the world is at stake

Zhou Qingfeng scratched his head, feeling that his words and working methods might be wrong.He simply sat cross-legged on the ground, beckoned the other numb villagers to sit in a circle, and said in a deep voice, "Do you want to not pay the rent?"

The villagers shook their heads in unison, feeling incredible and absolutely impossible.

"If I snatch the land from your village, the land rent will be [-]%, are you willing to rent it?" Zhou Qingfeng threw out another condition.

The elders and villagers raised their heads again, but they went down again after a while.The old man muttered even more inarticulately: "How can such a good thing happen. This land has its own owner, the government is powerful, and we small people can't fight it."

"If someone comes to collect rent, I will be responsible for driving them away. If someone is secretly inquiring into Xinhua Village, would you like to inform us?" Zhou Qingfeng continued to ask.

The elder still shook his head, but was interrupted when he wanted to decline.

"Xinhua Village will soon build a second mill, which will be free for the surrounding villagers to use in the future. In addition, the doctors in our village can also treat the villagers for free, and only charge for the medicine.

The village plans to set up a cooperative and buy fifty cattle from outside.When the spring plowing begins, the price of renting cattle will be calculated at half of the normal price.These benefits can be shared as long as you are willing to join the cooperative.

All you have to do is to give us manpower and material resources to allocate, such as helping to keep an eye on the movement of the surrounding land.If there are bad guys coming to spy, let us know in advance. "

Visible benefits are far more impressive than empty promises.

The medical treatment alone is a great convenience—ordinary people can only suffer from illnesses, and it is not easy to send patients to the county.Ask the doctor to come?I dare not even think about it.

"When you come to the spring famine, every household will have to cut off their food, and you must borrow money to survive. We will provide you with loans, and the interest will be calculated on the basis of one cent."

Loan usury is prevalent in the Jiangnan area, which is more ruthless than landlord exploitation.In the spring, farmers need loans to purchase seeds, farm tools and rent cattle. After harvesting in autumn, they not only have to pay land rent and government grain requisition, but also have to repay the loan.

As long as they are burdened with usurious loans, the economic situation of the peasant household will go from bad to worse. In a few years, they will inevitably sell their children and daughters, and their families will be ruined.There are such examples in every village, and they are not uncommon.

The usury lenders are generally local gentry.

In the era when the imperial power did not go to the countryside, these landlords and petty officials occupied the countryside for hundreds of years.They have the financial resources to support scholars, and if they can be admitted to the scholar, they can also be exempted from tax and corvee.

In order to survive, local peasant households turned to the gentry at the cost of surrendering their land.This exacerbated land annexation, forming a vicious circle in which the country could not collect taxes and the common people could not survive.

The operating costs of water mills are now almost zero. The 'Holy Light' team brought a ton of silver coins and copper coins as capital, which is a good opportunity to make themselves bigger and stronger.

Hearing Zhou Qingfeng say that the annual interest on borrowing money is only one cent, the hearts of the elders in Nanwan Village were pounding.But what he thought of was to borrow money with this low interest rate as much as possible, and then resell it and lend it to other people in the village at a high interest rate.

But right now, the farmers in Nanwan Village who can talk a little bit are sitting around in front of Zhou Qingfeng, and all of them have heard about this interest rate—the borrowing by local gentry is a "three-point interest" or a "rolling interest" calculated on a monthly basis. .

The pressure of loan sharks is so heavy that the bottom layer suffers unspeakably.

Hearing that they can borrow money, the people sitting around finally became more active.Someone asked in a low voice: "Master Zhou, I just want to borrow a few taels of silver."

"Shut up." The elder spoke suddenly, staring at the person who spoke, "The clan has not yet reached a conclusion, how can you speak up? Back off."

The person who was scolded immediately shrank his head, and slowly backed away in fear.

The elder looked at Zhou Qingfeng again, and changed his smiling face again, "Master Zhou is willing to borrow money, which is naturally a good thing. I am willing to take care of it on my behalf and ensure that the master will make a profit."

