stubborn thief

Tongguan.

Kang Yaomin, the commander of the left guard of Xi'an, covered his nose with the sachet he picked up, stumbled around the rat corpses everywhere, and cast his desperate eyes on the city gates piled with grain and grass behind him.

Two months ago, Kang Yaomin was still in a daze at left-back in Xi'an, so idle that he took a nap.

Governor Chen Qiyu issued an order and ordered him to be responsible for transporting grain and leading the 400 banner troops of the left guard to transport all the grain and grass stationed by the imperial court in Xi'an into Tongguan.

Don't mention how excited he was at that time. After hearing the order clearly, he immediately said like a carp: The big job is coming!

Kang Yaomin was not an ordinary person. The official position of commander of a guard station was the end of the struggle for millions of military households in the world.

But for Kang Yaomin?

Their entire family attaches great importance to culture and education, and becoming a military attaché requires a lot of mistakes.

The Kang family is a very famous family in Xi'an Prefecture, and it is even more famous in Wugong County.

The ancestor of their family was originally from Henan and was a merchant with some wealth. He moved to Wugong County in the late Song Dynasty, where he bought land, recruited refugees, and cultivated and passed down family traditions. The second generation ancestors were taught by Confucian scholars, and the third generation were county captains in the Yuan Dynasty.

In the fourth generation, it became more and more powerful. His name was Kang Ruji. He took the Ming Dynasty Confucian classics and his official position was Confucianism. However, when Zhu Yuanzhang chose the world's famous literary scholars to teach the princes and kings, this ancestor of the Kang family became He was selected into Prince Yan's Mansion and assigned to Zhu Di to join the army.

The official office to which this official position belonged at that time was called Wang Xiangfu, and its full name was Shenlu Qi's Military and State Affairs, and he was the same as the Prime Minister.

Kang Ruji worked in Prince Yan's Mansion for several years, and was transferred to another county magistrate before he could catch up with Jingnan. Later, Zhu Di Jingnan summoned Kang Magistrate to his residence, and was promoted to Minister of Punishment on the spot, and stayed in Beijing to assist Zhu Gaochi.

After his death, Zhu Gaochi ascended the throne and presented him with the Minister of Works.

His eldest son, Yin Shang Lin Yuan, was appointed as the Chief Supervisor and was promoted to Shaoqing of Taichang Temple in Nanjing. His second son, Yin Shang Lin Yuan, was appointed Deputy Supervisor and was promoted to You Guanzheng.

A primitive accumulation from the Long family is completed.

From then on, the descendants became officials successively. Those who studied were Guanzhong Confucius, those who treated diseases were medical teachers, and those who served as officials were county magistrates. In short... their family seemed to have inherited some kind of trait of turning disaster into good luck.

At the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the world was united. The ancestor of the Kang family recruited refugees in Wugong County to open up wasteland and cultivate land.

In the early Ming Dynasty, half of the world was busy with the Jingnan War. Kang Ruji, who had served as the Prime Minister in Prince Yan's Mansion, was very serious about being the county magistrate.

They like to read, are good at avoiding misfortune, and just muddle along, but at the same time they lack the motivation to make progress.

Even in Kang Yaomin's grandfather's generation, there was Kang Hai, a super slash young man.

In studying, he was the top scholar in the fifteenth year of Hongzhi, ranking first in the world;

Writing poetry, he was one of the seven sons of the Ming Dynasty and promoted the restoration of poetry;

Make friends. In the third year of Zhengde, Li Mengyang offended Liu Jin and was imprisoned. He handed him a small note saying "Save me from the mountain".

Kang Hai went to see Liu Jin and drank all night. Li Mengyang was released the next day.

In the fifth year of Zhengde's reign, Liu Jin was involved in the incident and was stabbed with 3,357 knives. Kang Hai was also demoted from his post because he was a fellow villager of Liu Jin.

