【Second update on March 13th.】

"Maintain!"

This time it was Wen Jia's voice.

Qin Wan turned her head and looked at Wen Jia.

Wen Jia rarely speaks on such occasions. He has always paid great attention to maintaining order in the army. If he was gathering in the city, he rarely expressed his opinions openly, but went back to perform his job. Only when the number of people was small, would he take the initiative to make suggestions or take on some military tasks.

Although Wen Jia does not belong to the Tianmen Village system, he is speaking openly now. No matter what the result is, he will not get out of here in the future.

Qin Wan was unwilling to drag Wen Jia down. He waited for a while, and seeing that Wen Jia's expression was still firm, he sighed, "...Wen Zouma please say."

Wen Jia said anxiously: "If there are thieves who hold good people hostage, what should the supervisor do to deal with it?"

Qin Wan felt warm and smiled comfortably. Wen Jia put the future aside to help him. "I understand, I understand..." He said a few words, and his voice became silenced again.

Since ancient times, the standard handling process of dealing with hostage-taking cases was to kill thieves, and hostage safety was never considered.

The most famous example is Qiao Xuan of the Later Han Dynasty. His son was kidnapped by the thieves and demanded a ransom. The Sili School Commander led people to come but was afraid of being timid and did not dare to use force. Qiao Xuan said, "The traitor is not ruthless, how could Xuan be the traitor of the country with the life of a son?" He asked the Sili School Commander to take action immediately. The last three kidnappers died, and Qiao Xuan's son also died. Qiao Xuan later wrote to Emperor Ling of Han, "Everyone who has robbery is killed, and no treasure can be redeemed for traitors, and the path to traitors will be opened." From then on, the government handled the case of hostages. As long as the case was successfully closed according to the law, there were only two results. One was that the thief died, and the other was that the thief died together with the hostages. It would never appear, and the case that saved the hostages' lives but let the thief run away could be successfully closed.

Throughout the dynasties, even legislation has been strictly prohibited from compromising with the thief. This prohibition is not limited to the arrest of the thief by the official. If according to the Tang Dynasty, if the hostages are concerned and do not come forward to arrest criminals, not to mention the officials who arrest the thief, even the neighbors of the hostages will be sentenced to two years in prison. The ministers and neighbors and neighbors will be sentenced to two years in prison. Only close relatives are qualified to ask for the safety of the hostages and do not receive punishment at any time. Song Dynasty is also average, and basically inherited the Tang Dynasty.

Moreover, according to the recent promulgation issued by the Ministry of Revenue, the punishment for neighbors remains unchanged. If the arrest and thief compromise, it will not be as simple as two years of imprisonment afterwards, and they will definitely be exiled. Qin Wan heard people complain in private, and the court is now increasingly disregarding its face and tries every means to drive people to the border for settlement.

Qin Wan didn't know how much of this order had achieved. Anyway, Qin Wan had never heard of hostages again in recent years.

Even the Taihang thieves who have existed in the Taihang Mountains for hundreds of years used to go down the mountain to plunder wealthy families in the countryside and tie people to seek wealth. In Dingzhou and Baozhou, the military states that are just beside the Taihang Mountains are very famous, but now they are gone.

The railways in the north have spread to various counties in the past decade. There are dozens of times more people who travel frequently than in the past. For bandits, there are dozens of times more people who can rob. The number of criminal cases in various places has increased significantly, and due to frequent traffic, the proportion of foreign criminals is increasing.

Three years ago, because of the reports of hostages and robbery of vehicles from all walks, even the trains running on the main line were robbed by bandits from Taihang Mountain, which seriously affected the railway operation in various places. In other words, hundreds of wealthy families and imperial courts in the north were robbed. As a result, the capital hall was aroused, and the four routes around Taihang were mobilized to cooperate in the joint battle. Hebei, Hedong, Jingxi, and Kaifeng counties all dispatched a large number of township soldiers and Kuaishou to cooperate with the railway protection army of the General Railway Administration. Shen Kuo led the group of thieves in Taihang and cleared out the bandits who harassed the railways in the four prefectures and counties.

The villages in Taihang Mountain that have been entrenched in the mountains for more than a hundred years or even for hundreds of years are all high and deep walls with excellent terrain. The walls three or four feet high on the top of the hillside are not rare. However, in front of artillery, the old defense system is meaningless, and none of them can withstand three days.

After more than half a year of joint combat, people were constantly holding shackles on the road to Lingnan, southwest and Western Regions.

For a time, as long as someone lives in Taihang Mountains, they will be regarded as a bandit nest. Many villages in Taihang Mountains were sacked and sent to the far side of the border. Perhaps some of them were innocent, but if you say that half of them had done black work, there was no way to argue.

Only a small number of them fled to the Liao Kingdom, and now they don’t know where to make cattle and horses for the Khitan nobles in the Liao Kingdom.

The law was so strict that many thieves were trapped. The northern territory was at a loss for a while.

The current dilemma of Tianmen Village is about to be discussed in detail, but the Liao people took millions of people as hostages and forced the city to compromise.