Zhou Qingfeng's face turned cloudy in an instant, and the scene was silent for more than ten seconds.

The old man in 'Nanwan' tried his best to smile, but suddenly Zhou Qingfeng slapped him hard.The latter couldn't bear it and shouted: "Patriarchal power, right? I just said why is it so difficult to handle things in your village? You are the one who stands in the way."

The old man is the elder of the village and the head of the clan, and all affairs of the village have to be arranged by him.After he was pulled down, several nephews behind him immediately looked at each other angrily.But before they got up, each of them was hit in the chest with a sweet heart, and they fainted on the spot.

The accident happened too fast, and the villagers sitting around hadn't reacted yet, and they were all stunned.Zhou Qingfeng beckoned, and a few 'assistant policemen' followed him, tied up the old man and his three or five nephews and dragged them away.

Zhou Qingfeng pointed at the person who had just asked for a loan, and said with a straight face: "I'm impatient, you... it's up to you. Either you just listen to me and become the village head of Nanwan Village; Let the elders back and let them kill you."

Several elderly people were dragged outside the sitting circle and were beaten by the "assistant police" like ghosts and wolves.

The person who asked for the loan looked at it dumbfounded, his mind blank.Instead, the companion next to him stabbed him, "Brother Wusi, you have been spotted by Master Zhou, and you still don't kneel down and kowtow to him."

Suddenly there were several kowtows on the ground, and after the 'Five Fourth Brother' mechanically kowtowed, he realized what had happened, and asked back: "Master Zhou, you can't do it. You want to arrest the patriarch of this village ?”

"How to deal with it, you have the final say?" Zhou Qingfeng kicked the ball back.

The person who asked about the loan immediately hesitated, looked at the villagers sitting around, and said with some coercion, "No way, that's the head of the clan with the original surname of the village, and he didn't look up and look down. He didn't offend you either."

"What's your name?"

"Zheng Wusi."

Zhou Qingfeng just sneered, "Okay, I understand." He shouted to the 'Associate Police' who was beating violently: "Zheng Wusi Master Zheng said that he wants to use my hand to kill that blind old man .”

The 'assistant police' are half-children recently recruited by Xinhua Village, who haven't received any training yet.It's okay to let them pretend to be tigers, but they dare not kill people.

Zhou Qingfeng gave an order, and several 'Associations and Police Associations' were all stunned, not knowing what to do.They only had a few short sticks in their hands, and no other weapons at hand.

But being forced by the fierce gaze of the 'owner', all the 'assistant police' shuddered.They ate enough for a few days, wore warm clothes, and they were all happy in their dreams.

Such a good day should not be lost anyway.

The boys trembled in their hearts, grabbed the short sticks in their hands, and smashed the head of the old man in Nanwan Village without any sense of control.In the first few strokes, the old man begged for mercy.But after smashing indiscriminately, people's lives are gone.

Zhou Qingfeng turned his head and said to Zheng Wusi: "How? Who else do you want to kill?"

"Don't kill, don't kill, it's enough. The rest are my brothers and uncles who are related to me. Don't kill any more." Zheng Wusi waved his hands in a panic, and he had no right to be happy from the sky.

But this is far from enough.Zhou Qingfeng still had a straight face, but instead stared at the farmer in front of him coldly.In terms of appearance, there is nothing special about this person, but he is willing to speak up, so he can be regarded as a part of challenging the clan's power.

Zheng Wusi was so stared at that his whole body was icy cold, and after a shock he came back to his senses, thought carefully about Master Zhou's words before and after, and hurriedly shouted: "Master calm down, I understand.

The mill is free, the doctor does not charge money, and borrow money at low interest rates. These are all good things. How can I not agree?The master wants to keep an eye on the movement of the nearby land, in case the bad guys sneak in, the younger one will immediately send someone to watch, without any delay. "

Under the warm winter sun, a dead body was dumped outside the grain drying field. The young and strong in several villages were beaten and moaned, and the rest of the villagers were stunned.Zheng Wusi's quick wit reached the limit, and he really didn't know what to say.

