Volume 2: Soaring! The Overlord of the Region Chapter 292: The Newcomers
When Philip and Rudolf temporarily suppressed Western Europe, Ibrahim finally found his own base, and Datar made up his mind to go all out. At this moment, the Ming Dynasty also entered the final stage of fighting against the super locust plague sweeping across North China.
It was October of 1616. The summer locusts had eaten all the wheat seedlings five months ago. However, the hundreds of millions of eggs laid by the summer locusts made life difficult for the time traveler:
The six major daily newspapers reported the tragic situation of the locust plague in North China in a series of articles, and repeatedly popularized the causes and reproduction process of locusts, so that the people of the country, at least the urban class, had a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the locust plague.
Zhu Youdong even stipulated that the court would implement work-for-relief, with able-bodied men earning food by building roads, while the elderly, weak, women and children who could not bear the heavy workload could exchange insect eggs for food!
Under the encouragement of such policies, although many foolish men and women in the Ming Dynasty still believed that locusts were messengers of the Locust God and that locust plagues were punishment from heaven, when faced with the choice between starving themselves to death and letting the Locust God's descendants die, they chose the latter without hesitation.
The power of the people is endless. Tens of millions of ordinary people mobilized together, and the descendants of the once rampant locusts were in trouble. By the end of summer that year, officials from all over the country reported that the number of autumn locusts appearing in the fields had decreased significantly.
However, no matter how few autumn locusts there were, the summer locusts that covered the sky and sun and broke out in large numbers in all provinces of North China eventually devoured all the green in North China. The damage caused to the Ming Dynasty was of course extremely huge.
However, natural disasters are relatively simple to deal with: if you can handle it, then handle it; if you can’t, then die. On the contrary, it is the man-made disasters mixed in with this locust plague that are complex and difficult to deal with.
“Pah, pah, ka, ka~”
"Hey! We're done again. Brother Boya, please stay alone for a while. I'll come back after I clean these six holes."
"Swoosh!" An arrow flew out quickly, and then a scream was heard not far ahead. The man who shot the arrow said at this time: "Well, my dear brother Boyun is now reloading this six-wheeled hand gun faster and faster. I can hold on."
The two people being hunted by a large group of people were none other than Li Jia, the new Jinshi of February this year, a student of Fangshan, and Sun Chuanting, whom Zhu Youdong highly regarded.
According to Zhu Youdong's arrangement, all the new scholars who were admitted this year would not be rushed to take the examination for the Imperial Academy or be assigned positions. Instead, they had to follow the many censors of the Censorate to the grassroots level in various provinces in North China to take inventory of granaries, supervise the distribution of relief materials, monitor the quality of cement roads, observe the plight of disaster victims up close, and receive anti-corruption education before taking office.
After receiving this group of nearly 300 new Jinshi, the current Left Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, Sun Wei, adopted the method of old censors leading newcomers. Then Sun Chuanting, Li Jia, and Hou Xun were assigned to work under an old Jinshi named Ye Wanlu, who was already over 50 years old.
Their group was responsible for the relevant inspections of Xuanfu Town: Xuanfu was the most important border town of the Ming Dynasty. After Cao Wenzhao defeated Ligdan Khan last year, the military pressure on Xuanfu was significantly relieved. However, as the hardest hit area of this year's locust plague, Xuanfu's land, which was not very productive, was even more barren. The people in other places who had nothing to eat might choose to flee. Most people in this place were military households. If they really couldn't eat, they would kill people with knives!
Therefore, this was the top priority in the Ministry of Revenue's disaster relief plan, and 600,000 shi of grain were prepared in advance.
At the same time, as the junction of farming and nomadism, this place will be the main base for Zhu Youdong to conduct trade with the Mongolian tribes in the future. Therefore, in this large-scale work-for-relief operation, a road from Beijing to Zhangjiakou Fort in Xuanfu was also started in May of this year.
In short, Ye Wanlu's group has a heavy task.
In March 1616, Ye Wanlu set out from Beijing with three Jinshi. As soon as they left the house, a violent conflict broke out among the four people: Mr. Ye, as a Jinshi in the 20th year of Wanli, had experienced ups and downs in the officialdom for more than 20 years, and was still an imperial censor, his passion for work had long been close to zero. So at this time, the old man was thinking about how to deal with it: along the way, the old man stopped at every post station to rest, and did not hide the identity and purpose of his team. While quickly attracting visits and "respects" from local officials, it also made Sun Chuanting and Li Jia extremely dissatisfied.
We are here to investigate corrupt officials! What can you find if you go there with such fanfare?
