The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 105 The Battle to Defend the Food Supply

The refugees from the Three Qin regions whom the Zuo clan disdained to associate with.

Despite more than ten years of continuous struggle against the Li clan of Longxi, they were not completely wiped out.

On the contrary, they secretly formed a Po Jun army of no less than 100,000 men.

These people all had iron tools.

Compared to the rebel army in Nanhe Prefecture, which had been established for less than a month.

Po Jun and the Fu Jun and Guan Jun have more combat experience.

Just a while ago.

The leader of the Po Jun army received news of more than ten peasant uprisings of varying sizes across the country.

In particular, the heroic deeds of the righteous army in the neighboring Nanhe Prefecture, who killed officials and opened granaries to distribute grain, greatly inspired them.

Before, Po Jun had only engaged in minor skirmishes and had not caused any significant losses to the government or landlords.

As a result, they were chased and attacked by the Li family and other landlords' armed forces.

Although I run fast, I feel really frustrated inside!
This time, the leader of the Po Jun army decided to learn a thing or two from the neighboring Yi army.

The incidents that worried the two escort leaders—robbery on the road and the frequent killing of escorting officials—did not occur in the Anxi Prefecture area.

The official roads in the Guanzhong Plain are wide and flat, with a post station every sixty li along the way.

The exile procession also increased its daily travel distance from fifty li to sixty li.

At this time, it was already the ninth month of the lunar calendar.

The sky was high and the clouds were light, clear and bright.

The summer heat gradually dissipated, and the temperature slowly decreased from over 30 degrees Celsius to the 20s.

Rainfall gradually increased, with occasional showers.

The rice paddies on both sides of the official road were a golden expanse.

It's time for the autumn harvest.

However, in the seemingly endless rice paddies, there were no farmers to be seen harvesting.

The former landlords, members of the Zuo clan, expressed their incomprehension:
"Why aren't the farmers in Qin Chuan working hard for the autumn harvest? Wouldn't it be better to bring the grain to the granary sooner so they can eat the new grain sooner? Look how high the grain prices have gone!"

"Didn't that old village chief from Tongguan County say that most of the farmland in Guanzhong belongs to the Li family of Longxi and their relatives and in-laws?"

"Which landlord's estate doesn't have tenant farmers and farmhands? Do you expect these people to work hard all year, only to let the rice fall into the fields at harvest time?"

"If it rains a few more times, the millet in the fields will sprout!"

“Wasting food will incur divine retribution.”

When the group got tired, they stood on the official road and pointed at the estates of the big landowners.

Unbeknownst to them, the tenant farmers and farmhands in this vast rice paddy had recently joined Po Jun's forces.

For a while, there was no able-bodied labor force to be found in the entire county.

With the rice about to rot in the fields, the farm managers were frantic.

The head stewards breathed fire at the heads of the estates, both large and small:
"What? All the tenant farmers on the entire estate have run away?"

"Where are the farmhands? With dozens of farms, surely we can find hundreds of farmhands to harvest rice? Pay them their full wages!"

"This is outrageous! They actually want to take 60% of the rice! Bring me their leader here."

The tenant farmers seemed to be completely determined; they wouldn't agree to harvest the rice unless they agreed to the distribution plan.

Long-term and short-term laborers were even more outrageous, demanding 30% of the grain from one mu of land as wages.

Moreover, the other party was completely unyielding, giving the stewards of the estate no room for negotiation whatsoever.

The steward didn't have that much power, so he had to report the news up the chain of command to the head of the Li family in Longxi.

When the rice matures and reaches its later stages, it will fall into the field if the wind is strong.

The greater hidden danger is the autumn floods.

If a few heavy rains come, the whole season will be wasted.

Even though the national grain price is now more than five times that of last year, it is still rising.

"How much grain will we lose if we delay for even a day?" The head of the Li family cursed the incompetent branch of the family who managed the estate.

He then ordered the county yamen runners in charge of the estate to teach the tenant farmers and farmhands a lesson.

In the Guanzhong Plain, spanning hundreds of miles, the decrees of the Li family patriarch were more effective than those of the provincial governor.

When the exile caravan passed through another village, they saw:
Dozens of yamen runners and more than a hundred young and strong guards from the landlords' homes were arresting the elderly, women, and children left behind in a village.

The cries and pleas for mercy from the elderly and women were very pitiful.

"Sir, please release my grandfather. He has been bedridden for seven or eight years and he really can't do any work in the fields."

"Sir, my child is due in half a month. Please spare me."

"Ah! I won't go to the county government office with you, I won't go, I won't go!"

"Help! Help! These officials are indiscriminately killing innocent people and disregarding the law!"

Just as the passersby were at a loss as to whether to offer advice or help,...

Suddenly, over a thousand strong young men appeared at the other end of the official road.

They were ragged, emaciated, and barefoot.

The weapons they carried were also a wide variety.

There were long and short knives, axes, hammers, and even large hoes.

The expressions on their faces were all very similar.

It's a kind of ruthlessness mixed with madness.

They wanted to destroy the world and overthrow all injustice.

as predicted.

The crowd watched from afar as they confronted the yamen runners and the landlord's guards, and without a word, they stepped forward and began to fight.

The voices that were just screaming for help were immediately reversed.

The two leaders were so frightened that they ordered everyone to run away immediately.

That's terrifying, isn't it?

Their uniforms were almost identical to those worn by the county government officials and clerks.

We hope we don't take our anger out on them!

With over a thousand farmers against a mere two hundred yamen runners and guards, victory was a natural outcome.

after that.

Without hesitation, they rushed to the farm.

They killed all the managers and servants of the 8,000 mu estate owned by a branch of the Li family in Longxi.

Zhenzhen'er was blinded by rage.

Anyone who relied on the Li family of Longxi for their livelihood met a terrible end.

Then, the granaries in each village were opened one after another by this group of people.

The rice harvested last autumn and the wheat harvested in the first half of the year from 8,000 mu of farmland are all stored in these granaries.

Two harvests are enough to feed more than half of the farmers in the county who do not have arable land!

In more than fifty tenant farmers' villages and throughout the town's streets and alleys, children joyfully sang nursery rhymes:
"Eat his mother's food, wear his mother's clothes, open the warehouse, and plunder the granary!"

"No corvée labor, no taxes, let's all enjoy ourselves!"

There are, of course, specific rules for distributing grain.

The leader of the Po Jun faction, who was in charge of the work, stated:
If a family has a male member who is a member of the Po Jun star, the family of five or more can receive five shi of grain at once! Families of five or fewer can receive three shi.

This is more grain than they had left after paying rent to the landlord.

In a short period of time, the number of people joining the Po Jun sect increased several times over.

The belatedly aware Li clan of Longxi immediately dispatched the garrison troops stationed in the prefecture.

Thus began a battle to protect food supplies, ranging from tenant farmers' strikes to violent suppression by powerful families.
(End of this chapter)