The official of Dongnu Province opposite the Dazhou Pass did not hold a high position. He was only a chiliarch. Naturally, there were 1,000 soldiers under the command of a chiliarch. Among them, 500 were stationed on the opposite side of the pass. The remaining 500 were naturally responsible for transporting the grain. After all, whether it was protecting the grain or transporting the grain, it required a lot of soldiers.
This chiliarch's name was Zhao Wu. He came from the royal family of Dongnu Province and was related to Zhao Yefu. However, they were already distant relatives. His status was not very high, and his position was very ordinary. However, he was still quite capable. Otherwise, he would not have been placed in such an important position by Zhao Yefu.
At this moment, Zhao Wu was respectfully waiting for Ang Lee's summons. He seemed to be a little excited. Many years ago, he met Ang Lee in Guichang City. At that time, he was already full of admiration. However, he was still a small soldier and did not have the courage to speak to Ang Lee face to face. He could only look at him from afar and feel somewhat regretful. At this moment, he was already a chiliarch, the highest official stationed at the border. Naturally, he had the right to request to see Ang Lee.
Ang Lee also wanted to know what the situation in Dongnu Province was like. Therefore, when he heard that Zhao Wu wanted to see him, he immediately walked out of the tent and met Zhao Wu.
"Zhao Wu greets Assistant Minister Li."
Zhao Wu bowed excitedly.
"You're welcome."
Ang Lee gently helped Zhao Wu up and asked, "Zhao Wu, why do you maintain so many soldiers at the border? How is the situation in Dongnu Province?"
Zhao Wu sighed and said, "Assistant Minister Li, you may not know this, but the situation in Dongnu Province is not optimistic. There are many bandits, and bandits are running rampant! In order to protect the grain, we have no choice but to send more soldiers. We have no other choice! "
"Oh, it's actually so troublesome. Tell me the details. The more detailed, the better."
Ang Lee said. He really wanted to know the specific situation in Dongnu Province. Only by understanding the situation could he better deal with the problem.
Zhao Wu did not hide anything and told him all the problems in Dongnu Province. Ang Lee did not expect that there would be so many crises in Dongnu Province. It was more serious than Ang Lee had imagined. It was on the verge of collapse. Not only were there natural disasters, but there were also man-made disasters. The combination of natural and man-made disasters caused the imperial court in Dongnu Province fall into a precarious situation.... of natural and man-made disasters..
Due to the sudden arrival of the natural disaster, the few crops at the bottom of the valley in Dongnu Province were washed away by the flood. Those that were not washed away were drowned. Basically, there was no harvest. Since there was not enough food in the storage, famine naturally occurred, leading to a series of disasters.
The sudden natural disaster alone was enough to make the imperial court in Dongnu Province panic. At the same time, there were various man-made disasters. These man-made disasters combined with the natural disaster made the political situation in Dongnu Province unstable. It could collapse at any time.
Dongnu Province was about to collapse. Once Dongnu Province collapsed, the most unlucky ones would undoubtedly be the ruling class of Dongnu Province. In order to prevent the collapse, Dongnu Province took various measures. Not only did it strictly control the free trade of food to prevent people from hoarding it, but it also raised a lot of money to buy food from Central Sichuan. In order to raise money, Queen Dong took the lead in exchanging her gold and silver jewelry for food in order to solve the crisis as much as possible.
Of course, the most powerful move was to completely integrate into the Tang dynasty. However, this move was also opposed by many people. To a certain extent, it increased the degree of man-made disasters. Many rulers of the dynasties in Dongnu Province began to oppose Zhao Yefu. They even committed treason under the urging of outsiders.
In short, the current situation in Dongnu Province was very complicated and very troublesome. The number of bandits alone was ten times more than before. Bandits were everywhere in the country. There were people starving to death on the roadside. It was a tragic sight.
According to Zhao Wu's introduction, the five rivers and dozens of mountains in Dongnu Province were full of bandits. These five rivers were the five main rivers with Guichang as the core. The other small rivers were not worth mentioning.
