style warship with a hybrid of sails and steam?

Hey, did I travel to the end of the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century, or to the late Qing Dynasty in the 19th century?

This sudden and unexpected explosive appearance greatly stimulated Li Meng's spirit, so much so that he fainted on the deck, and the others only thought that he was exhausted all the way and couldn't bear it, so they didn't pay much attention to it, just dragged him into the bilge.

So, by the time Li Meng came to his senses again, the "Lichun" had already raised its fire and anchored, set sail for the sea, and left Haizhou and headed south.

In the next few days of sea travel, Li Meng kept an eye on this steamship that should not have appeared in the late Ming Dynasty, as well as the various people on board...... It can be seen that most of the sailors on the ship are still Fujian and Guangdong natives in the late Ming Dynasty, and even if they are shaved short and speak a strange "official language", they cannot become modern people. But it is true that there are a few well-dressed guys, who not only speak more standard Mandarin, but also have a vague atmosphere that is out of place in this era, and occasionally leak a few words with obvious modern colors when speaking......

Alas, should I take the initiative to go up and confess my identity to them? But who knows if they will be kind to their "fellow travelers" next?

-- Just as overseas Chinese and overseas Chinese often like to trap their compatriots in the motherland, in case the other party is the kind of guy who is particularly narrow-minded and full of "domineering spirit", he adheres to the "dark forest law" in "The Three-Body Problem" and firmly believes that "the biggest enemy of the traverser is always another traverser", and tries to nip an "unplanned factor" in the bud...... So if you go up to reveal your identity, isn't it tantamount to asking for your own death?

What's worse is that Li Meng can't even be sure if they really come from the same era as himself - maybe decades after he has traveled by himself? Alas, this kind of thing that seems to require gambling on character and luck is really not easy to make a decision

Looking at the two "short-haired officers" who were talking and laughing not far away, Li Meng touched his chin and couldn't help but feel hesitation and entanglement.

“…… The bell is over eating, come and line up for dinner."

A crisp brass bell and the shouts of the sailors interrupted Li Meng's train of thought, and when he looked back, the fat cook on the ship had already brought a steaming breakfast to the sailors and "new immigrants" of the "Lichun" with several large tin buckets with lids, together with his child labor apprentice assistant.

In terms of the standard of living of the low-class people in the late Ming Dynasty, the breakfast of the "Lichun" can be said to be quite extravagant: each sailor has a large bowl of thick white rice porridge, mixed with chopped pickles and salted fish, plus a piece of fragrant roasted sweet potato and half a salted egg. The "newcomers" were fed worse than those of regular sailors, but they were only half a salted egg, and even better than Li Meng's food before he sold smuggled salt - in fact, he and the military households in the village could only eat two meals a day, sometimes even one meal, not to mention any dishes, not even white rice.

Even from the perspective of modern people, such a breakfast is barely passable, so Li Meng is still very satisfied with this kind of food.

But the only thing that made Li Meng feel uncomfortable and scared was that when everyone was squatting on the deck to eat, there was a strange Taoist priest walking around in the crowd, and from time to time he looked at some handsome young men and sturdy men with affectionate lustful eyes...... And the other guys who seem to be traversers are also indifferent to this place (in fact, they have been together for too long and have become accustomed to ignoring this corrupt), and they don't seem to think that there is anything wrong with this's actions, which makes Li Meng can't help but feel that his legs are weak and his back is cold.

Although in the late Ming Dynasty when the social atmosphere was open, it was quite common among the people for men to break their sleeves and dragons, and they were not discriminated against, but were touted as elegant by many literati who were willing to do this, but Li Meng, a rough man who was not elegant enough, couldn't bear this thing

The Jade Emperor and the Queen Mother bless, shouldn't he have come to some unbelievable "modern crossing group at the end of the Ming Dynasty"?

If you think about it carefully, on the Internet in later generations, there seem to be a lot of time-traveling versions of ** based novels written by rotten female writers

Seeing Zhang Yingchen, who was wearing a Taoist robe, squatting down with a smile, and personally feeding a handsome little Zhengtai with red lips and white teeth instead of Lori, Li Meng quickly turned around cautiously, trying to hide behind a pile of cables, and at the same time worried about the chastity of his ass after arriving at his destination......

Under the winter sunshine that lacked heat, the "Lichun" continued to chop the waves, carrying the traverser Comrade Li Meng to the unknown future......

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