Zhu Yuanzhang in the cellar

Chapter 212: Rivers of blood, mass graves

The rebellion in Zhejiang was different from that in Jiangxi.

Zuo Guangxian adopted a two-pronged approach and effectively suppressed the situation.

But the power of landlords in Zhejiang and Jiangsu is also different from that in Jiangxi.

The clan concept is strong in Jiangxi, and when a person becomes an official, he often wants to benefit his neighbors, so the land is often managed jointly by the clan.

If a family becomes the patriarch of a clan, no matter how much they exploit and oppress their clansmen, they will always be given some land, so that rebellions in Jiangxi often involve the entire clan.

Zhejiang and Jiangsu regions have been important grain-producing areas since ancient times, and the clan concept is not as serious as in Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong. Those who followed the rebellion were basically tenants of corrupt officials and landlords.

Therefore, if a killing really starts, more people will be killed in Jiangxi, and fewer will be killed in Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

But it doesn't matter to Lao Zhu.

It's all killing anyway.

A few days later, Jiang Li arrived in Nanchang with 1,500 Jinyiwei.

Local officials came to greet them.

More than ten officials including Yang Tinglin, Kuang Zhao, Wu Linrui, Qiu Shangyi, etc. were waiting at the water gate of the west city gate.

As soon as he got off the boat, Jiang Li looked around and said, "I am Jiang Li, the deputy commander of the Jinyiwei. Some of you may have heard of my name, but it is not important. What is important is that I represent His Majesty. What I need is that you work for me wholeheartedly, which means you are working for His Majesty. Do you understand?"

"Yes Yes."

Yang Tinglin and others nodded repeatedly. They naturally knew who he was.

He was responsible for the Lan Yu case.

The second-generation commander of the prestigious Jinyiwei was second only to Mao Xiang.

Jiang Li continued, "The reason why the Grand Master came to the world this time is to bring peace and prosperity to the Ming Dynasty. I will stay in Nanchang, set up camp outside the city, and set up a prison. You should dispatch local troops to garrison there, and bring all the prisoners here for interrogation. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Kuang Zhao hurriedly said, "I have already prepared everything. The Grand Master has issued an official document a few days ago. We have built a camp outside the city and are now constructing prison cells."

"Ah."

Jiang Li nodded with satisfaction and said, "You have done a good job. The information of these criminals, their land, houses, properties, and various accounts have been checked and sent to me. You are loyal ministers of the Ming Dynasty. You are lucky to be appreciated by His Majesty. You must handle state affairs well in the future and do not let His Majesty down. After His Majesty has cleaned up the Ming Dynasty and selected a wise and capable king, you will all be ministers assisting the country. Seize this opportunity well."

"I understand."

Everyone hurriedly bowed again in response.

During the Chongzhen period, secret agencies such as the Jinyiwei, Dongchang, and Xichang had long since declined, and the power of civil servants reached its peak. Even top military generals like Qi Jiguang were suppressed by civil servants, and almost no one was respectful to the Jinyiwei.

However, this Jinyiwei was not the Jinyiwei of the Chongzhen period. This was one of the first Jinyiwei commanders during the founding period of the Ming Dynasty. The famous Lan Yu died at the hands of Jiang Lin.

What's more, standing behind Jiang Lin was Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He symbolized Zhu's imperial power rather than that of Emperor Chongzhen.

There is also a gap between imperial power and imperial authority.

Therefore, everyone was extremely obedient and no one dared to give Jiang Li any instructions.

After handing over the power to handle the case to the Jiangxi officials, Jiang Lin immediately moved into the camp built for him outside the city. Then, Qiu Shangyi, the lieutenant general of southern Jiangxi, and Du Yingchu, the prefect of Nanchang, transferred troops and Nanchang government officials to Jiang Lin's disposal.

Before Jiang Li came, Yang Tinglin was already dealing with the aftermath.

Chen Juqing and others gathered a crowd to rebel, and at first they fought under the pretext of being invited by Kuang Zhao to go to Nanchang. Later, when the plot was exposed, they simply rebelled directly, broke through the local county town, and then attacked Nanchang Prefecture.

As a result, Jiangxi was in chaos at this time. Many county towns were breached, and local officials were either killed or fled. Order had to be restored.

To this end, Yang Tinglin sent officials to various counties to appease the situation while gathering people to arrest the criminals.

The whole of Jiangxi was in chaos.

Hundreds of people are taken to Nanchang every day, and the prisons in the city are already overcrowded.

Thanks to the fact that Nanchang was the seat of Jiangxi and had many wealthy people, during the national crisis, Yang Tinglin arrested corrupt officials and wealthy businessmen in the city who had committed treason, extorted their money, used money and food to recruit civilians to build fortifications, and set up some temporary camps to detain prisoners.