Of the two, Sun Chuanting was better. He basically said what he wanted to say and gave Ye Wanlu a very formal, sincere suggestion from a subordinate to his superior. And Li Jia? This guy is a true disciple of the crown prince. The entire Ming Dynasty belongs to our crown prince. As his students, we have to take good care of his family property for him.
Therefore, Li Jia could not stand Ye Wanlu's behavior of taking wages without doing any work and even accepting various benefits from the local government in a covert manner.
Moreover, this guy is only in his early twenties, at the age of full of vigor and vitality. Naturally, he ridiculed Ye Yushi in various ways...
As a result, the relationship between the two sides broke down completely. Li Jia said, "I won't serve you anymore. Old man Ye, you can slowly crawl to Xuanfu. I'm leaving first." Sun Chuanting, Hou Xun, will you two follow me?
Sun Chuanting followed without hesitation, and Hou Xun? He is a member of the Donglin Party. Although the Donglin Party is in a miserable state now, as a Donglin gentleman, how can I shamelessly flatter the crown prince? Even if I want to flatter him, I can't flatter him so obviously, right? So, I won't follow.
So the 24-year-old Sun Chuanting and the 21-year-old Li Jia quietly set out on their journey. Along the way, they hid in the dark. In addition, Sun Chuanting was born into a military family, so he was familiar with many of the problems in a large military town like Xuanfu. So they discovered many problems in the past few months and obtained a lot of evidence.
According to Zhu Youdong's regulations, the Jinyiwei in various places had to fully cooperate with the inspection of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. Therefore, the reports of Sun and Li were continuously sent to Sun Wei in Beijing through the Jinyiwei's information transmission channels. After Sun Wei got the information, he immediately sent out a more powerful team to quickly punish the relevant officials and military leaders.
But the commotion they made was too big: from May to September, in four months, seven officials in Xuanfu, more than a hundred clerks and runners, and more than thirty officers above the rank of captain were removed. With such a large number of officials being removed, even a fool would know that there were spies on their territory!
After all, it was Xuanfu, a large military town. Although corrupt soldiers would be in a mess if they went to war, they still had swords and servants. Therefore, Sun Chuanting and Li Jia were eventually targeted.
Zhangjiakou Fort is the future Zhangjiakou City. In the Ming Dynasty, the relationship between the Ming Dynasty and Mongolia was a cycle of war and peace, so the development of this place was not very good. But in the Qing Dynasty, since Mongolia was well governed by the Qing Dynasty, this place developed rapidly due to its superior geographical location and became a major commercial town in the early 20th century.
In Zhu Youdong's plan, he did not plan to collectively eliminate Mongolia in the future: this was something that was absolutely impossible and should never be done. Using war to promote peace and economic ties were what he, a time traveler, should do.
Therefore, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Highway is a key project this year and next year: Lingdan Khan must die, and Mongolia cannot have such a prestigious Khan. Before Lingdan Khan died, this highway was the main artery of logistics support for military operations. After Lingdan Khan was gone and Mongolia was divided again, it became the hub of economic and trade exchanges.
Since it is a key project, the imperial court will naturally invest a lot of money and grain. As for the officials here...
When Sun Chuanting and Li Jia arrived here, the two young men foolishly thought they were hiding well, but they didn't know that they had been followed all the way.
When they tried to approach the ordinary workers here to get first-hand information, they were hunted down by nearly a hundred family-level military households!
…
“Bang bang~Ka~Ka~”
"Uh, Brother Boya, we're out of bullets."
"Oh." Sun Chuanting habitually reached behind his back to grab the bow and arrow, but he missed it. "This is bad. I have used up all my arrows."
"Hahaha, this is going to be a close combat. Well, there are nearly twenty people on the other side."
"Humph, we have taken down nearly thirty of these bastards, right? A team that is still chasing us even though the casualties rate is over half, if it were put on the battlefield, it would be an unprecedented elite. Unfortunately, they would scatter at the first blow on the battlefield, but here they are so persistent." After saying this, Sun Chuanting drew out his sword, then turned to Li Jia and said, "Brother, how are you at close combat?"
"I'm ashamed. I came from Fangshan, and I only know one move in close combat." At this time, Li Jia also took out his dagger without hesitation, and quickly cut off a relatively thick branch beside him. Then he cut a strip of cloth from his clothes, and used it to tie the dagger to the top of the branch: "I can only stab to the right!"
"Hahaha, that's enough. Hmm? They are coming up. My dear brother, if we unfortunately die here, I hope to see you at the Martyrs' Shrine."
"Hehe, we can't die here. I, Li Jia, haven't established my career yet, how can I die here? Brother Boya, take care!"