These five rivers were Ruoshui in the north, Da Jinchuan in the south, Little Jinchuan in the east, Xian Shui in the northwest, and Ya Shui in the southwest. Among these five rivers, only Da Jinchuan was the main stream. The other four were tributaries of Da Jinchuan. The place where these four tributaries converged into Da Jinchuan was where Guichang City was located.
The Dazhou checkpoint that Ang Lee and his team arrived at was on the edge of Little Jinchuan. It was only a few hundred steps away from Little Jinchuan. However, because the river in Little Jinchuan was too turbulent, ships could not move there. It was obviously not feasible to use ships to transport goods. In this regard, Ang Lee was also helpless. If ships could be used in Little Jinchuan, then the crisis in Dongnu Province would be much easier to solve. After all, the efficiency of water transport was much higher than land transport. It was much more convenient to use rivers to transport goods than vehicles.
Not to mention the Little Golden River, even the largest main stream, the Great Golden River, couldn't sail in it. The Great Golden River was also extremely turbulent. If ships were to sail in it, they would capsize if they weren't careful. The five rivers in the East Woman Kingdom couldn't sail transport ships normally. This made people feel helpless. If all five rivers could sail transport ships, it would be wonderful.
Although the five rivers could not be used for transport ships, because some of the river basins were relatively stable, fishing boats could barely fish in them. As long as they were careful and did not go to dangerous river basins, there would not be too much of a problem. Fishing boats could fish very well in the stable river basins. There were also some people who pretended to fish, but were actually pirates. When they encountered passersby, they would show their ferocity.
In the five areas surrounded by the five rivers, there were dozens of mountains. Each mountain also contained many small hills. The traffic situation was very bad. These mountains were now the world of bandits. Almost all the mountain people were forced to become bandits.
At this time, the closest group to Ang Lee was the Holy Mountain Bandit Group in the northeast. The Holy Mountain was about 50 miles in radius and had thousands of peaks. The terrain was extremely complicated. Some of the gaps between the ridges were somewhat large, forming a considerable area of flat ground between the mountains. Almost all of these flat valleys were developed into farmland. Some of the hills with relatively gentle slopes were also developed into terraced fields. However, due to the natural disaster, no matter if it was the flat ground in the valley or the terraced fields on the gentle slopes, no one dared to continue to grow crops on these fields.
The area of the Holy Mountain was vast. Almost every flat ground in the valley and terraced fields was a village. The people relied on these fields to live. They relied on these fields to eat and drink. However, the natural disaster broke all of this, causing the people who relied on these fields to have no way to survive.
Some of the wealthier families still had some food reserves, but the ordinary poor people had very little food reserves. When there was no food harvest in the fields, they could only drink the northwest wind.
Fortunately, this was the mountain. In the case of no food harvest, they could still go hunting, gather wild fruits, and dig up grass roots to obtain a little food. Although this little food could not fill their stomachs, at least it could keep them alive and prevent them from starving to death so easily.
However, the feeling of hunger was very bad. When a person was in a state of hunger for a long time, they would become thinner and thinner, and their mentality would also change greatly. A good person who was hungry for a long time would also think of stealing. At this time, if someone urged him, it would naturally cause this good person to become a bandit.
No matter how balanced the imperial court of the East Woman Kingdom was, there would always be families who had enough food, while other families ran out of food. Families who had enough food would not take out their food to help the poor. They would rather hide it secretly than help the poor who were suffering. Regarding this situation, the imperial court was helpless. They couldn't just search from house to house! Moreover, many of the families with enough food were the upper echelons of Dongnu Province. They were all people with status. Ordinary people would not dare to casually search.
However, some large families had food reserves. This matter could not be hidden from too many people, especially the bandits who were good at robbing. They were the most well-informed. When they learned that a large family had a large amount of food reserves, they would gather the bandits under their command to rob this large family in order to obtain food that could allow them to survive.
