How could Liu Chengzong let the duck lose its mouth?
The rental bank was robbed, it was a sure thing.
Liu Chengzong made full preparations for this robbery, including ambush and fortification, but it turned out to be completely unnecessary.
Four sentries under his command rushed down from the hills. The soldiers and civilians transporting the silver either kowtowed or ran away. No one tried their best to protect the palace's renters, mules and horses.
It is particularly strange that among more than 200 people, not one loyal and brave man can be found.
The huge team of transporting silver fell apart.
After asking later, I found out that the news of the banditry in Yan'an Prefecture had spread too much. Ansai was not peaceful at all. The flag troops stationed in the palace could scare the thieves, but the closer they got to the prefecture, the more frightened the people became.
On the night of August 15th, when the Yunyin team was resting in Ansai City, people were still whispering to each other in the street shops, telling stories about Liu Ying in Fucheng robbing big households.
Anyway, some people were so frightened that they trembled, while others tried to embolden themselves and stayed awake for half the night.
At noon the next day, they saw groups of elite cavalry rushing up from the mountains under banners with Liu characters. They were more powerful than the Liu Ying they had heard about, and they had no intention of resisting.
The banner sent by Gao Yingxiang made a great contribution.
Liu Chengzong was very happy when he heard the surrendered prisoners say this, and asked: "How did you embolden yourselves the night before?"
Their direct surrender does not look like they have emboldened themselves.
Unexpectedly, the prisoner said: "We are all poor people, and Liu Ying never kills poor people."
This statement made everyone laugh.
Especially Liu Chengzong laughed hard.
This group of people usually receive royal salaries and feel complacent about being the weaklings of the clan. But when people meet him, they can actually recognize their own class.
Liu Chengzong stopped laughing and turned to Cao Yao: "Let them identify those who have done things like bullying men and dominating women, seizing people's fields, building dams and cutting off rivers, and those who are determined to work for the palace."
"Okay!" Cao Yao nodded in agreement and said, "After identifying the bad guys, should we kill them, or should we put the bad guys back, cut off other people's escape routes, and recruit them as auxiliary soldiers?"
Liu Chengzong's expression was okay when he heard the first half of the sentence, but he turned around and glared at the second half of the sentence: "Are you just Timely Rain Song Jiang?"
Cao Yao raised his head and smiled, shook his head and said: "Actually, I think it doesn't matter whether you kill or let go...the good and evil of little people are of no use anymore."
Liu Chengzong couldn't help but be speechless.
Thousands of hungry people were hungry outside the city, and a bright glazed pagoda was built forty miles away.
The village was deserted and starved, corpses filled the pits, and a river dam blocked Wangzhuang's rotting food.
This is a bizarre and chaotic world. Cao Yao has been running around like a wild dog for ten years in this chaotic world, and it is easy for him to become disappointed with the world.
Be it good or evil, people will always die due to illness and hunger.
Perhaps in Cao Yao's eyes, these people are nobodies, and he and Liu Chengzong are also nobodies.
Killing some people and letting others go will not be beneficial to the overall situation.
Even the big picture doesn't mean much to him.
As long as you can stay alive, who cares about the overall situation?
"That's right." Liu Chengzong shook his head and said, "It is human dignity to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong."
Not only him, but also them under Liu Zi's banner, and even the dignity of these people who are about to be identified.
Humans have morals, animals do not. Only by treating oneself as a human being and treating others as human beings can one have dignity.
There is a prisoner's dilemma in identifying this matter.
When there is no first person to identify, no one will identify, but when the first person appears, the situation is different.
"Hey, you damn thing, you have a share in that, General, I want to lift him up!"
"Why are you just talking about me when there is him?"
"You take advantage of my mother-in-law, go to hell!"
More than 200 people got into a mess during the identification process. Some yelled at each other and some fought with each other.
The onlookers of the Mule Battalion soldiers looked at each other in astonishment. It was unimaginable that just a moment ago, these people were lining up to escort the renter southward.
Cao Yao stepped forward to maintain order, fired a cannon into the sky, hit the horses and cursed: "Don't fight randomly, stand in line, everyone goes forward in turn, and if others have questions, just ask."
He asked everyone to walk around in front of the queue, with those who had questions standing on the left and those who had no questions on the right, and continued to participate in the subsequent identification.
In the end, there were about a hundred people standing on each side.
Those with problems were mostly servants working for the palace, while those with no problems were basically newly recruited hungry people from Ansai.
And among the people in question, there was a small group who used to bully other servants.
Liu Chengzong once became the county magistrate in the wilderness, and he was sentenced and punished now.
Six of them were accused by dozens of people of committing heinous crimes and were pinned to the ground by Han Shipan and Han Shiyou with his servants. The rest, depending on the seriousness of the crime and the number of people pointed out, were punished with sticks or simply handed over to the hungry people.
There are also many people who actually did not make any big mistakes, but just had minor incidents such as quarrels and fights, and they were protected from punishment.
Two other people falsely accused them, and Cao Yao shot each of them to death.
