"It seems that Chief Shen knows Mr. Ye's identity?"
“I’ve heard a little bit about it.”
"Does Chief Shen know that we are wanted by the government?"
"Of course I know."
Ye Zongliu did not formally start the uprising until July of the ninth year of Zhengtong, but before that, he had already had many small-scale battles with government soldiers and had long been a wanted person.
"Well, it seems that I, Ye, was wrong. I have courage!"
Seeing the misunderstanding resolved, Cang Huotou next to him responded, "Boss Ye, I was saying that based on Case Master Shen's behavior last night, how could he be a coward?"
"That's right. A person who can do something righteous is definitely not an ordinary cowardly scholar."
The strong men nearby responded one after another. Shen Yichen's action of helping the refugee children last night won them a great deal of favor.
You have to know that Shen Yichen belongs to the scholar-official class, and refugees belong to the lowest class of people. In the past, those powerful people would never look at them straight in the eye, and even looked at them with disgust and contempt when they approached.
Only Shen Yichen ignored the distinction between high and low and was willing to help. This behavior deeply moved the grassroots miners.
However , Shen Yichen felt somewhat confused when this group of people told him what happened last night. It seemed that their appearance was not accidental but had been planned long ago?
No matter how hard Shen Yichen racked his brains, he couldn't figure out why the miners far away in Zhejiang would pay attention to him.
"Chief Ye, I have a question in my mind and I hope you can answer it."
The doubts were too deep, Shen Yichen could not hold back any longer and was ready to ask the other party.
"What Mr. Shen wants to know is why we helped him, right?"
"Indeed."
"I wonder if Mr. Shen still remembers Bian He, the aide to the Yingtian prefect."
Bian He?
Hearing this name, Shen Yichen was extremely surprised. Why would an aide to Yingtian Prefecture Governor Li Min have connection with Zhejiang miners?
But he suddenly remembered that at the celebration banquet in the courtyard, Bian He had said something inexplicable, saying that for the crime he had committed, Shen Yichen would have to inherit the title and reach the level of Duke Chengguo before he could help.
At that time, Shen Yichen thought that Bian He was just drunk and talking nonsense, but now thinking back, it’s probably not just nonsense, he is a "traitor"!
"Is Mr. Bian related to you?"
"That's right. Mr. Bian and I are from the same hometown of Qingyuan and have known each other since childhood. Later, he was wanted by the government for the mine incident, so he changed his appearance went to Yingtian Prefecture to work as a staff member, hoping to find a way to reconcile."
"So Mr. Bian chose me?"
"It's not that Case No. 1 Shen was chosen, but Case No. 1 Shen was one of many candidates."
After Ye Zongliu finished speaking, he glanced into the distance and said, "Mr. Shen, I will explain this to you in detail, but now we have to clean up and leave. This place is not far from Zhenjiang Prefecture, and if the blood flows downstream, it will be easily discovered."
The canal is not as wide as the Yangtze River. If the bodies of more than a dozen people are not dealt with, they will soon be discovered by passing ships. No matter what the reason is, Shen Yichen will not be able to escape responsibility for these more than a dozen lives.
Therefore, these speedboats and corpses had to be disposed of before being discovered, otherwise if they attracted soldiers, it would be twice as difficult to escape.
"Okay, then I'll trouble you, Chief Ye."
"You're welcome. Besides, Mr. Shen is a scholar , which really impresses me."
Ye Zongliu praised him. He could tell from Shen Yichen's pale face and slightly trembling arms that it was the first time for him to see such a bloody scene.
But even so, Shen Yichen remained calm and clear-minded from beginning to end. And when he said he wanted to deal with the corpse, he agreed without hesitation.
If they met some pedantic literati, they would probably think of reporting to the authorities to clear themselves of the matter, and they would have neither the ambition nor the courage to do anything big.
Shen Yichen, who is still in his teens, has achieved this, which makes him look like a hero. No wonder he became the first in the Little Three Yuan case and was valued by Master Bian. He is indeed different from others.
In response to Ye Zongliu's praise, Shen Yichen just smiled and didn't say anything, but he felt helpless and at a loss whether to laugh or cry.
He was a descendant of a Ming Dynasty noble family, the first place in the Minor Three Imperial Examinations, and a scholar-official. In theory, he should be a "die-hard" member of the government.
Now, he has inexplicably become a member of the same boat with the "rebels", and has even reached a consensus on destroying the body. The other party even admires him. What kind of bizarre story is this?
Ye Zongliu's group was very efficient and cleaned up the "crime" scene in a short time. The bodies of the Jingkou Gang were salvaged and placed on the speedboat, and then several people were assigned to drive the speedboat to a remote river bay.
As for the subsequent action, whether it would be burning it or some other method, Shen Yichen couldn't guess, after all, he was not a professional in this field.
However, the cooperation and discipline of Ye Zongliu's group of miners also made Shen Yichen look at them with new eyes.
