Chapter 8: Transfiguration

In the open space in front of the county office, the black pressure was full of people.

Guan Shengyun himself is tall, and standing on the steps, his vision is even wider: in the dilapidated streets and alleys in the distance, there is still an endless stream of people gathering here...... A cursory look at the past, a few hundred will definitely not be able to beat - it is not possible to make a thousand!

Guan Shengyun pinched a cold sweat in his heart, and subconsciously held the scabbard with his left hand. However, these people in front of them were all kneeling, and the people behind them also knelt down one after another, shouting and shouting, and their eyes and ears were full of noise.

Guan Shengyun wasted a lot of effort to figure out what these people wanted to express: Life was already too hard, and if he came to rob hundreds of people again, he couldn't survive at all, so it was better to follow the "army"......

Guan Shengyun never expected to encounter such a situation.

In his "siege plan", there are only two possibilities: either hit his head and throw down a hundred or ten unlucky ghosts, pick up a life and continue to flee into the mountains to gnaw on tree bark, or spare some lives, grab a handful of good things and pull something, and then still run. I never expected that the county seat would be so easy to get hands on, and it was slackened all of a sudden, and there was no plan in advance, and the subordinates were scattered everywhere in order to grab more things, so they encountered such a big trouble.

Guan Shengyun, who grew up in a barracks with a similar environment to Huaziwo, knows his situation better than anyone else: it is difficult to ride a tiger. Don't look at these guys now kneeling miserably and begging, if there is really no way out, they will become a bunch of reckless beasts in the blink of an eye! Take the border army's salary as an example, for a few big coins or a liter of miscellaneous grain, they will accept all kinds of humiliation with a shy face and a smile, and they can even let their wives and daughters laugh, and for the same thing, they can also do things to hang the governor of a province and beat him to death - don't forget, on weekdays, the deputy marshal of the general is so nervous when he sees a four-rank prefect! Such gossip, although the commander strictly blocked it, the camp also heard it from time to time.

The key to controlling the development of events is to maintain a sufficiently strong deterrent at all times, while giving them hope. This is the only way - otherwise, he and his rabble will be swallowed up by these desperate guys in the blink of an eye.

Guan Shengyun suddenly burst out and shouted: "Shut up!" ”

In this case, the seven or eight veterans who had been following him, such as Gao Tengdou and You Futian, also knew it very well, they had already tacitly understood that they didn't even need eye contact, and immediately dispersed into the kneeling crowd, and whipped the guys who were still pulling their necks and shouting with their scabbards: "Close the beak!" "Shut up for Lao Tzu! "Silence! ”

How could the scolding of a few people stop the noise of thousands of people, and the shouts and prayers still came and went.

The sound of a gong "...... bell" suppressed all the noise at once.

Guan Shengyun was also shocked by the loud noise in his ears, turned his head to look, and saw Luo Shifan, the son of the county, standing behind him with a copper gong in his mouth, still holding a sheep bone in his mouth: Obviously, this young man heard the movement outside and ran out, so he copied the opening gong of the county yamen's room in a hurry to help him calm down.

The sound of the gong represents the prestige of the officials, and the consciousness of obedience to the government has long been dissolved into the blood of the people. The black head fell silent for a moment, and the people all knelt down and waited for the instructions of the "adult".

"Good boy!" Guan Shengyun praised in his heart and nodded to Luo Shifan. turned around and yelled at the people: "Wu Niang's dog official is in charge, forcing our old and young masters to not survive, then Lao Tzu will be reversed!" Everyone is bitter haha, want to follow Lao Tzu to eat and drink spicy? Then join in! ”

Let's find a reasonable reason for myself first, and put the responsibility of robbing the house on the "dog official", it seems that Guan Shengyun's books when he was a child were really not in vain.

"It's getting late today and the place isn't spacious enough. Tomorrow morning (seven o'clock), everyone will wait outside the West Gate and join the camp! It's all gone today! ”

After speaking, Guan Shengyun glanced at Luo Shifan, turned around and entered the county office. The crowd dispersed in twos and threes, and most of them bowed their heads to the empty staircase in an orderly manner.

After returning to the ya, Guan Shengyun asked his subordinates to find all the big and small leaders, and solemnly admonished: Stay in the city tonight, but don't do too much, especially it is strictly forbidden to kill, rape & adultery. The guys, who are not very restless on weekdays, are personally supervised by the leaders. If you break into a disaster, you will be killed-now it is a matter of life and death, if you can control the people, you may have another world, and the people will be forced to be anxious, as long as there are three or more places in chaos, the whole city will be blown up by the black lights, and none of these hundreds of people will survive!

Luo Yonghao also asked Luo Shifan and the officials to call the officials to the county office, and gave such and such orders.

At about a moment the next day, Guan Shengyun came to the west gate surrounded by Master Luo and a group of leaders. The mayor of the west of the city has organized nearby people to build a platform more than one person high with tables, chairs, and door panels overnight.

