Ming Dynasty: Summoning game players at the beginning

Chapter 316: Starting from the first sprout of life underwater

According to the instructor, Feng Hanmin has been very lucky recently as he happened to catch the right time when the Beiwei Army was short of soldiers and needed reinforcements.

The military master took the broken spear from his hand, handed him a sharp waist knife, a spare knife, a tiger-head wooden shield, and a set of half-body chain mail, saying that he was now a soldier of the Beiwei Army.

An auxiliary soldier can be promoted to a combat soldier after several months of intensive training. This is nothing but luck.

There were no new military uniforms at the moment, so he wore a cotton jacket taken from a dead person.

These days it’s enough to have a set of warm clothes. It doesn’t matter whether they are new or look good.

He was wearing a clean cotton jacket, and when he looked at himself in the stream, he felt refreshed, just like a disciplined Ming Dynasty officer, majestic and handsome.

However, Shangguan said that regarding the military uniforms, he had arranged for the women of the military households to work hard to make new clothes, and it would take some time before they could be distributed to the troops at once.

Feng Hanmin was particularly moved by this.

Even though he had served as an auxiliary soldier under the protection of the Beiwei Army for more than half a year, he still felt that the treatment of the Beiwei Army was too fantastic.

Ordinary generals would only want to suck the blood of their soldiers and collect the empty salaries, and would not care whether the soldiers are well fed and warmly clothed...

On the other hand, the general of the Beiwei Army is so kindhearted that he wants to take care of all the food, clothing, housing and transportation for his soldiers. He is even closer to them than their own father.

No, Feng Hanmin, who planned to settle in Liaodong, got his own little house.

The farmyard consists of three bungalows and a wooden fence. The plaque at the door reads "Feng Hanmin's Home", which is enough for a family of six to live comfortably.

There are many wooden houses like this, all organized and built by the generals of the Beiwei Army.

Regardless of whether they were auxiliary troops of the Beiwei Army or other garrisons in Liaodong, as long as they had a good relationship with the Beiwei Army, they were all pulled over to participate in labor regularly.

Repair roads, build houses, forge tools, prepare armor and weapons...

After all, Liaodong is a vast area with a sparse population, plenty of arable land and land for building houses.

I'm not afraid of not having a house or land, I'm just afraid of no one coming.

Refugees did return home in large numbers.

At first, only a few thousand people returned home, but then more and more people returned.

According to the newspaper, the number of refugees returning home in the past month has reached 50,000!

Most of the refugees' hometowns had been reduced to rubble and had to be rebuilt from scratch.

However, the Beiwei Army did not build the houses for them directly and wait for them to move in. Instead, they organized the refugees to "work in lieu of relief". Only after each batch of houses was built would a residence be randomly assigned to the refugees.

If refugees feel that they are repairing houses for others, they will inevitably feel tired.

When the refugees learned that these houses might very well be theirs in the future, they were afraid that the shoddy workmanship would end up in their hands, so they worked hard to improve the construction quality, and in the end, everyone benefited.

Beiweijun also arranges "bonfire parties" to match single men and women, with the main idea being that it's a matter of mutual consent, and success depends on one's own ability.

Recently, there have been a thousand couples in the area around Haizhouwei alone, and each couple can receive a stone of brown rice as a wedding gift.

If Feng Hanmin had not just been promoted to combat soldier and had just received his salary, he would definitely have joined the "reunion".

Ever since the amount of training increased, he always felt that the desire to "get things done" was growing stronger.

However, Liaodong had just been recovered not long ago, and there were too few women, let alone "relevant practitioners", so he had to solve the problem himself.

Some who couldn't hold it in any longer dared not touch decent women, so they could only enter the stables...

Sometimes Feng Hanmin would think that the Beiwei Army should be more stingy.

If the money and food are all eaten up, such a good life will not be able to be maintained.

But it turned out that his worries were unfounded.

After the Beiwei Army drove away a group of Tartars and killed another group, there were less than 200,000 Tartars to feed in Liaodong.

These slave owners always want to eat more and take more. With over 200,000 people, they must monopolize the food reserves for at least 600,000 or 700,000 people...

According to what the military teacher said in the cultural class, the people can only produce so much food. If the food can be distributed reasonably, there should be few people starving to death in this world.

But the fact is that there is always injustice in the distribution of money and grain, and the tragedy of "rich people feasting and drinking wine while others freeze to death on the streets" often occurs.

Because some people eat more, some people can only eat less, and some people have nothing to eat.

It's like a balance scale. Either the right side tilts up, or the left side rises. It's not easy to get the balance right...

The general killed the Tartars, and the slaves who originally produced food suddenly became farmers again.