After leaving his job, he returned home, made Yuefu and played music, supported Zhang Yupeng and Wang Lanqing, and formed a troupe club, forming the foundation of West Road Qin Opera.

The drama "Zhongshan Wolf" was put on the stage and he compiled it.

It costs money to engage in art. What if you don’t have enough money? In business, he is a world-famous Yangzhou salt merchant.

Kangshan Thatched Cottage in Yangzhou was originally an unnamed mound piled up from the waste soil of the canal. Because Kanghai lived there as a guest, it got the name of Kangshan. Later, Dong Qichang inscribed Kangshan Thatched Cottage, so it got its name.

Besides playing music and doing business, he also did some serious work. He compiled a "Wugong County Chronicle", which was rated as "the best history of the country". After that, he compiled local chronicles, mostly using this martial arts chronicle as a model.

Up to now, the Kang family still has Kang Wanmin, last year's new academician, and Kang Yumin, the supervising student with the title of Guanzhong Liangjue in calligraphy.

These two brothers embody the Kang family's temperament that has nothing to do with war.

Against the background of wars inside and outside the Pass, the two brothers spent most of their lives deciphering the Xuanji Diagram at home, and read out 7,958 poems from the Xuanji Diagram, which had only 841 characters.

Kang Yaomin is the younger brother of these two talented men, but there is a big age difference between him and the two elder brothers, so they can't play together.

He himself was also a student, but the national affairs were turbulent, and the social atmosphere changed as he grew up, abandoning literature and practicing martial arts, so he took the exam for a military position, and the imperial court arranged for a Xi'an left guard commander.

Of course, Kang Yaomin was not the only one in this generation of the Kang family who had the desire to serve the country. His younger brother Kang Jinmin also followed the same path and appointed thousands of households as the conduct officers of Yuhe Fort in Yulin Town.

But it’s hard to say about human destiny.

Although the four brothers of the Kang family have different career paths and life philosophies, they are all shrouded in the iron heel of Liu Chengzong at this point in time.

Kang Wanmin, a newly promoted scholar, was in the procession of gentry from Wugong County heading to Xianyang for a banquet. Kang Yumin, a great calligrapher, swept the couch to greet Captain Qingtian of the Marshal's Mansion in his hometown of Wugong.

Kang Jinmin, the ethics officer of Yuhe Fort, is repairing the scenic spots and historic sites where Liu Chengzong once lived.

The commander Kang Yaomin was in Tongguan, deeply concerned about the army of the Marshal's Mansion.

Even though the mountains are high and the water is long and the road is far and the car is far away, even if Liu Chengzong cannot hear him, Kang Yaomin still stubbornly sends his best wishes to the generalissimo: "Come here, I'll poison you to death, you coward!"

When Kang Yaomin received the task of escorting grain and grass into Tongguan, he did not expect that this majestic city would become his burial place.

In fact, Kang Yaomin had already died once in Tongguan.

First, news came from Henan Prefecture that the bandits had invaded Nanyang. The commander of the Tongguan Guards felt as if they were facing a powerful enemy and asked Kang Yaomin's 400 banner troops to join the Guancheng defense to prevent the bandits from snatching the grain.

More than 4,000 banner troops and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians took out all available weapons and stood ready inside and outside Guancheng.

But the expected thieves did not come. Instead, the mighty swarm of rats from Shanxi came, and they were everywhere in the mountains and plains, like black clouds twisting and lying on the ground.

However, there is actually no difference between rats and bandits to the Tongguan defenders.

They are all thieves who want to eat food.

Tongguan people gathered grain and grass all over the place. In order to keep the food and grass, the Guanban banner army used their special skills to deal with the swarming rats in a national war-like way.

Franco machine cannons, fierce fire oil tanks, ten thousand enemies, Hunjiang dragons, and flying cannons all fired out with great force.

But this great pass, built to defend against the terrifying ape erectus, had no miraculous effect in stopping these dusty little guys.

