Ming Dynasty: Summoning game players at the beginning

Chapter 115 I want it all
Vehicles were heading to the government office in an endless stream, and within just a few days, traffic jams, car crashes, and collisions occurred one after another.

The servants accompanying the rich family cursed at each other and even fought for the right of way.

The slave's master came out in person to rescue him and was surprised to find that the person he was facing was his good friend who usually drank and scolded beggars and thieves.

The two scolded the beggars at the banquet, and then turned around and sold themselves to the beggars with their property. Their moral bottom line was softer than shrimp.

The two looked at each other awkwardly and smiled, then each took a step back to make way, but when they rushed to the government office, they still walked into the lobby side by side.

Seeing the wealthy families that "sellers" seek refuge with and the frustrated lower-class gentry every day, the players repeatedly emphasized -

"We don't want any donations! We don't want just any Tom, Dick or Harry!"

"Don't think we don't know why you're in office. It's to recoup your investment and make a fortune in a few years! Don't even think about it!"

The wealthy families still didn't believe it, and they brought up Mr. Sun's example, saying that they could negotiate and be loyal to the beggars. They could give them whatever they wanted.

"Sun Yan shares our aspirations and it's a shame we met so late. He is a talent that meets the requirements of our Qihuo Army! Even so, we will also review Sun Yan's life and behavior.

If they have a history of committing crimes, we will punish them severely. If they are either given important positions by us or are one of our own, they will be exempt from punishment and everything will be fine!"

Even though the beggars made sufficient explanations, there were still people who came to the government office every few days.

"Alright, you really want to work for us, right? Then I'll fulfill your wish of repaying your loyalty!"

So the player starts a strict "political review" on the surface, but in fact he is opening a court to make accusations and collect evidence of the criminals' crimes.

Anyone who reports something true can receive up to one-tenth of the criminal's wealth. As for the final amount of the reward, the right of interpretation belongs to the Beggars' Army.

With the generous reward, a large number of wronged victims indeed sued their "enthusiastic" neighbors, and several "rich old men" with serious crimes were found and arrested, their properties confiscated and their families exterminated.

The rich and gentry were all dumbfounded. They advertised their requests for official positions, which attracted the attention of the beggars. Many of them ended up making things worse and had their entire clans exterminated.

Including the property of the princes and evil gentry that had been counted, the beggar army seized a total of 17,000 taels of gold, 1.2 million taels of silver, 390,000 dan of grain, 2.34 million mu of arable land, and countless assets such as silks, jewels, furniture, houses, etc.

They recruited over 6,000 surrendered soldiers from the government army and local garrison troops, 4,000 war horses, and over 11,000 pack horses, mules, cattle, donkeys, and sheep.

This large amount of funds is divided into three parts.

Thirty percent is left to the "civilian group" to maintain administrative and judicial expenses, thirty percent is packed and secretly transported back to the main base in exchange for merit points, and forty percent is used to recruit soldiers.

The Qihuo Army will select 10,000 elite men from the vicinity of Runing Prefecture and incorporate them into the militia, and then formally form a cavalry unit of about 2,000.

The total strength of the Qihuo Army will reach 46000.
Of course, most of them are militia forces. The "backbone" of players and former government troops combined is about 15,000 people.

At the same time, Li Mu, who "ate" part of the finances of the Beggar Army, was also expanding his armaments.

The original 12-strong family team was expanded into combat soldiers, cavalrymen, and two artillery companies with smoothbore cannons, half of which were iron cannons and half were copper cannons.

He has countless military farming villages under his command, and as long as he has sufficient weapons, he can mobilize thousands of militiamen.

The treatment and equipment given to the "Beggar Army" were basically the same as those given to the militia under Li Mu.

During wartime, militiamen receive uniform weapons.

A nine-foot-long spear, a trapezoidal tiger-decorated shield commonly used by the Ming army, a waist knife, and a cheap mass-produced iron helmet.

If they have spare time, all militiamen must practice archery.

The combat group spent military funds to complete the military expansion, and the civilian group said they also wanted to "recruit soldiers."

Considering that the Beggar Army basically controls the entire Runing Prefecture, there is no time to wait for combat and farming players to change their professions.

So, taking advantage of the cold winter and the vacuum period when the defeated generals dared not attack, the leader issued the side quest of Runing Prefecture.

【Recruitment】

At the command, newspapers, storytellers and other publicity channels were fully launched.

The news that the Qihuo Army was holding a "civil service examination" quickly spread to the Runing Prefecture area and even spread to other prefectures and counties in Henan.

Regardless of whether one is from an official or ordinary citizen family, as long as one has extraordinary talents and basic reading and writing skills, one can go to Runing Prefecture to take the selection examination.

After careful inquiry, the gentry of Runing Prefecture found out that the Begging Army wanted to select some lowly clerks instead of decent officials.

He also said that the beggar army was a system that integrated officials and clerks, and even future high-ranking officials in the ministry had to start as grassroots clerks at this time.

The gentry immediately lost their enthusiasm for response.

The gentry wondered why he kept running to the government office.
Isn't it just to realize his ambition of governing the country in the upper echelons of the Qihuo Army? At the very least, he should get a position as a county magistrate or a county magistrate, right?
What's the point of being a mere clerk?

How can it be proper for these respectable people with honors and achievements to receive their salaries from the same hall with those lowly clerks, just like competing for food from a broken bowl with a stray dog?

What's more, he is a beggar and a rebel. He might be defeated by the imperial court in three years. Who would be willing to go there if he is not offered an important position to attract talents?

The gentry had little interest in the "civil service examination" for selecting minor officials, but the grassroots citizens and frustrated old students were ecstatic.

