Chapter 115: Things Going the Other Way [VIP]
Inside the tent.
The place was turned upside down and anyone who didn't know would think a thief had broken in.
Zheng Fu looked at the dried human-shaped pool of blood on the ground, and the hairs on his back stood on end. How could he dare to sleep there?
He didn't even want to stay in the quarry any longer. These guards and servants would betray him again if they did.
Who can guarantee that he will survive next time?
Zheng Fu turned around and almost bumped into the guard following him.
He was startled himself, but pretended nothing had happened. "What did you do with the body? Have you eaten all my rations?"
The guard stammered, "As usual, the convicts carried it away and threw it into a mass grave in the mountains. The rations are still untouched and will be brought back to you shortly."
Zheng Fu felt very uncomfortable when he heard this. He was not sad about the death of his subordinates, but he felt sorry for himself.
He was a young master from a prominent family, but he had fallen to this point. He was truly a tiger in plain land being bullied by a dog.
"Okay, you don't have to follow me." Zheng Fu walked outside, intending to look for Yang Jizong. It would be safer if he followed them back to the government office in the city.
"Sir, I will protect you."
Comprehensive? It was ironic to hear these two words coming from the guard's mouth.
Zheng Fu suddenly sneered, and the guards following him bowed their heads, not daring to look him in the eye. It was a long while before he heard the man in front of him speak.
"You stay here and clean up this tent without leaving any bloodstains. Do you understand?" Zheng Fu raised his hand and patted his shoulder heavily.
"Yes, I obey your command!"
Zheng Fu left with a cold face and waved his sleeves. He found Yang Jizong and others in front of the thatched hut where they were doing hard labor. Just as he was about to go over, he was stopped in his tracks by the shock of the scene before him.
Yang Jizong, along with Chen Yao, Tian Baolai and others, were distributing food rations to the villagers in the two villages.
The remaining few people from Wanhe Township were quite excited to see Yang Jizong again. They all knelt down before he even came up to them.
"Brother Yang, I thank you on behalf of everyone."
Yang Jizong quickly stepped forward and helped everyone up: "Let's get up and talk if you have anything to say."
The leading villager held Yang Jizong's arm and shook his head. The others behind him were still kneeling on the ground like him and refused to get up. Two lines of muddy tears were streaming down their dark faces.
"Brother Yang, if I hadn't listened to you and reclaimed the land in the quarry to grow chicken claws, we would have starved to death long ago."
Yang Jizong called Chen Yao, Tian Baolai and other villagers to help him help everyone get up.
He then looked at the hard laborers standing behind this group of people, watching the villagers from the two villages divide the food.
"I'll take people into the mountains to find some edible food for you in a moment, so don't worry."
But when everyone heard this, they all rushed forward and surrounded him: "Brother Yang, considering that we know each other, can you please tell me the truth?"
Yang Jizong and others were puzzled.
The people asked, "The city wall is almost finished. Do the officials really want us to die of starvation by withholding food?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Zheng Fu, who was standing nearby and watching, stepped forward and shouted, "I don't have such thoughts. If you want to blame someone, blame it on the severe disaster that hit Fang County this year and the poor harvest. Not only do you have no food, but I haven't even been able to collect my rent. Li Menghong has exchanged it all for hard labor like you."
None of the other slaves could be so distorting right and wrong as he was. They only heard Zheng Fu continue to accuse them: "If you had just worked hard on the land and paid your taxes and rent, would I have ended up like this?"
The more Zheng Fu thought about it, the more he felt that he came here because of these tenant farmers.
The tenant farmers, who were originally very sad, were now all enraged by Zheng Fu's words.
It was at this moment that no one expected that the usually calm Tian Baolai would suddenly rush over and give Zheng Fu a heavy punch.
The moment Zheng Fu was knocked to the ground, the villagers immediately surrounded him to prevent him from being discovered by the surrounding guards and officers.
As for the group of yamen runners who came with Yang Jizong, they would not interfere as long as no one was killed.
Tian Baolai sat astride Zheng Fu, pinning him down tightly to prevent him from rising. He grabbed Zheng Fu's front with both hands and said, "Zi'an taught us to read, saying that it would help us understand things, but I think it's useless for you from aristocratic families to read more. Do you know how much grain an acre of land can produce? Have you ever cared about it?"
"No, if you did, you wouldn't charge extra rent." Tian Bao asked himself and answered.
"How dare you assault and insult an imperial official?" Zheng Fu pushed the man sitting on him with both hands, but he couldn't move him. So he turned his head and looked at Yang Jizong who was standing beside him: "Why don't you pull him off me? Come on—"
Chen Yao wanted to step forward to persuade him, but was pulled aside by Yang Jizong.
Someone, help!
Before Zheng Fu could utter this sentence, Niu Wazi's father quickly stuffed something into his mouth.
"Woo woo woo, ugh~"
Zheng Fu widened his eyes in disbelief at this farmer.
"What our village chief said is right. Why are you yelling? You're blaming us for not farming well. We treat the land like our ancestors."