Zhou Qingfeng was silent for a while, and added: "The whole village joins the cooperative, and the labor force is used by me. Farming, road construction, marriage, and funeral are all decided by me."

"Okay, ok, lord is smart and fair. I'm not dissatisfied." The creases on Zheng Wusi's face were huddled together, and his smile was uglier than crying.He wanted to fight for the clan, but he didn't have the courage.

The same is true of the others, obsequiously, without any criticism.It seems common sense for powerful people to be domineering.As for the elders in the village being beaten to death, no one seemed to care.

"Okay, the first thing I ordered is to call out everyone in your village, and I will make an inventory. In addition, the conditions of each family, houses, fields, farm tools, and cattle must be registered. From now on, your work will proceed according to the plan."

What is a 'plan'?The villagers didn't understand, but they nodded and agreed at the moment.

After all, at this moment, Master Zhou's performance is better than that of the government.It's not that he is so fierce, but that he can't be chosen by means of both kindness and power. Who dares to refuse?

It's just that the more happily the villagers agreed, the more annoyed Zhou Qingfeng became - he also wanted to learn from the revolutionary predecessors to do mass work patiently, but he couldn't do it.

Chapter 11 Totalitarianism

To what extent was the power of the ancient clan so great?Today Zhou Qingfeng experienced a lot.

There are only about two hundred people in Nanwan Village, and there is an ancestral hall surnamed Zheng in the village.There are two big pig cages hanging on the porch of the ancestral hall.It is made of bamboo strips, cylindrical in shape, and made into a net. The net is quite large and one end is open.

It's a pig cage, not a lantern.

Unlike other ash-laden furnishings in the ancestral hall, these two pig cages are quite clean.When Zhou Qingfeng entered the ancestral hall, he saw these two things at a glance.He turned his head and asked, "Is this used to punish adulterers and adulterers?"

Zheng Wusi was confused by today's situation, followed with drooping head, looked up and said 'yes'.But after he finished speaking, he felt that it was not accurate, and added: "The men were beaten to death with clubs, and the women were put into pig cages, immersed in the river and drowned."

Zhou Qingfeng asked again, "Did you soak a lot?"

"Every four or five years, one or two are always soaked." Zheng Wusi nodded and said, "Actually, there are not many cheating. But those who are unruly, jealous, and insulting to the family are all soaked."

"What do you mean by not obeying women's morals?" Zhou Qingfeng said coldly.

Zheng Wusi opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Zhou Qingfeng asked again, "Who is going to judge what is 'disobedience to women'? And who is going to order the pig cages to be soaked?"

"Naturally the patriarch." Zheng Wusi said.

"It seems that I am not wronged to kill him." Zhou Qingfeng's tone was harsh.

It has been half a month since the crossing, and the members of the 'Holy Light' team have detected the geographical boundaries that they can reach, and if they go out, they will be out of the range of short-term communication.

They found that the social environment they faced was extremely harsh, the peak of feudal society that had been developed to the extreme and had not been cleaned up at all.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese society was repeatedly devastated by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and foreign colonial forces, which provided the soil for the New Cultural Revolution.But the current Ming Dynasty is really an extremely solidified and conservative society.

In the level after level of oppression, the situation of the bottom women is the most miserable.

Ming history experts have recorded a lot of folk anecdotes in Qinglong Town, especially after the team recruited a group of young women, many vivid records have been added.

For example, a newly married young daughter-in-law was dubbed as 'mindful and lowly' and soaked in a pig cage because she went out wearing a calico dress, which aroused gossip and teasing from the men in the neighbors.

There is also the "riding a donkey upside down" torture tool, which is specially used to bully women - I saw similar things in the text and pictures of later generations, but I don't feel deeply.It can be creepy to hear the current women speak out with examples.

