The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 62 Fleeing Famine and Evading Labor

The group was collectively in an emo mood for quite a while.

The leader, surnamed Mao, asked, "Your Stone Village has been flooded by mudslides. Is it still habitable?"

When asked this question, Old Zhong's previous worries vanished.

There was still a hint of joy in his eyes: "No, no! Why go back to those high mountains and steep slopes? We plan to escape the famine after we get through this downpour."

The two leaders exclaimed in unison, "Escape from famine? Where are you going?"

Old Zhong looked very experienced:

"At this rate of rainfall, the further south we go, the worse the flooding will be! We plan to go back to our ancestral home in the north. There are fewer people and more land there, and maybe they will even give us some wasteland to cultivate."

The leader surnamed Huang poured cold water on his enthusiasm:
"This torrential rain in Ruzhou must have washed away many river embankments and roads. The government will definitely be conscripting a large number of laborers. Do you think they can let you leave Ruzhou to escape famine?"

Old Zhong, however, was not afraid at all:
"Because the officials are all from out of town, the old man dares to speak his mind!"

Our imperial court is finding new ways to make things difficult for ordinary people every year!

Last year, the land tax was collected at a rate of one-tenth!

Even the wealthy farmers who owned fields and land at the foot of the mountain weren't necessarily living a good life.

In addition to land tax, poll tax, and head tax, corvée labor and military service were levied twice a year.

We don't know what the rules are for corvée labor in other places, but in our Ruzhou area, the stronger one's physique, the faster they die!
We can't find a way to pay off corvée labor, even if we want to. Every year, five or six strong laborers die in Shitouzhai!
With the autumn harvest already flooded by torrential rains, who knows how many kilograms of rice and flour one tael of silver can buy in the prefectural capital right now?

We were just trying to leave before the corvée labor was assigned. Anyone who's a fool to stay here and wait for a few pounds of relief grain to survive will definitely not be able to leave!

The topic of corvée labor was somewhat heavy, and the officials were well aware of the irregularities involved.

In a prosperous region like Daming Prefecture in the Central Plains, aristocratic families and wealthy households used money to find connections to avoid corvée labor.

The copper coins a poor family saves in a year are not enough to qualify for even one spot.

Repairing roads, city walls, and river embankments are all manual labor jobs, and people dying is a common occurrence.

It's probably about the same all over the country.

The three people in the conversation fell into a long silence.

After the awkward moment.

The leader surnamed Huang abruptly changed the subject: "Speaking of your Ruzhou region, the mountains are truly treacherous and numerous. You climb one after another, it never ends!"

Old Man Zhong: "Ruzhou is located between Nanhe Prefecture and Yangnan Prefecture. Its terrain is a valley between two mountains, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack. It has been a strategic location fought over by military strategists since ancient times."

The leader surnamed Mao couldn't help but complain:
"It's not all good that it's easy to defend and difficult to attack! If foreign enemies can't get in, it's also difficult for you Ruzhou people to get out!"

Old Zhong laughed heartily:

"Your words hit the nail on the head, sir. Ruzhou is under the jurisdiction of Yangnan Prefecture. Every year, the autumn tax grain we receive must be transported to Yangnan Prefecture, a journey of thousands of miles!"

There's a folk song around here that goes, "When Yangnan sends back grain, the child will call for its mother."

How many months will this take? The baby is old enough to call for his mother!
The leader surnamed Mao also asked the question that was of most concern to him at the moment:
"Old man, if we go down the mountain in the future and bypass this mountain range to reach Yangcheng in Nanhe Prefecture, how many miles will we have to travel?"

Old Zhong counted on his fingers for a while:

"If you take a detour, then it's hard to say! If you find the right direction, you can travel about two hundred miles. But if you take a wrong turn or encounter a mountain flood blocking the road, you might have to travel more than four hundred miles."

It's several times farther than originally planned!
The two leaders had long faces.

Old Zhong was very good at reading people's expressions. He said:
"We'll be passing through Nanhe Prefecture on our way to Yangcheng, and since we're heading in the same direction, why don't we travel together? When I was young, I used to go to Nanhe Prefecture every year to sell hides, so I'm quite familiar with the mountain roads around here!"

"That's great! That's great!" The two leaders nodded repeatedly.

What they were thinking was:
There are many able-bodied men in Shitouzhai, who can help clear the road in the future.

Old Zhong knew the way to Nanhe Prefecture and could be used as a living map.

With these government officials around, the mountain people can avoid a lot of trouble from being questioned.

Mutually beneficial! The three are in friendly discussions regarding cooperation.

After gnawing on the big bones and drinking the delicious bone broth, the mountain children couldn't sit still any longer.

During his imprisonment in Daming Prefecture, all the girls over the age of ten in the nine clans of the Zuo family were married off prematurely.

Girls from large families generally get engaged early.

In times of man-made disaster, marriage is the best way out.

Therefore, in this group of exiles.

There are more than fifty boys under the age of ten, but only eighteen girls.

And all of them are under nine years old.

Even though the two months of exile were not easy, and everyone got quite tanned and lost a lot of weight.

But the imbalance of male and female populations in Stone Village was so severe that the boys had never seen so many girls before.

She was still a little girl wearing a pink dress and with her hair in a bun.

For a moment, everyone was stunned.

This prompted various jokes from the men of Stone Village:

This is teasing his own nephew:
"Lu San, you're still a kid who hasn't even grown a beard yet, do you want to get married? Aren't the girls from the city prettier than those from the mountains?"

That joke was about the youngest brother in the family:

"Oh dear, weren't you just fighting over pig feed a moment ago? Why are you all suddenly silent now?"

And there were bachelors shouting:

"Hahaha, look at how worthless they are, their eyes can't even blink! If I had been as quick-witted as them back then, would I have had trouble finding a wife?"

"."

The boys in the mountains are very resilient and don't get angry when they are laughed at.

Some of the bolder ones even deliberately walked up to the little girl and circled around her.

This caused the boys of the Zuo clan to stare wide-eyed.

In a corner unseen by the adults, the underage boys from both sides had already exchanged glances.

When Gan Minglan and the others returned from washing the dishes by the river, Fatty ran up to his mother and complained, "Mom, they're bad!"

Gan Minglan secretly stuffed a completely black mulberry into her son's mouth and asked, "Who are they?"

The little guy's dissatisfaction was immediately soothed by the sweet mulberries.

He chewed several large mouthfuls and swallowed them before he had time to answer his mother's question.

He gestured with his chubby finger towards the group across the street: "That's them! They're grinning at the older women."

Barbara.

Fatty, with his quick wit, recounted to his mother how the mountain children fawned over the older sisters in the clan and how they glared at each other.

Concluding remarks: "They're all bad kids. If they bully my sister again, I'm going to beat them up!"

Gan Minglan was speechless: "You little rascal, you're actually quite protective of your own, siding with your relatives regardless of the truth."

The little guy's eyebrows furrowed like caterpillars: "They're bullying us! I'll help my sister, which means we'll reason with them!"

He still remembers what his mother said last time: some people only recognize fists and not reason.

His fists are really hard!
Gan Minglan: "Alright, if they provoke the older sisters again, don't hold back. Give them a good beating, and if you can't win, run away."

(End of this chapter)