"It seems that Mr. Shen knows Mr. Ye's identity?"

"I've heard a little bit about it."

"Does Chief Shen still know that we are wanted by the government?"

"Of course I know."

Ye Zongliu did not officially start the uprising until July of the ninth year of Zhengtong, but before that, he had already had many small-scale battles with officers and soldiers, and he had long been a wanted person.

"Okay, then it seems that I, Mr. Ye, thought wrong and had the courage!"

Seeing that the misunderstanding was solved, Cang Huotou next to him responded: "Boss Ye, let me tell you, given Shen's behavior last night, how could he be a person who is afraid of trouble?"

"That's right, people who can do righteous things are definitely not ordinary cowardly scholars."

The strong men next to him all responded. Shen Yichen's action of helping the refugee children last night won a lot of favor in their hearts.

You must know that Shen Yichen belongs to the scholar-bureaucrat class, while the refugees belong to the lowest level. In the past, the powerful people would not look at them seriously, and even approached them with disgust and contempt on their faces.

Only Shen Yichen ignored the distinction between high and low and was willing to help. This behavior was deeply moved in the hearts of the miners at the bottom.

It's just that this group of people told Shen Yichen what happened last night, but it made Shen Yichen feel a little confused. So it seems that their appearance was not accidental, but had been planned long ago?

No matter how hard Shen Yichen racked his brains, he still couldn't figure out why the miners in Zhejiang were paying attention to him.

"Chief Ye, I have a question in my mind, and I hope to find an answer."

The doubts were so deep that Shen Yichen couldn't hold back anymore and was ready to ask the other party.

"What Chief Shen wants to know is why we came to help, right?"

"Indeed."

"I wonder if Chief Shen still remembers Bian He, Yin's staff in Yingtian Mansion."

Bian He?

Hearing this name, Shen Yichen was extremely surprised. Why did an aide of Yin Limin of Yingtian Mansion have contact with the Zhejiang miners?

However, he suddenly remembered the inexplicable words Bian He said at the celebration banquet in the small courtyard. In order to say that what he had committed, Shen Yichen had to be at least as high as Cheng Guogong in order to be able to help.

At that time, Shen Yichen thought that Bian He was drunk and talking nonsense. Looking back now, I'm afraid it wasn't nonsense, he was a "rebel"!

"Mr. Bian has something to do with you?"

"Yes, Mr. Bian and I are from the same hometown of Qingyuan and have known each other since childhood. Later, he was wanted by the government for the mine incident, so he changed his identity and went to Yingtian Mansion to work as an aide, hoping to find a way out for reconciliation."

"So Mr. Bian chose me?"

"It's not that Chief Shen was selected, but Chief Shen was one of many candidates."

After Ye Zongliu said this, he glanced into the distance and then said: "Chief Shen, I will discuss this matter with you in detail, but now we have to clean up and leave. This place is not far from Zhenjiang Mansion. If the blood flows down the river, it will be easily discovered."

The canal is no wider than the Yangtze River. If the bodies of more than a dozen people are not disposed of, they will soon be discovered by passing ships. No matter what the reason is, Shen Yichen will be involved in the lives of more than a dozen people.

Therefore, these clippers and corpses must be disposed of before they are discovered, otherwise it will attract officers and soldiers who want to escape, and the difficulty will be doubled.

"Okay, then I'll trouble you, Leader Ye."

"You're welcome. In addition, the head of the case is a scholar, which really impressed Mr. Ye."

Ye Zongliu praised him. From Shen Yichen's pale face and slightly trembling arms, he could tell that this was the first time for him to see such a bloody scene.

But even so, Shen Yichen was extremely calm and clear in thinking from beginning to end. And when he said he wanted to dispose of the body, he agreed without hesitation.

If you meet some pedantic literati, you may still want to go to the official to resolve the relationship and have no ambition or courage to do anything big.

Shen Yichen, who is still in his early teens, can achieve this step, which makes him look like a hero among people. No wonder he became the leader of the Little Three Yuan case and was valued by Master Bian. He is really different.

In response to Ye Zongliu's compliment, Shen Yichen just smiled and didn't reply, but he felt helpless in his heart.

After being a relative of the great Ming Dynasty, the head of the Xiao Sanyuan case, a scholar-bureaucrat and a scholar, should theoretically be the "hardcore faction" of the government.

Now, inexplicably, he and the "rebels" are on the same boat, and they have reached a consensus on the matter of destroying corpses and exterminating traces. The other party even appreciates it. What kind of bizarre stories are these.

Ye Zongliu and his group were very efficient, and the scene of the "crime" was cleaned up in a short time. The corpses of the Jingkou Gang were salvaged and placed on the speedboat, and then several people were separated to sail the speedboat. Toward a remote river bend.

As for whether the follow-up action was to set him on fire or some other method, Shen Yichen couldn't guess. After all, he was not a professional in this business.

However, the cooperation and discipline of Ye Zongliu's group of miners also impressed Shen Yichen.