If the crime is light, it won't be a big deal if you beg for mercy, but false accusations are different. False accusations are not just about deceiving people, but behind the deception is an attempt to take advantage of them.
This is courting death.
Not to mention the rest of the people, their physical fitness was only acceptable. After all, Wangzhuang had already screened the hungry people for them, and those who were not in good health would not be sent to do this.
Each of the five sentry commanders led the team to select among the crowd, and those who liked them were pulled into the team and assigned to the soldiers as auxiliary soldiers.
It took nearly an hour before and after, and another hundred or ten people were added to the army.
Liu Chengzong did not interfere with the recruitment of auxiliary troops. He was busy inquiring about the situation in Wangzhuang and inspecting the harvest of war profits.
The most eye-catching ones are the four wooden boxes, each weighing more than fifty kilograms and containing the same things.
Each box has three layers, the top layer contains one hundred taels of gold, and the two lower layers each contain three hundred taels of silver.
The total is 400 taels of gold and 2400 taels of silver, worth 5600 taels of silver.
Then there are crops, such as alkali flour, salt bricks, pepper, fine cotton cloth, tanned leather, cattle and sheep horns, etc.
There were so many types of goods that Liu Chengzong didn't look at them one by one. He only compared them with the goods list from Wangzhuang's manager to make sure that there was nothing missing.
In addition, there were twenty-four large horses of very good quality, twenty two-wheeled carriages, forty-five fat sheep, and more than a hundred pack mules and horses.
The food he wanted most was not in it. Everyone only carried seven days of dry food with them, and there was a lot of horse grass.
After some questioning, Liu Chengzong found out that the Wangzhuang this time was not Qin Fan's, but Qing Fan's pasture.
The first destination they want to transport is Ganquan, from Ganquan to Yanzhou, from Yanzhou to Qingyang, and from Qingyang to Weizhou in Ningxia.
"You are so courageous. You, the managers of Wangzhuang, have never thought about the thieves everywhere?"
The flag army who had been recruited as an auxiliary soldier was still very afraid of Liu Chengzong and nodded: "I have thought about it, and we don't even want to make this trip, but the palace is urging me, and the person in charge also said that there will be peace in Ganquan territory, so he urged me to wait. Get on your way quickly.”
Liu Chengzong had too many questions: "Will there be peace when we get to Ganquan? What a beautiful thought. There is a lot of wealth here. Since you don't want to go on the road, why don't you divide it and let it go?"
"I don't dare. We'll go to Ganquan, where there will be Wangzhuang to support us. Then we'll go to Qingyang, and there will be a team from Prince Han's Mansion. It's approaching winter, and they'll all be delivering goods to the Prince's Mansion."
After the auxiliary soldiers explained the reason for peace in Ganquan, he smiled bitterly and said: "There is no food here, and we are working for Wangzhuang. At least we will not die of hunger. If the grass falls, isn't it... then isn't it just a piece of meat from the king's men?"
a piece of meat?
Liu Chengzong reacted for a moment before he realized that it meant cannon fodder. He smiled and said: "I am Liu Chengzong, follow me, and I can feed you... Please tell me carefully, what is Wangzhuang?" How could you get so much wealth if you bought so much land?"
After that, he ordered the team to return to Dawang Mountain.
On the way, this 'piece of meat' told Liu Chengzong the situation in Wangzhuang in detail.
That Wangzhuang has a lot of land under its name, but it's not too much. Calculated at 540 acres, it's 70 hectares of good farmland on both sides of the Xingzi River.
But it is not as single-produced as the earlier Qin king Zhuangzi.
There are not only fields, but also pastures, mountains, pastures, and riverbanks, which produce horses, mules, donkeys, sheep, livestock, and various minerals. You can also grow leeks, grain, fruits, vegetables, and fodder. You can also hunt thanks to the favorable location on the riverbank. fishing.
This is amazing, even at the Yuhe Fort guarding the Wuding River, there was nothing in the river two years ago.
There was no other reason for them to take the risk. In the 18th year of Wanli, the imperial court set a certain number of Lumi for the clans in Shaanxi, Henan, and Shanxi.
The officials all hate the clan very much, and they are not willing to send money to the palace in peacetime. Now that the three armies cannot send out military pay and rations, they have found an excuse. Who cares about the money of the clan?
The imperial court did not send lumi to the palace, so the palace could only urge the village stewards in various places to send money quickly.
After the things were transported back to Dawang Mountain, Liu Chengzong gathered with the five sentinel commanders for a discussion, mainly informing the two sentry commanders Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu about the principles of spoils distribution.
Then according to the rules, 70% of the team headquarters, 20% of the soldiers, and 10% of the officers.
The military honors book gives luck to those who are good at calculation.
Not long after, several sentry commanders were discussing the matter of plundering Wangzhuang, and Cheng Yun came to the door.
"So fast? You are amazing!"
Liu Chengzong looked happy. When he walked out, he saw that Chengyun was a little embarrassed. He pulled him aside and said, "Brother, it's not me who is fast. You guys, the amount of silver you share is not as much as the number of soldiers. Is this reasonable?"