Zhou Qingfeng stood in front of the two pig cages that were often used, thinking how many women's ghosts were haunting them, and he was full of hostility when he thought too much.He turned around and ordered: "Burn these two things."

Zheng Wusi didn't dare to disobey, but he didn't care too much.He only felt that Mr. Zhou probably felt that the instruments of torture that executed too many women were unlucky—if they were burned, they would be burned, and it would be good to stab two more in the future.

The mentality of the surrounding villages of Xinhua Village is generally the same, knowing that these foreign masters are too powerful, rich and powerful, and kill people at every turn - Zhou Qingfeng's "security rectification" was the first to be unlucky for a few scoundrels in Nanwan Village.

One of the old rascals molested the young daughter-in-law who was doing laundry by the river, took out a bird to pee upstream, and shot the bird across the river—bacterial infection is slow in winter, and he was carried back to the village in pain for five or six days before he died. .

Because Master Zhou has dealt with it so badly, the surrounding villages seem to be quite honest, but secret conflicts are inevitable.In particular, the clan class that wields power is doing things overtly and secretly.

As a result, Zhou Qingfeng was provoked.

At No. 200 in Nanwan Village, all men, women and children came out to accept registration.Zhou Qingfeng counted the population, residence, and food surplus in the village, and then ordered: "Although it's winter, don't be idle.

There are several bamboo forests around Nanwan Village. You choose the thick ones, cut them down, and send them to build bridges.When the bridge is built, the two villages can be merged into one village. "

At present, there is not enough wood, and the digging of the ancestral graves of the gentry's house has not yet begun, so bamboo has become a substitute for building materials.Songjiang Prefecture is not the main producing area of ​​bamboo, but it can still be found.

Zhou Qingfeng ordered to cut bamboo to build a bridge, Zheng Wusi regarded it as a disguised corvée, and complied listlessly, and selected twenty "strong women" in the village to chop bamboo.

This person is still unaware of the idea that many masters of the 'Holy Light' are eager to mobilize manpower.Even if the elders in the village were executed, he would only regard it as a disobedience to the master and bad luck.

The twenty 'strong women' were either short or thin, with little strength.They didn't have any tools at hand, so they only transported more than [-] thick bamboos to the bridge construction site all morning. The transportation was all by dragging, so it's no wonder it was fast.

Near noon, dinner was served at the construction site by the river.

The central kitchen of Xinhua Village brought in food by boat, full of buckets of brown rice, steaming white steam when the lid was opened.

There are lard residues in the fried vegetables, which are fragrant.Plus the filling egg drop soup, full of chopped green onion and salt, and a layer of glistening oil and water.

With this kind of food, some of the twenty "strong women" almost choked to death while eating.Like starved ghosts reincarnated, they rushed in front of the "assistant police" who shared the meals, and at the same time, the hired workers of Xinhua Village who were eating at the construction site wanted to fight them.

It's so greedy, the landlord's family has hired workers to cut wheat, and I have never seen such good food!

In winter, poor people pay attention to 'Cat Winter'.The whole family lay in a dark room covered with straw, and they did not cook until they were dying of hunger. They saved every grain and firewood in order to stay warm until the beginning of spring.

If it weren't for the persecution of the young and strong in Zheng Wusi's gathering village, no one would run out to do heavy work at this time of year.It's deadly.

Many "strong women" were forced to go to work, and they didn't even have enough clothes to keep out the cold. Their hands and faces turned blue from the cold, and they fainted several times.They had become a habit of submissiveness, just as their own destiny, until they were rescued by a few bowls of hot soup on the construction site.

Originally, the soul was going to be scattered, but after drinking hot soup, he would be resurrected with full blood.

The children of the middle peasants and rich peasants in the village smelled the aroma, and they desperately wanted to go to the food and stretched out their hands to beg for it.The hired workers and the 'assistant police' were not as polite as 'Shengguang', they scolded and beat them, and drove them away.

