The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 229 The Downfall of the Song Family

The intersection of North-South Street and Commercial Street forms a crossroads with a raised platform in the middle.

This was originally where the instructors preached government orders, and later became the seat where the executioner sat during the execution of death row prisoners.

Death row prisoners from all over Liaodong were brought here for execution. The crossroads became the vegetable market of Kaiyuan, used for executing prisoners and for the public to watch.

Liu Zhaosun advocated lenient sentencing for crimes committed by the people and tried to kill as few people as possible, earning him the reputation of "Liu Bodhisattva".

Under the influence of "Liu Bodhisattva", there were only five or six executioners in the vast Liaodong.

Because there were too few prisoners executed, executioners were often unemployed and had to take on some private jobs such as slaughtering pigs and sheep and exorcising ghosts to supplement their family income.

In April of the second year of Taichang, the rectification movement initiated by the Kaiyuan military and political system completely changed the executioners' predicament.

Under the thundering attack of the Marquis of Waiping Liao, more than 200 military and political officials were imprisoned, half of whom were escorted to the crossroads and beheaded.

After the twelfth lunar month festival, the executioners were busy chopping people every day. Besides being busy, their income increased a lot.

Death row prisoners mainly include:

Corrupt officials, battlefield deserters, and stubborn Jiannu captives.

~～~～

Yang Tong walked on the North-South Street with full vigilance.

The pacification soldier was wearing a red uniform with broad shoulders and a high collar. The sword in his hand was clattering, the gong belt tied around his waist was quite smart, and the new flintlock pistol added a bit of majesty to him.

Although he has retired from the army, Yang Tong still exudes the unique temperament of a Kaiyuan soldier.

Yang Tong, a sergeant of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Guards Army (formerly the 1st Banner of the 2000th Headquarters), is known as the best sharpshooter in Kaiyuan.

Two months ago, Ping Liaohou besieged Hetuala with an army of 32,000 and launched a war of annihilation against the Later Jin.

Yang Tong participated in the battle against the two yellow flags outside the Khan's palace. When he was sniping a Later Jin archer, a heavy arrow hit his left hand.

The moment he fell into the horse pit, he inserted his dagger into the inner wall of the pit, with his toes touching the densely packed sharp bamboo sticks and wooden stakes, hanging in the air for a full half hour.

When the subsequent attacking soldiers rescued him, his left hand had lost too much blood and the wound had frozen into a blood clot. When he returned to the barracks, they had to amputate his left hand at the wrist.

After losing his left hand, Yang Tong could no longer serve.

According to the Kaiyuan pension system, soldiers who retired due to injuries could receive 300 taels of pension silver and 50 mu of farmland, and the pension silver would be paid out over five years.

Wounded soldiers who did not want to retire would receive a pension of 100 taels of silver and continue to do some work within their ability, such as serving as military lecturers in schools or serving as pacification soldiers - these pacification soldiers were not used to supervise battles on the battlefield - they were similar to the police in later generations, responsible for maintaining public order in the city.

Yang Tong left one hand in Hetuala and became disheartened from then on.

Either thanks to the Taishang Laojun's blessing or the resuscitation power of the shoulder bandage, the wound didn't develop gangrene, and the tight bandages used to stop the bleeding didn't rupture any blood vessels. Furthermore, Old Song and his disciples were so skilled that they didn't need to saw through the bone; they simply opened the joint and applied a layer of Dianxi Baiyao to the severed wrist. Yang Tong remained strong and recovered in two months.

Recommended by the flag captain Cheng Liang, Yang Tong, who had lost his left hand, became one of the 600 pacification soldiers.

He took out one tael and five cents of silver from his pension and asked a private blacksmith to make an iron hook. When the blacksmith heard that Yang Tong was injured while fighting the Tartars, he gave him a pair of long nails for free to fix the iron hook on his wrist.

The iron hook is made of fine steel and carefully wrapped with buffalo leather inside. It has been repeatedly hammered and quenched to make it strong and sturdy. Two leather belts of different lengths connect the iron hook to the shoulder and elbow, and it is covered with a special iron arm, which is extremely strong.

After installing the iron hook, he gradually forgot what happened on the battlefield.

When he was patrolling the streets with the iron hook on, he would hide it in the sleeve of his uniform to avoid scaring the children coming towards him.

Since last winter, merchants in the city have been killed one after another. The Han, Mongolian and Jurchen people accused each other of doing it. Due to fear and suspicion, people fought every day.

Patrols were stepped up in the city. Yang Tong and other pacification soldiers patrolled the streets and alleys of Kaiyuan, checking all suspicious pedestrians and were busy until late at night every day.