The rats easily filled up the moat, piled up layers of corpses under the city walls, swarmed up the city gate through poisonous fire and oil, walked through the streets and alleys inside and outside the city, and scattered the fleas on their bodies into wells and wells. Houses, warehouses.

The plague then raged. In just nine days, one commander and 800 flag troops were killed. It was useless to bring down the soldiers and civilians, and the entire Guancheng was paralyzed.

Kang Yaomin also died at that time. He died in a very miserable state. He had ulcers on his head, neck and armpits, and he coughed up flesh and blood like rotten watermelon. All his contaminated clothes were stripped off and burned. His body was thrown on the ground, and he was even covered with straw. There are no seats.

Like most people who died at the same time, he was no different from the rats that died on the streets.

A large number of people died in a short period of time, and even more people became sick. The lingering Chengguan no longer had the energy to care about the red tape of the world.

It is not uncommon for a family of three or even four brothers to be crammed into a coffin. The newly made coffin cannot keep up with the deceased, and even the coffin maker later dies.

People first used straw mats, and later curtains, felts and beddings. When these things were exhausted, each deceased person left the world as clean as when he came.

In fact, Kang Yaomin's situation is pretty good.

The 400 Xi'an Left Guard Banner Army under his control had already collapsed in the battle with the rats. Fortunately, he still had servants brought from home to take care of the funeral.

Two servants who were still able to move after being infected dug a grave for him in the city, which was actually a small pit within a big pit.

Due to drought, the pond at the corner of Tongguan became a mud pond, and after the plague hit, it became a mass grave.

The servants dug three feet into the ground and made a place for them. Unfortunately, the grave had not been dug yet, and the two servants who dug the grave had no strength, so they could only push him and several servants who died of illness in hastily.

After only burying two handfuls of loess, one of the two servants vomited blood and died, while the other drew a knife and wiped his neck - there was not enough space in the pit, and he really did not have the strength to dig another grave for himself.

On the third day after his death, Kang Yaomin woke up in the pile of corpses.

This situation is very common.

After all, in this era, people's detection methods are pulse and breath. If a weak person fails to survive, he will enter a state of suspended animation. If these two vital signs are gone, it means he is dead.

But it's not impossible to wake up.

That's why it's the custom for people to remain buried for a few days before they are buried. Leave it there and look at it again.

The situation faced by Tongguanwei was a little more complicated than usual.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians crowded into Guancheng and fought desperately against the rats to protect the food. As soon as the plague broke out after its incubation period, the chain of command was shattered.

The doctor who took the pulse was dead.

When a person falls to the ground while walking, it is as if he is dead.

Kang Yaomin still had a fever, and his fever was even worse than before because of the exposure of the ulcerated wound to soil and sewage.

But he was still alive, and the lumps on his neck, armpits, and thighs were smaller than before, but he couldn't be sure whether this was because the wounds were ulcerated and dirty blood flowed out.

With no time to grieve over the death of his servant, and no way to grieve over the corpses everywhere in Tongguan, Kang Yaomin stumbled back to the government office.

Until this time, the Tongguan defenders were still fighting.

After the death of Commander Zhangyin, the Tongguan Guards had no official commander, leaving only a bunch of hereditary commanders without actual authority.

Among them, the commander Zhang Eryou was the strongest and most popular. He was good at riding, shooting and fighting, and he was a powerful general who could defeat ten thousand enemies on horseback. Unfortunately, he also fell ill and developed a high fever, making it difficult to manage.

On the other hand, another commander, Sheng Yida, who was over sixty years old, took advantage of the window between the first outbreak and the second outbreak after the plague hit, and ordered the military households in the guard station to distribute decoctions and prohibit gatherings. , wash and dry bedding, open windows for ventilation, smoke moxa and bathe. At the same time, they also offer sacrifices to ward off evil spirits, and put amulets on the doors of every household and government office to ward off plague.

Whether the main one is useful or not depends on using them all!