Apart from anything else, just looking at the execution ability shown in the process, even Shen Yichen felt that the military service of some garrisons in Yingtian Prefecture was not as good as theirs, which was completely inconsistent with the stereotype of the peasant army as a "mob".
At this moment, Shen Yichen suddenly remembered that the Qi family army in the late Ming Dynasty, which swept across the Japanese pirates and won every battle, was formed by recruiting miners from Yiwu, Chuzhou, Taizhou and other places as the backbone.
Among them, Chuzhou is Ye Zongliu’s hometown!
In a sense, this group of miners was the predecessor of the famous Qi Family Army, and could be regarded as one of the best sources of soldiers in the Ming Dynasty.
After the matter was settled, the Que ship continued to set sail. Ye Zongliu and a few others remained on the Que ship and began to talk to Shen Yichen about Bian He.
Bian He also came from a miner's family in Chuzhou. He was gifted and good at studying since childhood, so the villagers worked together to send him to school, hoping to cultivate a scholar.
Bian He lived up to everyone's expectations and successfully passed the imperial examination at the age of 26. If he continued to develop on this trend, although he could not become a high-ranking official, at least he would be able to give back to his fellow villagers and benefit the people there.
However, all this was interrupted by the mining tax in the early years of the Zhengtong Dynasty. The miners, who were already burdened with heavy taxes, once again faced increasing taxes. In addition, the court also vigorously cracked down on private mining, and the extra income was blocked. Now even the last way to survive was gone.
The miners were strong and powerful, and they had formed a rudimentary militarized organization. In addition, clan fights were very frequent in Zhejiang and Fujian, which made the locals very tough and bloody, so various small-scale resistance riots continued.
Marshal Qi later chose Chuzhou miners as his soldiers because he saw these characteristics.
Faced with this situation, Bian He initially had a literati mentality and hoped to negotiate with the government to reduce mining taxes and give the people a way to survive.
The result of this naive idea was obvious. The government did not buy it at all. They even took the opportunity to hunt down the leading miners during the negotiations and listed them as wanted persons, including Bian He, a scholar.
Seeing that negotiations were fruitless, Ye Zongliu simply gave up talking and sent people to various places to purchase iron tools for "forging weapons and armor", and then occupied the mountains and became a king, using force to fight against the government.
This is why they appeared in Zhenjiang Prefecture among the refugees.
After all, Bian He was an educated man and knew how powerful the Ming Dynasty was. He knew that occupying the mountains and becoming a king would not work and he would eventually be surrounded and suppressed and fail.
At that time, all these childhood friends, miners and fellow villagers were killed in the name of treason.
In order to change this outcome, Bian He chose a completely different path from Ye Zongliu. He wanted to get to know high-ranking officials and dignitaries through the way of a staff advisor, and find a way out for the clan members from the decision-making power.
In this way, a pair of childhood miner partners worked hard on two different paths for survival.
Without the God’s perspective of history, they also don’t know whose choice is right and whose is wrong in the end.
But instead of waiting to die, at least these miners chose to fight in order to survive!
Sitting at the bow, Shen Yichen listened quietly to Ye Zongliu's narration. The short words in the history book once became a portrayal of everyone's life at this moment, and the feeling was completely different.
Shen Yichen did not comment on whether Bian He or Ye Zongliu made the right or wrong choice, because he knew very well that neither of these two people's paths would work.
The increase in taxes on silver mines was not only due to the exploitation and greed of the government, but also because in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the production of silver, as a base currency, was seriously insufficient. In simple terms, it was not enough.
Because of the epidemic, many people in later generations learned that the Ugly Country used nuclear-powered printing presses to print money crazily, causing inflation in many countries and prices began to soar.
However, inflation also has an economic antonym, which is equally harmful, and that is deflation.
The so-called deflation refers to a situation in which the amount of money circulating in the market is less than the amount of money required for the circulation of goods, which causes currency appreciation and a general and continuous decline in prices.
Many people may think that falling prices are a good thing. It will be cheaper to buy things, so shouldn’t people live better?
But in fact, once the currency appreciates and prices fall beyond a certain level, the goods will become too cheap and it will not be profitable to sell them.
Since there is no money to be made, why should I work so hard to produce? I might as well stop selling. After this step occurs, if no one produces, the unemployment rate will soar, and the overall social wealth will shrink.
If there is no way to solve deflation, it will enter a vicious cycle, and the ultimate result will naturally be economic collapse.
Therefore, modern economics is a discipline with very rigorous logic. It is not as simple as what ordinary people understand as prices being higher or cheaper.
In postmodern society, when there is not enough money, the printing press can still work overtime to print money. In a feudal society like the Ming Dynasty, paper money without sufficient central government credit would only become a piece of waste paper.
Even if there was such a thing as silver notes, it was based on the reserves of precious metals, which was fundamentally different from the paper currency issued in later generations.
For the Ming Dynasty, when there was not enough silver, the only way was to exploit the miners. If the fundamental contradiction of the currency gap was not resolved, neither Ye Zongliu nor Bian He's path would be feasible, and it would be a dead end for the miners.