The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 175 The Last Yansheng Duke (I)

"I heard from Military Supervisor Qiao that there was a rebellion in Fushun and Tieling, and many people died. I've been feeling very upset these past few days."

"Qiao Yiqi is such a chatterbox, talking nonsense! Madam, don't worry. This isn't a rebellion. It's just a few refugees beating drums and spreading rumors. I've already sent Sun Chuanting back with his troops, and they'll definitely handle it properly."

"That's good... Sir, from now on, do more good deeds and kill less people."

"I know that tomorrow's trip to Qufu is to do good deeds. While I'm gone, you should rest and take care of your baby in Wendeng. Don't do anything with weapons."

The third hall of the Wendeng County government office, the wing where the magistrate's family had previously lived, was now the residence of the Marquis of Ping Liao and his wife. The two chatted for a while, and Liu Zhaosun tucked Jin Yuji into bed, got up, blew out the candle, and comforted his wife to sleep.

Jin Yuji was pregnant and soon fell into a deep sleep.

Liu Zhaosun gently hugged his wife, looked up at the dim lights on the street outside the window, and the little one in his belly suddenly kicked Ping Liaohou.

"It's a boy, right? Don't travel through time again in the future."

As the little life grows little by little, the time traveler feels that his life has become more complete, and there is a very soft place deep in his heart.

"Do more good and kill less."

Jin Yuji fell asleep. He got up carefully, walked to the window, looked towards the southwest, and murmured in his heart:

"Duke Yansheng, are you okay? I'm going to see you."

~~~~~
Duke Yansheng, very good.

Confucius family in Qufu.

The sixty-fourth Duke of Yansheng, Kong Yanzhi, looked at the row of thin girls standing in front of him, took the cup of Longjing tea from the pretty maid next to him, rinsed his mouth, and looked displeased.

"Why so many this year? Our dynasty governs the world with filial piety. I am in mourning, how can I be close to women?"

The head servant bowed his head and said with a flattering smile:

"Master, you may not know that in June and July, the Wenxiang Sect in Yanzhou rebelled, and our Qufu was also hit by disaster, with many farms destroyed. The tenants had no food, so they brought in more women than in previous years. These were all carefully selected, with good looks and figures."

Kong Yanzhi became slightly interested, picked up the whisk on the table, and walked in front of the girl with his big belly.

The head servant shouted loudly:

"You've met Lord Yansheng, and you still don't kneel down to pay your respects? Do you want to be beaten?"

A group of skinny girls knelt down timidly, not daring to look up.

The fat and greasy Mr. Kong in front of them only appears in their dreams and nightmares.

Kong Yanzhi nodded with a lewd smile, his eyes falling on the girl in the middle.

The girl had dark skin and unkempt hair, but she had a pretty face and eyes like cold stars in the autumn night.

She curled up behind the crowd like a little animal and did not salute him.

Duke Yansheng was not angry, but murmured:
"It's a little thinner, so it can be used after some care."

The head servant took two steps forward and angrily said to the girl:

"Why don't you kneel!"

"You guys killed my father, I want revenge!"

As he said this, he rushed forward, knocked away the servants of the Kong Mansion, and was about to bite Duke Yansheng's neck.

Duke Yansheng was shocked and quickly pushed the girl away.

"Kill her! No, don't kill her yet!"

The head servant kicked the girl's knee hard.

Snap! The calf broke.

The girl fell to the ground, wailing and glaring at everyone.

"I've ruined the master's mood. I deserve to die. I'll bury this crazy woman right now!"

Duke Yansheng twirled his beard lightly, shook his head and said:
"slow!"

The head servant was slightly stunned.

But then the master continued:
"In the shadow of green clouds, the bright clouds are woven into a thousand layers of embroidery. The Song people called bamboo green clouds. This girl is unyielding even when broken, and she has some of the integrity of the Song people. I like her very much. Since her character is similar to that of the bamboo, I will name her Green Cloud. Take her away, lock her up in the dungeon and starve her for a few days. When she has figured it out, she can come and serve me again."

~~~~~
Ten miles southeast of Qufu is Liujia Village. All the villagers in Liujia Village are tenants of the Confucius Mansion.

Liu Laosan, who was forced to death by the Kong family, and Liu Laosan’s daughter, Liu Yueer, whose legs were broken by Duke Yansheng, were also one of them.

The Kong family of Qufu had lasted for a thousand years, and with the continuous rewards and enfeoffment from successive dynasties, the Kong family was at its peak of power. Only the lineage of Zhang Tianshi from Jiangxi could barely rival them. Although the two families were of the same kind.

Emperors took turns to sit on the throne and dynasties changed at will, but the Kong family in Qufu remained an ironclad camp that lasted for a thousand years.

The secret to the Kong family's survival is actually very simple, and there are roughly two points.