As the saying goes, people become more mature with age, and they can reach their prime in their sixties. What haven't you seen before? When the plague comes, let’s not talk about anything else. Let’s do all the necessary preparations first, and then talk about detailed analysis.

The Tongguan Sheng family was very special among the hereditary commanders of the Ming Dynasty.

Their family is special in that they were born in the Imperial Guards, but they were members of the Wenyao clan and became famous through imperial examinations.

In two generations, there was a governor-general, a deputy commander-in-chief, a general in charge of the Beijing camp, a commander, as well as two Jinshi, father and son, who successively became ministers and ministers.

Commander Sheng Yida's father, Sheng Ne, was the third in the family. The eldest brother inherited the command and was later promoted to the post of Tongzhi of the former Nanjing Governor's Office. The second brother passed the martial arts examination and became a staff general in the Beijing camp; he passed the Jinshi examination and After his death, he was given the title of Minister of the Ministry of Rites.

The current commander, Sheng Yida, is Sheng Na's eldest son. His second brother Sheng Yihong, who passed away a few years ago, also passed the Jinshi examination and was promoted to the Minister of Rites.

Therefore, the Sheng family currently has many educated people. The younger generations not only have martial arts students who are good at archery, horse riding, and archery, but also have many talented people.

Sheng Yida knew very well that his arrangements were useless against this plague.

Because apart from the technique of seeking psychological comfort such as offering sacrifices and affixing amulets, other countermeasures were all targeted at the four seasons of epidemics in the past.

The so-called four seasonal epidemics are actually influenza that occurs when the seasons change.

The ancients did not lack knowledge of infectious diseases. On the contrary, because medical methods and understanding of viruses were not as developed as those of later generations, they had a deeper impression of infectious diseases.

It's just that people used a different caliber at that time. Instead of calling it an infectious disease, it was called an epidemic.

Epidemic itself means that all people are ill.

It is composed of the word "bian" and "shu". "shu" was a military weapon in the pre-Qin period. Bronze was still very valuable at that time. Most ordinary people used wooden sticks to fight. Only the nobles on chariots used bronze wares. This kind of wooden sticks had bronze hoops. The weapon with the three-edged spearhead is a well-deserved murderous weapon.

So that almost all words with the radical '殳' are related to injury, attack, killing and death.

Such as throwing, beating, killing, destroying, destroying and dying.

To put it simply, epidemic refers to this disease, which kills people very easily.

But diseases are different from each other. During the four epidemics, the mouth was dry, coughing, and the throat was sore. However, this plague caused headaches, fever, and swollen necks. Even taking handfuls of Yinqiao Powder was useless!

However, Sheng Yida's measures were not to get rid of the plague, but to boost the confidence of military households and rebuild the organizational capabilities that had been defeated by the plague.

The military households were frightened and shocked, and their hearts were divided. It was impossible to prevent the plague from spreading to one person's house, and to the whole village.

At this point, Sheng Yida's measures are very effective.

The Tongguan guards who were attacked by the plague quickly swept away the decline, and the remaining defeated soldiers were reorganized. They even found the pattern and key of the plague.

People who come into contact with rats or are infected with the plague usually start to get sick within three, five, or seven days. Those with mild infection can survive for a few days or even survive, while those with severe infection will die in about three days. Human world.

The two sons of the Sheng family, Zhaozhi and Kui, dug out the medical books of Zhang Zhongjing of the Han Dynasty, and took up the responsibility of treating the doctor after his death. They prescribed the right medicine to the sick military households according to the clinical manifestations, which really had certain effects.

Although they don’t know what the disease is, how they got it, or how it works.

In short, if a soldier suffers from high fever, he should drink Da Qinglong Decoction, which Zhang Zhongjing used to treat typhoid fever.

If you vomit pus and blood, drink Zhang Zhongjing's Cimicifuga Turtle Armor Decoction to detoxify. If it cannot be detoxified, increase the amount of realgar.

The pulse is slow and heavy, which means the pulse is weak, the heart is close to stopping, and he is about to go into shock. He should quickly drink the Ephedra Cimicifuga Decoction from Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Febrile Diseases" to kill him.

