Chastity Layman 2

Chapter 197

Zheng Yuanrui took the white note, made a ferry on the pier, crossed the Jing River, and went straight to Qizhou.When he arrived in Yongcheng, Qizhou, he met his brother Zheng Yuanxuan.

Zheng Yuanrui narrated what happened in Jingyang from the beginning.

"You are confused. At this time, why do you still think about transporting grain to Qizhou to sell?" After hearing this, Zheng Yuanxuan was very dissatisfied with his brother. In the past six months, the Zheng family in Xingyang was almost put on fire by the new emperor. Roasted, Zheng Xuanli was brought up and beaten by the emperor every now and then, and now his muscles and bones are all broken.

Not to mention that Zheng Shanguo, who is the head of the Zheng family, is completely unemployed at home now.

Since Zheng Yuanxuan returned to the Tang Dynasty, he has successively held important positions such as Taichangqing, Hongluqing, and General Canqi. After Dingyou was at home, except for the three years of keeping his filial piety, he went to the Turks five times for the Tang Dynasty, and was once held by the Turks. Xieli was detained for a long time.

For Datang, it was hard work, but as soon as Li Shimin seized power, he was immediately given a pretext to lose his position, and then hung up for a few months. After repelling the Turks before, he traced back to him the merits of his mission to the Turks. He was awarded the title of governor of Qizhou and released Beijing.

At this time, don't keep your tail between your legs and keep a low profile, you still want to make a disaster fortune.

"Brother, the last time the government's food was confiscated, there was no objection or dissatisfaction at all. Why don't you understand?"

Zheng Yuanrui has not been an official for many years. These years, he has studied Confucian classics at home and also taken care of the industry. He is far inferior to Zheng Yuanxuan brothers in terms of these situations in the court.

He just thought that his brother is now the governor of Qizhou, and he would bring some grain to sell, not only to help the brother stabilize the situation, but also to make some money along the way, who would have thought that he would be unlucky to meet Qin Lang passing by.

"Go down and rest first."

Zheng Yuanxuan sat alone in the governor's yamen and pondered. Qin Lang's handling of Yuan Rui's matter surprised him. After all, Qin Lang and Zheng's family had long been feuded, and the relationship between the two families had been at odds for a long time.

But thinking about it carefully, although this guy said that his relationship with the Zheng family was tense, brother Shanguo also said that in June before, Xu Jingzong sent people to copy the Anzhaizi of the Zheng family's parents, and Qin Lang once defended them .Not to mention, the niece and granddaughter Thirteen Niang are now in Qin Langa, and it is said that she is quite well taken care of.

This time, this matter can be big or small, but this young man didn't take the opportunity to make things big, but instead gave the Zheng family affection in this way, which is really surprising.

Compared with Qin Lang's methods, many members of the Zheng family are far behind in their work. Not to mention the junior Zheng Xuanli and Zheng Hongji, even his brother Zheng Yuanrui is not as good, short-sighted.

But he immediately turned to something else.

Qin Lang said that he would accompany Qin Qiong to inspect the locust catch.

Could it be that Qin Lang deliberately sold his favor first, and then wanted him to fully cooperate with him in this matter?

But after thinking for a long time, Zheng Yuanxuan still shook his head.

One yard owned by a yard.

He has always been against the matter of catching and exterminating locusts.

He not only insisted on the view that heaven and man were connected, and heaven sent warnings, but he also believed that catching locusts and eating locusts was a matter of harming the peace of heaven.

Therefore, in Qizhou under his tenure, although the imperial court issued official documents repeatedly, Zheng Yuanxuan still suppressed them until now.

Not only did he not respond to the court's extermination of locusts, but he even issued an order from the governor to prohibit the people from catching locusts.

When Sima, the governor of the state, heard that Qin Qiong and his son were coming, they all came to ask for instructions.

"Your envoy, Mr. Qin and Bachelor Qin, are you here to pursue the crime?"

"Locusts are natural disasters. To get rid of natural disasters, only the emperor cultivates his own virtues, and the heavens can avoid natural disasters, and we can't put the cart before the horse!"

In the face of inquiries from his subordinates, Zheng Yuanxuan still insisted on his own opinion, refused to modify the order, and still maintained the original order not to allow the people to catch locusts.

"But now there are more and more locusts. According to the locust control manual issued by the Zhenfu Department, locusts hatch from eggs to insects. They can grow wings in only one month, and then they can fly in groups. Day and night It can even fly for three hundred miles. If we don’t catch and kill locusts, when the locusts grow wings, they will fly everywhere.”

"Locusts are tormenting, we have to pray more devoutly!"

No matter how much the subordinates tried to persuade him, the governor couldn't be persuaded, so everyone could only sigh and retreat.

Although Zheng Yuanxuan had not been appointed governor for long, he did a lot of practical things in the first place, such as building Confucius Temple, building prefectural schools and county schools, encouraging students, teaching them personally, and being upright and clean, so he still has a lot of prestige.

······
Qin Qiong originally planned to go to Binning and Jingyuan prefectures first, then go to Lianggan and other places, and finally return via Qinlong and other prefectures. Qizhou can be regarded as the last stop back to Beijing.

But now, after listening to Qin Lang's introduction, he knew that Qizhou, a large state in the west of Beijing, was the least active in locust control, and even ran counter to the imperial court's decision.