If the number of farmers remains unchanged, grain production will naturally not decrease, and may even increase.

Since there were fewer wild boars that consumed a lot of food, and the Beiwei army generals never ate more than they should have, the production and consumption of food suddenly became balanced, and there was even a surplus, so the living conditions of the people had a qualitative leap compared to the slave state.

Similarly, the reason why the Ming Dynasty was plagued by war and bandits was because the powerful and wealthy were inhumane and took away the food that the poor relied on for survival.

When the people can no longer survive, they can only kill officials and rebel.

Even if the government wipes out the bandits, corruption will continue to rage, and new bandits will rise up until the old one collapses...

Feng Hanmin was still confused about this obscure "distribution issue" and did not dare to criticize the court.

Isn't the instructor saying that the Ming Dynasty will be overthrown by bandits sooner or later?

Fortunately, such outrageous words were only spread among the Beiwei Army soldiers. If the officials heard about it, they would be beheaded...

In his eyes, the Ming Dynasty was still extremely powerful, a mountain that was difficult for a small pawn like him to cross.

If the Beiwei Army were gone, his current life of food and clothing would be gone, and he would have to return to his past miserable life.

When he was in Zhili, he could only eat two meals a day, which were hard steamed bread mixed with bran and wild vegetables. Occasionally, he had to find odd jobs to earn some food.

Before he was captured by the Tartars and taken to Liaodong, the situation in various places had become extremely bad. When the harvest was poor, there were corpses everywhere along the way.

Some corpses would lose limbs or even disappear completely within a night. Sometimes they were eaten by wild beasts, and sometimes they were eaten by "hungry ghosts".

His life was better now. His monthly military salary had increased from five cents to one ounce and five cents. The stoker prepared three meals a day for him, and he could occasionally get some minced meat soup to improve his diet. He didn't have to worry about becoming an unknown corpse on the roadside.

He never dreamed that he would have such a wonderful life!

Every day when he woke up, he would think of his poor life in the past and pinch his face hard.

The slight pain told him that this was a real day.

After he experienced a decent life with enough food every day, he realized that his previous miserable life was like that of an ant, and his daily life under the slavery of the Tartars was even worse than that of pigs and dogs.

That kind of dark and painful life is like a dog with a broken spine, curled up in a dark corner and enduring the painful torture. It has become so numb that it dares not look forward to tomorrow and only wants to die quickly.

If when he first joined the army he just wanted to be an auxiliary soldier to make a living, now he hopes that this comfortable life can last for a long time.

Lao Liu from the same team was quite clever and summed up all this dreamy life in one sentence:

When the Beiwei Army arrived, the lives of the poor people improved.

The Beiwei Army is the great master of these soldiers and civilians. No other official can reach such a level. Such simple and easy-to-understand words are very clear.

Ordinary people always expect the "honest judge" to uphold justice and hope that a great hero like the Monkey King will descend from the sky to eliminate demons for the people.

The Beiwei Army is his Monkey King! He cannot allow the treacherous ministers to find an excuse to assassinate the Beiwei Army.

So he buried all the "treasonous words" he had heard deep in his heart.

Of course, not all the lessons the instructors taught the soldiers were "treasonous".

Such as literacy, arithmetic, marching, formations, logistics...

Feng Hanmin can understand literacy. People from all walks of life respect scholars, and those who know a lot of words are scholars.

Knowing a few more words seemed to add a bit of literary grace to him, and he felt his back straightened when he went out.

He studied military affairs very hard, but he didn't understand why he had to learn arithmetic.

He is not an accountant, so isn't it enough for him to know some simple addition and subtraction? You can't expect him to check the accounts in the granary, right?

But when the instructor broke down some military and logistical problems and laid them out, Feng Hanmin realized how "terrible" arithmetic was.

Ordinary laborers eat only one liter of grain a day in the absence of oil, water and protein.

The soldiers' training workload was extremely heavy, and according to the Beiwei Army's standards, they only ate one liter and five he of food per day.

War horses require even greater amounts, being fed one bundle of grass and three liters of bean feed every day.

How much food and fodder do 10,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry need in a month? How many baggage trains are needed for transportation, and how many trips are needed? What are the losses along the way?
If river and sea transportation are used, how many times can the grain transportation efficiency be increased, and how many days will it take to transport the grain?

As soon as these questions were raised, Feng Hanmin felt like his brain was about to explode.

He had never thought about such issues before, nor did he know he should consider them.

He always thought that a large-scale field battle was just a battle where both sides were brought together to see who was braver and whose firearms were more powerful...

The instructor said this was the most basic arithmetic. If one wanted to control artillery, one would need to learn more advanced arithmetic.

