Great time travel

Chapter 9, 27 Moments in the Four Years of Chongzhen ([-])

The Ninth Moment: When the Traveler Meets the Traveler

On the East China Sea in December of the fourth year of Chongzhen, the morning light in winter was very gloomy.

When the sun slowly climbed out from the horizon, it had long since lost its radiance like the sun in the sky.The gloomy light is not so much a vibrant morning sun, but more like a sunset that has lost its brilliance, as if it is about to fall to the horizon again.

The salty sea breeze brought a deep chill. Li Meng was wearing a thick cotton coat with very rough fabric, leaning against the side of the "Lichun" ship, watching the sea and sky gradually spread from lavender to light blue in the distance, and couldn't help it. I sighed melancholy, and a white mist came out.

Although it was cold and windy outside, Li Meng still crawled out of the dirty hold and breathed in the fresh air.During the days of drifting at sea, except for a short period of time to let the wind out every day, only the person whose turn it is to empty the urinal can be lucky enough to climb on the deck for a breath of air, and everyone else can only nest in a small space in the bilge. Don't move around at will, after a long time, the disgusting bad smell is really not to be mentioned.

Therefore, no matter how strong the wind was on the deck of the "Lichun" or how cold the weather outside was, he still couldn't bear to let go of this rare ventilation gap.

Breathing the cold air, closing his eyes, the events of the past year seemed to appear in front of Li Meng's eyes again, and they were all vivid in his mind.

——First, when I was swimming in Qingdao Beach, Shandong, I had the misfortune to meet some unscrupulous tourist who littered garbage. As a result, I was hit head-on by a wine bottle in the water, and immediately passed out... Wait until I wake up When he arrived, Li Meng's swimming trunks had turned into tattered cloth clothes, and he was still holding a heavy iron pot, and his identity had become that of a soldier whose parents both died in Jiaozhou, Shandong during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen in the late Ming Dynasty. House children.

Since the farmland of various military guards in the late Ming Dynasty had already been occupied by military officers and gentry, if the poor military households in the guards in Jiaozhou wanted to survive, the only way to survive was to rely on the sea to eat the sea and sell salt by boiling sea water. , to improve life a little bit.It's a pity that this business has already been taken over by someone - in the late Ming Dynasty, the government servants were usually the biggest robbers and bandits, so the inspections responsible for hunting down smuggled salt were usually the biggest smuggled salt dealers in the area.For example, in Jiaozhou City not far from Li Meng's home, there lived a salt inspector, Mr. Mou, who hunted down smuggled salt. Under this Mr. Mou's men, he gathered hundreds of ruffians. Rampaging among several counties in Jiaozhou, I basically don’t make much salt. I just rob salt from the homes of military and civilian households in various places in three days, and resell it to salt merchants, so as to make huge profits. Miserable.

Li Meng originally didn't intend to start a big fight, but the way of life in the late Ming Dynasty has always been "killing people and setting fire to gold belts, repairing bridges and repairing roads without bones". Looting is like blood-sucking mosquitoes and beasts, with a particularly sensitive sense of smell.Li Mengcai brought some people from the village to sell illicit salt once, so he had to fight halfway with Yan Ding, who was inspecting the salt affairs, beheading seven of them; In desperation, as the leader of the village, Li Meng had no choice but to play a guest role as Rambo, sneaked into Jiaozhou City alone with a knife in his pocket, and assassinated Mr. Mou in the middle of the night. , and fell into chaos as they competed for the inspection position left by Mou Laozhong, and finally gave Li Meng and the others a period of breathing time to freely sell private salt.

Taking advantage of this very precious respite time, as well as the silver he earned from smuggling smuggled salt, Li Meng finally pulled up his team and trained a team of pikemen who could fight so-so, known as "salt poles". He fought fiercely with all kinds of officials, yamen servants, bandits and salt dealers, road tyrants, and won many times. He gradually monopolized the private salt trade in Jiaozhou.Li Meng also got a gang name "Erlang Zhenjun", and his life was quite moist for a while,

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long. After several months of vacancy in the position of the salt inspection inspector in Mou Laozhong, finally a new salt inspection inspector with a strong background came down from another place by air.Originally, Li Meng didn't want to break up with the government right away—after all, the current Daming didn't seem to be chaotic enough. Some money buys peace.