If according to Wen Jia's statement, if you keep your door closed and don't accept it, you will have a legal basis - but this is just a trivial matter. According to the military law, the defeated soldiers will retaliate against the battlefield, and you will not be killed! Qin Wan has sufficient reasons to defend himself.

But the reason why many people hesitate is because they have conscience and compassion cannot be comforted.

So Wen Jia's words are more important to allow Qin Wan to be righteous. It is not to be timid or to be alone, but to avoid the Liao people's repeated use of their old tricks and let more people in Hebei suffer this disaster. As Qiao Xuan said, it is to avoid "opening up a path of treason". It can allow the hesitant people to have peace of conscience.

Qin Wan knew that Wen Jia's advice was reasonable, but there were not one or two hostages in front of him, but there were thousands or even tens of thousands of people. One by one, one vivid face was right in front of him. How did he order this?

Qin Wan held the stool, and for the first time he hated his incompetence.

Even if he was ten times more Liao people, Qin Wan had never been afraid. Even if he risked his life to go out to attack at night, he had never hesitated. But if he had to watch so many people from the Song Dynasty die before him, he could not force himself down.

Seeing that Qin Wan was still hesitating, Wen Jia persuaded even more eagerly, "The capital, if the city is opened today, it will be difficult to save the people. It will only destroy the Tianmen Village. Moreover, with the nature of the Liao people and the tigers and wolves, how can it not be used in other places in the future? Once the Northern Barbarians invade, there will be no seldom along the way, and from now on, the people of Hebei will never have peace."

This was clearer than the previous vague reminder. Several generals and schools were excited when they heard this and shouted one after another, "The Chief Executive, you are right, you can't open the door."

"The Northern Lu will rush in after opening the door. It's not about saving people, it's about dying together."

"Today, Liaogou tasted the sweetness, and more people will suffer in the future!"

At the end, seven or eight opened their mouths and said in unison, "Master, you can't open the door!"

Qin Wan turned around and advised him not to open the door louder. But the people who spoke were less than half of the crowd.

The remaining people did not speak, some people refused to stand up, some were hesitant, and some people even wanted to put the people into the city, but they didn't know how to speak.

Qin Wan looked at his capable commander of the horse army. This military man who always held his head high and his chest was full of energy, now with his head hanging down and no reaction.

He was almost forty when he got married. Yue's family was a wealthy family in a nearby village, and Qin Wan had just drunk his wedding wine.

When the war broke out, his husband's family was in Tianmen Village, but his father-in-law's family was all left outside. Among the tens of thousands of people outside, there might be his husband's family.

Qin Wan looked at one of his personal soldiers again. This simple-looking young man was begging. He was from a local family. Because he was honest and serious in his work, he was sent to the city yamen to do odd jobs. After Qin Wan had contacted him several times, he felt it was available and lifted him up as a personal soldiers. His family was outside the village and he couldn't have time to escape into Tianmen Village. He used to think that the whole family was in trouble, but now tens of thousands of people are in front of him. How could he not expect his own family to be there in his heart?

In Tianmen Village, only half of the soldiers were stationed in other places, and the other half were local local soldiers. If the order is now closed, at least half of them will completely lose their fighting spirit.

Time passed by Qin Wan's hesitation.

More than ten thousand people were as dark as the tide, rushing towards the four gates of Tianmen Village.

When they started running, they were still driven by the people behind them and walked step by step. Now they have formed inertia and started running.

As long as you are a little slower, you will be caught up, pushed down by the people behind you, and you will be stepped on by one foot, and you will never get up again. No one dares to stop, even if the people in front fall down, their reaction will only be to step on.

The chaotic crowd rushed to Tianmen Village in no order, just like a flood breaking the dike, nothing could stop them.

Wen Jia and others who advocated being closed-door and refused to accept it no longer urged Qin Wan. As long as Qin Wan continues to hesitate, it will be the best result. Since the city will inevitably be unable to shoot at the people and prevent them from approaching the city wall, they will definitely come under the city wall in the end, so it is best to do nothing.

In Wen Jia's anxiety, Qin Wan raised the telescope silently.

In the camera, a mother fell to the ground, maybe she was injured, or she was trampled to another place, and she couldn't struggle for a while.

Like most women who suffered, she had a layer of black and gray on her face, and there was a little girl next to her, probably her daughter.

The youngest daughter is only three or four years old, with a red headband tied with a black and gray face like her mother. She was crying and holding her mother's hand.

The mother and daughter had already landed at the end of the crowd, and the Liao soldiers following behind were catching up one by one.

The mother held up several times but couldn't stand up. She gave up struggling in despair and began to push her daughter desperately, shouting to drive her daughter away quickly.

The little girl was pushed and scolded by her mother before she obediently walked forward. She took two steps, looked back, and was scolded again, ran two more steps, and staggered to the ground. She looked back pitifully at her mother, crawled back, grabbed the corner of her mother's clothes, and refused to let go.

The mother and daughter hugged their heads and cried bitterly. A Liao soldier chased after him in a cat-playing mouse with a slow step. He held a wet knife in his hand and walked slowly to their side.

Qin Wan calmly put down the telescope and no longer needed to look at it.

The mother and daughter finally made up their minds.
Chapter completed!