Picturesque Rivers and Mountains in the Red Chamber

Chapter 298 4.94 The White Lotus Sect is not so exaggerated, right?

Volume Four

4.94 The White Lotus Sect is not so exaggerated, right?

Here, Zhou Yang took the girls, soldiers, and goods all the way without mentioning the water route. It was not until the 26th of the first lunar month that he finally returned to Daye. Before he could arrange the ceremony and manpower, he saw that Fu Shi and five thousand households had already blocked the road. When he arrived at the Qianhu Yamen lobby in the county town, he had no choice but to go over and ask. Unexpectedly, the six of them just went through a few words of greeting procedures before pulling him on his horse and leaving the city.

"Look at you, it seems like the matter is urgent?" Zhou Yang asked with a somewhat annoyed expression. Who else had been on the cruise ship for several days, and was dragged to work before he could stand up as soon as he got off, or should he just set off on horseback? His temper was absolutely terrible It's not going to get better, "If the matter is not big enough, be careful, I will ask you to undergo a month of fully closed training!"

"Sir, how can I dare to be so humble in my humble position?" Yuan Xiu said with a wry smile and cupped his hands, "If the situation is not really urgent and I can't explain it clearly with words, I would not dare to be so rude in my humble position."

"Is there something wrong with the Thousand Households Office?" Zhou Yang calmed down and asked with some confusion, "No? Then what else could be wrong? Daye County is not a small one, but the only one who can be involved with us is our own family. Are these brothers?"

"Your Excellency, let's follow along!" Fu Shi said in a retort.

A group of eight people, plus two subordinates of the general banner rode their horses and galloped, and arrived near a village less than ten miles away from the city in a short time; to Zhou Yang's surprise, Yuan Xiu called everyone to dismount before entering the village. , and then all the way either with the help of the dead grass in the woods, or into the bottom of the ditch, and finally left the subordinates and Fu Shi outside the village, went around a big circle before using the firewood pile to cover, and walked to the outskirts of the village.

"What's going on?" Zhou Yang's expression became extremely solemn after only looking at the open space in the center of the village from a distance, "Why don't I know that in this rural area of ​​Huguang, there are still great gods dancing before the end of the new year?" Rules? Judging by their appearance, aren't they a little too religious?"

"Sir, it's the White Lotus Sect." Yuan Xiu said with a wry smile, not trying to hide it at all, "This is one of their incense altars. The one who is jumping on the high platform is the senior brother in the village. They are gathered here. The external reason is to open an altar and offer sacrifices to pray for good weather and a good harvest this year."

"What the hell, even if I don't believe this, I know that there is no one with a white cloth strip wrapped around their head in worshiping the gods." Zhou Yang scolded under his throat, "Just like a bird, saying that they are doing funerals to summon souls, It’s more reliable than opening an altar to offer sacrifices; also, you just said that this is an altar of incense, are there many such things?”

"A lot!" Jiao Zhen, who usually has a dull personality and never likes to talk, took over and said, "Basically, even in places not far from the outskirts of the city, there are always two or three Zhuangzi; if they are remote and poor, There may be one in a village, and the poorer and unlucky you are, the more of these things you have.”

"Dongjie, I remember when we first came here, the White Lotus Sect here wasn't so exaggerated, right?" Zhou Yang asked with a frown.

"Yes, the humble position was strange at first. It was only after asking around that I found out that it doesn't matter here in Huguang. There has been a drought in the Central Plains for two consecutive years, and a large number of refugees have flowed into Huguang to beg for work as usual. It's pretty good here. I heard that Yun The Yang Mansion was overcrowded, and they had even started fighting with the local people many times in order to have enough food.

Huguang was originally a prosperous city, and although the White Lotus Sect had always been quite powerful, it did not have many basic manpower here, and now it was able to help them make up for it. Fortunately, that area had always been the hardest hit area by the rioters, and the admirals and governors were well prepared. Disaster relief and suppression on the one hand finally kept Yunyang Mansion from getting into trouble. "

"In this way, other prefectures and counties that had nothing to do originally had signs of trouble due to lax precautions." Zhou Yang frowned deeper and understood what Yuan Xiu meant, "Where is our county magistrate? He didn't take any action. Disaster relief? Also, this village doesn’t seem to be poor. These people worshiping the incense altar should be ordinary people in the village, right? They haven’t become refugees, so why are they causing trouble? "

"A few days ago, people from all the villages in the suburbs of the county gathered at the county government office, hoping that the county magistrate could take the lead in disaster relief. They were willing to donate money and materials for this purpose." Meng Kun, who has always been relatively reckless, said bitterly, "No one can Unexpectedly, the dog officer said nicely, but he took the money and food in his left hand, and sent out the government servants with his right hand to chase and chase the victims everywhere, but not even a grain of rice was released.