Unexpectedly, the new inspector of salt affairs is a smiling tiger, Li Mengrong can tolerate him, but he can't tolerate Li Meng, the "Erlang Zhenjun"!So on the surface, he accepted the gift and made peace with a pleasant face, saying that he still has a lot to rely on Li Meng's "salt pole" in the future, so everyone might as well get along well.Behind the scenes, they set up a Hongmen banquet in an attempt to lure Li Meng and others into the trap; at the same time, they invited a group of officers and soldiers to copy the lairs of Li Meng and his gang.

After a scuffle at the Hongmen Banquet, Li Meng and his cronies managed to break out of the siege, only to find that the village had been completely wiped out with blood, so out of grief and indignation, they resolutely rebelled and broke through several times. Yamen servants, inspectors, and miscellaneous officers even captured the new salt inspector alive.Li Meng took the culprit to the mourning hall, beheaded and digged out his heart to pay homage to his relatives. He was very angry, but he also broke through the hornet's nest. The chaotic war in Jiaozhou finally attracted the attention of the Beijing court. So he ordered Dengzhou Town to send troops to suppress...

So, under the Dengzhou Army's long spears, the strict phalanx, and the roaring guns, hundreds of "salt poles" under Li Meng's command who ran rampant in Jiaozhou were defeated and returned in a big defeat, which made him truly feel In this era, the power of the first-class regular army.Before he could come up with a countermeasure, the Dengzhou army who was chasing broke through the stockade again. Li Meng had to take a few fishing boats out to sea indiscriminately, preparing to escape from the ground of Shandong, and he was on the run from then on.

(Because he vaguely knew that Sun Yuanhua, the "Westernization Faction" in the late Ming Dynasty, cast artillery in Dengzhou, hired Portuguese instructors, and trained troops with "Western methods", so at this time Li Meng had not connected the Dengzhou army who came to crusade with the traversers. , it should only be Sun Yuanhua's "foreign gun team".)
sex

Then, under the strong wind and waves of the Yellow Sea in winter, Li Meng's small escape fleet was quickly broken up.Some boats were sunk by the wind and waves, and some boats have never been whereabouts. Only two boats drifted to Huaguo Mountain outside Haizhou City in a daze, and were rescued by chance after being stranded on the beach...but only Li Meng was left. The leader was a mere dozen or so people, and all of them were cold and hungry, half dead, and the small amount of money and weapons they carried with them were all lost in the storm at sea, and everyone looked very depressed. , The ambition to compete for the world is gone.

Therefore, as soon as the "Deer Manor" at the foot of Huaguo Mountain expressed his intention to solicit, Li Meng and the others, who were so cold and hungry that they could hardly walk, immediately agreed, even if they sold themselves as slaves— —Otherwise, they reckon that they are about to die right now: If the weather is cold today, food prices are skyrocketing, and the family is not relatives, why should they support you for nothing?Anyway, if the host's treatment is too harsh, it will not be too late to escape...

Next, these private salt dealers suffered a strange living crime in the manor under Huaguo Mountain: For the epidemic prevention and quarantine work of the newly imported population-usually referred to as "purification", the Lingao Senate authorities have They have figured out a mature process, even if it is a stronghold thousands of miles away, as long as conditions permit, they will follow the same pattern... So, under the scolding of the manor manager, Li Meng and the others stripped naked in a shed, Like buying and selling animals, people look at their body, and then look at their teeth. After asking a few simple questions such as age and name, they stamp their fingerprints on a piece of paper as required——Li Meng I thought it was a document such as a contract of sale, and then I was forced to shave my hair for the reason of epidemic prevention, and took a shower carefully, and finally got a new dress made of blue cloth. "New Immigrants".According to the person in charge of them, as newcomers, they will have to continue to practice for several months before they can be officially "joined".

Naturally, the Jiaozhou refugees were not very willing to shave their heads, but they had no choice but to admit it in the current desperate situation.On the contrary, brand new clothes were issued immediately after joining the group, which made them very speechless—they had worked as servants in rich families before, and they knew that even those gentry who were willing to do good would generally only wear them for new servants. Old clothes... new clothes are indigo in color and rough in texture but clean and soft.It's just that the appearance is really weird, like a bell worn by a monk.Because it was winter, they were given old cotton robes to keep out the cold.

After going through such a set of "purification" procedures, the steward of the manor originally wanted to explain the rules and assign work to them, but at noon the next day, a large ship docked at the manor at the foot of Huaguo Mountain. Then Li Meng and the others were all driven into the cabin, saying that they were going to be transported to the south to farm and work... Although Chinese farmers have a tradition of relocating and relocating easily, but for those who are originally For Li Meng and others who fled from the defeat, it didn't matter - since they had already sold themselves into slavery, they could only obey the orders of the master.