Apart from anything else, Shen Yichen even felt that the execution ability shown in the processing process was not as good as the military service of some guards in Yingtian Mansion. It was completely inconsistent with the stereotype of the peasant army as a "rabble".

At this time, Shen Yichen suddenly remembered that the Qi army that swept away the Japanese pirates in the late Ming Dynasty and was victorious in every battle was formed by recruiting miners from Yiwu, Chuzhou, Taizhou and other places as its backbone.

Among them, Chuzhou is Ye Zongliu’s hometown!

In a sense, this group of miners is the predecessor of the famous Qi Jiajun, and can also be regarded as one of the best sources of soldiers in the Ming Dynasty.

After the matter was settled, the bird boat continued to set sail. Ye Zongliu and others still stayed on the bird boat and began to tell Shen Yichen about Bian He.

Bian He also came from a miner's family in Chuzhou. He was very talented and good at reading since he was a child, so the village worked together to send him to school, hoping to cultivate a scholar.

Bian He lived up to expectations and successfully obtained the title of Juren at the age of twenty-six. If he continues on this trend, not to mention how big an official he can become, he will at least be able to give back to his fellow villagers and benefit his fellow villagers.

But all this was interrupted by the mining tax in the early years of the Zhengtong Dynasty. The already heavily burdened miners once again faced layers of heavy taxes. In addition, the court also vigorously cracked down on private mines, and additional income was blocked. Even the last way to survive is gone.

The miners themselves were strong men, and the prototype of a military organization was beginning to take shape. Coupled with the frequent clan fighting in Zhejiang and Fujian, the locals were fierce and bloody, and various small-scale resistance riots continued.

Later, Marshal Qi chose Chuzhou miners as his source of troops because of these characteristics of them.

Faced with this situation, Bian He was still a scholar at first, hoping to negotiate with the government to reduce mining taxes and give the people a way to survive.

The result of this naive idea was obvious. The government did not accept this idea at all. They even took the opportunity to hunt down the leading miners during the negotiation process, and listed the leading miners as wanted targets, even Bian He, a high-level official, was no exception.

Seeing that there was no way to negotiate, Ye Zongliu simply stopped talking and sent people to various places to purchase iron tools to "forge soldiers' armor", and then occupied the mountains and became kings to fight against the government with force.

This is why they appeared in Zhenjiang Prefecture among the refugees.

After all, Bian He had read books and knew how powerful the Ming Dynasty was. The road of occupying the mountain as the king would not work, and he would eventually be encircled and suppressed and failed.

At that time, these childhood friends and fellow miners will all be killed in the name of rebelling.

Wanting to change this outcome, Bian He chose a completely different path from Ye Zongliu. He wanted to get to know high-ranking officials and dignitaries through the way of a staff master, and find a way to survive for the clan members from the perspective of decision-making power.

In this way, a pair of childhood miners worked hard on two different paths to survive.

Without the God's perspective of history, they don't know who made the right choice and who made the wrong choice in the end.

But instead of waiting to die, at least these miners chose to fight in order to survive!

Sitting on the bow of the boat, Shen Yichen quietly listened to Ye Zongliu's words. The short words in the history books have become a portrayal of everyone's survival at this moment, and the feelings are completely different.

Shen Yichen did not comment on whether Bian He or Ye Zongliu made the right choice, because he knew very well that neither of them would go anywhere.

The increase in taxes on silver mines was not only due to the government's exploitation and greed, but also to the fact that by the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, the output of silver, as the benchmark currency, was seriously insufficient. In layman's terms, it was not enough.

Because of the epidemic, many people in later generations learned that the United States used nuclear-powered money printing machines to print money like crazy, which caused inflation in many countries and prices began to skyrocket.

However, there is another economic antonym for inflation, which is equally harmful, and that is deflation.

The so-called deflation is a situation in which the amount of money circulating in the market is less than the amount of money required for commodity circulation, resulting in currency appreciation and a general continued decline in prices.

Many people may think that falling prices is a good thing. It makes buying things cheaper. Shouldn’t people live better?

But in fact, once the currency appreciates and prices fall beyond a certain level, goods will become too cheap and you will not make money by selling them.

Since I no longer make any money, I will still work so hard to produce, so I won’t sell it at all. After this step occurs, no one will produce, the unemployment rate will increase sharply, and the overall social wealth will shrink.

If there is no way to solve deflation, it will enter a vicious cycle, and the end result will naturally be economic collapse.

Therefore, modern economics is a discipline with very rigorous logic, and it is not as simple as ordinary people understanding whether things are more expensive or cheaper.

In post-modern society, when there is insufficient currency, the money printing machine can still work overtime to print money. In a feudal society like the Ming Dynasty, paper currency does not have enough credit endorsement from the central government and will only become a piece of waste paper.

Even if there is such a thing as a banknote, it is based on precious metal reserves and is fundamentally different from the paper currency issued in later generations.
Chapter completed!