The Ming Dynasty took an unconventional approach

Pan Yun entrusted the three ships to Zhang Weiyi and Qu Le, which was actually indirectly entrusting them to the Tianshi Mansion and the Wulin Alliance, which was also a fulfillment of their alliance.

Pan Yun: "Of the three boats, except for the one promised to the Navy Office and the prefect, the other two boats can carry people, 20 taels per person. If they are carrying cargo, we will give it to you at 30% off the market price."

Even though they knew Pan Yun was working for them for nothing, they still had to do their best.

After all, she regarded the people sent by Tianshi Mansion and Wulin Alliance to take over the port and silver mine not as money but as partners.

She handed the ship over to them instead of to the Navy Office and the prefect, giving them more bargaining chips.

For this reason, they couldn't let her suffer any loss and had to do their best to arrange the three boats.

That night, Pan Yun flew back to Sanqing Mountain with his three nephews.

The darkness concealed the Sanbao Ding's silhouette very well, allowing them to fly back low, and they also saw the people who were sleeping in the wild because their houses were destroyed.

There were sporadic fires burning, and wealthy families nearby came with food as relief. They built stoves and cooked porridge in large pots.

Pan Yun flew over their heads and could still smell the fragrance of the porridge. The victims who were queuing with their bowls in hand felt something in their hearts and looked up, but they only saw the moon hanging in the east sky.

"Today is the 18th, right? The moon is only missing a corner."

"It's the eighteenth. It's past the rice planting season. My newly harvested wheat was all in the house, but a strong wind and heavy rain destroyed it all."

"Ah~~"

"Don't sigh. The fields are still there. Just keep cultivating them. Mr. Zhou said that each tenant can borrow 100 kilograms of grain from him without interest."

Pan Yun flew over and saw scattered victims in the wild. There were two children hiding in the bushes, their bodies huddled together, not moving.

Miaohe quickly dropped a small package.

With a bang, the package fell beside them.

The two children were startled and hugged each other. For a long time, no one came to catch them, and they smelled food from the package.

A dirty little hand reached out from the grass and quickly pulled the package in. When it was opened, there was a small bag of rice, a large bag of buns, and a bag of water.

The two children's eyes lit up and they grabbed the buns and started to gobble them up. After each of them had finished a bun, they began to count the remaining things.

A child picked up two yellow talismans folded into a triangle, looked at them carefully, gave one to his sister and put the other in his own arms.

He carefully stuck his head out and looked up at the sky.

There is nothing in the sky.

He pulled his sister out, knelt on the ground, and kowtowed to the sky: "Hurry up, this is given to us by the gods."

My sister asked in a baby voice, "Didn't our parents give it to you?"

The child was silent for a moment and then said, "It must be my parents and the gods who prayed for it."

The younger sister followed her brother and kowtowed three times toward the sky respectfully.

Pan Yun flew over the town.

Some officials patrolled at night and carried the sick people who fell on the street to the county medical office. They also took people to go from street to street to count the victims and the sick.

Pan Yun was distressed when he saw the rushing, muddy river outside the city, which was almost half filled with mud and sand. "Is it really that serious?"

Xue Shao was also on the way.

From Fujian to Beijing, one needs to go through Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Nanzhili and Anhui...

He reached out and touched the traces of the flood on the city wall, then looked at the silt and debris accumulated in the city, muttering, "Is it really this serious?"

The Jinyiwei who was escorting Xue Shao looked sarcastic: "Yushi Xue is the inspector of Jiangnan, but doesn't he know how serious the flood in Jiangnan is?"

Chen Liutao on the side seemed to be hesitant to speak.

Xue Shao said nothing.

He walked into the city.

It was clearly dark, but the city gates were not closed and there were no guards. The whole city was empty, as if it was a ghost town.

Xue Shao stepped on the mud and walked towards the depths of darkness with his back to the moon.

There was a rustling sound, and a thin, ragged man, hunched over, dragged something out of the mud and was pulling it into the house next door.

Xue Shao took two quick steps and hurried after him.

Someone is faster than him.

A man rushed out from the side, and the other party grabbed that man and fought fiercely for the thing in his hand.

Xue Shao quickened his pace and heard the other party's hoarse scolding: "Don't eat!"

"These are pigs washed down by the flood. If you eat them, you will get plague! Let them go!"

When Xue Shao heard this, he trotted forward and helped the man take away the bloated and muddy dead pig.

Seeing that Xue Shao brought so many people, the man turned around and tried to run, but Xue Shao grabbed his sleeve and he staggered and fell to the ground. Xi Jin hurried forward to help Xue Shao up, while Chen Liutao and Qu Zhixing grabbed the man who was struggling to run.

"Censor Xue?"

A quarter of an hour later, Xue Shao was sitting in front of the county government office, half covered in mud, and together with the county magistrate Dai Rong, he watched the victims who had just stopped struggling.

He was holding Xue Shao's dry food in his hand and was eating it voraciously.

I ate too fast and choked so much that my eyes rolled back.

Xue Shao quickly unscrewed the water bag and handed it to him. He waited until he swallowed the food before he breathed a sigh of relief and reminded him, "Eat slowly."

The victims nodded repeatedly but didn't listen and continued to stuff things into their throats eagerly.

Dai Rong was so sad that tears started to fall. He covered his face and cried, "There are more than 10,000 people in Kunshan, but only a few are left."

Xue Shao asked: "How long has the incident happened? How many casualties have there been?"