But the problem is, this big ship named "Lichun"...why does it look like a Western-style battleship with sails and steam? ! !

Hey, have I traveled to the late Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, or the late Qing Dynasty in the nineteenth century?
This sudden and unexpected explosive discovery made Li Meng's spirit so stimulated that he passed out on the deck. Others only thought that he was exhausted and exhausted all the way. He was dragged into the hold.

So, when Li Meng woke up again, the "Lichun" had already raised fire and moored, set sail to sea, and left Haizhou for the south.

During the next few days of the sea journey, Li Meng has been paying attention to this steam ship that should not have appeared in the late Ming Dynasty, and all kinds of people on board... It can be seen that most of the sailors on board are still from the late Ming Dynasty. The natives of Fujian and Guangdong, even if they shaved their hair short and spoke a strange "Mandarin", they could not become modern people.But there are indeed a few well-dressed guys who not only speak relatively standard Mandarin, but also have a vague aura that is out of tune with this era, and occasionally leak a few words that are obviously modern when they speak... …

Alas, should I take the initiative to confess my identity to them?But who knows if they will treat their "traveling compatriots" kindly in the future?
——Just as overseas Chinese of overseas Chinese often like to cheat compatriots of the motherland, what if the other party is the kind of guy who is particularly narrow-minded and full of "dominant spirit" and upholds the "law of the dark forest" in "Three-Body Problem" , firmly believe that "the greatest enemy of a time traveler is always another time traveler", and try to nip all "unplanned factors" in the bud... Then, if you go up and reveal your identity, wouldn't it be tantamount to seeking your own death?
What's worse, Li Meng couldn't even be sure whether they really came from the same era as him—maybe it was decades after he traveled through?Alas, this kind of thing that seems to require gambling on character and luck is really not easy to make a decision!
Seeing the two "short-haired officers" chatting and laughing not far away, Li Meng rubbed his chin, feeling hesitant and entangled.

"...Dangdang! Dangdang! The wind release is over! It's time to eat! Come and line up for dinner!"

A burst of crisp copper bells and loud shouts from the sailors interrupted Li Meng's train of thought. Looking back, the fat cook on the boat had already used several large tin buckets with lids to feed The sailors and "new immigrants" of the "Lichun" brought a hot breakfast.

In terms of the living standards of the low-level people in the late Ming Dynasty, the breakfast on the "Lichun" can be said to be quite extravagant: each sailor has a large bowl of thick white rice porridge mixed with chopped pickles and salted fish, plus A piece of roasted sweet potato and half a salted egg. The food of the "new immigrants" is worse than that of the official sailors, but it is only half a salted egg missing, and it is even better than what Li Meng ate before he made his fortune selling private salt. In fact, he and the military households in the village At that time, I could only eat two meals a day, and sometimes even only one meal, let alone any dishes, and I couldn't even eat white rice at all.

Even in the eyes of modern people, this kind of breakfast is barely passable, so Li Meng is still very satisfied with this kind of food.

But the only thing that made Li Meng feel uncomfortable and scared was that when everyone was squatting on the deck to eat, there was a strange Taoist walking around among the crowd, and from time to time he would look at him with lustful and lustful eyes. , looking at some handsome teenagers and strong men... and other guys who look like time travelers are also indifferent to this place (in fact, they have been with each other for too long, and they are used to ignoring this rotten gay guy. ), it seemed that he didn't think there was anything wrong with this gay man's behavior, which made Li Meng's legs go limp, and his back felt a chill.

Although at the end of the Ming Dynasty when the social atmosphere was more open, the goodness of men's cutting off men's sleeves and Long Yang was quite common among the people, and they were not discriminated against. A rough person who is not elegant enough can't stand this thing!

Blessed by the Jade Emperor and the Queen Mother, I must have come to some unbelievable "Modern Gay Guys Traveling Through the Late Ming Dynasty", right?

etc!If you think about it carefully, on the Internet in later generations, there seem to be quite a lot of time-traveling version of Danmei and Jiji novels written by those rotten female writers!

Seeing Zhang Yingchen in Taoist robe squatting down with a smile and feeding a handsome young lady with red lips and white teeth—not a loli, Li Meng quickly turned around carefully, trying to hide behind a pile of cables, and at the same time Worried about the virginity of my butt after arriving at the destination...

Under the lack of heat in the winter sun, the "Lichun" continued to cut through the waves, carrying the traverser Comrade Li Meng to the unknown front...