He swallowed it with his mouth. Just then he stopped breathing, tore off strips of rags from his body and hastily wrapped the wound.
With food in his stomach, his numb body gradually regained consciousness, and he only felt severe pain in his fingers. I couldn't help but grit my teeth and endured it for a while before I felt better. Just as he was about to turn around and leave, two children, who looked like clay monkeys, suddenly jumped on the body of the woman whose head he had robbed, crying pitifully and calling "Mother" one after another.
Xiao Chuba was shocked, turned around and wanted to escape, but the desperate cry and wailing sound was like a sharp knife piercing Xiao Chuba's internal organs. He had been eating more anxiously just now, and instantly he felt that his mouth was filled with the smell of blood. , I felt nauseated, my stomach was churning, and I couldn't bear it any longer, so I vomited out all the steamed buns I had just swallowed. I choked and coughed repeatedly, and my mouth was full of blood-red steamed buns dregs.
Xiao Chuba finally coughed and gasped. Seeing the filth he had vomited, he knelt on the ground and cried desperately. His cry was hoarse and shrill, but it was quickly drowned in the murmur of the crowd chanting sutras.
Amidst the fanatical chanting, more than 20,000 refugees gathered together like a huge turbid wave. In order to survive, they broke through and swallowed up the villages in Lunan with destructive power, heading in one direction towards Dadianzhuang. The direction is coming. There are endless corpses left along the way.
In front of Yunsheng Temple, despite the cold weather, there was a lively labor scene. More than 20,000 refugees in the refugee camp have been mobilized by the New Taoists to dig a huge trench around the Taoist temple and the refugee camp.
The specifications of this trench are that the width of the trench is one foot and two feet, the bottom of the trench is five to six feet, and the depth is one foot and five feet. The excavated soil was piled on the inner wall to form an earth bank, making the relative height on the inner side of the ditch higher.
Around the refugee camp and Yun Sheng Temple, approximately 3 kilometers of trenches need to be dug. The project is huge and daunting - not to mention that the snow is frozen and the ground is hard, making manual excavation extremely laborious. But in the Taoist leader's opinion, this is the only way to save the refugee camp and the Taoist temple.
Tens of thousands of refugees are a destructive force. No matter how many 21st century "spells" Zhang Yingchen has, he is very vulnerable to this wave of refugees coming for survival. Facing the masses who have been blinded by fanaticism and hunger, they must have enough means to intercept them and let them settle down.
Machine guns are the best method. But Ye Mengyan's team only had two light machine guns - too few. Only trenches could be used to stop them.
To this end, he mobilized more than 20,000 refugees in the entire refugee camp, and sent people to Dadianzhuang to ask for help from the villagers. He also mobilized the people of Dadianzhuang and neighboring villages, and also borrowed a large number of farm tools. , earthen baskets and poles.
The man was kind enough to say that the Taoist priest promised to use grain as wages, not to mention farm tools. It was originally a slack time for farming, and the displaced and exterminated households left behind many farm tools that they could not take away. It is enough for more than 20,000 people.
Except for the Taoist priest and the naturalized people from Lingao, everyone has doubts in their minds: Can a trench of this size be built in a short time? Mr. Zhuang asked tactfully:
"When will it be completed?"
The Taoist leader replied nonchalantly: "Oh, it will be completed within ten days."
It's incredible. Indeed, if it were completed within ten days, it would be before the refugees arrived. But with such a huge scale, even if it is operated by the government, it will take several months to complete.
Could it be that this Taoist Zhang has great handling skills? Both Mr. Zhuang and the banker’s boss found it incredible.
Zhang Yingchen returned to the refugee camp. He immediately sent a message asking the refugees who had led teams to dig ditches and rivers to come and see him.
Digging trenches is essentially the same as dredging rivers and digging canals. It doesn't require much advanced engineering technology - in China. Building water conservancy projects in winter is something that farmers often do during their leisure time. Almost all young and middle-aged laborers have done it.
Zhang Yingchen met with the first one hundred people and explained to them the current urgent situation and his plans. And promised to all refugees who participated in digging trenches. Additional relief rations will be allocated based on the amount of earthwork.
The refugees all regard him as a god who saves people in need, and now that the "god" has said so. There is additional food supply, so there is nothing they can't do - the refugees are also afraid that the stable life they have finally obtained will be destroyed. At that moment, they all expressed their willingness to start working immediately.
Zhang Yingchen drew a rough outline on the blackboard and gave specific dimensions.
"Don't dig out all the ditches in the north," Zhang Yingchen pointed at the blackboard. "Leave ten dirt roads across the ditches. The roads are only wide enough for one person to pass through."
"Are the real people going to let the refugees in?" one of them asked.
"They are all the people of God, and they have no choice but to do so. It's just that they now believe in evil heretics. As long as they can return to the right path, we will still save them..." Zhang Yingchen made a face of compassion.