Dai Rong: "It's been twelve days. Half a month ago, there was a storm. It rained for three days in a row. The water overflowed several feet on the flat ground. I asked the people in the city to hide in high places and drained the water. Later, the sky cleared up, so I thought everything was fine and ordered the people to return to the city. But, but..."

He covered his face and cried, "That night, the water of Taihu Lake overflowed and rushed down the river. Songjiang River was in turmoil again, and the lake and the sea surged. There were no houses for people and animals on both sides of the water. Kunshan, the whole city of Kunshan was flooded..."

Xue Shao held his shoulder in silence, and waited until he had finished crying before he calmly asked, "Have you counted the casualties? Is there any food and grass for relief in the city? Have you reported it to the court?"

Dai Rong wiped away his tears and replied calmly, "There are 462 casualties and 839 missing. Because the city is low-lying, all the filth was washed here. I was afraid of another flood, so I moved all the people in the city to higher ground outside the city."

He pointed in a direction and said, "They are all over there now, barely using the food in the warehouse to survive, but they can't hold out for too long. After the flood, I sent someone to report to the court 300 miles away, but... there has been no response so far."

Xue Shao stood up abruptly and turned around in place with a sullen face.

It’s an express journey of three hundred miles to the capital, and the memorial can be delivered to the capital on the third day.

The disaster was as serious as the fire. Dai Rong should have received a reply four days ago at the latest, but there has been no news until now.

Unless... the memorial was not submitted, or the court had no money and decided to deal with it coldly.

Xue Shao closed his eyes, clenched his fists, turned around and said, "I'll go out of the city with you and take a look. I'll ride into the capital tomorrow."

Dai Rong immediately knelt down and said, "On behalf of the people of Kunshan, I would like to thank Censor Xue."

Xue Shao helped him up, held him tightly and said, "This is my responsibility. I only learned about the flood in the south of the Yangtze River today, half a month late. I have failed in my duty."

Dai Rong smiled bitterly and said, "Brother Xue, why do you have to take the blame? There have been rumors in the Jiangnan officialdom that you followed that group of Taoist priests and martial arts heroes to go out to sea to suppress bandits. After you disappeared in Jiangnan, everyone saw you in private and hoped that you would be hindered by Japanese affairs and not come back."

Many things are kept secret from the superiors but not from the subordinates. The capital may not know that Xue Shao went to sea, but the officials in the south of the Yangtze River who had been keeping an eye on Xue Shao's whereabouts were the first to receive the news.

As a result, the Wulin Alliance and the Tianshi Mansion had a particularly smooth sailing this time. Even the Navy Office lent them ships privately. Officials at all levels in Jiangnan saw it but said nothing.

They just wanted them to take Xue Shao as far away as possible. If he couldn't come back in the end, they were willing to ask for meritorious service and honor for Xue Shao, and give him posthumous honors.

Anyway, no matter what, no one is looking forward to his return. Dai Rong follows the crowd and thinks that he will have a hard time if Xue Shao comes back.

Although he did not make any mistakes, his superiors might not be clean. When his superiors were sad, he, a small county magistrate, had to suffer with them.

However, he didn't expect that after just one month, he began to miss Xue Shao.

Especially after he sent three memorials to the capital but received no news, and after he went to Suzhou Prefecture to ask for an audience with the prefect but still received no relief food, he missed Xue Shao terribly.

Dai Rong pulled Xue Shao out of the city while crying, "As long as I can get them relief food, I will even dismiss me from my post."

He cried more and more sadly: "Brother Xue, I don't have your courage. I feel ashamed of my teacher and the people. I once wanted to open Changping Warehouse privately, but I was afraid of death and I was afraid of bringing trouble to my family..."

He tightly grasped Xue Shao's hand, and said in an inaudible voice: "Now we can have porridge a day, which is enough for five days. After five days, if the relief food doesn't arrive, I will have to open the Changping warehouse. Then I hope Brother Xue can save my son's life..."

Xue Shao held his hand tightly back and whispered, "Don't worry."

Kunshan is all flat land with a very low altitude and a well-developed water system, so it is a land of fish and rice.

But this also means that when a flood occurs, people have nowhere to escape.

There is only one mountain in the entire Kunshan County, called Yufeng Mountain, which is only eighty meters high.

Because it stands out as a unique place, it is very precious, and the literati and poets of Kunshan like to come here to climb whenever they have time.

After the first rainstorm, Dai Rong asked the people in the city to take shelter in the mountains, and at the same time relocated all the nearby villagers who could.

He later ordered the people to return home, but because everyone had families with them, only about two-thirds of them left immediately, and the rest had no time to evacuate.

Just one night later, a flood suddenly came and the people who stayed on the mountain survived. Then, under Dai Rong's organization, they began to rescue the people who had gone down the mountain.

Many people have been rescued one after another, but many people are still missing.

Dai Rong felt guilty, and the fact that he had not received assistance from the court for a long time made him lose weight rapidly. At this time, the official robe he wore looked as empty as a piece of linen draped over a bamboo pole.

Seeing him like this, the people could not bear to blame him. The rich families who were hiding in the mountains with him also did their best to contribute food. It was only thanks to the food stored in their warehouses and the county government's warehouse that everyone was able to survive safely until now.

The mood on the mountain was low at this time. Dai Rong was afraid that it would affect them, so he wiped away his tears before going up the mountain and pulled Xue Shao up the mountain happily. (End of this chapter)