Chapter 129.2

Chapter 129.2

Zhou Maohe’s breathing stagnated as cold sweat broke out on his back.

Although Zhou Maohe was born in a poor family, his family still could afford for him to become a scholar. He knew that it was impossible to call them really poor; at least from childhood to adulthood, he always had enough food and clothing and never had been wronged.

But at this time . . .

“If you yell again, I’ll throw you out,” The man who killed the bug with a slap said to Zhou Maohe

Although the man spoke in a dialect, Zhou Maohe understood it; and when he thought of the situation outside, he didn’t dare to say anything more.

In fact, Zhou Maohe occupied the Hongjiang Salt Farm, and news that Zheng Yi inquired about was a little different from what people outside thought.

Zhou Maohe was not Jiang Zhen; even though he saw the corruption in Hongjiang Salt Farm, he wanted to properly interrogate the people there and would not directly lead people to occupy Hongjiang Salt Farm . . .

At that time . . . As a matter of fact, he was forced to react.

After getting close to the Hongjiang Salt Farm, he knew that the lives of the people near there were not very good. After he saved the woman who fell into the water and met the salt workers, he became even angrier about the situation at Hongjiang Salt Farm.

Then he took these people to Hongjiang Salt Farm for talks. But what happened in the end, when they arrived, they saw a very unbearable scene.

In the Hongjiang Salt Farm, a group of soldiers were having fun with the women, and there were even a few bodies thrown outside.

Zhou Maohe immediately became furious while the group of salt workers behind him directly erupted. Then these people no longer listened to Zhou Maohe’s words and rushed out to fight the people of Hongjiang Salt Farm.

Zhou Mao failed to stop him, so he could only watch helplessly as they occupied the Hongjiang Salt Farm and killed many people in the Hongjiang Salt Farm.

At that time, he was very dissatisfied with these salt workers, but they put up a lot of criminal evidence of the Hongjiang Salt Farm in front of him and said that they had no choice but to do it. He saw that they were really pitiful, so he did not pursue the matter and just wrote a note to the imperial court. He also contacted officials nearby and said he wanted to give justice to these salt workers.

However, he failed to bring justice to them as officials came only to stop the rebellion.

He felt a little sorry for these salt workers, but unexpectedly, these salt workers changed their faces at that time.

It turned out that when these salt workers met Zhou Maohe, they originally planned to go to the Hongjiang Salt Farm to rescue their captive relatives. After meeting Zhou Maohe, who was an imperial envoy, they thought that Zhou Maohe might be able to help them, so they took Zhou Maohe to the Hongjiang Salt Farm.

But the result was Zhou Maohe failed to help them after all.

As soon as the army of the court came, they had no other choice but to die . . . Seeing that Zhou Maohe even intended to go and talk properly with these imperial people, the group only thought he was crazy, and then they took him and ran away. With the imperial envoy in their hands, they could also be a little safer.

These days, they have been in hiding, spending every day in fear, but Zhou Maohe was still trying to convince them that they shouldn’t go against the imperial court, so they became more and more impatient with Zhou Maohe.

“Brother Zhu, what are we going to do next?“ A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy looked at the man who slapped the bug to death.

The man’s name was Zhu Erlin. Although his entire family was also salt workers, he was given some face because his father managed dozens of salt farmers. Because of this, Zhu Erlin could read a little.

But even so, in the eyes of some people, they could still be abused at will.

On the day Zhu Daqiang, the eldest brother of Zhu Erlin, got married, his new wife was kidnapped, and it took several days for her to be released and returned. As a result, when his eldest nephew was born, he was killed because no one couldn’t figure out who the father was.

When Zhu Erlin reached the age of seventeen or eighteen, he secretly fell in love with a salt worker ger, but the ger went “missing.”

This time, he finally couldn’t stand it, and it was because of two things: first, the food distributed from above became less and less, finally making many old people unwilling to eat and starving to death, including his own parents. Second, because it was close to the New Year, the Hongjiang Salt Farm people intended to find some women and gers to bring back for fun and forcefully took away a lot of people.

They have endured for a long, long time, but this time, they were no longer able to bear it. In the end, they simply stopped cooking salt and went together to the seashore to pick up some crab, clams, and other things to boil with the rest of their food. After eating all of it, they took their weapons and planned to fight to the death with the people of Hongjiang Salt Farm.

But it ended up . . .

After Hongjiang Salt Farm was occupied by them, they had to hide.

“We’ll hide first. We can’t be found,” Zhu Erlin said. In fact, he didn’t know what to do next, so in that case, he might as well hide first.

Anyway, they had stolen a lot of food. At least they didn’t have to worry about starving.

Hearing Zhu Erlin say this, the rest of the salt workers who followed him nodded their heads and then began to discuss how to hide.

“Zhu Erlin, should we change our hiding place?”

“What are we going to do afterwards?“”

“If we stay here for long, the children will not be able to stand it . . .”

. . .

When these salt workers decided to fight against Hongjiang Salt Farm, they did not take the old and the weak with them, but then they went back to the village and brought along all the old and weak. So currently, all the weaker people were settled in another drier cave.

“Let’s go south,” Zhu Erlin said.

At this time, Jiang Zhen came to the village where he had previously bought seafood.

At that time, the village was very poor and dilapidated, but there were still many people living there, but right then . . .

Looking at the body in front of him, Jiang Zhen’s expression became extremely ugly.

“Boss . . .” Jiang Ming voice trembled as he spoke Jiang Zhen’s name.

Although he had fought with the pirates and many people died at that time, these people were all adult men. But in this place, there were even children who had their heads cut off . . .

Jiang Ming, who had been living in such a peaceful village as Hexi, couldn’t stand it.

Among the people Jiang Zhen brought, those who had not followed Jiang Zhen to the capital before could not help but vomit at this moment.

The bodies showed signs of having been gnawed and devoured by animals, which was absolutely unbearable for an average person.

“Go dig some holes to bury them,” Jiang Zhen said.

“Yes, boss,” Jiang Ming responded and led the men to dig the hole.

They didn’t know anyone here, and it would be hard to even think about putting a monument for them, but at least it was good to let these people rest in peace.

Jiang Zhen and the others were digging a hole in silence when a voice suddenly rang out, “Who are you?“

The people of Hexi Village were startled by the sound, and some of them even turned pale as if they had seen a ghost. But Jiang Zhen was very calm, then he saw a man dressed in rags coming out of a shabby house.

The situation here looked so miserable that Jiang Zhen didn’t even notice that there was still a living person hidden in the house.

He was startled at first, but after seeing the way the man was dressed, he calmed down a bit. Checking the man’s appearance . . . Wasn’t this the young man who had once sold him a lot of salted fish and seaweed when he used to come here to buy seafood?

The young man’s lips were white and his eyes red; he looked at Jiang Zhen and the others warily, and his fists were clenched hard.

“Do you remember me? I used to come here and buy seafood from you,” Jiang Zhen said to the man. “I want to dig out a pile to bury the people here.”

The man stared at Jiang Zhen for a while then sat down on the ground and cried bitterly.