All rivers and mountains are safe

Shen Mingan was sat on the small stool by Lu Ciheng's shoulders. Lin Hongshen's youngest son obviously liked him more. As soon as he sat down, the child clung to him and asked Shen Mingan to hug him.

This child is not shy of strangers, his soft little face has two dimples when he smiles, anyone who looks at it thinks it is cute.

There are a lot of people around. For these hungry and cold victims, just standing in the ice and snow is very difficult, but it is hard to stand in line for such a long time. If you leave now, it means you have to line up again from the end of the line. Everyone wants to get the porridge before others, and no one wants to leave.

After waiting for a long time for the hot porridge, many people complained quietly, and some simply sat down on the floor. The victims gradually became agitated, and they had no strength to move around under the hunger. There is no other way than to wait.

The small stool was too short for Shen Mingan. Sitting on it with his baby in his arms, his sight was completely blocked, and he didn't notice the people here. When the buckets of porridge that had just been cooked were brought out, he suddenly heard There were several sharp and ear-piercing noises, like clear water dripping into hot oil, and the originally quiet crowd was full of noise.

Many people didn't even get the porridge, and they crowded into a pile, full of voices.

Shen Mingan let go of the child and stood up. Before he could figure out what happened, he heard a surprised and suspicious curse from the crowd, "Where did the cicada I just caught go?!"

He saw Lin Hongshen's youngest son bent down and picked up something from the ground, then ran to Shen Mingan's side as if offering a treasure, and held up the thing in his hand to show him.

Shen Mingan's heart sank, before he had time to think about it, he picked up the child with one hand, and wrapped his little hand with the other hand, trying to cover the cicada in his hand, but the sharp-eyed people saw the cicada's trace , pointing to their side and yelling loudly: "In the hands of that child!"

The child in his arms was startled by this man's ferocious cry, and instantly let go of the cicada in his hand, and stretched out his arms to hug Shen Mingan's neck, but the cicada's wing was ripped off and he released it. After falling to the ground, crawl slowly.

These disaster victims rushed forward as if they saw a life-saving treasure, and as long as they could walk, they rushed to grab the cicada.

With quick eyes and hands, Lu Ciheng lifted Shen Mingan who was standing there a few steps away from the crowd, looked at these crazy people indifferently, and asked him: "Is it Han Lingchan?"

"No." Shen Mingan's throat was astringent, "It's just a very ordinary winter cicada."

He had seen Han Ling cicada in Huaxing Palace, it was more than two or three times bigger than this black cicada, and its shape was completely different.

Along the way from Shangjing, notices of searching for cicadas were plastered all over the gates and alleys of the city, but Lu Chengjing turned a deaf ear to his advice, and the purpose of searching for cicadas even reached Yizhou before the relief money.

Lin Hongshen asked the guards to maintain order. He stood on a high place and yelled that this was not the cicada the emperor was looking for. Hong Shen's voice couldn't suppress them either.

The reward of thousands of gold, ordinary people have never seen so much money in several lifetimes.When the cicada-hunting notice was first posted, the people tried their best to find the cicadas. Officials from all over the country didn't know what the emperor was looking for, so they handed over all the cicadas they found.

In a few days, all the cicadas found from various places were sent to Huaxing Hall, but none of them were what Lu Chengjing was looking for. Among them, a small county under Jiangzhou handed in the most, and there were all those with missing legs and wings. With an order, the magistrate of that small county immediately lost his head.

But even so, there are still many people looking for cicadas day and night for the bounty. If they find them, they will be rich and worry-free all their lives.

Shen Ming'an watched these people jostling and pushing, and even pushed the porridge bucket they had been waiting for just now to the ground because of the confusion of the crowd, but no one cared at all, while Lin Hongshen was still standing on a high place and shouting hoarsely.

Like a farce, absurd and ridiculous.

This chaos lasted for a cup of tea. When the guards pulled the crowd away, there was a young girl inside. She was prostrate on the ground, protecting the cicada with her body, and her teeth were in chaos. One was broken, and the mouth was full of blood, which looked terrible.

She spat out the blood in her mouth, and carefully turned the upside-down bowl over. In order to prevent the cicadas in the bowl from escaping, she covered the bowl with her five fingers, and limped to Lin Hongshen, "My lord, I Found the cicada!"

Lin Hongshen couldn't bear to jump off from a high place, but he had to repeat what he said just now.

"Why not? It's exactly the same as the cicada pictured on the cicada-hunting notice." She saw that Shen Ming'an's official rank was higher than Lin Hongshen, and she clutched the sleeve of Shen Ming'an's official uniform and said anxiously: "My lord, I beg you , take a closer look, even if it is not exactly the same as the cicada that the emperor is looking for, it still fits a little bit, right? Then you can also get part of the bounty, I don’t want a thousand gold, just give me some broken silver , I will leave the rest to you, my mother is sick, and if I don’t drink the medicine, I will be unable to hold on like this every day, I beg you, my lord..."

She also seemed to understand that the cicada she had snatched with all her might was useless, she slid to the ground and wept uncontrollably as she spoke. Lin Hongshen's youngest son came down from Shen Ming'an's arms, ran to her side and awkwardly wiped her tears with his sleeve.

And those people who were fighting just now, after learning that the cicada can't get a bounty at all, stopped paying attention to this side and continued to wait for the porridge indifferently.

It seemed as if the anger that had been supporting her had been vented in an instant, and she stared at Shen Ming'an as if she was muttering to herself and questioning, "Mother went to the woods in such a cold day so that we could have enough to eat. People who got inflammation from looking for cicadas, why did the porridge only start giving out in the city today, why did the emperor order to look for cicadas at this juncture."

"Perhaps the emperor has his own considerations..."

Even Shen Mingan himself didn't believe what he said. Lu Ciheng stood beside him, and when he heard him say this, his face was very ugly, and he said half-sarcastically: "The old man is so stupid, why don't you Want to protect him?"

After a while, he added, "The Grand Tutor also has the heart to lie to such a little girl."

Why Lu Chengjing wanted to look for cicadas, Shen Mingan knew best.

He is loyal to the emperor, so he does his best to assist Lu Chengjing and teach the prince.

But looking at these chaos, he felt for the first time that he was being blindly loyal to the emperor.