Otherwise, he would probably have trouble finding a place to lock people up.

After a few more days, the originally chaotic situation in Jiangxi was finally slowly settled down. Officials and a small number of soldiers were dispatched to various places to impose martial law. In many places, entire clans were arrested by people from the yamen, and the number of yamen runners and clerks in various places was simply not enough.

Fortunately, information was not well developed in ancient times, and most of the men who participated in the rebellion were either killed in the explosion or captured outside the city of Nanchang. Only the elderly, the weak, women and children were left behind and had no ability to escape.

Otherwise, under normal circumstances, if we went to arrest the person more than ten days later, the place would have been empty.

By late March, the barracks were already stinking.

The various cries and pleas for mercy, mixed with a foul smell, were almost sickening.

In the torture room, Jiang Lin threw the sharp scalpel in his hand onto the table without changing his expression. The newly recruited Jinyiwei soldiers beside him all looked pale and tried hard not to vomit.

This second-generation Jinyiwei gave these new Jinyiwei a little Hongwu shock.

Lying on the torture bed at this moment was Zou Kuiming, one of the traitors. He was no longer in human form. Hundreds of pieces of flesh had been cut off his body. Blood was constantly gushing out and was constantly washed with water, revealing his pale and reddish skin.

But the terrifying thing is that he is still alive.

Zou Kuiming has confessed everything he could about everyone he could accuse. In this short period of less than half an hour, he regretted why he was still alive and why he did not commit suicide earlier to save his family.

"Give him a quick death."

Jiang Li said calmly.

"Yes."

The Jinyiwei who had also killed people before rushed forward and cut Zou Kuiming's throat with a knife.

Jiang Lin just walked to the basin and washed the blood off his hands.

The torture chamber was filled with the stench of blood.

Given his status, there was actually no need for him to conduct the interrogation personally.

However, the Jinyiwei recruited were all rookies, and the interrogation experts brought from Nanjing were still interrogating other prisoners. There were too many people, so he had to take action himself.

When they returned to their barracks, the newly appointed captain Liu Yanbin handed over the recorded list and said, "Sir, these are the names of the criminals' confessions."

"Just follow the rules."

Jiang Wei said.

"Yes."

Liu Yanbin went out.

Not long after, another captain came in and said, "Sir, Chen Juqing's entire family has been killed."

"Well, follow the rules."

"Yes."

That man just came out.

Nanchang prefect Du Yingchu came in again and said, "Sir, I have just counted Luo Xianwen's property. It totals 32,486 acres of land, 236 catties of gold, and 218,000 silver. All of his clan members, more than 300 people, have been beheaded."

"Follow the rules."

Jiang Li said without a trace of emotion.

"Yes." Du Yingchu stepped out.

The so-called following the rules means following the strategy he has formulated.

If it is a list of confessions made by a criminal during interrogation, then someone will be sent to review and check the list.

In fact, it is just to make false accusations and continue to expand the case.

For example, a certain landlord only knew Zou Kuiming but was not familiar with him, and was confessed by him.

If you are a landlord with a conscience, treat your tenants well, have a good reputation in the village, and often do good deeds, you can still preserve some of your property, which will be enough for your family to have food and drink.

But if you are a bad landlord, even if you did not secretly participate in the rebellion, I'm sorry, but the court says you participated, then you participated, and your entire family will be executed, and all the land under your name will be confiscated.

As for those who were directly involved in the rebellion, they had already been killed.

On the southeast hillside seven or eight miles away from Nanchang City, there is a piece of wasteland under an old forest, where hundreds of people are executed every day.

In addition, corpses are also sent there every day from various prisons and punishment areas.

There are also rules for those who were killed. For example, if Chen Juqing's entire family was killed, then his property would be counted.

There are also rules for those who have taken inventory.

Luo Xianwen was a native of Nanchang. He was quick in counting his property and turned over the gold, silver, money and grain to the government treasury. They were then transported to Nanjing and used by Zhu Yuanzhang to improve people's livelihood.

The land was naturally registered and distributed to refugees, landless people and released tenants.

So organized.

If the scope of the crackdown needs to be expanded, then the scope of the crackdown should be expanded, regardless of whether you are innocent or not. Since you have a lot of land, your property should be confiscated. This can be regarded as Zhu himself reshuffleing the cards and distributing a new round of cake.

At this moment, Zou Kuiming's body was in a terrible state. Several Jinyiwei suppressed their nausea as they put his body into a sack and carried it out of the torture room.