"There's no need to waste time talking to him. He doesn't know anything. He's going to get whipped ten times anyway. We might as well give him a beating too."
Being stared at by countless pairs of sunken eyes, Zheng Fu couldn't hold it in any longer. With a smelly shoe stuffed in his mouth, he said incoherently, "What on earth do you want to do?"
Tian Baolai still sat on him motionless, but like the crops, he had to do something all year round in order to have a good harvest.
Zheng Fu heard about weeding, pest control, digging out feces, and picking up bird and chicken droppings to fertilize the fields, and he suddenly felt that the smelly shoes in his mouth were even more disgusting.
He seemed to be able to smell the feces from the stinky shoe.
The more I think about it, the more possible it seems. The tenant farmer's family is poor, and they definitely don't have many shoes like this. The farmer wears these shoes when he goes out to fertilize the fields.
Seeing that he was about to faint, Tian Baolai kindly took the shoe out of his mouth and gave him some fresh air.
Niu Wazi's father came over and was about to put it on, but when he heard Bao talking, he retracted one foot.
Tian Bao said, "I haven't finished talking yet. Don't shout or faint. Remember everything I said, or I'll stuff the shoe back into your mouth."
Zheng Fu finally had a chance to catch his breath. He wanted to shout, but when he heard his threat, he became as wilted as an eggplant hit by frost.
So Tian Baolai continued to tell him when to plow the fields and when to sow seeds. After plowing, he had to water the fields from time to time, weed and catch insects. When the wheat was about to mature, he had to drive away the birds. After it was ripe, he had to harvest and dry the wheat.
After all these crops are rotated, when the harvest is good, they can get nearly two stone of grain per acre of land. If the harvest is bad, such as the disaster this year, there will not even be one stone of grain.
"Sir, you are educated. Why don't you calculate for us? Even if we, the tenant farmers, starve for food and drink, how can we pay you three dan of grain per acre after the autumn harvest?"
Zheng Fu was speechless when asked.
"We can't pay taxes and rent, so we have no choice but to use people to do hard labor to pay the taxes. And you blame us tenant farmers for not farming well. Is it our fault for not farming well?"
Even though what Tian Bao said made sense, Zheng Fu's self-esteem was at work. As a son of a prominent family, he didn't know that this was human nature.
Besides.
"This fertile land is originally our clan's property. Since you have rented the land, you have to pay the rent. Are you asking me to waive the rent for you? There is no such good thing in the world."
Zheng Fu's reaction was different from what Tian Baolai had imagined, and Tian Baolai was almost broken.
He originally thought that as a village head, he would one day meet people from prominent families and tell them the actual yield of an acre of land and the plight of the tenant farmers. Perhaps they would realize where they were wrong and correct themselves.
But now when he looked at Zheng Fu's face, it was as if he saw all the noble people behind him.
They actually understand but they don't care. All they care about is the food they receive.
Chen Yao watched her cousin stand up as if he had lost his soul, and hurried over to support him. Then she looked at Zheng Fu who was sitting up and said, "Have you ever thought about what would happen if one day we had our own land and didn't rent your fertile farmland?"
"How is that possible? Even if you don't rent the land, we have plenty of servants to farm it. We're just pitying you by giving it to you, and you still..."
Zheng Fu was halfway through his words when Chen Yao raised her hand and slapped him: "We don't need your pity. We have earned everything with our own hands. Unlike you, you have nothing but a bunch of idiots inside."
"Thirty years in the east, thirty years in the west; it's still uncertain who will be pitied and who will be pitied in the future."
"Yes, you are a fool."
"Idiot, Idiot."
Everyone was no longer afraid and started to make a fuss.
Zheng Fu was enraged and suddenly shouted outside. His guards rushed over immediately after hearing it and subdued the group of laborers.
Yang Jizong looked at the complacent Zheng Fu and asked, "Do you still want to leave this place alive? If you do, you must treat these people well from now on, otherwise you will regret it later."
Zheng Fu did not take these words to heart at this time, so he did not know that he would have to pay a heavy price for it in the future.
Not only did he not listen, he also ordered the guards to arrest all the troublemakers and give each of them ten lashes.
As for Tian Baolai and Shen Yao who beat him, Zheng Fu could let them go without pursuing the matter, but Yang Jizong had to agree to one condition.
"I will be living in the government office from today."
"Sir Zheng, deserting your post is a capital offense. You'd better stay here and wait until the city wall is completed."
After saying this, Yang Jizong took the stone baskets for everyone and led Tian Baolai, Chen Yao and the male yamen runners they brought with them to the nearby mountains.
Zheng Fu ordered the guards and runners to stop them, but they were intimidated when faced with these runners.
After all, this is Fang County, Li Menghong's territory.
When going into the mountains to look for food, except for the yamen runners who couldn't tell the edible plants apart, everything else was easy to catch.
The yamen runners caught wild game in the mountains, Chen Yao and Yang Jizong looked for plants that could be grown to fill people's stomachs, and the villagers dug wild vegetables and searched everywhere for cassava leaves. If they found anything that looked even remotely like the original, they would dig three feet into the ground.
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