The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 232 Waterloo

A vigorous afforestation campaign is underway in the western foothills pasture.

Its popularity dominated the trending topics list in the border town for six consecutive days.

Where is the lifeless atmosphere that it was when I first arrived in the entire refugee camp?
The happiest time of the day for people of all ages is when they finish work, receive their wages, and hear the clinking of the coins in their pockets.

That was truly the most beautiful sound in the world, giving people a strange sense of peace.

The elderly man, who had a plan in mind, had already begun inquiring in the villages and fortresses around the refugee camp about how much it would cost to build two simple mud-brick houses.

When the news reached the main camp, the general waved his hand dismissively.

For two taels of silver, each refugee household was allocated a plot of land for homesteading.

They also promised that this price would be valid at any time within three years.

He also encouraged those who couldn't afford to build houses and wanted to leave the refugee camp's communal dormitories to rent houses in the surrounding villages and fortresses if they wanted to live more comfortably.

For example, there's Majiabao, the place closest to the eastern foothills of Junma Mountain, which was massacred by the Tatars.

Of all the five major military outposts in the entire border town, there are no houses cheaper than those in Majiabao.

Because that night, apart from the border troops on duty at Majiabao, not a single family member of the soldiers was left alive.

The horrific scene of bloodshed that day has deterred anyone from living in this village to this day.

The border soldiers born in this village dared not return home, for fear of being reminded of painful memories.

Ancestral homes cannot be sold casually.

But houses are strange things. Once a house is empty of people, it will start to fall into disrepair visibly after only two months of being empty.

The refugees' current demand for affordable housing is like a pillow delivered to the border troops in Majiabao, who were already feeling sleepy.

The refugees walked through piles of dead bodies along the way. What's there to fear in villages where people have died?
Older people understand this very well: everyone has to face that day eventually!
Young children don't know fear!

The two parties reached an agreement immediately.

The refugees were delighted: the copper coins they had earned these past few days were enough to rent two rooms for a whole year!
The refugee camp broke up much faster than Zhao Muyun and the others had imagined.

They were full of praise for Captain Gan's act of hiring refugees to plant trees!
Previously, some generals were envious of the money earned from selling that batch of grassland sheep at a fair price.

Seeing that they spent several thousand taels of silver just to hire people to plant trees, he was speechless.

I'm utterly impressed!
The happiest people were the quartermasters.

They were filled with worry every day as they looked at the granary.

Unfortunately, the existing food supplies are really not enough to eat!
I wonder how those Right Guard Battalion members who went to the grasslands to catch rabbits are doing?

The person in charge of the rabbit-catching operation, who was being targeted by the quartermaster, was also extremely worried.

The first few days after arriving on the grassland.

They harvested nothing.

It's not that we can't see rabbits.

Instead, rabbits roamed freely across the grassland, and the hunting nets they brought couldn't catch them at all.

If you want to capture them alive, you can't just shoot them with arrows.

In the end, they had no choice but to resort to raiding rabbit holes.

The wild rabbits truly gave these soldiers a live lesson in the art of "a cunning rabbit has three burrows."

Moreover, it is exceptionally complex, with no discernible pattern.

I searched for several days.

It was so hard to finally open for business!

During their pursuit, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the wild rabbits. Just how fierce?
It's the kind of thing where you could lose your life even if you struggled.

Several rabbits that had temporarily submitted devised a plan that very night, and that same night they tore through the burlap sack containing the rabbits and escaped.

Sharp teeth and a sharp tongue, that's a wild rabbit!

After several experiences catching wild rabbits, everyone summarized the temperament of this wild animal as follows:

They are timid (easily startled) and have a bad temper (they can become so agitated that they keep banging on their cages). Ordinary breeding cages or enclosures simply cannot contain them!

The sentries were getting anxious:

"Chief, what should we do? Captain Gan's suggestions aren't always reliable! At least, I think this time the grassland rabbits probably won't survive."

"It's really strange. Last year's snow was so heavy, why didn't these rabbits freeze to death? They're practically swarming!"

"Look how deep these rabbits' burrows are, and they even use their own fur to make nests, so they won't freeze to death even in heavy snow! But most of their natural enemies can't withstand the cold, so with fewer prey to eat wild rabbits, the number of rabbits has naturally increased."

"Tsk tsk, don't those Tatars have an endless supply of rabbit meat? They don't even need to bother raising them; they can just grab one and eat it whenever they're hungry."

"Are you out of your mind? Just for such a small amount of meat! The Tatar herders would weep if they saw all these rabbit holes dug across the grassland. The rabbits have eaten every last blade of grass, roots and all. What will happen to the sheep? Will any horses that fall into these rabbit holes survive?"

"It's over, the Tatars are probably going to have a tough year!"

While the sentries sympathized with the Tatars, their hands did not stop moving.

After several days of practice, they have finally mastered the skill of digging rabbit holes.

Whether a cunning rabbit has three burrows or five burrows.

Every time you reach in, you're right.

However, there were simply too many wild rabbits on the grassland.

There are so many that you can't catch them all, you simply can't catch them all!
On the first day that the Right Guard Army found a way to start catching wild rabbits in large numbers, they caught more than 12,000.

The only regret is that in order to let them escape, we have to catch and kill them on the spot.

Then, a sentry suggested, "The large rabbits won't survive. Why don't we just catch the ones that are only a few days old and take them home to raise?"

"good idea!"

The daytime temperature is getting higher and higher every day.

Fearing the wild rabbit meat would spoil overnight, they quickly dispatched a third of their forces to send the dead rabbits back first.

The rest of the people, naturally, continued to be arrested and captured.

Soon, Gan Minglan, who had been invited to the camp by the bearded guards, stared blankly at a large pile of burlap sacks filled with dead rabbits.

She was certain that she had suffered her first Waterloo since her time travel.

"Dead? Not a single one of these rabbits is alive?"

After the sentries explained, Gan Minglan was still in a daze for a long time.

Perhaps, just maybe, those rabbits that looked like wild rabbits in my past life weren't wild enough?

The usually calm and composed beauty, who rarely showed any extra expression, had such a cracked expression that several generals in the camp couldn't help but chuckle.

Fearing she might get angry, I quickly tried to calm her down.

One person said, "The wild rabbits on the grassland are just like wild horses; they are untamed even when they are adults. So let's start raising them from chicks."

The man said, "Anyway, we didn't spend any money to buy it! Trying it will only take some labor and weeds. It doesn't matter if it doesn't survive; at least it's a piece of meat."

In the end, General Zhao still placed all the hopes of the entire village on her:
"Captain Gan, now it's up to your skills! The chefs here in the Northwest really aren't good at cooking rabbit. Do you have any ideas on how to turn this rabbit meat into a delicious dish?"

Gan Minglan: "."

(End of this chapter)