Li Hong ordered the gentry and green insects to cut down wood and build siege weapons.

Xie Xianzhong is a juren from Zhangqiu County, Jinan Prefecture. Because of the favor of Xie Qiguang, the Minister of the Right Temple of Dali Temple, their Xie family was a big family in Zhangqiu. Originally, the Xie family heard that the Qing army was going to attack Jinan, so they did not dare to escape to Jinan, but hid in the mountainous area in the local area. Who knew that a group of Qing soldiers actually got into the mountains and arrested all the people of the Xie family.

In fact, the real identity of the Qing soldiers was Li Hong's personal guards agents, who were familiar with mountain combat. After obtaining the information that the Xie family fled into the mountains, the agents took the Mongolians into the mountains and forests and captured the Xie family.

Now Xie Xianzhong is wielding his axe to chop wood. The vicious Mongolians (actually Han people) are wielding their whips to drive away the gentry and masters who are usually high and high, forcing them to go up the mountain to cut down wood and build siege weapons.

Xie Xianzhong waved his axe and chopped a few times, and felt his arms sore and could not even hold the axe up. After all, he was a scholar before, and was taken care of by the Xie family. When he was a child, the Xie family took great care of these scholars. He could eat enough for three meals a day, and the food was not bad, including millet porridge, pickles, salted eggs and white flour buns for breakfast, rice, tofu, vegetables and meat for lunch, and dinner was the same as breakfast. If ordinary people were ordinary people, they would never dare to think about it. Back then, ordinary people had two meals a day, one meal was done one meal a day. Even during the prosperous era of Yongle and the prosperous era of Renxuan, ordinary people could only barely fill their stomachs and not starve to death. However, these scholars protected by the family could live a much better life than ordinary people even if their family didn't have much money.

Of course, the family cannot give so much money to the scholars for food and clothing. Brothers settle the score clearly. It is his own family’s business that Xie Qiguang has money at home, so he cannot give the money to the tribe’s people for free food and drink. Not everyone in the tribe’s people are so rich. So, where does the money come from when these scholars who are not well-off in the family? They are provided by merchants.

Merchants pay money to support scholars. Scholars pass the imperial examination and become officials, and they will naturally speak for merchants. Whenever the emperor wants to increase the commercial tax, officials will jump out: Your Majesty must not compete with the people for profit!

The so-called people are those businessmen and court officials who collude with merchants, not real ordinary people.

If a businessman supports these scholars, their conditions are of course much better than those poor scholars who have nothing. It is very difficult for a peasant family without any family to offer a scholar. A scholar with family to make a name for himself is much better than a person to start.

Because Xie Xianzhong was smart and had excellent grades since childhood, he did not suffer any hardship since his childhood. Businessmen also had principles to support scholars. When Tongsheng was poor, he knew that the guys who had no future would naturally waste money on them. Although Xie Xianzhong was a farmer, because of his excellent grades, he had all the expenses he had in the Xie family academy. He was pampered since childhood. As a result, his career was very smooth. He passed the county examination, the government examination, and the college examination. He became a student at the age of fourteen and was admitted to the juren a few years later. If nothing unexpected happened, he could still get a master's list and become a Jinshi.

But the Mongols came and it was all over. The moment Xie Xianzhong was caught by the Mongols, he understood that he would never have the chance to go to Beijing to take the exam and get a gold medal. He knew that he would be captured by the Mongols as a slave.

But strangely, these Mongolians were not that bad. When they heard that their parents were all peasants, they let their parents go, otherwise they would have been cut off with one knife. Many elderly gentry in the family were cut off their heads by the Mongolians without any mercy.

As for why those Mongolians have this quirk? It is said that the Mongolian leader named Subud particularly hated scholars.

Xie Xianzhong was captured by the Tumotes and became a slave. He came from Shandong and had only a little rice bran and wheat bran every day, plus some rotten vegetable leaves. Xie Xianzhong, who had never suffered before, couldn't eat at first. After a few days of hunger, he saw those things that he couldn't eat on weekdays and swallowed them voraciously.

Just when Xie Xianzhong recalled his life back, he suddenly felt a violent pain coming from his back. He only heard a whip. He turned his head and saw a whip in his hand whip again, whipping on his face, making his pretty face lose his eyes. He only heard the roar of the Mongolians: "Do work quickly! Be lazy, I will kill you!"

In desperation, Xie Xianzhong had to raise his already numb arms, swung his axe, and chopped the trees. I don’t know how long it took to chop, but a big tree finally fell down.

After a busy day, Xie Xianzhong dragged his tired body and was taken back to the camp by the Mongolians. During dinner at night, he suddenly saw an obese and familiar figure.

"Shopkeeper Wang? Why are you arrested?" Xie Xianzhong walked up and asked, "Didn't you escape into Jinan? Why are you arrested by them?"

This shopkeeper Wang is a grain merchant in Zhangqiu City. He bought grain from farmers by lowering prices during the grain harvest season and increasing the grain price during the green and yellow season, and made a lot of ill-gotten gains. Some people even said that he had collusion with the government, and the government's greedy disaster relief money was sold by them and other unscrupulous merchants. However, shopkeeper Wang was very good to scholars like Xie Xianzhong. It is said that part of the cost of his study was the silver paid by shopkeeper Wang.

Manager Wang smiled bitterly, his body as fat as a mountain of meat trembled slightly, and said with a frown: "We have escaped into Jinan. Who knew that we were beaten and sneered, and then our family was all over here."

It was getting dark and these slaves were sent to the barracks to rest. A group of craftsmen captured by the Mongolians began to build various siege weapons under the supervision of the Mongolian soldiers.

Xie Xianzhong was not at the moment, so he naturally didn't know how to build siege weapons, so he was arranged to rest. Lying on the straw pile, blew the cold wind, Xie Xianzhong wrapped his clothes tightly. His clothes were thick cotton coats brought from home, but they still couldn't stop the cold. The cold wind blew in from the collar, causing him to tremble all over. Although it was so cold that it was difficult to fall asleep, he still fell asleep in a drowsy after a while.

"Get up! Get ready to attack the city!" Xie Xianzhong was woken up by the Mongolians in his sleep.

After waking up, he felt that his whole body was already cold and lost consciousness. He slept in the pile of soup stoves for a night, and felt even colder after waking up. Fortunately, a pot of hot porridge was boiled on the campfire. Xie Xianzhong, who was cold and hungry, couldn't wait to pick up his broken bowl and line up to get the porridge.

The porridge is made of a little sweet potato, wheat bran, rice bran and a little corn flour. If it is normal, Xie Xianzhong wouldn't even bother to take a look at this porridge. But now he was holding a bowl of hot porridge that had just been cooked, squatting on the ground, drinking in big mouthfuls, and like those vulgar tenants, squatting on the ground to drink the porridge, making a loud noise in his mouth.

The sky gradually brightened and the Mongols began to attack the city.

Xie Xianzhong and more than a dozen other slaves pushed a shield car full of sandbags together and slowly approached the city wall. Behind the shield car in front of him, a familiar fat figure was whipping under the Mongolian whip, pushing the car with difficulty. The man was Manager Wang. He slowed down a little, and saw a Mongolian soldier whipping up with a whip. His clothes were immediately broken, and cotton was exposed from it.

"Damn Tartars! He treated us like this!" Xie Xianzhong cursed in his heart.
Chapter completed!