Since the birth of the imperial examination system in ancient dynasties, it cannot be said that there were no channels for advancement, but at least they could be said to be extremely narrow.

In ancient society, the high tuition fees alone were enough to deter most poor families from joining the society, not to mention the expensive writing brushes, ink, paper, and inkstone.

By the late Ming Dynasty, local charity schools had long since collapsed. Even if some teachers generously waived tuition fees, the average family could only attend a private school for a few years and learn to read and write a few words. The cost of ten years of hard study and leaving one's job was simply beyond the reach of an ordinary family.

More poor people are semi-illiterate or even completely illiterate from birth to death.

Now the Qihuo Army has put forward a new channel for advancement, which is equivalent to building a bridge that everyone can walk across the cliff between the two mountains, raising the imperial examination system to a new height.

Although most gentry scoffed at the "Talent Seeking Order", the total number of people who actively signed up exceeded 20,000.

Among them were some nephews and nephews of the gentry who had signed up honestly despite cursing, and even themselves...

According to the "basic data" of various counties in Runing, the total population of the prefecture is about 1.4 million, and the Qihuo Army actually controls 1.25 million people.

According to the previous ratio of county and village cadres, about 2,500 people are needed.

At present, there are two groups of player cadres filling in the north and south of Runing Prefecture, nearly 400 people, and another 2,000 people can be recruited.

The reading, writing and general knowledge questions in the first exam are mainly used to eliminate those who are uneducated or even semi-illiterate.

The questions in the re-examination are varied, including arithmetic, medicine, history, policy essays, geography, construction, etc.

Anyone with a special skill can answer the entire test and get a passing score.

The really talented candidates successfully passed the re-examination and advanced to the next round.

However, those "good guys" who only know how to work in isolation and whose heads are full of the Four Books and Five Classics, even if they get high scores in language and history, are far behind those with practical skills in the overall evaluation.

After fierce competition, only 6,000 people from the initial 20,000 applicants entered the final ideological test.

The finale was very simple, with only a few oral questions.

"The Ming Dynasty is the legitimate imperial court. Why would you betray it and apply to become a 'rebel' civil servant? Do you think this is in line with loyalty?"

"What consequences have the Liao and suppression taxes currently levied by the Ming Dynasty had on the lives of the people?"

"Why did the exchange rate of one ounce of silver for one thousand wen change to one ounce for one thousand three hundred wen?"

"Has your family ever produced high-ranking officials? How many of your family members have achieved high academic achievement?"

"If you were the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, how would you deal with the peasant uprisings within the Great Wall and the invasions by the Eastern Tartars outside the Great Wall?"

"Why are the lower-class people suffering? Where does their pressure come from? How can we alleviate it?"

If officials and gentry rely on their rich life experience and personal connections, they may be able to overcome all difficulties, but in the face of this carefully designed final test, they will expose their "political inclinations."

Civilian players believe that they lack experience and have average personal abilities, and do not have a pair of sharp eyes that can see through good and evil, loyalty and treachery.

However, as modern people living in China, they all understand that a person's state of mind depends not only on the position of their buttocks, but also on their strong motivation to choose what kind of person they want to be.

People who come from bureaucratic and gentry families have long been immersed in the spiritual ocean of "power and privilege thinking". No matter how much they care about the poor people at the bottom, they cannot truly be moved.

Because he has never been poor.

He had never felt the numbness of struggling day and night to make a living, nor had he experienced the sadness and helplessness of having to leave his hometown and sell his children during years of famine, nor had he felt the despair of being entangled by a trivial official and having nowhere to go.

Rich people spend thousands of dollars on breakfast, while poor people spend less than twenty dollars a day.

The perspective of a rich kid from a bureaucratic or gentry family in thinking about social issues is inherently different from that of poor people.

And this is exactly what the civilian team wanted to see, and they did see it.

The civilian team selected more than 2,000 "landers" from the thousands of answers that ultimately "fought", including some craftsmen and apprentices.

Although these two thousand people are not the best, and their writing and reading abilities are even at an average to below average level, the political ideas they have demonstrated from beginning to end absolutely meet the current needs of the Beggars' Army.

Being able to select more than 2,000 "thought seeds" that meet the requirements of the Beggar Army from tens of thousands of applicants has successfully achieved the purpose of this "civil service examination".

Those who passed the exam were jubilant and jumped for joy under the bulletin board, while those who were eliminated beat their chests and stamped their feet like scholars who failed the imperial examination, sighing in frustration.

The 2,300 people who passed the test will be assigned to corresponding positions based on their skills and expertise, and will intern behind the civilian players for one year.

Those who have not made any major mistakes within a year need to take another assessment test. Only those who pass the test can be officially hired as clerks by the Beggar Army.

"Remember, you are not only officials of the Beggars' Army, but also their pride. If anyone thinks that being a minor official gives them the right to exploit the people, then I advise you to take off your uniform immediately, go home, and hang yourself! lest the Beggars' Army's death squads come to your door and accidentally kill your entire family!"

Now that internal affairs have been dealt with, the newly recruited militia will need several months of recuperation and training. Some players will also switch war zones and join the volunteer army to fight against the Qing Dynasty.

In order to prevent the main force of the government army from gathering heavy troops to attack during this period, special tasks derived from the main tasks were launched on time.

This is a "special mission" that was precisely assigned to a very small number of latent players many days ago.

Go to Gucheng

That day, Yang Wenli was a little confused when he saw the special task that suddenly popped up in the task list, because he asked his teammates around him, but no one had received the relevant prompt.

He seemed to be the "lucky one" chosen.

(End of this chapter)