Straight man of steel

Chapter 137 The truth?

"Brother Li, do you see that the people of Yelang Kingdom exchange what they don't need for what they need most.

But we bring the most precious silk and grain here to exchange some useless stones. "

At a stall in front, Zhang Yuan and Li Jian saw a businessman who was obviously dressed as a Han man holding Shu brocade and negotiating with the vendor in exchange for a piece of jade on his stall.

In the past, Li Jian might have thought this was harmless, and these jade stones would have been bought by nobles when they were brought back to the Han Dynasty.

Those who starved to death were ordinary people or slaves. There had never been a precedent for a big man to starve to death on the street.

But following Zhang Yuan along the way, he was almost brainwashed to reshape his cognition.

When the people of your own country have not enough food and clothing, exchanging grain and silk for these things is tantamount to treason.

"Businessmen pay more attention to profits, His Majesty should issue laws to restrict the nobles, and prevent the nobles from paying attention to these foods, so that the merchants will not harm the country and the people."

Li Jian still didn't understand the deep meaning, Zhang Yuan shook his head with a smile and explained to him.

"Brother Li, I don't think there is anything wrong with Xungui buying these things. On the contrary, I would like to see Xungui spend a lot of money to buy these things, but the profits should be taken by the people of my big man.

You see, if we can collect corvee here, we can ask these Yelang people to help us dig jade and gold mines, and give them a little food, as long as they don't starve to death. This is the price we can accept, and we can also Would like to see. "

Although the merchant was cunning, the Yelang peddler who sold jade insisted on making a dress for his wife. When the transaction was completed, he still took away the one-man Sichuan brocade from the merchant.

Walking from the market to the farmland on the edge, Zhang Yuan gradually discovered a problem. The vendors were all men, and the farmers were also men. He didn't seem to have seen many women in Yelang Country.

Yelang Kingdom is too close to the Han Dynasty, and besides Nanyue, a descendant of the Qin Dynasty, all people in this area speak Chinese, so there is no obstacle to communication.

There was a shirtless old farmer on the edge of the farmland, leaning on a stone to rest.

Zhang Yuan came forward to ask for advice because he had doubts in his heart.

"Old man, why didn't I see many women when I first came to this county?"

Before asking, Zhang Yuanxin had considered it internally, if the customs of the Yelang Kingdom were similar to those of the big Han, and those women seldom showed their faces outside, then this phenomenon was normal.

But in the big man, those who do not show their faces are also women who have not been out of the cabinet. Those who are married and married can already serve as a labor force, and they will definitely not hide their faces because of avoiding suspicion.

In the midsummer of Guanzhong, if you ride a horse and gallop in the countryside, you can always see a woman with only a few strips of cloth on her body working in the field.

After all, for big men, men have to serve in the army because they have to undertake corvee service, which directly leads to the fact that the proportion of women in each household is much higher than that of men.

But in Yelang, Zhang Yuan rarely even saw an elderly woman.

The old farmer held a hoe in both hands, looked up at Zhang Yuan, and saw Zhang Yuan and Li Jian in gorgeous clothes, so he stood up immediately.

Aristocratic status is useful no matter where it is.

Even if the scholar-bureaucrats left over from the Qin Dynasty are dead characters at this time, the treatment in prison is much better than that of ordinary people. Members of the Xiang clan can be officials from the Han Dynasty to the prime minister. their identities.

"The villain has met the noble man. I don't know what the noble man wants to ask. The villain must tell everything he knows."

The hands of the old farmer holding the hoe were already trembling, and Zhang Yuan didn't know where he put pressure on him, making the old farmer forget all the questions he just asked.

"The old man is fine, I just want to ask why there are not many women in this county."

After hearing Zhang Yuan's question clearly, the old farmer's face was very ugly, and he hesitated a little, and his fear gradually turned into vigilance.

Zhang Yuan glanced at Li Jian, and Li Jian took out a piece of gold from his pocket and handed it to the old farmer.

This gold can save a family of four from going hungry for a year even in Yelang Kingdom.

Even so, the old farmer hesitated for a while before putting the gold into his arms.

"My lord, you may be from the Han Kingdom.

Our Yelang often fights with the surrounding tribes. In recent years, those tribes have joined forces to deal with my Yelang, and they don’t invade the land, but just rob food and women. Now Yelang has far fewer women than men.

That's why the nobleman felt that he hadn't seen many women. "

Zhang Yuan nodded after listening, the doubts in his heart were resolved, and there was nothing else to do.

Even now, Tang Meng and Duotong still don't have a clue, and they have to wait until Zong Xing returns to Fu County after the investigation, before he can make a next judgment.

On the second and third days in a row, Zhang Yuan didn't wait for Duotong to summon him again, so he followed Jifu and Li Jian to wander around the city of Fu County all day long, experiencing the customs of Yelang.

On the afternoon of the third day, Zong Xing, who was covered in dirt, finally returned to the post house from outside on his war horse.

When he returned to the post house, he knocked on the door of Zhang Yuan's room without taking a shower and changing into clean clothes.

"Master, master, I'm back."

Zong Xing knocked on the door very quickly, and Zhang Yuan quickly got up and opened the door.

"But what did you gain?"

Zongxing nodded excitedly.

"Okay, sit down and drink some water before talking, since you're back, you don't have to worry so much."

Zong Xing patted the dust on his body outside the door, and then walked in again and sat down, picked up the tea bowl and took a sip of the green tea brought from Shu County.

"The Patriarch, the Huang family, and the civilian husbands that Tang Meng forcibly expropriated were not people from the Yelang Kingdom at all, but were captured from other surrounding tribes."

"Caught from other tribes?"

"Hmm, yes.

Some soldiers under Tang Meng's command had left this valley in the past two days and went to capture people from the surrounding tribes.

The armored soldiers I went with mixed in with this team, and only then did I realize that none of the people from Yelang were arrested by them.

Those soldiers didn't seem to know the facts. After all, they only followed the orders from above to arrest people, and they didn't care about other things at all. "

Now Zhang Yuan understood why Duotong agreed to enlist civilian husbands, but was unwilling to count the household registration population of Yelang Kingdom.

Once the household registration population is counted, it will be easy for the officials in charge of enlisting corvee from the big Han in the future to find out that the civilian men they enlist are actually not Yelang people at all.

(End of this chapter)