Liu Chengzong frowned slightly, took the account book in his hand, and understood at a glance.
The soldiers' two war profits were more than one thousand taels, and the officer's was five hundred and sixty taels.
According to the rules, the sentry commander gets ten points, the captain gets five points, and the commander gets one point; while the combat soldiers can get up to five points according to their military merit.
If you divide it like this, those with fewer soldiers will get one tael, and those with more soldiers will get five taels.
According to the rank of the officers, the captain received one tael and eight taels, the captain received nine taels, and the sentry commander received eighteen taels.
Liu Chengzong smiled and said: "This is because there is a lack of auxiliary soldiers in the camp. My idea is that the auxiliary soldiers do not distinguish between war profits and combat soldiers need to support them. If a very long team performs meritorious service, they can be rewarded with silver. This is the point. That’s fine…are you done with it?”
It's time to recruit auxiliary troops.
In fact, he envied Gao Yingxiang's men, those various talents, some were haymakers, some were picking fruits, or like the auxiliary soldiers under Guo Tianxing, they could walk horses and stand sentry.
In his camp, all these things had to be done by soldiers.
Nowadays, there are more mules and horses. Even if they are stationed in the camp, the daily handymen can fill up the time of the soldiers.
It's okay in the short term, but in the long run, it will affect combat effectiveness sooner or later.
Liu Chengzong led Chengyun into the cave where the meeting was taking place. Cao Yao was the first to approach him with a playful smile: "How about it, how many taels of silver can I share with Cao this time?"
"The whistle commander has eighteen taels, and the captain has nine taels."
The five sentry commanders, Cao Yao, Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu, have all been leaders themselves, and they don't actually take money that seriously.
Cao Yao smacked his lips and smiled at Yang Yao: "Eighteen taels, not bad. I didn't do anything this time. I got enough money to work in the border army for half a year."
However, Gao Xian and Feng Rui had different reactions. This money was a huge sum of money to them.
As for Wei Qian'er, who was in charge of the Tang Cavalry, he was already dumbfounded by the number. He leaned against the earth wall and twitched his fingers. He hesitated for a while and asked blankly: "General, can you give me nine taels?"
Liu Chengzong nodded.
Wei Qian'er held out three fingers, with a very complicated expression on his face: "Three years, I have worked at the post station for three years, and the salary is 128."
Liu Chengzong didn't know how to comfort him, so he patted him on the shoulder and said, "If you have nothing to do, stop that bad mouth and learn how to lead troops from several sentry commanders. If you have the ability, I will let you be the sentry commander."
"How the hell do you accept this?"
Captain Tangqi scratched his dirty hair scarf and muttered to himself. After the words had left his mouth, he gently gave himself a mouth. He stood at attention with firm eyes and said: "Don't worry, General, I will definitely please the commanders!"
After that, he leaned closer and whispered: "We don't need money here, can I send the money home?"
The lack of money is the biggest reason why the captains are not interested in silver.
Living in the camp and living in the mountains all day long, money has basically lost its original meaning of existence.
In fact, this is the reason why Liu Chengzong made a rule to distribute all the profits other than money and food to the soldiers and officers. When there are more people in the camp, there will be a small market wherever he can camp.
The soldiers in the team can use the reward money and war profits to buy and sell separately, which can also control their minds.
He had been a soldier, and he knew very well the impact of being in the camp all day on the soldiers' mentality. Even if the soldiers liked to study martial arts, they only practiced for four hours a day. The rest of the time was idle and boring, and it was inevitable that they would pick up bad habits.
Such as drinking, such as gambling.
Without these two habits, it would be easy to desert when bored. Instead of running out to do bad things that harm the people, you would have to find something to do with other soldiers in the camp.
There will definitely be no good results anyway.
There is a small market, which is used to exchange goods within the camp. Soldiers can set up stalls or go shopping when they are bored. It can also be regarded as an entertainment project for the peasant army.
Wei Qian'er's words attracted the attention of several sentry commanders. He envied the sentry commanders for their rich money, and the sentry commanders envied those who had a family and had people who could give money.
Cao Yao was especially in debt. He crossed his legs on the kang and leaned back: "Take it over. Look at me. My aunt is over the mountain. I will send it to you as soon as I receive the money."
Wei Qian'er's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to curse. Thinking of Liu Chengzong's words just now, he closed his mouth and let out a long breath: "Chief Cao is right, I will bring my family members back when I turn around."
The nose was neither a nose nor a mouth, which made Liu Chengzong laugh. He raised his hand and said: "You are right, the brothers of the postmen had better bring their families. It is also a matter of sending money to those who have family members, but not now."
He sat on the kang and said: "Good things are yet to come. There are good horses in King Qing's village, fields that can be irrigated and are not affected by disasters, and iron mines in mountain kilns. Moreover, unlike Yan'an Prefecture, which is located in a strategic area and is surrounded by mountains. It’s a good place to hide people and a good place to settle your family… Let’s go there tomorrow!”