In addition to the ten dirt roads that cross the ditch, several observation towers are built with soil on the embankment. This was what he prepared for the shooters of Ye Mengyan's team.
Zhang Yingchen immediately took these more than 100 people as the core, and selected another 2,000 young and strong laborers to form 20 teams, one for every 100 people, and each team had one captain and four supervisors. The team leader puts a paper flag on his waist and supervises the work. They are the main force in trench digging. Each team is responsible for a project section, and each section starts at the same time.
However, two thousand people were far from enough, so about 20,000 refugees in the refugee camp were mobilized, and it was announced that anyone, regardless of age or sex, who could dig and transport a basket of earth would receive a relief biscuit or five potatoes - This condition is also the same for the people in all villages around Dadianzhuang.
The most important thing in famine years is food, which is really more important than money for survival. As soon as the Taoist leader's order came out, not only the refugees came to work enthusiastically, but also the people from neighboring villages came one after another. Men, women, old and young, as long as they could walk, they all brought farm tools, baskets, poles and wheelbarrows, and they poured in day and night. When we arrived at the construction site, we started working hard.
The disciples of the Taoist priest served as timekeepers and were distributed in various project sections, handing out bamboo sticks and chips as vouchers for receiving work meals.
The project was carried out very intensively, and we were working day and night. Every night, Zhang Yingchen ordered people to light piles of bonfires along the trenches to provide light for the people working on the project and to protect them from the cold night. Large pots borrowed from various temples were kept on fire day and night, boiling water and gruel, and providing them at any time.
Even so, people who have been malnourished for a long time have to perform such heavy physical labor and consume insufficient protein and calories. As many as 100 refugees and civilians die on the construction site every day.
Zhang Yingchen stood on the piled earth embankment and looked at the people who were swarming like ants in the ditch and on the earth embankment, digging and transporting earth sweating profusely. Every time he raised his hand, the people cheered loudly, and hoes, shovels, and poles surged like a tidal wave. He stood on the earth embankment, the wind blew his robes slightly, and he felt "flying like a fairy" - this feeling is intoxicating: letting many people act according to their own wishes, there is nothing more enjoyable in the world than this ? No wonder real leaders are people who are pure in heart and live a simple life. Power is the best aphrodisiac, so what else do you need wealth and women for?
On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival, the project was completed, and the entire project took only six days and nights. Several men from the banker came here and saw that such a magnificent fortification had been erected. They couldn't help but click their tongues - the real person's ability is really not good enough.
After the completion, Zhang Yingchen asked carpenters and plasterers to build a small house on the north side of the earth embankment as his headquarters. Let the soldiers of the special reconnaissance team carry a box that they have hidden in the view to the earth embankment.
"Xiaoye, once the refugees arrive, your troops will be the key." Zhang Yingchen said to Ye Mengyan, "When the time comes, the bullets will be the tranquilizers to reduce their fever, so you have to be careful."
"It's okay." Ye Mengyan nodded, "I made a secret code agreement with you, and my men will shoot according to whatever gesture you make."
"Okay." Zhang Yingchen said, "Remember, you can't set foot on the dirt road across the trench alone before I give you an order!"
The crowd of refugees who poured into Linyi finally arrived seven or eight miles away from Yunsheng Temple after leaving countless corpses along the way. Several believers in black clothes and Nanwuliang Sect who had gone out hurried back.
"Master Lei Xiang! Master Wang Xiang!" The believer knelt down and saluted, "Ten miles ahead is the lair of the demon!"
The two people called Xiang Master are the actual commanders of this group of refugees. This large group of refugees is nominally headed by the "Saint Siyu" of the Nanwuliangjiao General Altar, but in fact it is headed by a protector of the general altar. This person dislikes the smell of the refugees, the chanting of sutras and the music. The noise was too noisy, so he took the saint in a big sedan chair and followed the refugees, only showing up when blessings were distributed. These two people were assigned to maintain order among the refugees.
One of them, named Lei, was named Lei Zilin. He was a poor scholar in his forties. He crossed the sea from Liaodong and moved to Shandong a few years ago. Because he had no food and clothing, he joined the religion. The skills of physiognomy and medicine have also become somewhat famous in the general circle. This time, he was asked to follow the refugee group, directing the believers to burn incense, carry flags, chant sutras and chant mantras, and he was regarded as a literary team.
The other one is called Wang Xing. He has a quiet appearance and seems to be an ordinary person who doesn't like to be troubled. In fact, he is a bandit leader in the Yimeng Mountain area. This time it was a group of believers in the refugee community. With more than 300 strong believers, many of them were deserters of officers and soldiers, and bandits who were separated from the group. All of them were brave and ruthless people, carrying sharp weapons.
