Chapter 257: Luhua Town is Corrupted from the Root
Cui Qingyi casually gave Taozhi a slap on the head, "Murder? Who did you kill? What nonsense are you talking about."
She just felt that the people of Luhua Town were indeed very rebellious. She didn't even need to see the entire picture of Luhua Town, but could see it from that small inn.
In troubled times, harsh punishments were necessary, and when she encountered violent people, she had to find someone who could calm the situation. Although the county yamen runners were not bad, Cui Qingyi felt that their deterrent effect was still not enough.
The total population of Luhua Town is five to six thousand. If she just brings a few yamen runners with her, it will probably not have any deterrent effect.
Yes, Cui Qingyi forced Wang Xiaoqian to borrow people from the camp in order to intimidate the people of Luhua Town.
Poor mountains and bad waters produce unruly people, but Luhua Town is her fiefdom now. All her original intentions are to let the people there live a good life. In fact, to put it bluntly, as long as the people have land to farm, enough food to eat, can pay taxes and support their children, who would be willing to live a life of risking their lives and licking blood on the edge of a knife?
If life is not difficult but you still want to bring disaster to the village, then you are a real disaster.
Wang Xiaoqian is a county magistrate and cannot control the people of Qinghe Camp. But who can blame him for having Zhou Yanxiu standing behind him? Zhou Yanxiu is now a favorite of His Majesty and has a close relationship with the commander-in-chief of the camp.
He only needed to bring a verbal message, and the camp would have already allocated a hundred people to go to Dongping County.
Of course, Cui Qingyi was not idle during the waiting period. She found the list of Luhua Town residents archived in previous years from the county government office and compared it with the list of flowers sent by Lu Da. She asked Taozhi to organize the extra population according to age and gender.
These people will be the ones Cui Qingyi needs to pay special attention to when she goes to Luhua Town this time.
Seeing the extra fifty or so people, Taozhi was a little confused. "Village leader, according to our investigation, Luhua Town needed a lot of government funding in the past. Logically, one more person should mean one more relief grain. Then why are these people not on the government's household register?
If you weren't there then, why are you here now?"
Cui Qingyi thought for a moment and said, "There are two possibilities. The first is that these extra people don't exist in the first place. Lu Da, the village head, doesn't take me, the village chief, seriously. He just made up these people to fool me in order to get more rice.
The second possibility is that these people are indeed residents of Luhua Town, but for some special reason they cannot appear in public. The reason they reappeared now is simply because Lu Da thinks I'm easy to fool."
Luhua Town
Lu Da listened to Lu Shan while holding his water pipe. "You mean, not many people are willing to follow you out to find work?"
Lu Shan nodded silently, then glanced at Lu Dacai and said, "Everyone heard from somewhere that the village chief would give us tax exemptions and food, so many people don't want to leave."
In fact, Lu Shan himself was reluctant to go out. The people from Luhua Town had a bad reputation in the county. They had gone out in previous years, but when people who were building houses or moving goods heard that they were from Luhua Town, they would rather spend a few more copper coins to hire people than use them.
Those who went out were forced into a corner and had no choice but to lower their prices further and look for the hardest and most tiring jobs. Sometimes they didn't get much money and were subjected to all kinds of unfair treatment. Over time, everyone would rather stay at home and work than go out.
In addition, when people heard that the village chief would exempt taxes and provide food, they became lazy.
Lu Da was blowing out smoke rings, and his drooping eyelids made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.
He didn't say anything, and Lu Shan didn't dare to leave. After smoking a cigarette, Lu Da finally said, tapping his pipe, "Forget it. I have raised you all my life. Now I am old and you are grown up. You can do whatever you want.
But I, an old man, have one advantage in this life, which is that I can judge people well. The village master is not a weak person. You can't rely on him to support you and eat for free. That's impossible."
Having said this, Lu Da waved his hand and told Lu Shan to get out.
Lu Shan was very embarrassed, but most people in the town had developed the habit of being lazy and gluttonous, so he couldn't say anything.
Seeing Lu Shan leave, Aunt Lu came out of the kitchen and said, "You are too old now, so you should stop interfering in things that are not your business."
As Lu Da's daughter-in-law, when I entered this family, I was still a half-grown child and had to take care of several half-grown children. You said that the children were young at that time and they had to take care of them, but now they are all grandparents, how can they take care of them?
It's not that Aunt Lu didn't have complaints over the years, but she just kept them to herself. But seeing how the people in Luhua Town were becoming increasingly lazy, and now even trying to rely solely on government handouts, Aunt Lu was fed up.
Her mother's home is in Qingping Town, next to Luhua Town. Before Zhou Yanxiu came, it was not a very wealthy town, but the people in Qingping Town were very hardworking. Now not only have they become rich, but there is also a school in the town, and the children can go out to study and learn to read. But what about their Luhua Town?
The adults live a lazy life, and the younger generation follows suit. They play with cats and dogs on the street at a very young age. Not to mention learning to read, they may not even be able to find a wife in the future.
Her family members are now unwilling to associate with them, as they are afraid that their children will learn bad habits.
Because of this, Aunt Lu was very strict with her grandchildren. If they dared to play with the kids on the street, they would definitely be treated to a meal of stir-fried pork with bamboo shoots when they got home.
As for the girls in the family, Aunt Lu watched them even more closely. She was planning to marry all her granddaughters off to other places in the future. If possible, she even wanted to take her whole family to live in the county town and completely draw a line between themselves and this shabby place.
Lu Da sighed and said, "I'll listen to you and leave it alone from now on."
Knowing that the old man was probably just talking and that she would still have to take care of things when something happened, Aunt Lu sighed and walked away without bothering to comfort him.
Knowing that the village chief was going to distribute food to them, some people came to the Lu family for several days and said bluntly, "Village head, didn't the village chief say that he would distribute food to us? Can you go and ask when it will be distributed? My family is almost out of food and is just waiting for that little bit of rice."
Lu Da looked at the man. It was Lu Biao, who lived in the east of the town. "I remember when your father passed away last year, we still had a lot of rice and grain at home. Now it's just you and mom at home, so we should have been able to make it to the end of the year. How come we're out of food now?"
Lu Biao touched his bald head and said with a grin, "Hehe, you don't know that when I have nothing to do, I like to play a few cards. If I lose, I have no money and can only use the food at home to make up for it.
If the imperial government doesn't send us food, my mother will starve to death at home. Then I'll take her to the county and see what that village chief can say for me!"
There was some viciousness in Lu Biao's eyes. The gambler had already begun to imagine what kind of compensation he should ask Cui Qingyi, the village chief, if his mother really starved to death at home.
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