As for what is written in medical books, drinking too much is bad for your health, such as fatigue, edema, and yellowing of the face. Just ignore it and save your life first.

After the two brothers treated them like this, the mortality rate of sick military households dropped significantly. At least many military households with weak pulses and dying were brought back to the line of life and death. They originally died in three days, but now they are still alive after seven days. He was twisting and struggling on the ground, groaning in pain.

But people are still afraid of the plague, because people who are not sick yet and don't come into contact with others are still getting infected in droves.

Later, they discovered that more than twenty military craftsmen and military households close to the gunpowder shop of the Ordnance Bureau in the city were not infected.

In other places, there were corpses everywhere, and every family was wearing sackcloth and mourning. But they were fine and had nothing to do. They even developed a side business and started making coffins, weaving linen, wreaths, and mourning sticks in the Ordnance Bureau.

When asked what was going on, they didn’t know. They had been in contact with rats and patients, but they were dying. Hey, it’s okay!

Just when the Tongguan guards were about to restore order and even discover the secret of the military craftsmen's protection from the plague, Marshal Wei Qian'er's forward troops approached Tongguan.

For a moment, they just saw hope of survival, and the order that Tongguan and everyone worked together to create collapsed - they had already tried their best to survive, and it was impossible to deal with another war.

But Tongguan is so important. It not only stores a huge amount of food and grass, but more importantly, it is the gate to the world.

Once the rebels pass Tongguan, Henan Prefecture, which is also suffering from the plague, is irresistible. Otherwise, there is no danger to defend. The strong Western soldiers can attack the capital to the north, sweep across Shandong to the east, and threaten Fenghuang to the south. Positive.

To prevent this from happening, it is the responsibility of Tongguan Weishi to receive the hereditary military position of the country.

At this juncture, in order to stop the rebels in the Marshal's Mansion, the Tongguan guards were at their peak, and the commander Zhang Eryou, who had long since fallen ill on the couch, struggled to hold on.

He ordered his family to lead their horses, fetched swords, bows and arrows, led three hundred sick banner troops to kowtow tearfully to the Forbidden City at the pass, and then left the pass.

After three defeats in three battles in one day, only forty bannermen were left. Under the leadership of Zhang Eryou, they managed to escape the pursuit of the marshal's army and returned to Tongguan Guards.

The fallen flag soldiers sacrificed their lives and hit Wei Qian'er's head with the plague.

The elite troops of the Marshal's Mansion, who had swept through 40,000 Ming troops in Guanzhong in three days, stopped when they encountered Tong.

A tragic defeat created a great strategic victory. The flag army of Tongguan Guard wanted to celebrate, but they didn't know where the celebration came from.

The significance of the great victory is thousands of miles away, but the tomb of the dead is very close at hand.

More importantly, they did not realize that the army stationed at the foot of Mount Hua on the other side of the battlefield was just like them.

We are soldiers like them, holding the same beliefs, experiencing the same struggles, and participating in the same crazy war.

Only four days had passed since Zhang Eryou went to war. On the wheat-filled plateau west of Guancheng, large red flags were fluttering among the paths on the wheat field ridges, and the slow and rhythmic sound of hoofbeats was like heavy drums.

The red-armored soldiers who were pressing the bridle and marching slowly all had red eyes and swollen necks. Their movements were slow and tired, but they still maintained the extremely standardized horse movements in the drill, but their faces were expressionless and their eyes were dull, and they licked the cracks with the tip of their dry tongue. Her lips rose and fell with the horse's back, staring at the towering city gate.

They first appeared dotted in the wilderness, and then joined together, against the red glow of the setting sun, like an ominous omen spreading over the earth.

The cannons on Tongguan City exploded, the bells and drums continued, mixed with the hoarse shouts of the defenders, which spread throughout the city.

"Rebels in Baocheng!" (End of this chapter)