First, use falling to respond to not falling, so that you can never fall.

To put it bluntly, whenever a dynasty changed, the Kong family of Qufu would immediately pledge their loyalty to the victor (or whoever they believed was the victor), whether the other side was the Mongols, Manchus, Japanese, or even Germans (when the German army occupied Qingdao in the late 19th century, the Duke of Yansheng immediately hung a portrait of the German Emperor in the Kong Mansion).

Secondly, the Kong family desperately exploited the tenants around Qufu, using the blood and sweat of the people of Qufu to buy off various forces, making themselves invincible.

The descendants of Confucius had already occupied all the fertile land near Qufu.

Living under the shadow of the "Great Sage and Teacher", there are no private schools and no houses in Liujia Village, and the villagers all live in shacks.

No one knows how long the villagers of Liujia Village have lived here, but Liu Yue'er has known for as long as she can remember that she was a tenant of Yanshenggong. Her family is not large: her father, an older brother, a younger brother, and that's it.

Liu Yue'er's mother got typhoid fever in the winter of the previous year. She had no money to buy medicine and died after two days. After her death, she was wrapped in a straw mat and buried in the ground. A few days later, there was a heavy rain and Liu Yue'er saw her mother's toes...
Shandong is densely populated, especially Qufu, and all the surrounding cemeteries have been occupied by others.

There is a big mountain in the north of the village, and the villagers cannot remember its name. Later, Liu Yue'er learned that the mountain is called Konglin. Unless there is a major disaster, the villagers would never dare to go up the mountain to pick fruits or hunt, let alone bury the dead.

This mountain with a radius of dozens of miles, together with hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farmland and forests in the surrounding area, are all the private property of the master of the Kong family.

Mr. Kong was the Duke of Yansheng. It was said that this gentleman was kind-hearted. When he saw villagers hunting in the mountains without permission, he would only break their legs and would not kill them the second time.

~~~~
The Wenxiang Sect caused trouble this spring and lasted until summer. The leader of the Wenxiang Sect was a literate man who respected Confucius very much. He did not send his men to rob the Confucius Mansion. Just when everyone felt relieved, the situation changed again.

In September, a group of soldiers came from Dengzhou and beat the Wenxiang sect so hard that they cried for their parents and fled all the way north.

A group of Wenxiang Sect rebels fled through Liujia Village, and Liujia Village suffered disaster.

The Wenxiang Sect rebels robbed food from several farmers in Liujia Village and killed two families. When the pursuers came after them, they did not dare to stay and hurriedly fled westward.

The cries of women could be heard in the village. The families whose food had been stolen could not pay the rent and probably would not survive the winter.

For the entire summer, Liu Yue'er followed her father and brother, harvesting crops under the scorching sun, bundling the wheat, carrying the grain on their shoulders and backs under the scorching sun, and collecting it from the fields, then placing it on the threshing ground to dry.

She was tanned all over, and since she was not tall to begin with, she looked even more like an ape.

When the Wenxiang Cult invaded the village, the Liu family had just gathered their grain and hidden it in the cellar, where it escaped detection. The pursuers, desperately chasing after them, only robbed a few households of their food before hastily fleeing. After the Wenxiang Cult rebels left, the dreaded pursuers followed closely behind.

Having just been harmed by the Wenxiang Sect, they are now facing war.

The villagers of Liujia Village huddled in their homes. The women covered their bodies with mud, and the men looked through the cracks in the doors cautiously at the passing army outside.

Suddenly, a whistle that had never been heard before was heard on the main road east of the village.

Then, soldiers wearing armor and holding spears lined up in neat rows and walked past Liujia Village one after another.

The road was filled with billowing dust, war horses were neighing, and drums were beating. The scene was even more lively than the New Year's market.

After a while, dozens of soldiers walked out of the team, all holding bulging cloth bags, and walked towards the village.

"Dad, what are they going to do?"

Liu Yue'er leaned behind the broken door and asked her father in a low voice.

She didn't smear the black mud on her face because she thought she was already dark enough.

Liu Laosan looked back at his two sons, clenched the carrying pole in his hands, and shook his head.

A sturdy soldier, carrying a musket that they were unfamiliar with and a cloth bag in his hand, walked quickly to the Liu family's wooden gate.

He raised his head and looked around. After making sure there was no danger, he quickly put down the bag and turned to leave.

The moment the soldier turned around, Liu Yue'er saw that his face was covered with dust. The dirt road east of the village was not easy to walk on.

Liu Yue'er felt an inexplicable intimacy and couldn't help but whisper, "What's your name?"

The soldier carrying the musket turned his head to look at the wooden door, and through the gap in the door, his eyes met with Liu Yue'er who was hiding behind it.

He hesitated for a moment and was about to speak when he suddenly remembered something and just smiled foolishly at Liu Yue'er.

"My name is Liu Yue'er, and I've been to Qufu County."

Liu Yue'er was about to speak, but was slapped aside by his father.

"You're so desperate, you wild girl!"

At this time, a quick bamboo whistle sounded from the other side of the road. The soldier hurriedly turned around and ran. After running a dozen steps, he looked back at the dilapidated wooden door in front of him.

Only after the sounds of bamboo whistles and the Flying Tiger flags disappeared on the dusty dirt road did Liu Laosan push open the door and pick up the cloth bag at the door.

It was very heavy, weighing at least thirty kilograms.

"Dad, what are you pretending to be?"

"Food, what kind of soldier is this?"

Liu Yue'er covered her red face and stared blankly in the direction where the soldier had just disappeared, but she didn't feel any pain at all.