There were many wooden carts densely packed outside the torture chamber. Some of them were loaded with human-shaped sacks, some were empty, and in other torture chambers, the Jinyiwei were dragging sacks over and throwing them onto the carts.

When they had gathered enough people to fill a car, the Jinyiwei called out to the outside: "Someone come."

Several bailiffs from Nanchang Prefecture came in and said with a smile, "Sir, what do you want me to do?"

"This car is full, send it over."

"Yes."

The bailiffs went up and towed the car away with ease.

Passing through the barracks, the fresh air from the wilderness outside blew towards them, making the yamen runners breathe a sigh of relief.

"This is the sixth car today."

"This is our eighth car. Lao Zhang and his team also sent a car over before."

"It's tragic. I don't know how many people die every day."

"Who asked them to rebel?"

"That Jinyiwei lord is really scary. Every time I see him, my calves tremble."

"He is Lord Jiang Li. I heard from Hou Dianshi that he was the second commander of the Ming Dynasty. The famous Lan Yu was killed by him."

"Who is Lan Yu?"

Several yamen runners were chatting.

Due to the underdeveloped information flow and the fact that many people could not afford to go to school, they didn’t even know who Lan Yu was.

However, this did not prevent them from being afraid of Jiang Li.

After all, in the first few days, even the Jinyiwei who were in charge of interrogating the prisoners and had followed the three generals to fight against Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were vomiting all over the place.

The yamen runners who were responsible for carrying, escorting, standing guard and doing some idle chores on the periphery heard the screams and smelled the blood inside. Although they did not see it with their own eyes, they could imagine the hellish scene inside.

While chatting, we walked about three miles southeast from the camp and arrived at Linpo, southeast of Nanchang City, about seven or eight miles away.

From a distance they saw a large number of laborers cultivating the land and digging holes there.

The ground below the slope was flat and the weeds had been removed.

A group of prisoners had just been executed in the morning. When a few yamen runners brought the dead bodies from the barracks, they saw the laborers filling the pit with soil.

This is the execution ground.

In just seven or eight days, more than three thousand people were killed here.

The officers and soldiers guarding the execution ground went from being terrified, scared, and vomiting in the beginning to having no expression on their faces now.

The executioners transferred from the prefectures and counties across Jiangxi Province chopped until their hands were tired every day.

The laborers who were filling the pit went from being trembling with fear at the beginning to being numb now and just kept filling it with soil to bury it.

"Master Wang, are you on duty today?"

Since corpses had to be delivered every day, many county yamen runners had even become familiar with the officers and soldiers who assisted here.

The so-called Lord Wang was actually a general flag bearer, formerly a general under Huang Degong. He had followed Huang Degong to suppress many peasant uprisings and had also fought with Zhang Xianzhong's troops.

It can be said that he has rich combat experience and has seen many dead people on the battlefield. He is a lower-level officer of the Ming Dynasty who has truly emerged from a sea of ​​blood and swords.

However, by this time he had already become numb.

The number of dead people he had experienced recently was more than he had ever seen in his life.

Hearing the flattering greetings from the yamen runners, Wang Zongqi waved his hand expressionlessly and said, "Send it to the west. The pit here is fully filled."

"Good."

The bailiffs pushed the bodies into the prepared execution ground and headed west.

After walking about a mile, the smell of blood hit my nose again.

There was still a large amount of blood on the flat ground that had not been buried, and there were seven or eight large pits densely packed around it.

They pushed the cart to the edge of one of the pits and looked down. They felt dizzy and as terrifying as if they were looking into a deep black hole in the universe.

I saw dead bodies and human heads all over the bottom of the pit, with blood pouring down on them. Their faces were pale, their eyes were wide open, and it seemed as if endless fear could be seen in their empty eyes.

There were at least twenty or thirty corpses piled up underneath, stacked together like a pyramid.

The human head was thrown next to the headless corpse, the blood and water were intertwined, and it was impossible to tell which corpse belonged to which head.

It was March, and we were in the midst of a mini ice age. The temperature was slightly low, around ten degrees Celsius. The bodies were killed and buried the same day, so they were very fresh. Apart from the pungent smell of blood, there was no fishy smell.

But even so, the smell of blood alone made people feel uncomfortable. Even though the bailiffs had seen it so many times, their legs were still trembling and they almost wanted to run away.

"Hey, have a good journey, and don't rebel in your next life."

The leading old yamen runner sighed, lifted the handle of the cart, dumped the six or seven bodies stacked on the cart, and then left silently.

As for the other yamen runners around, they had already fled several feet away, and some even started to retch.

This damn place has long been a river of blood and has become a mass grave.

(End of this chapter)