Of course, since it was a large family, it would definitely have guards. It was not something that could be successfully robbed by two or three bandits. Therefore, if one wanted to rob a large family, the bandits must have a certain number of bandits. In the previous Dongnu Province, the number of bandits was insufficient, so robbing large families rarely happened. At this time, because many poor people were forced to become bandits, the strength of the bandits had greatly increased, and their success rate of robbing large families had also greatly increased. Many poor people joined the bandits in order to rob large families with the bandits and obtain a large amount of food that could fill their stomachs.
Other than the heavily protected Guichang City, for the time being, no bandits dared to act rashly. The other small towns and some large families in Wubao were facing the danger of being robbed at any time. The reason why many large families built their homes in the mountains was that the mountain environment was good, and it was a fairyland. Living in such an environment would be very comfortable. However, after this natural disaster, these large families regretted to death. If they were in Guichang City, they would have the protection of the main forces of Dongnu Province, and they could live peacefully. But in the mountains, they watched as many poor people joined the bandits. In this way, it was only a matter of time before a large number of bandits raided their Wubao. This made them very helpless. They were obviously unwilling to take the initiative to distribute food to the hungry poor. Once Wubao was breached by a large number of bandits, their lives were very likely to be lost. Therefore, this was a dilemma. Even if they were rich with food, it was difficult to choose.
During normal times, many large families would only have a dozen or so guards, and their defensive power was relatively weak. However, because they would almost never encounter bandits, a dozen or so guards were enough. During this sensitive period, many large families would temporarily recruit many guards. They would choose the slums who were taller and bigger, give them food to fill their stomachs, and let these people defend Wubao for them. They would decide how many guards they would need based on the number of bandits in the surrounding area.
In other words, in Dongnu Province at this time, there were no more small bandits of three to five people, because three to five bandits couldn't do anything. They had the ability to rob ordinary farmers, but ordinary farmers had no food at home, so they couldn't rob anything. If they robbed the large families, their guards were not to be trifled with. Therefore, the bandits had to have enough people to succeed in robbing. And the large families also didn't want to be robbed by the bandits, so they would also recruit the poor people to be their guards to resist the bandits' robbery.
As a result, the ordinary people who had lost their ability to survive became the target of the bandits and the large families. The bandits and the large families' strength skyrocketed, and they often fought, causing Dongnu Province to be plunged into a bloody storm. Many people lost their lives because of the fighting.
Fights broke out everywhere in a kingdom, and this kind of internal friction was huge. Moreover, many times, when they saw that failure was a foregone conclusion and that their food was destined to be stolen, the large families would even set fire to their own families and all their food to ashes. In this way, the bandits who attacked the large families wouldn't be able to get food to fill their stomachs. After paying a huge price, they still had nothing. And the large families' actions of burning their food in despair further worsened the food shortage in Dongnu Province.
Under such circumstances, it was especially important for the imperial court to personally control the food because once the food entered the large families' hands, it would almost never enter the market. Even if the food in these large families' homes became moldy, they wouldn't help the poor. They stored a large amount of food to ensure their absolute safety. Who knew how long the food shortage would last? The large families had stored food, and under the condition that they were full every day, there was a limit to how long they could last. If they helped the poor or sold the excess food, how long would the food be safe to store? Was it half a year, a year, or three to five years? Who could accurately predict? If their estimation of the time was wrong, they would starve to death when the time came.
People were always selfish. When faced with a shortage of food, people's worries about food would be maximized. The best way to solve this worry was to hoard enough food in one's own home. No matter if it was a rich family or an ordinary person, as long as they had the opportunity, they would do so. As long as they had food in hand, they would not panic. This was not an empty phrase. For humans, this sentence would always be applicable.
According to the estimates of some knowledgeable people in Dongnu Province, if all the food in Dongnu Province was collected and distributed according to 70% of the food, then the food in Dongnu Province would be able to last for at least a year. This wasn't a problem at all. Unfortunately, this situation could only be imagined. The difficulty of executing it was too high, and it was simply impossible.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
