"What's so noisy outside?"
"Manager Iron, the bitter people outside are protesting, saying that there is no rice in the porridge and they are not full."
"Damn it, didn't a batch of old grain just arrive a few days ago?"
The supervisor who came to report was speechless.
How can there be enough food for the hundreds of laborers working in this dam quarry with just the two carts of old grain that were transported a few days ago? !
But that's what he thought in his heart, but he didn't dare to say it on the surface.
He heard, he just heard, that the Tie's Grain Company represented behind this iron steward had some relationship with the grain depot in the provincial capital.
A few days ago, his wife bought a bag of rice mixed with a lot of old grain at Tie's Grain Store.
He cursed his mother that day, but later he guessed what was going on, but he didn't dare to say more.
"Take the guys and come out with me!"
Manager Tie put on his clothes, greeted the two thugs, and went outside together.
There was a lot of noise outside.
A group of ragged Kuhaha, most of them holding broken bowls in their hands, gathered in front of the porridge tent.
With a snap, the sound of the bowl breaking was heard.
The iron manager who came over saw a clerk who was brought over from his own grain store being pushed to the ground by a tall and thick black man in the crowd.
"What are you doing, what are you doing, do you want to rebel?!"
Manager Tie raised his eyebrows, walked over with a whip, and yelled loudly.
Seeing the respectable people coming, many of the laborers who were joining in the fun shrank their necks.
But there were also a few people like Chen Tiezhu who stayed there unmoved.
"We don't want to rebel, we just want to know where the food went?"
Chen Tiezhu said directly.
"Rice, what kind of rice?"
Manager Tie asked angrily.
"It's just the food for us to eat. At the beginning, there was thick porridge, but now it's just water porridge!"
Chen Tiezhu is a fool and always speaks directly.
"Where is the food? Where did the food we eat go?"
he questioned.
"All the food you eat has been swallowed up, sold as inferior quality, and turned into money and stuffed into our own pockets..."
Of course it is impossible to tell such a big truth.
"The food is all in the pot!"
Manager Tie glared at the troublemaker and said.
"There's nothing in this pot at all. Taikoo can't even stand up if you throw it in. It's just water!"
Chen Tiezhu stepped forward and picked up the steaming cauldron.
"What do you want to do?"
Manager Tie asked warily, and the two thugs beside him also hurried forward, looking warily at the rough black man.
"I want to show you."
Chen Tiezhu answered and poured the water in the pot onto the ground next to him.
A large amount of water with a hint of white was poured out, and the pouring did not stop until some rice grains were finally seen.
People around only saw a thin layer of rice at the bottom of the pot.
"Look, everyone, this big pot of porridge only has this little rice at the bottom. Who can eat it?"
Chen Tiezhu showed the people around him a thin layer of rice grains under the pot, and finally turned the pot to the iron steward, as if to prove that they were not making trouble, but were just fighting for the reasonable rations they should have.
"Master Steward, when you were doing hard labor, you made an agreement with us to take care of the food, but now you are just in charge of a person with enough food, and we have to smash rocks with a hammer every day. How can we work without enough food? ?”
The person next to me said reasonably.
"Then what do you want?"
Manager Tie's face turned gloomy.
"We don't want to do anything, we just want not to be hungry."
Chen Tiezhu answered honestly.
"Yes, sir, we just want not to be hungry."
Someone echoed.
"Okay, okay, if you don't want to be hungry, then I'll let you eat."
The iron manager smiled.
"Really?"
Chen Tiezhu was a little happy, thinking that standing up to protest this time was useful.
But the next moment, there was a snap.
This tall and thick black man was whipped in the face by the iron steward.
"Really, more real than real gold, I will let you eat the whip in my hand now!"
Manager Tie shouted arrogantly.
However, his body was a little weak, and the whip he swung was not very heavy. Chen Tiezhu only suffered a sore face from the slap.
"Fuck you..."
The pain made this hungry fool become angry immediately. He cursed and waved his fists, wanting to beat his own person.
But before the fist hit Guanshi Tie, a thug stepped forward and kicked him over, and then started punching and kicking him.
The people around who came with Chen Tiezhu were stunned for a moment, then became a little angry, and just wanted to step forward to help.
"Bang~"
However, with the sound of a gunshot, these people stopped.
The iron manager took out his gun, pointed it in the sky and fired again.