The key to all this is Zheng Yuanxuan.

This hero who has been sent to Turkic five times and is also a well-known and famous scholar is still offering sacrifices to the God of Locusts every day and praying to God to solve the locust plague. This has caused the level of locust disasters in Qizhou to continue to rise, and even The price has also risen the most.

The people are worried that the locust plague is uncontrollable, so the grain keeps soaring, but Zheng Yuanxuan opposes the forced expropriation of the grain in the hands of the common people, so the price of grain is no longer under control. city.

Under such circumstances, Qin Qiong could only temporarily divert to Qizhou to personally inspect locust control and disaster relief.

Qizhou, west of Chang'an, was called Fufeng in ancient times.

In the Qin and Han Dynasties, there were Zhongjingzhao, Zuofengyi, and Youfufeng, and they were called Sanfu.

This is the west gate of the capital, but now the west gate is completely out of control, the locust plague is serious, the food shortage is serious, and the people are panicked.

People are scrambling for grain everywhere, but the grain store only sells a very small amount of grain every day, and the underground grain market is very rampant, with prices changing all the time.

After Qin Lang and others entered Qizhou, there was no such lively scene of locust catching in the field as in other places.

The newly grown green shoots in the ground are gone.

The ground is densely packed with jumping gnats. These jumping gnats are eating young shoots recklessly and growing happily. Many of them have successfully molted several times and are about to grow wings and can migrate.

"Corrupt Confucianism is detrimental to the country!"

Qin Lang cursed angrily, other states are doing their best to control the locust situation, but Qizhou has allowed the locusts to develop, and even banned the people from catching locusts. This place is simply a breeding base for locusts. Within ten days, the first batch of migratory locusts will It is about to fly out of Qizhou and start to harm other places.

It can fly up to three hundred miles a day.

Once the locusts in Qizhou take shape, the efforts of other states will be in vain.

Passing by a village, many villagers were praying around a locust temple, and a huge clay locust was enjoying their worship.

There is even a group of bald heads wearing monk robes, who are teaching spells there.

"This is the dharani mantra for the seeds of the mantra so that there will be no locusts. Take the seeds once and curse 21 times to ensure that there will be no locusts after the seeds are cultivated!"

Those bald people are preaching their mantra, Tudharani mantra. As long as you offer them a bucket of food, you can teach them a spell that they have consecrated. They say that taking it back and reciting the mantra on the seeds will take effect, and it will be planted in the future. Not afraid of locusts.

This despicable deception has countless villagers lining up to ask for talismans and food.

At this time, the incomparably precious food was offered to these people one by one, and then exchanged for a piece of yellow paper and a spell.

"It's too shameful for these monsters to openly bluff and deceive!" Qin Lang said angrily.

Qin Qiong also looked gloomy.

"Come here, take down all these monsters!"

The brigade of Zhen Fusi soldiers rushed forward, surrounded the villagers, and then went up and knocked down the panic-stricken bald people to the ground, and dragged them to Qin Lang like dead dogs.

"Bold monster, dare to cheat on this trip, how courageous."

The bald men still wanted to pretend to be with Qin Lang.

Qin Lang waved his hand directly, and Ah Huang immediately drew his knife and jumped to chop off a bald man's head with one blow.

Blood splattered, and the crowd screamed.

Ah Huang put away the knife.

"The envoy of Zhen Fu of the Tang Dynasty, the envoy of all the locust catchers, Duke Yi accompanied Ping Zhangshi, and the envoy of the locust catcher of Guanlongheshuo, Duke Qi is here!"

Qin Lang ordered people to smash the huge mud locust, and then directly used the altar in front of the locust temple as a public judgment stand.

In the face of knives and blood, few of those bald people are really hard goods.

They quickly confessed.

Among this group, one was a monk who used to be a monk in Chang'an Temple. At the beginning of the year, because he couldn't even memorize all the scriptures, he was ordered to return to vulgarity. Traveling in all directions, bluffing and deceiving everywhere.

This time when the locusts started, this guy united with other idlers, pretended to be monks from Chang'an, and taught some Dharani mantras here, taking the opportunity to defraud money.

Because of the serious locust plague here in Qizhou, they ran here to cheat, and made a lot of money, but they didn't expect to meet Qin Lang, a ruthless person, and beheaded a person as soon as he came.

When the common people heard these bald heads confess on the spot that they were just fake monks, and some of them were even fugitives, they were also stunned, and when they heard about Dharani mantras, it was even just a sentence that the monk randomly picked from some scriptures. , everyone was angry.

For these guys, even Qin Lang, who always believed that human life was precious, didn't hold back this time, and directly ordered to kill these monsters on the spot.

With the corpses of these monsters, Qin Lang rushed directly to Qizhou Yongcheng with his men and horses angrily.

More than a dozen blood-stained corpses were dragged directly to the Governor's Yamen by the cavalry of the Zhenfu Division, and one after another, they were directly thrown into the Governor's Yamen.

This time, the state government was also restrained by this hand.

When Qin Qiong and Qin Lang walked out under the guard of honor, all the officials in the yamen also knew that something big was going to happen this time.

It's just that no one expected that when they came, they would greet everyone in such a situation.

(End of this chapter)