Li You's Tang Dynasty

Chapter 277 Dead Rat Walk

"Master Zhao, don't worry, we've been following you for a while, and this is a small mountain village, there won't be any gangsters." A young yamen servant looked at the middle-aged yamen servant and smiled.

"Hmm!" Hearing what the little yamen servants said, the middle-aged yamen servant known as Mr. Zhao also nodded slightly and said: "We who eat public meals must always be careful, you don't know, that peddler looks very dead horrible.

The whole body was covered with black spots, and he vomited blood and died. According to my experience, he must have been given some terrible poison, so after arriving in the mountain village, the water and food inside were not allowed to be touched. "

"Understood Master Zhao!" All the yamen servants answered in unison.

In this way, a group of seven yamen servants walked into the mountain village, and the beauty of the mountain village was also admirable to the yamen servants, but the middle-aged yamen servant felt more and more wrong, what was wrong?

After entering the small village at the beginning, it is very abnormal that no one has been seen along the way, because although this is not the busy season for farming, it is also a critical moment for planting melons and reaping melons.

Generally speaking, it should be when the farmers are busy. There are large fields outside. It is impossible for no one to see them all the way. Soon, they reached the entrance of the village. There is still no one in the village.

I saw that in the village, it was deathly silent, and the chickens and dogs could not be heard, as if there was no one here.

"Master Zhao, what's the situation in this village? Why is there no one there?" A young yamen servant felt strange, and instinctively came to the middle-aged yamen servant.

At this time, the middle-aged yamen servant Zhao Ye also mustered up his courage and said: "Don't panic, there are seven of us here, everyone draw out your knives, let's go into the village together to have a look."

"Okay!" All the yamen servants said hello together, and then everyone drew out their horizontal knives and formed a simple formation. You and I walked into the village relying on each other, step by step. After entering the village, the middle Nian Yamen servant shouted, "Is there anyone?"

But the answer to the middle-aged yamen servant was a silent answer.

Then the middle-aged yamen servant yelled again, but there was still no answer. The middle-aged yamen servant had no choice but to say, "Go into the house in the village and have a look, but everyone must be careful when entering."

"It's Lord Zhao!" The yamen servants answered in unison.

Then a group of people found a relatively large house, and then slowly groped in. The middle-aged yamen servant took the lead and kicked open the door of the house. After kicking it open, all the yamen servants were dumbfounded.

Then one of the youngest yamen servants yelled in horror: "Oh, dead people, dead people, all dead people!"

It turned out that this house was full of dead people, as if the whole village had died in it, and what was even more strange was that these dead people died in the same way as that shopkeeper, with black spots all over their bodies, rotten, and vomiting blood.

"It's not good!" Suddenly, the middle-aged yamen servant swallowed his saliva, and then said with a terrified expression: "This is not poisoning, this is a plague!"

"Plague...?" All the yamen servants showed terrified expressions.

"Go back. Immediately report to the Ming government and block this place immediately!" To be honest, the middle-aged yamen servant rushed out of the house first, and the other yamen servants also rushed out after the middle-aged yamen servant, and then a group of seven people rushed back to the county, thinking His own master reported.

But what these yamen servants didn't expect was that their actions had accelerated the rampant plague.

In ancient times, there was a very severe plague, which was a severe infectious disease in history. Its victims had black spots on their bodies, rotted limbs, and black necrosis, so it was also called the Black Death.

The Black Death is the plague. When it was at its worst, it broke out in Europe, killing 2500 million people, accounting for one-third of the population at that time.Its tragedy, cruelty, and death toll are so high that only World War II can compare with it.

But the plague was not exclusive to Europe. In the late Ming Dynasty, a plague of unprecedented scale broke out in North China.When Li Zicheng attacked the city of Beijing, the city had already lost its resistance due to the rampant plague, and it was almost an empty city.Otherwise, how could Li Zicheng's peasants enter this city so easily that even Wala and Houjin hadn't breached.

Strange to say, when the Manchus entered the customs, the plague in Beijing disappeared not long after.However, during the Jiaqing period in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the plague once again ran rampant in the Yunnan-Guizhou area of ​​my country.According to historical records, "every time you see a mouse jumping at a person, you will die immediately after jumping. The human body will give birth to a baby, or vomit blood and sputum. The disease will die quickly, and the medicine will not work." It can be seen that the plague is severe, the death is fast, and there is no medicine. able to heal.

At that time, a scholar named Shi Daonan was in the plague-endemic area and wrote the poem "Dead Rat Walk", which recorded the tragedy of the epidemic area. It can be called a documentary poem about the epidemic situation of plague.This poem is popular and clear, plain as words, and not difficult to understand. The full text is as follows:
Rats die in the east, rats die in the west, people see dead rats like tigers; rats die within a few days, people die like demolition.

People who die in the day, don't ask, the sun is bleak and melancholy.After the three people walked for less than ten steps, they suddenly died and crossed the road.

The dead at night, dare not cry, the epidemic ghost exhales and the light shakes green.When the wind and the lights suddenly disappear, people and ghosts and corpses are in the same house in secret.

The black cries keep on crying, and the dogs smell when they cry.People contain ghosts, ghosts rob people and gods.In the daytime, there are many ghosts when meeting people, and when they meet at dusk, they are against the suspicious people.

The ground is full of dead people, and the human bones are gradually blown old by the wind.There is no one to collect the crops, so who should I ask for the official rent?

I want to ride a celestial dragon, go to the mansion of heaven, call the celestial father, beg the celestial mother, sprinkle the celestial milk, disperse the celestial milk, and penetrate the nine plains of thousands of feet.

Everyone in the underground returns alive, and the underworld turns into spring rain.

Shi Daonan, the author of this poem, wrote about the situation before and after the onset of the plague. At first, the rats died, and people feared the death of the rats like a tiger. After a few days, people began to die. During the day and night, countless people died.What was even more frightening was that three seemingly normal people were walking on the road, and suddenly two of them fell down on the road.The speed of infection and the number of dead are not difficult to imagine.

Because so many people died, they were in a trance, unable to distinguish between people and ghosts.After describing the scene of sad cultivation in the epidemic area, Shi Daonan couldn't help asking: dead people are everywhere, the population is almost cut off, and the crops in the fields are unoccupied, who is going to ask for the "official rent"?

The implication is that the plague is so rampant, where is the government?Why don't you ask?That being the case, don't expect to collect the rent from the fields.Finally, the whole poem uses romantic techniques, expressing in the poem that he hopes to ride a dragon to the sky, beg the heavenly father and mother for panacea, and sprinkle it all over the world to eliminate the epidemic and bring the dead back to life.However, this is nothing more than a helpless wish that will not come true!

This song "Dead Rats Walk" was widely spread, and was rated as "strange news and strange things, which the eyes can't bear to see and the ears can't bear to hear".However, the tragedy is that when Shi Daonan wrote this poem, he had already contracted the plague and died within a few days. He was under 30 years old, and his mother, wife and others died together. Only two children survived. Survived, people feel sorry for.

And no one thought that the Great Tang actually had the Black Death!

(End of this chapter)