~~~~
"Hand over all the food!"

Two days later, several fat, white, middle-aged men dressed in silk walked into the village, followed by a group of ferocious servants.

Under the command of the fat white man, the servants began to collect rent from house to house.

They quickly took away half of the grain in Liujia Village.

When it was the Liu family's turn, Liu Lao San stood in front of the cellar and asked timidly:
"Master Bai, why are you charging so much? Last year it was only 30%."

The fat white man listened with disgust and said impatiently:
"Isn't there a Wenxiang sect this year? Master Kong suffered a disaster, and you've been living a good life for a long time. It's time to repay him! Pay back all the rent owed during the famine in previous years!"

After saying that, the two servants pushed Liu Laosan aside and went to fetch the food.

Liu Laosan stopped him tightly and begged:

"Master, why did you say the price would go up so quickly? You took away so much grain. What are we going to eat this winter? There are three of us in my family, and the Wenxiang Cult burned our crops. We only got two stone of grain..."

"roll!"

Mr. Bai kicked Liu Laosan over and ordered the servants to open the cellar lid.

Just as the food hidden by the Liu family was about to be taken away, the servant suddenly staggered and fell to the side.

The servant looked at Liu Laosan who was pushing him from behind, and in a rage, he kicked the old farmer hard. After two kicks, the other party grabbed his boots.

He was so angry that he drew his sword.

"You bastard, you're looking for death!"

Liu Laosan fell in a pool of blood, and before he died he was still dragging the servant's legs to prevent him from opening the cellar.

Her elder brother and younger brother were so scared that they hid far away. Liu Yue'er watched the servants drag her father away like a dead dog and threw him outside the wooden door.

The fat white man glanced at the food on the ground and said with a curled lip:

"That's all? Not enough, not even close! Take this girl back!"

~~~~
On the country road outside Liujia Village, Liu Zhaosun rode his horse slowly forward under the escort of a group of guards.

A group of soldiers from the 1,000th headquarters followed the central army's flag and marched quickly. The coconut scoops and cymbal belts on the soldiers' bodies rubbed against each other as they ran, making crisp sounds.

The Kaiyuan soldiers were scattered all over the place, some chasing after the Wenxiang sect thugs, some guarding Wendeng County, and some were taken back to Liaodong by Sun Chuanting to suppress the rebellion of the people in Liaodong.

These more than 900 people are the maximum force that Ping Liaohou can mobilize at the moment.

Liu Zhaosun will lead this force to join forces with more than 8,000 soldiers from the three thousand headquarters that are besieging Qufu. At that time, he will personally command the Kaiyuan army to complete the cleanup of the Kong Mansion and the remnants of Wenxiang.

After all, such a great family that is "a model for all ages" and "has hereditary succession" is so powerful that even the emperor has to respect them. They are not comparable to ordinary officials.

It takes great courage to eradicate the Kong family.

Deng Changxiong is not good enough, and Wang Erhu is not good enough either. Only Ping Liaohou can personally take action to ensure that Kong Yanzhi can successfully become the last Yansheng Duke.

After entering Qufu, Liu Zhaosun led his soldiers through villages one after another.

What I saw was the same poverty and filth—pile of garbage, dilapidated huts, sunken roofs, collapsed walls, rotten thatch…

Several naked children were playing in the stinking mud, their bodies covered with scars.

Purple and half-rotted corpses floated in the ditch. They were abandoned babies whose parents could not support them.

The people in the village seemed to be from hell, with mouths full of yellow, smelly, rotten teeth, unkempt hair and dirty faces, all of them were skinny, with a strange smell all over their bodies, and their eyes were full of numbness and despair.

This is a typical portrayal of the northern rural areas in the late Ming Dynasty, and it is also the living conditions of the tenants under the rule of Duke Yansheng.

Liu Zhaosun withdrew his gaze, his eyes slightly red. He waved his goose-feather knife, pointed it in the direction of the Confucius Mansion, and whipped his horse:

"Duke Yansheng, I'm here to see you. Are you okay?"

(End of this chapter)