The child went back crying, and brought the news that there was a lot of eating and drinking on the bridge construction site.After Zheng Wusi learned about it, he hurried to the construction site to see it, and saw with his own eyes that the "strong woman" he arranged was full of greasy food and glowing red.

"Master Zhou on the opposite side is so rich that he is willing to give such a good meal to the servants who are working? There is nothing like this in Qinglong Town."

Zheng Wusi found members of the construction team who were still at the bridge construction site, and said that he would replace the twenty "strong women" sent to the construction site, and he could personally lead a team to cut bamboo for the old men.

Gao Zhen, the leader of the construction team, was in charge of repairing the bridge. He glanced at Zheng Wusi, who was actively expressing his opinion, and shook his head, "I don't think you can do it. Amei Wang will be the village chief of Nanwan Village."

Gao Zhen waved, and a thin woman walked over timidly.But when she saw Zheng Wusi, she didn't dare to move forward, and stood several meters away in fear.

When Zheng Wusi saw this woman, he immediately said angrily: "This is a daughter-in-law with a foreign surname who married into the village. How can she be qualified to manage our village's affairs? Master, you must not be deceived. She is not a woman. , to soak the pig cage."

Frightened by Zheng Wusi's accusation, the thin woman's legs went limp, and she fell to the ground.She was so anxious that she couldn't open her mouth, so she could only wave her hands and make a wow sound, indicating that she was definitely not 'disobedient'.

Gao Zhen was furious, pointed at Zheng Wusi's nose and cursed: "I'm fed up with you idiots who fail to succeed and fail. I finally found a smart person who can teach me once. How dare you touch her!" Hairy hair, I chopped off your whole family."

Angry, angry!

Zheng Wusi didn't understand why the master in front of him was angry, but fell to the ground in fright.In his opinion, the masters in Xinhua Village are very polite, and even the fiercest master Zhou is also a civilized person-he can laugh when he does violence.

The old master Gao in front of him is angry because of a woman. Could it be that he has taken a fancy to this little daughter-in-law?

After Zheng Wusi sat down, he became dizzy and dizzy, turned around and ran away without distinguishing things.

Gao Zhen stared at Zheng Wusi's back, hating him endlessly.Looking back and seeing the village woman who was only about ten years old kneeling on the ground, he became even more angry, "Get up and go to work. What I value is your brain."

That night, after discussion, the 'Holy Light' team believed that in the current environment, enlightening people's wisdom and granting civil rights is a matter that is divorced from reality, and only by implementing simple militarized management can resources be used effectively.

Two 'urban management' from the military team wore black armor and led a team of 'assistant police' into Nanwan Village, announcing that Zheng May 200th had been dismissed and that more than [-] people in the village would be managed by so-called 'foreign wives'.

"Anyone who disagrees will be suppressed."

Torches were lit in the village, and the "urban management" who came to the town was two meters tall and black as a door god.In order to gain an advantage in the era of cold weapons, the people in the military team deliberately chose the type who is tall, strong and has a thick voice, which is extremely deterrent.

According to internal discussions, if we want to develop rapidly and implement Zhou Qingfeng's plan of demolishing houses and burying graves, we must implement an authoritarian military management system with highly centralized power, and any individual must obey the collective.

Just at night, the military team gave the rest of the village a full meal, and then asked them to make a choice...

Either tear down the ancestral halls and tombs in the village that symbolize family power overnight, and stay to accept the rule of the "Holy Light"; or pack up your belongings and flee, and go elsewhere.

In this cruel social practice, more than a dozen villagers resisted, but were easily overthrown by the black-armored military group "urban management" - some died in fighting, some were expelled, and most of them chose to be obedient citizens.

The next day, Nanwan Village became the first area under the rule of 'Holy Light' to implement the rationing system.The elderly, adults, children, able-bodied and disabled obtain living materials according to their different working abilities.