The murderer who massacred the merchants has never been found, and criminals are beheaded in the city every day.

Yang Tong had no sympathy for the civil officials who were beheaded. Not only did they embezzle military pay, they also secretly colluded with the Jiannu.

According to the decree formulated by Ping Liaohou, any general who embezzled money worth more than 500 taels of silver would be executed and his property would be confiscated.

Many officials were executed this time.

Yang Tong once participated in a house-raiding operation in the backyard of a civil affairs official. He used an iron hook to pry open the cellar barrier, and mountains of cloth and silver appeared in the cellar.

As he was busy like this, Yang Tong gradually stopped thinking about the girl from the Kong Mansion.

Now that he is disabled, no woman is willing to follow a cripple.

Fortunately, as long as he didn't look at his severed left hand, as long as he felt the itch on the tip of his index finger, and as long as he imagined that he was still scratching it with his thumb, he would be satisfied.

If he had a dream tonight, he would see himself in the dream, unharmed, returning from the battlefield, leaving Kaiyuan, and returning to his distant and vague hometown. In front of his parents, he could rest his exhausted head comfortably in the palms of his hands and sleep soundly.

The shouts of the people behind him brought Yang Tong back to reality.

He turned his head and looked towards the execution ground.

A huge crowd of people gathered at the intersection, the end of the crowd was as far as the eye could see, and everyone stretched their necks and stood on tiptoe like ducks.

Under the gaze of thousands of eyes, a fat Hong Yangban (executioner) walked into the execution ground holding a ghost-head knife.

The executioner saluted the executioner on the high platform, climbed up the execution platform, and played with the hair of the prisoners kneeling on the platform like slaughtering chickens.

The executioner Qiao Yiqi was wearing a bright red auspicious robe and a red velvet hat. He was sitting under a huge umbrella with a black and red inkstone on the table in front of him.

"Prisoner Song Yingding."

"Have!"

"He took bribes and abused his power, embezzled 30,000 taels of silver from the trade, and the evidence is irrefutable!"

Qiao Yiqi reached out and used a red brush to write the word "behead" on Song Yingding's sign (a sign representing the prisoner's identity), drew a red circle, and threw it on the ground.

A pacification soldier picked up the notice and ran quickly to the execution platform. The executioner turned the prisoner's head and let him see the word "behead" clearly on the notice.

"Identify the identity and execute!"

The executioner pushed Song Yingding's hair aside and moved the prisoner's shoulders.

Song Yingding was tied up and knelt on the execution platform, looking blankly at the cheering crowd in front of him.

The executioner took the coconut ladle handed to him by the pacification soldier below the stage, gulped down a few mouthfuls of strong liquor, and sprayed the liquor on the ghost-head knife with a puff.

The executioner looked at the distracted Song Yingding and said with a drunken look on his face:

"Sir, you have embezzled so much silver. You deserve to die ten times. Today I will send you off and later burn more paper money for you to ensure that you have enough in the afterlife. I was born to do this for you. Please don't blame me." The people watching from all sides shouted loudly.

"Kill him! Kill him!"

"Kill the thing, worse than pigs and dogs!"

"Let him be greedy and kill him!"

"kill!"

In the end, all the shouts merged into one word: kill.

Yang Tong turned his head away, too lazy to look any further.

He had seen too many such scenes in the past half month, so it was nothing new.

The man who was beheaded on the stage worked as an accountant in a trading company. He took advantage of loopholes in the accounts, colluded with the employees of the trading company, and embezzled 30,000 taels of silver from Kaiyuan. It is said that this man was a relative of a high-ranking official in Kaiyuan, and that high-ranking official was a veteran under the command of Ping Liaohou and had a very prominent status.

Fortunately, Kaiyuan does not practice collective punishment, otherwise it would not be just three people killed today, but at least thirty.

Yang Tong carefully observed the people around him, hoping to find something unusual in the crowd.

The executioner with the palm knife followed the bone gap near Song Yingding's occipital bone, and with a "ah--" sound, he swung the ghost-head knife down.

Yang Tong left the execution ground and turned to walk towards South Street. After walking a few dozen steps, he heard earth-shaking cheers from behind him.

He did not stop and continued walking forward. There were few pedestrians on the street, as they all ran to watch the beheading.

Just after taking a few steps, a pacification soldier flashed past and greeted Yang Tong.

"Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, why don't you take a break?"

"Where can I rest? See you later."

Yang Tong hesitated and passed by the pacification soldiers.

Just as he was about to move forward, he caught a glimpse of a bloodstain on the pacification soldier's gong.