Why was the Beiwei Army always invincible? In addition to their individual bravery and fearlessness, they also possessed extremely high arithmetic skills, and their artillery fire was fast and accurate.

Before others can even touch you, they will be beaten up by your artillery, resulting in casualties.

Then I faced the enemy in a reduced state with my full strength, and it was obvious who would win and who would lose.

Feng Hanmin was stunned. He had always looked down upon arithmetic, but it turned out to be so powerful!
He only saw that the Beiwei Army won battle after battle, but he didn't know how many deeper reasons were hidden behind the victory.

No wonder the Beiwei Army, which consisted of thousands of troops separated from the Black Flag Army, has grown into a large force of tens of thousands today.

It turns out that the general of Beiwei Army has been working hard in secret, striving for perfection in all details.

It is true that a quarter of an hour on stage takes ten years of hard work off stage!
Even such an outstanding general is working hard, why shouldn't a small pawn like him work hard?
So he accepted all the subjects taught by the Beiwei Army.

After working hard for more than half a year, he actually received a "Class D Academic Certification" certificate issued by the instructor.

The instructor praised him as a good student, saying that although he was just starting out in his early twenties, he would learn quickly.

He didn't know what the purpose of this academic certification was. He only knew that his salary was increased by three taels of silver and he was selected into the "Officer Crash Course".

But before the crash course even started, he took a long vacation.

The instructor said this is called a combination of work and rest, and long-term high-intensity training will drive soldiers crazy.

People not only have material needs, but also spiritual needs.

People who are starving will go crazy and eat other people, and people who are under long-term mental depression will also lose their sanity.

So, in order to feed the body, we must also "feed" the spirit. This is why we often see riots in the camps...

Whenever he heard new knowledge, Feng Hanmin would sigh that the Beiwei Army generals knew so much.

They know everything about astronomy and geography, and understand all kinds of unpopular and niche knowledge.

They know the ants on the ground, the insects in the air, the mountains and rivers, and the stars in the sky. They can march and fight, winning battles time and again; they can farm and work, benefiting the people...

They are like an all-encompassing "Six Ministries", and also like a patriarch who is cold on the outside but warm on the inside, giving the people meticulous "care".

Compared with the generals and officers of the Beiwei Army, those gentry and literati were semi-illiterate who could only read and write.

Feng Hanmin and the soldiers also became more and more impressed by the Beiwei Army.

Even some pawns have reached the point of "fanatic worship".

As long as what Beiwei Jun said was right, I would never question anything Beiwei Jun said.

Even if they were asked to draw their swords and kill the Ming officials and rebel immediately, they would not hesitate at all.

However, people like Feng Hanmin have not yet reached the point of "conspiracy for rebellion".

He didn't want the Beiwei Army to fall, but he also didn't want to fight against the huge Ming Dynasty.

Isn’t today’s comfortable life good?

Refugees returned to Liaodong one after another, and production and construction flourished in various places.

The potatoes planted last year are now being harvested, and the refugees no longer have a shortage of food.

Countless newlyweds are planning a beautiful new life, and the land of Liaodong is already filled with laughter.

Newspaper readers would take their newspapers to teahouses every day to read to the illiterate people. There were even opera troupes that went in and out of the city, deep into the garrisons, watchtowers, and villages, turning the news into dramas for the people to watch.

The Beiwei Army entered Korea to fight, conquered Hetuala, marched north to Tieling, and intercepted the fleeing Tartar soldiers in northern Liaoning...

The Beiwei Army won a great victory in the battle against the DPRK and brought back a lot of spoils, including hundreds of thousands of dan of grain, enough to feed the entire Liao people for half a year. However, he was a little frightened by the behavior of the "rebels". Why did they have to fight and kill when they couldn't just live a good life?
With this in mind, Feng Hanmin returned home alone. Except for a small knife for self-defense, all his weapons and armor had to be handed over to the armory.

Along the way, fellow villagers greeted him from time to time, and he responded with a smile.

He always likes to go home and visit during holidays.

Even though he was the only one at home, he still wanted to sit in the house and whisper to the empty environment.

I am back.

This is the "happiness" he has fought for with his own hands, and he wants to protect it well.

When he marries his wife, his children run around and laugh at home, and the deserted courtyard becomes lively, his life will be better, right?

Just as he was imagining a bright future, he suddenly heard a loud shouting and cursing coming from outside the village.

Who caused the dispute?

Feng Hanmin thought that he was a soldier of the Beiwei Army, and when he encountered disputes among the people, it was his responsibility to mediate the conflict.

But when he walked out of the house, he realized it was not that simple.

(End of this chapter)