This land is dying.

It is the season for winter wheat to sow. However, when I look up, I see that the fields are yellow, the fields are dry and cracked, and the fields are lifeless.

This is in Suzhou, on the edge of Sui River.

“…Woooooo, brother, wake up…”

The young girl cried, her voice weak and helpless.

Not far from the river embankment, there is a pond. The water is half dry, and the black mud emits a disgusting stench in the sun. The edge of the pond is covered with weeds, and there are several hungry corpses more than ten steps away. They are all thin in limbs, gray in their faces, dry like skeleton monsters.

The sound of sobs and crying came from the pond, but there was a 17 or 18-year-old boy lying on the weeds by the pond. The boy looked pale, his eyes were closed at this time, and he looked unconscious. Only his handsome face could be vaguely seen.

The boy looked like a scholar, but although he was wearing a blue shirt, his sleeves were narrow, his head was soft and his feet were cloaked, his body was covered with a scabbard and a dagger was hidden around his waist, and a shiny slashing sabre was inserted beside him, which seemed not like an ordinary scholar.

Beside the boy, two children, one older and one younger, were kneeling and crying. It seems that these two children are not old, one man and one woman, both of whom are only five or six years old.

The boy seemed to be older and a little calm and sensible. He cried for a while and comforted the girl: "If Ying'er doesn't cry, her brother will wake up."

The girl just sobbed and cried: "I...I want my brother..."

It seemed as if he heard the cry of his younger brother and sister, the boy suddenly moaned, and an incomparable pain appeared on his pale face, as if he contained strong anger and unwillingness, and even his handsome face became distorted.

The boy said in surprise: "Brother is going to wake up?"

At this moment, a sudden movement came from the side, and immediately the two children, one big and one small, looked at each other. Sure enough, the weeds in the pond separated from the side, and the two men staggered out.

The two children looked at the two men in horror, seeing that they were holding wooden sticks and wearing shabby cotton coats, black and ripped with holes, and they looked extremely hungry when they walked. Their faces were red and swollen, and it was hard to see what they originally looked like, but their eyes were shining with green light, like evil wolf.

This is a manifestation of eating human flesh. In the first year of Chongzhen, Ma Maocai wrote in "The Memorial of Catastrophes": "The more unusual ones are the children and the lonely people who go out of the city, and there is no trace. Later, I saw people outside the door cooking bones as firewood, and cook human flesh as food. I realized that everyone in the past was eaten by them. However, people who eat people had red and swollen faces, and they died of dryness and heat inside..."

This is the inhumane act during the famine. Cannibalism, especially women and children, are the first victims to be affected.

The two children may not know so much, but seeing the two strange and middle-aged men's eyes lit up and walking quickly with wooden sticks, they all felt keenly dangerous. Both of them started crying, and the girl even shook the boy's body and cried shrillly: "Brother, wake up, wake up."

The two men staggered over quickly, one after another, and said "hehe" in their mouths, and saliva kept flowing down while walking.

The closer they were to the two children, the more distorted their red and swollen faces became, and they were full of cruel and greedy expressions.

The girl's cry became more and more sad, and the boy also cried in horror. Seeing two men approaching, he gritted his teeth and wanted to pull out the sabre next to the boy.

At this time, a man was not far from the boy. He took a few steps, raised the wooden stick, and swung it high towards the boy's head. The boy was so scared that he stared blankly in front of him, leaving only the girl's helpless crying.

With a "puff", at this moment, a long sword suddenly pierced from the cannibal man. As the figure flashed, the long sword, with the sound of the flesh and bones, burst out from his back with blood, bringing out a large bunch of blood.

The man screamed and his whole body trembled. The wooden stick held high in his hand fell to the ground weakly, making a dull sound.

The latter cannibal stopped suddenly. He looked in horror, but saw a young man pulling out a long knife from the man in front of him with a cold expression and stabbing him violently.

Another sound of a long sword piercing through his body, the man in front of him screamed, his body shaking like a sieve, and large streams of blood poured out of his mouth.

The boy calmly drew a long sword from the man in front of him, letting him fall to the ground with no power, and then looked coldly.

The latter cannibal man screamed, threw down the wooden stick and turned around and ran away, but he heard the footsteps behind him. He was frightened and couldn't help but look, but saw the young man chasing him quickly. He held a knife in both hands, his eyes cold and sharp.

Seeing that the boy was about to catch up, he turned around and opened his mouth to say something, but when a knife flashed, blood splashed out. The man's throat was cut open, and the bloody wound was exposed. He fell to the ground, covered his neck with both hands, and struggled and twisted desperately on the ground.

The boy slowly approached his side, and looked coldly at the cannibal man twitching constantly, watching him screaming silently, and the blood with foam continued to overflow from his wounds.