"Move, why don't you dare to move? I'm telling you, if anyone dares to move, I will beat him to death!"
During the labor service, people in the same village were scattered to different places in order to facilitate management.
Under the threat of gunpoint, no one here dared to step forward.
"Hmph~"
Looking at the cowering crowd, Manager Tie blew his gun with some pride and gave orders to the thug who was beating Chen Tiezhu.
"Hang those guys and the guy you beat up on a tree and give them a beating, so that I can show these bitches. This is the result of making trouble!"
The thug nodded, and just as he was about to make a move, he was knocked to the ground by Chen Tiezhu.
Chen Tiezhu raised his fist and hit the man's arm protecting his head again and again.
The people around were a little shocked, and Manager Tie was also stunned for a moment, but then he became angry.
"Stop the fuck!"
The man picked up the gun again, but as the saying goes, if you are horizontal, you will be stunned. The gun did not stop Chen Tiezhu, but attracted his attention. His eyes were a little red and swollen and he stared at the man.
And just when Manager Tie was frightened by the other man's eyes and was about to shoot the man, another thug next to him also reacted and kicked Chen Tiezhu in the face from the side. But he and his companions fought against each other as a group.
But Chen Tiezhu was so fierce that he dared to fight back even if he was one against two. The people around him were ready to move again. But at this time, the garrison stationed at the stone field also noticed the commotion here and came to see the situation. Following the buzzing of the tracks, As soon as the sound was heard, a tall machine with a 20mm cannon drove over.
"What are you doing here?"
The captain, who was wearing a light yellow military uniform, looked at the three people who were still fighting and asked the iron piper next to him about it.
"Chief Jiang, some of these laborers wasted food and came to make trouble."
Manager Tie stepped forward directly and complained, pointing to the spot on the ground where the porridge had just been poured out.
"It's not like this, sir, it's because of our food recently..."
The laborer over there was interrupted before he finished speaking.
"Shut up, the food you eat is all the royal food from the government treasury. Not only do you not want to repay the kindness of the king, but you actually dare to waste the national food and come here to cause trouble?"
The visitor didn't listen to the laborer's excuse at all. After saying this, he made a decision directly: "Those who participated in the trouble will be deprived of food for three days, and those who lead the trouble will be whipped fifty times."
There is still a difference between professional soldiers and thugs from the grain store. Chen Tiezhu, a fool, still wanted to resist, but the knightmarer mecha came over and swiped it with a gun tube, and he flew several meters away. I fell to the ground and couldn't get up.
Several soldiers stationed at the stone field walked over, picked up Chen Tiezhu, dragged him aside, and began to beat the man.
After a few whips, there was a crackling sound, and the skin on Chen Tiezhu's back was split open, and the blood directly dyed the dusty clothes red.
Chief Jiang didn't bother to take another look, and motioned to Steward Iron to come with him. When the two of them reached a place where no one was around, he scolded them: "Look what you have done, and you actually caused people to make a fuss?!"
"Chiang Jiang, calm down, calm down!"
Manager Tie cursed the debt collector in his heart, reached into his arms, took out some money, and handed it over.
"Um."
After weighing the amount of money, Jiang Shichang's attitude suddenly improved a lot, and he turned around and said.
"Recently, there have been some troubles in many stone quarries due to food rations. The superiors have issued instructions for us to take care of the people below. Therefore, we should not deduct too much from the recent food. Otherwise, if the laborers cause trouble, I will It’s hard to explain to the superiors.”
"Understood, Chief Jiang, we will never cause you any trouble. In the past few days, I have ordered my people to give those bitches more food."
Manager Tie replied.
. . . .
Now, the newly arrived Governor Li has embezzled the construction money. Eunuch Zhang has taken the money and colluded with Governor Li, and a group of blood-sucking petty officials below have been colluding with the local gentry, and this time they also took the opportunity to embezzle money. I got some public food from the treasury.
In the past, when Governor Huang was here, he dared to chop off people's heads, so not many people dared to do it. However, now that Governor Li has been replaced, many people have gone back to their old ways, eating and taking whatever they want, from top to bottom. No matter who it is, they all want to take a big bite out of building dams.
And if these people can have enough to eat, someone will have to go hungry, and whoever has to go hungry is of course the poor fellow who came to work hard to pay off the tax debt.
