The Ming Dynasty took an unconventional approach

"Come meet a friend."

Pan Yun pulled Miao He closer and they realized that they were wearing Taoist robes.

Miao He said: "Let's go find Wang Xiaojing."

"who are you?"

Miao He: "We are Taoist priests from Mount Sanqing. Wang Xiaojing knows this. Just tell them my name is Miao He and my junior uncle wants to see him."

The two felt that Miaohe was too rude, but they were Taoists from Sanqing Mountain.

They also believed in the mountain god of Sanqing Mountain, so they retracted their knives a little and spoke in a more gentle tone, but they still stopped them: "Wait, we have someone to report it."

Pan Yun: "Wouldn't it be faster if we go with another one?"

"That won't work. What if two of you beat one of us?"

Pan Jun raised his hand, and a ball of fire appeared in his palm with a bang, scaring the two men so much that they took two steps back.

In the firelight, Pan Yun smiled at the two of them: "Look, even if the two of you are here, you can't beat us, go and report."

The two men looked at each other, and one of them put away his knife and turned and ran away.

Pan Yun then clasped his hands together and extinguished the fire in his hands.

It was late at night and most people were asleep. Wang Xiaojing hurriedly followed the road guard. When they met, both of them could not help but pause and looked at each other silently without saying a word.

Wang Xiaojing is still a teenager, but he looks much more weathered. Not only is his face weathered and his eyes full of sadness, but even the youthful spirit is gone.

Miaohe was a little angry at first, angry that her friend had participated in such a thing and implicated the entire village, but as soon as they met, Miaohe's anger disappeared and she was left with only heartache.

The two of them followed Wang Xiaojing into the village silently.

Even though there are lights and fires burning in the village, there are actually few people awake. Everyone is sleeping by the fire.

Wang Xiaojing took them to a campfire, turned around to get a bowl of steamed buns and handed them to them in silence.

Pan Jun took it. The steamed bun was still hot, soft and fluffy. When you pressed it, a hollow would form but it would bounce back quickly. It looked delicious.

Pan Yun broke it open, handed half to Miao He, and asked, "Did you steal it?"

Wang Xiaojing said, "There's nothing to eat on the mountain. We have to survive."

Pan Yun said: "I saw people from your mountain when I was distributing relief food."

Wang Xiaojing was silent for a moment, then raised his head and said, "I also went down the mountain to see you, Junior Master, thank you."

"Because of Fenshui Village?" Pan Yun said, "Your grandparents, parents and sister are still in prison."

Wang Xiaojing lowered his eyes and said, "There will be a way to rescue them."

Pan Yun turned his head to look at the rebels sleeping around the fire. Most of them were older than Wang Xiaojing and looked to be around thirty years old. However, there were also quite a few young men who were as thin as Wang Xiaojing but had weather-beaten faces.

Wang Xiaojing followed her gaze and said, "They are about the same age as me."

Pan Yun pointed at the group of people who looked to be in their 30s or 40s and asked, "How old are they?"

"About twenty years old."

Pan Yun: “It doesn’t look like that at all.”

"The days in the mine are like years. I've only been there for less than half a year, but it feels like a lifetime," Wang Xiaojing said calmly, yet with an indelible sadness: "Thinking back to how happy I was as a child, that was only last year, but it seems like something that happened so long ago."

Pan Yun: "It sounds like you have matured a lot. How much say do you have here as a deputy general?" Wang Xiaojing looked at her solemnly: "Brother Song is the one who makes the decision here."

Pan Yun ate the last bit of steamed bun in his hand, clapped his hands and said, "The imperial envoy is coming soon. He is honest and upright. I will find a way to ask him to solve your problem. You should ask the court to recruit you."

Wang Xiaojing was stunned: "Recruitment? Doesn't that mean surrender?"

"If you don't surrender, are you still thinking about becoming bigger and stronger, and pulling down the emperor to become the emperor yourself?" Pan Yun pointed around and asked, "With your limited manpower, no food or weapons, what can you use to fight?"

Wang Xiaojing defended himself: "We don't want to be emperors."

"Then what do you want to do?"

Wang Xiaojing was silent.

Pan Jun sighed and said, "You don't even know what you want to do, how long can you last?"

Wang Xiaojing: “We don’t know what we want to do, but we know what we don’t want to do.”

Pan Jun listened carefully and said, "Tell me about it."

Wang Xiaojing: "We don't want to work seven hours a day, we don't want to be deducted for no reason, we don't want to work ourselves to death and only get paid a hundred yuan a month."

Wang Xiaojing felt very aggrieved: "The wages were already low, and they always found ways to deduct our money. In the end, we only got 800 to 900 wen a month. In the past two months, the officials who came down said that we were lazy, the mine was not efficient, and the income was not enough to cover the expenses, so they directly deducted our wages."

"We don't want our family to pay such high silver taxes, and we don't want to serve such heavy labor..." Wang Xiaojing's eyes turned red when she said this, and she lowered her head so that they wouldn't see her tears, but her tears fell to the ground in big drops, and her voice couldn't help but choke up: "Second uncle...he died because of military service. He had learned carpentry and had arranged a marriage. He was only waiting for the autumn harvest to get married. Once he was called up for labor service, everything was gone."

Miaohe cried with him.

Wang Xiaojing was able to hold back at first, but when he heard Miaohe's sobbing, he could no longer hold back and burst into tears, covering his face.

Miaohe leaned close to him and cried with him in her arms.

Pan Jun was about to cry, but the deafening cries of the two people made her hold back the tears.

The people lying around the fire looked up, then lay down again quietly, telling their awakened companions: "Go to sleep, Xiaojing is crying again."

Pan Yun wiped the tears from her eyes. After hearing what they said, she couldn't help but ask Xiao Jing, "How did you become a deputy general?"

Wang Xiaojing sobbed and wiped away his tears, saying, "I know the most words among all the people. Not only can I read the government notices, but I can also recite the Great Edict. So they made me the second in command. The titles of deputy general and so on were given casually according to the drama literature."

"So you can't make much decisions." Pan Yun sighed, "Go and invite your boss over, I'll talk to him."

Wang Xiaojing hesitated for a moment and asked, "We surrender, what if the government goes back on its word?"

Pan Yun: "Do you think I'm dead? If they dare to go back on their word, I'll ask the mountain god to strike them with thunder."

Wang Xiaojing's eyes lit up: "Really?"

Pan Yun nodded: "Really."

Wang Xiaojing went to find Song Dalin immediately.

Song Dalin was sleeping soundly in the landlord's house.
The landlords were driven to live in side rooms. Not only could they not go out, but all the food in their homes was taken away. So far, they have not suffered any losses.

Song Dalin turned over with his back to Wang Xiaojing and muttered, "Cry if you want to, don't bother me."

Wang Xiaojing paused, then shook him even harder: "Brother Song, Brother Song, wake up, wake up."

Song Dalin sat up angrily and glared at Wang Xiaojing: "What on earth do you want to do?" (End of this chapter)