The victims, who were not many at first and would not starve to death at any rate, now had no way of survival. They started to threaten and demand food in groups, causing panic in the entire county. The White Lotus Sect took the opportunity to preach, and the most important thing was to recruit people from each village. Once the organization was in hand, the excuse was to "connect and protect each other", and the other side would take in the victims and help them contact the villages to discuss "borrowing food", and they would gain momentum as soon as they went back and forth. "

"This piece of shit!" Zhou Yangqi yelled. As a modern man, of course he knows the principle of "officials forcing the people to rebel". If the people can't survive, don't blame others for risking their lives; but it's different now. He can't look at Daye. It would become chaotic, because in that case, the only person responsible for ending the situation would be the Daye Qianhu Institute in his hands.The problem is that he has no way to do anything about this kind of thing, because he cannot directly use the money and food from Xuezihao to provide disaster relief. He is now in charge of the military power, and theoretically has no authority over the administrative affairs of the county. If he dares to take action, he will not be able to escape. ", evil intentions", this is a dead end that must not be tolerated in feudal society.

But what if you just do nothing and just watch?In the end, it was inevitable to use troops to suppress it. The education he received in his previous life had already engraved the concept of "serving the people" in his bones. He was really unwilling to get involved in something that was obviously killing people.

"Sir, what should we do?" Zhao Tong asked worriedly.

"What should we do? Cold salad!" Zhou Yang was very angry, but he had no way to do it, "As long as there is no accident here, we can't move; once there is an accident, we will be killed no matter what, this dog named Xu , go and don’t let me seize the opportunity, otherwise you must let him have a good taste of the power - get out first, it’s not convenient to talk here!”

There is nothing to say next, since the problem has been found, and there is no way to solve it on the spot, so we can only lay the groundwork first and be ready to do it at any time. Therefore, Zhou Yang greeted everyone and went back to the Qianhu Office, where daily work is going on. Training——If you really want to say it, this is actually against the rules. In the feudal era, "exercise once every three days" was considered an elite soldier. His mode of "exercise once a day" or "training day and night" is generally "thoughtful" "Talents use it.

"Don't worry, sir. I have never been relaxed these days." Seeing Zhou Yang's satisfied look, all six of his subordinates secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Then Yuan Xiu smiled and reported, "The banditry was eliminated in the first two times." Although it was not a big deal, it made the brothers see blood and made them understand that only by practicing well on weekdays can they save their lives in real fights.

Now our two lances, two matchlocks, one cavalry and one artillery have all been replenished. They have completed the drills strictly according to the standards you mentioned. Such elite soldiers can look to the world. Then They are also the top group, but their daily consumption is indeed a bit higher. "

"Don't worry about food and wages, I'm not short of those three melons and two dates." Zhou Yang waved his hand indifferently and pointed at the artillerymen who were training to transition from marching to combat and said, "Have they all undergone live ammunition training now? They won't fight with them anymore. Back then, we could only use three artillery pieces, so it would have to be the instructor I hired to use them, right?"

"I don't dare to take this humble position!" Yuan Xiu, who was originally an artillery household, broke out in a cold sweat. "Now, this hundred households are equipped with a total of twelve infantry cannons, and there are eight spare ones in the warehouse. Every small flag has been flown. At least three live rounds were conducted, including rigorous training in all aspects, including aiming, bomb selection, gun position setting, distance estimation, etc.

However, they still have a short time after all. If it is covered by ordinary grape bullets, it will be okay. Solid bullets at longer distances are not accurate. But if they were to deal with the Ye family that time, they could bombard the enemy from a distance of more than a hundred steps. There will definitely be no problem with Fangchengmen; sir, please see, their conversion speed is not bad. "

"It makes sense." Glancing at the artillerymen who were still sweating in the winter, Zhou Yang nodded with satisfaction, "Keep working hard - there must be other problems, why haven't I heard you mention the cavalry? "

"This -" A group of people looked at each other, and finally Meng Kun, who was more outspoken, explained, "Sir, none of the low-level cavalry people understand this, so we can only let them practice according to their own abilities. They usually practice equestrianism and riding archery on weekdays, but in the humble opinion, their riding skills are pretty good, but this riding and archery..."

Recruiting soldiers in the feudal era was not like today. A bunch of ordinary young people who knew nothing were sent to a training base. They selected whatever types of soldiers they needed and then trained them slowly. Because the vast majority of people in this era were illiterate. Soldiers have little training value at all. They are generally the life of grassroots infantrymen and rarely have any chance to stand out.

For "advanced units" such as cavalry and archers, when recruiting, you need to find people with a certain foundation. Otherwise, riding a horse alone is enough to scare most people away; you also need to add daily maintenance training, and The best equipment configuration that can be obtained. On these two points, the latter is okay. The former was crushed by the surrounding nomads. This is also the main reason why all the dynasties in the past were trapped by the northern border troubles.

"Did you forget the line advance and saber training that I asked them to strengthen before I left?" Zhou Yang actually doesn't know how to train cavalry, but he has seen a lot of works and knows what modern light cavalry looks like. no problem?"

"This is just the most basic riding event, of course there is no problem." Yuan Xiu said without hesitation, "It's just that the matchlock gun is more troublesome. The horses are always frightened at first. Not long ago, they were familiar with the sound of gunfire, but , these horses are just high-quality fast horses, and there is still a big gap between them and war horses."

"Leave it to me, you can continue your daily training." Zhou Yang waved his hand to signal them to get out, then frowned and looked at the cavalry hundred households, "Wall assault. Should it be lining up to kill people?"

(End of this chapter)