What happened next was a breeze—Guan Shengyun had seen it many times in Lu Yong's camp and had personally participated in it. When the generals felt that they were short of manpower, for example, there were too many auxiliary soldiers who died of exhaustion, starvation and illness for a while, or there were too many battalion soldiers who fled after the war and did not return, and at the same time, there were not enough exiles sent by the local government, they would organize search teams to go out to arrest the displaced people. An experienced search team can bring back dozens or hundreds of strings after wandering around the field for about ten days and a half months. Then the team officer designates the fruit leader, and the fruit leader picks it in turn from the homeless pile. Pick it out, take it out and sit on the ground in the open space on the side, the fruit chief sits in front, and the back sits ten called flowers. After the replenishment is completed, the guys sitting in the camp are reorganized into the battalion, and in the future, they will be a mighty division, a glorious member of the Ming Border Army, and the rest will be handed over to the auxiliary captain for the second round of selection: look at the auxiliary team that can still be used, and there will be a war to make meat targets for the soldiers in the future to consume the enemy's long-range firepower or fill the trench. The rest were sent to be serfs to farm, and they were to work under the whip until they died. A few people, who can't even be slaves, stay alone, wait for everyone to disperse and drag them to a secluded place and kill them with a knife, cut off the head and marinate it with lime and store it, and when there is any war, it will be handed over as a decapitation - this kind of head, the imperial court military department will definitely not recognize it, but it can effectively increase the psychological pressure of the inspector: the last time I handed over the fifteenth level, you only recognized the third level, this time I handed over more than a hundred levels in one go, you can't only recognize the fourth or fifth level, right? As long as the number of hands is large enough, those that can be recognized or not can often be passed at this time (the real thing, this kind of thing that seems sensational today, there are a lot of records in the historical materials)......

When the men are almost dead, it will be time for the next round of search teams to set off again.

The hundreds of people in Guan Shengyun's original class did not form a formation at all, but they were only made small leaders by Lu Yong's personal soldiers and followers, each with dozens of minions. Now this method is not possible, so the night before, he promoted his original team to the line of fire, and appointed the battalion officer, who has four team officers under the jurisdiction of A, B, C and D, and appoints ten fruit leaders for each team......

In the morning, Guan Shengyun mastered the strength of four battalions out of thin air: although the main battalion that he was also a battalion officer was not fully equipped, Gao and You led the other two battalions with more than 300 people, and there was a horse team of fifty or sixty horses, which was handed over to the horse thief Gu brothers to lead the army. Not only that, but after sending back those white-bearded old flowers who were even scared and deceitful, the rest of the people actually made up an auxiliary battalion of more than 200 people - overnight, Guan Shengyun's strength threw off his benefactor Lu Yong, who once admired the heavenly man, a few streets, and surpassed many deputy generals of the Ming Independent Association, well, even individual general soldiers!

Looking at the black head under the platform, Guan Shengyun was very happy, and a heroic spirit of a professional soldier suddenly arose - however, before this heroic spirit erupted, he was hit by a shout of "When will I be hungry for dinner", it was really too bad.

It's a good thing that there are more soldiers, but—these fucking guys have to eat too!

We can't use today's eating habits to figure out the amount of food of the ancients - at that time, there was no meat, poultry, eggs and milk on their daily menus, except for rare cases, there was almost no intake of animal protein, and life was all dependent on carbohydrates, and, at lucky times, well, not so lucky, with pure natural dietary fibers such as bark and grass roots.

Therefore, don't look at the rickety figures who have been malnourished for a long time, their meals are beyond imagination: the wartime standard ration given to each person by the imperial court and the military department is four catties (one catty in the Ming Dynasty is equivalent to nearly 600 grams today) of rice beans - this is still dry! Add water to cook, how much will it be? It is a common phenomenon for a guy to stuff a dozen catties of food in his stomach at a meal.

Therefore, Guan Shengyun was worried.

Shenmu County is really too poor, otherwise, it would not have gathered so many people at once. Guan Shengyun knew in his heart that as long as it took another ten days and half a month, he would die and say, in a few months, these many big mouths would be able to eat the surrounding area into a blank field, and the team would completely lose the ability to maneuver, and he would not even need to wait for the officers and soldiers to suppress him, and he would be wiped out.

Therefore, Guan Shengyun can only take the risk - to go to the next stop: Yulin City.

Yulin City is what it is called today, and it was called Yulinwei at that time. The military structure of the Ming Dynasty, the capital protection mansion is similar to today's military divisions, and the guard is a heavily guarded border fortress or a traffic point - Yulinwei is not Shenmu County!

Although Guan Shengyun has a lot of "soldiers", the backbone of the pillars is also some bandits and robbers, and those ordinary "soldiers" are poor people. Luo Yonghao searched the county treasury and didn't make up many rusty knives and guns, and the possession rate of iron weapons (even if there is an iron head) is less than fifty percent, and some others carry sticks and some simply stick branches. Leading such a "heroic division" to attack the border military fortress - Guan Shengyun would never be so bold if he had any other choice, and he really had no other way.

As a result, Guan Shengyun, who had been wandering and looting all the way, was reborn from a bandit to a thief in Shenmu County, and in Yulinwei, he ushered in the first test of his anti-thief life.