After watching for a while, the young man stabbed the knife again and stabbed it in with one knife. The cannibal man tilted his head violently, his body trembling violently, and his heart was scattered from front to back. Then he pulled out the long sword and the blood spilled open like a fountain.

The boy stabbed him again, and he stabbed him three times in a row. The sound of his skin and bones being pierced was extremely cunning. In the end, the cannibal man did not move, without any sound.

The boy turned around and had some blood splashed on his face, adding a bit of sharpness to his handsome face.

The two children were already stunned. All this was going on. Things were so cruel and sudden, which made their young hearts unbearable. Finally, the two came to their senses, cried loudly, and rushed into the boy's arms, one left and one right.

The boy's expression turned soft, and he even put the knife into the sheath, reached out to hug the two children of a man and a woman tightly, and murmured: "Ying'er, don't be afraid of Qian'er, brother is here..."

...

The Sui River originated in Henan, passed through Kaifeng Prefecture, Guide Prefecture, and then flowed through Fengyang Prefecture, Nanzhili, and finally flowed into the Yellow River through the east of Suining County, Pizhou, Huai'an Prefecture.

At least before the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the river banks were still fertile land in Fengyang Prefecture. However, after the Yellow River flowed all over the Huai River, the Yellow River water frequently broke, and the downstream of the Sui River was severely silted. The consequences of poor drainage caused large areas of land by the river to be salinized.

This is the case with the Sui River, especially on the north bank, where the river channel is covered with sand dunes, saline, and ponds and swamps.

The boy walked along the banks of the Sui River with two children. It can be seen that due to the yellowing, the terrain along both sides of the river is relatively high, especially the north bank is higher than the south bank.

It seems that in order to protect the river channel and the land on the south bank, the embankment on the other side of the river is completely closed.

The river bank that the boy walked on at this time was not very far from the Fuli Bridge upstream. It was a key road to Suzhou. Logically speaking, this area should be very prosperous. However, when I looked up, it was extremely desolate everywhere, and there was no village I saw that I didn’t give up.

Not only that, lodging hungry people appear from time to time on the riverside path. Each corpse is dry and thin, with deep eye sockets. Many of the clothes of dead corpses are peeled clean, revealing the ribs and dry bodies.

The corpses that had been dead for a long time turned into yellow and black bones earlier, and various inexplicable insects crawled in and out of the bones.

This is really hell, and it is shocking to watch.

If it were placed in later generations, not to mention so many corpses, even any lodged corpse would cause a huge shock.

"Since the eighth year, the bandits have been in conflict with each other, and more than half of the people have died. In the eighth year of Chongzhen, the bandits in Xian captured Zhongdu, and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed. In the nineth year, the bandits in Lingbi, Xiaoxian, Yongcheng, and attack Peixian. In the tenth year, the bandits in Suining and attack Xuzhou..."

"In May and June of the 14th year, Henan's native enemy Yuan Shizhong gathered 200,000 people, and they peeked at Fengsi in the north of the Yangtze River. The thieves and ants were attached to each other. The Governor Zhu Dadian defeated him, and the thieves abandoned their livestock and fled at night. At that time, Shandong's thieves rose up, Shandong's native enemy Li Tingshi and Li Dingxuan fell into Gaotang Prefecture."

"In July, the two capitals, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Lake is vast and drought is not rainy, and locusts cover the sky. In August, Huizhou is suffering from drought, and rice prices are 5 taels per stone silver. In September, the eastern enemy became more and more intense, Xu De became thousands of miles away, with white bones crisscrossing, and the pedestrians were cut off."

These historical materials appeared in the boy's mind, and every word was so shocking. This was the troubled times in the late Ming Dynasty and the people were suffering.

There are many reasons for this, and natural disasters are part of them, including man-made disasters, bandits, bandits, and wars. Since the eighth year of Chongzhen, they have been raging on this land.

But the government ignored the lives and death of the people, and even forced the people to rebel, bandits, warlords, and Tartars, what kind of thing were they?

Who is the real choice of the people?

"Brother, Ying'er is so hungry."

The girl's weak voice interrupted the boy's contemplation. Both children were very obedient and followed him downstream hungryly. However, the boy knew that he had to find some food for his younger brothers and sisters, otherwise they would definitely not be able to support him.

He picked up the girl and comforted her softly: "Be good Ying'er, brother will find you something to eat soon."

After comforting her sister, the boy looked around the fields, withered yellow colors everywhere, and the ground was full of cracks caused by drought, and even the fields near the river were no exception.

The boy sighed, and an unspeakable bitterness rose on his face: "In the 14th year of Chongzhen, Yang He actually came to the Ming Dynasty in the 14th year of Chongzhen. This is really a strange thing that has never happened in the ages!"
Chapter completed!