In the stone yard of No. 51 Dam, Chen Tiezhu was beaten half to death. When he was dragged back by his fellow workers who were also doing labor, he was only half breathing, with a lake of flesh and blood behind him.
However, the laborers in the stone yard of No. 51 Dam were able to eat a barely decent meal again.
Although those troublemakers were cut off from food rations, many people still secretly hid some food and gave it to them quietly, especially Chen Tiezhu, so that this fool did not die directly from the weakness caused by his injuries. .
But this kind of better life didn't last long, because people's greed has no limit. It didn't take long for the food at No. 51 Stone Farm to be reduced again.
But this time there was no recovery, because the lower-level officials from bottom to top had begun to deduct the money for food from the laborers.
Especially after someone discovered that by starving some of the laborers to death and then concealing the false number of laborers, they could gain greater benefits, something even uglier about human nature happened.
. . . .
"Pa~"
Another laborer fainted from hunger and collapsed.
"Take it away and bury it in the pit!"
The overseers didn't care. They took whips and asked two laborers who were also hungry to move the people who fainted from hunger to the back pit. They treated the living people as if they were dead. This was not only the order from above, but also because of hunger. It is useless even if a fainted person is still alive.
He was so hungry that he couldn't do any work at all, so he might as well let him die.
Then, treat it as a living thing to squeeze out more rations that can be withheld, and then turn the withheld rations into nothing.
"Brother Tiezhu, we can't sit still and wait for death any longer."
Next to Chen Tiezhu, a person came over and said.
After experiencing the last protest incident in the quarry, although Chen Tiezhu was almost beaten to death, he also gained a lot of prestige while working in the quarry.
"If we continue like this, we will either die from exhaustion, or we will faint from hunger and be buried as dead people."
The young man who came over was named Wu Guangyi, and he was also one of the people who protested together.
"Let's go protest again!"
The man encouraged.
However, since he was beaten half to death last time, Chen Tiezhu, a fool, has also gained some insights. He suddenly understood why the grandfather in the village often said that the people would not fight with the officials, but he shook his head: "If you protest again, I’m afraid we will be beaten to death.”
"Then what should we do? Are we just waiting to die?"
Wu Guangyi asked quietly.
"I won't hide it from you. I already planned to pretend to be dead and sneak away secretly."
Chen Tiezhu replied quietly.
We can no longer stay in this hellish place. Staying any longer will only lead to death.
And the soldiers stationed in the stone field and equipped with mechas were not something they could fight against.
Therefore, we can only pretend to be dead and then run away in the dark.
To be honest, this plan was good, but Chen Tiezhu didn't know how to keep it secret, so he shared his plan with the laborers who were close to him.
These laborers felt that the plan was good, and they also shared it with those close to them. They spread it to ten people and hundreds of people, and soon it reached the chief stationed at the stone field.
Originally, Chief Jiang didn't care whether these laborers lived or died, but the people above discovered their little tricks. Although they turned a blind eye, they took the money they paid and allowed them to continue. Tan Mo deducted the rations from the laborers, but also gave them a fatal order, that is, Tan Mo's rations were fine, but some engineering tasks still had to meet the standards.
Well, if Chen Tiezhu was the only one pretending to be dead and escaping, then he wouldn't care too much. After all, the quarry has been accepting labor. One more person is not much, and one less person is not much. But now a group of laborers want to do this, Shi Director Jiang, who needed people to complete tasks in the field, couldn't sit still.
On the same day, this man led the soldiers into the stone field, found Chen Tiezhu and others, and in front of everyone, hung up Chen Tiezhu and others who were about to execute the escape plan of pretending to be dead and beat them half to death.
He also told other laborers that if someone fainted in the future, whether it was real or fake, they would directly kill them after confirming their death and then throw them into the pit. However, this directly blocked everyone's way of survival.
The hot pot was cooking oil, and there was a slight chance that it wouldn't catch on fire, but this time, the oil in the hot pot started to emit a lot of smoke.
It is true that the soldiers stationed in the stone field with mecha weapons are no match for the mortal bodies, but the soldiers who control the mecha cannot always be in the mecha.
Therefore, on the fourth night when the way to survive was blocked, the laborers of No. 51 Stone Field, who felt that they had no way to survive, began to fight back. However, they took advantage of the darkness to sneak attack the vigil soldiers stationed at the stone field, and a riot began. .
