As the first stronghold to be wiped out by Qitian Village, this stronghold is actually not far from the county town, so it is not unfair that it was chosen first.
How can we explain this distance? If it were peaceful times, even a single copper coin stolen from a mountain stronghold would be counted as a public security incident in the county. The first requirement for being a bandit is to stay away from the city, even if the city has already been reduced to ruins. After all, as long as the government wants to govern, the first place to restore order is the city, and the first bandit to be eliminated is the one closest to the city. So, in general, bandits who settled at this distance either didn't have enough strength to seize a good feng shui site, or they arrived too late and the good spots were already taken.
This is also one of the reasons why Lin Hai decided to show leniency to the boss. After all, he has no strength and became a bandit late, so it seems that he can't do too many bad things.
The boss was imprisoned in the county jail, and the person who led the way this time was a serf rescued from the mountain stronghold. This was Lu You's forced request. Although Lin Hai didn't understand why, he didn't insist.
"Sir, this is the village's boundary marker. The headmaster said he wanted others to know he was here so they wouldn't break the rules on his territory, so he erected a marker here." The man who answered the question was Zhang Chun. He was considered one of the more clever serfs, and he was said to know a few words, so he was chosen to lead the way. Zhang Chun, with only one arm left, bent over, keeping his eyes below Lin Hai's chest. He saluted Lin Hai and then spoke softly.
Lin Hai from the "Golden Master's Village" glanced at the stone tablet and asked, "So this is your village? Why don't I see anything?"
"To answer your question, sir, this place is more than ten miles away from the village. At that time, the boss said that the farther the stone tablet is placed, the better. The farther it is, the larger the territory of the village will be. But the brothers who were carrying the stone tablet really couldn't walk anymore. No matter how hard the manager pushed them, they couldn't get up. Only then did the boss agree to put the stone tablet here." Zhang Chun responded quickly.
"But there's no village or shop here, and it's not even an intersection. Will anyone see this stone tablet here?" Lin Hai was still very curious about this boundary marker. After all, a mountain village would have to draw a boundary for itself, and it was really rare to make it look so formal.
Zhang Chun tremblingly raised his only arm and pointed to the bottom of the boundary marker. "Sir, if you don't believe me, you can dig it up. The six brothers who carried the marker are buried underneath. I dug the pit. The boss said that if we want our business to last for generations, we need someone to lay the foundation. It just so happens that these six brothers were too tired to get up, so the boss buried them alive here for convenience."
Every hair on his body stood up instantly, and Lin Hai couldn't even find a suitable adjective to describe how he felt at the moment. A bandit wanted to build a boundary marker for himself, and also had to have a foundation that would last for thousands of years, and even had to use living people to lay the foundation. How absurd and cruel it was.
After taking a deep breath, Lin Hai calmed himself down for a while. To be honest, after so many years of fighting, Lin Hai had seen people killing and being killed. In a single battle, he had seen more dead bodies than in the movies he had seen before, but he had never seen anyone killing their own people for such a ridiculous reason.
"Aren't these people your boss's men? Isn't he destroying his own foundation by doing this? What's the point of talking about eternal generations? What's wrong with your arm?" Lin Hai asked.
"Three years ago, the eldest son finally had a son. He consulted a fortune teller, who said he should be named Ma Yu, as it echoed the name of the legendary Holy Emperor and meant he would be destined to become an emperor. There were three people in the village who could read, and I was one of them. The eldest son asked us to write poems for his son, saying that if he was to become an emperor, he must have poetry to accompany him. But the three of us were born into accountants, so we could do accounting, but we really couldn't write poetry."
At this point, Zhang Chun sat down on the ground and burst into tears. Lin Hai had seen this kind of crying on the battlefield before; it was the cry of extreme fear. Zhang Chun's whole body was convulsing, but not a single tear came out. He didn't know if he had run out of tears or if he could no longer shed them.
Lin Hai did not disturb Zhang Chun. When Zhang Chun slowly calmed down, he heard him twitching and saying, "The big boss didn't believe it. He said that those who can read can write poetry. He counted a number. If he couldn't write it, he would chop off an arm. After that, he would chop off a leg. After that, he would chop off a hand and then his head. I... I was lucky. I was the last one. I tried hard to think. The other two were right in front of me. They were chopped into six pieces. The twelve pieces were placed there in a mess. I couldn't tell them apart. Fortunately... fortunately, you just chopped off my left arm, and I was able to write it. Really, I was able to write it. Master, I will recite it to you..."
"The emperor's surname is Ma"
"He is the only one who can unify the world"
"He will attack the capital someday."
"The sky is full of big red flowers"
"The boss said this poem was well-written and gave me two wild vegetable cakes as a reward, each weighing half a pound!"
"The Emperor's divine order?" After hearing this "poem" which was not even a doggerel, Lin Hai exchanged a glance with his sworn brothers around him, and gradually understood what Lu You meant by asking Zhang Chun to lead the way.
"Come here, smash the stele, dig up the body, and take it back for burial. Let's continue to look around the village."
After reading the poem, Zhang Chun calmed down a lot and took Lin Hai all the way to the mountain village.
During the whole morning of the visit, Lin Hai witnessed cruelty that he had never imagined.
Every ninety-nine steps from the boundary marker to the village gate, a dried corpse was hung. It was said that these were the people in the village who dared to resist. The leader felt that hanging them here would help to demonstrate his power. Of course, in reality, not many people had such a strong spirit of resistance, so later, to make the scene neat and beautiful, the leader randomly killed ten more people to fill in the gaps, finally completing the sense of ritual.
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