Kaiyuan’s military law is strict, and these retired pacification soldiers must maintain a strict military appearance when patrolling the streets.

Yang Tong wanted to remind that person, but when he looked back, the pacification soldiers had disappeared at the alley behind him.

"This person looks unfamiliar."

Yang Tong was surprised, but he did not stop. He walked forward a few steps and suddenly looked up. Ten steps away, he saw a figure swaying on the Seven Star Tower.

Kaiyuan's top marksman instinctively realized that the moment he looked up, a pair of eyes in the restaurant were looking at him.

The iron hook under the sleeve shone with a cold light.

The pacification soldiers strode towards the Seven Star Tower.

A window-facing room on the third floor of Qixing Building.

A middle-aged man dressed as a foreign merchant alertly lowered the window frame and looked back at a young civil official sitting at the table. The civil official had a panicked look on his face and turned a blind eye to the table full of delicacies, just like Song Yingding on the execution platform, his eyes were a little dazed.

"Master Song, I'll ask you again, are you leaving or not? The boat is ready and we can leave tomorrow. There will be a strong wind the day after tomorrow, so they won't be able to go out to sea, and they won't be able to catch up with us by land."

The young civil affairs officer looked even more anxious after hearing this.

In the corner of the private room stood five or six sturdy men, all with murderous looks on their faces, looking around with vigilance.

"Eunuch Zeng, if you leave like this, Liu Zhaosun will definitely kill my second brother."

The foreign merchant laughed dryly, as if he had heard a very good joke.

"What you did in Kaiyuan is enough to wipe out the Song family several times over. Liu Zhaosun will not let you go! If he finds out that you are in contact with the East Factory, can he save your life? You'd better take care of yourself first."

Eunuch Zeng patted the civil affairs officer on the shoulder and whispered:

"Return to the capital and let you be the head of the Ministry of Revenue."

Thunderous cheers came from the crossroads, and the civil affairs officer's face became even uglier.

"Liu Zhaosun first seized the military power of your second brother, Song Yingxing, and placed him under house arrest in Qinghe. He then accused your eldest brother, Song Yingding, of corruption and had him beheaded. Lord Song, it's your turn next. This is killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. Your Song family has earned so much money for the Liu family, and now that they've lost power, you're the chickens to be slaughtered."

"Go to the capital. The emperor will use you and you will enjoy endless wealth and glory. If you stay in Kaiyuan, you will die."

Song Yingsheng stood up silently, walked to the window, and looked at the execution ground where his elder brother was beheaded. The place was already crowded with onlookers.

Tears welled up in the civil affairs officer's eyes.

He suddenly remembered that the three Song brothers were the first civil servants to defect to Kaiyuan.

At that time, Liu Zhaosun had nothing, and even the salaries of officials were often in arrears.

The brothers worked diligently in workshops, shops, and the army, helping Liu Zhaosun to be promoted all the way from lieutenant general to general, and finally he was granted the title of Marquis of Ping Liao.

The cheers of the people in the distance drifted to the window, growing louder and louder until they became harsh.

Song Yingsheng's facial expression kept changing, and Eunuch Zeng waited patiently beside him.

After a long time, he finally said:
"Go find Sun Chuanting tonight and take him with you. Sun Chuanting has been humiliated so many times that he's bound to rebel. Also, if you don't want to go to Tianjin, go to Shandong."

Eunuch Zeng looked suspicious.

"Going to Shandong?"

There was a hint of coldness in Song Yingsheng's eyes.

"Liu Zhaosun has been unkind to our Song family, so don't blame me for being unjust! First, go to Weihaiwei, arrest Jin Yuji, and bring along 6,000 soldiers from the headquarters to join us in the capital. Only then will you and I be able to present our merits to the court."

Eunuch Zeng's eyes lit up, like a beast smelling blood, and he spoke impatiently.

"Go on."

"The Sixth Thousandth Headquarters consisted of refugees recruited in October. They are in Wendeng and their morale is unstable. The Thousandth Headquarters is from the same hometown as mine and we have a close relationship. I told him that Liu Zhaosun wants to lay them off. If we give him the Rank of Lieutenant General, he will definitely be willing to go with us."

Eunuch Zeng nodded repeatedly, looked back at the dozen or so Dongchang eunuchs in the room, and said with a ferocious look:
"We're leaving tomorrow. I'll give Liu Zhaosun one last surprise. Ma Tianxing has gone to blow up the workshop. You guys should split up and attack where there are a lot of people."

"Remember, kill more people and let Liu Ze know what the consequences are of opposing the imperial court!"

(End of this chapter)