Chapter 215: Sacrifice, Compensation

Chapter 215: Sacrifice, Compensation (Monthly Ticket Plus 9)

A long convoy appeared at the end of the road.

The people of Xiangcheng who rushed over after hearing the news stood solemnly and watched quietly.

The first sound was the sound of trumpets.

In the front row are eight military horn players, blowing their trumpets hard with their cheeks puffed out.

The horn sounds desolate and carries a hint of sadness.

In the back row are seven drummers and one pan flute player.

The drum beats were gentle, neither fast nor slow, and the flute sounds were mournful, as if guiding the souls of the dead to follow them.

After walking for a while, the drummers stopped playing, and the elegy singers composed of more than a hundred Liangxian martial arts students sang in unison:

"Whose land is this among the weeds? It gathers souls, regardless of whether they are wise or foolish."

"Why is the ghost urging me? Human life cannot be delayed for even a moment."

He sang as he walked, his spirit was sad and his voice was mournful.

Behind the elegiac man came a decorated carriage.

The stack cart was decorated with white cloth curtains and had a straw mat inside, with the corpse wrapped in it.

There was a man standing on the cart, coming out from the left side of the cart with coins for the guests.

After the first stack car passed, the second and third followed...

On the left and right of the stack cart were large groups of soldiers in mourning.

The weapons shone brightly in the sunlight, adding a lot of solemnity to the funeral.

When the funeral procession passed the area where people gathered, everyone was solemn and even faint cries could be heard.

After crying, he looked at Shao Xun, Lu Zhi, Yang Man, Yu Liang, Wu Qian, Mao Er and others who served as guides for good and bad luck in the team, and they all fell to the ground.

The convoy rumbled along, quickly passing the crowd and approaching its destination: a barren plateau.

The crowd began to stand up.

Someone sighed and said, "When Emperor Wu died, there were only 120 mourners. Now the Marquis of Luyang presided over the funeral personally, and thousands of officials and soldiers came to pay their respects. Drums and horns were played, and sacrifices were made on the road, and the fields were filled with wailing. The posthumous honors of the soldiers and civilians who died in the disaster are gone."

"According to the Han and Wei traditions, at the funerals of great men and high officials, the coffin bearers would sing elegy." Someone else said, "When did the common people of Guizhou ever have such a mourning honor?"

"I am forty years old this year. The people who used to travel with me, stay in the same room with me, and have dinner with me have either died in an accident or have fled to Wu in the south. Looking around, there is nothing left." Another person sighed, "I don't know if anyone will come to bury me after I die. Or will my body be left exposed in the wild for birds and beasts to eat?"

Having said that, he was already in tears.

"As long as Marquis Luyang is here, why should you worry?" someone advised.

"Many people have crossed over to the south, but many have stayed behind. Marquis Luyang has rescued Luoyang several times and defeated the bandits many times. He will surely be able to keep the area peaceful."

"In these turbulent times, a god may appear to lead the people and save them from suffering. As long as Marquis Luyang does not abandon us and cross the river to the south, what does it matter if we protect him?"

"The world is in chaos, Taibai has come, why not follow him? It is better to rely on yourself than on others. Marquis Luyang is short of people, so why not go and help him expand his business. Even if it is still inevitable to be destroyed in the future, so what? The worst that can happen is that we will die together. My ancestors' tombs are here, but I don't want to cross the river to the south."

"Yes, it is better to rely on yourself than to rely on others. Helping Marquis Luyang is saving yourself."

Everyone was talking at once, which made the middle-aged man feel much better. He wiped his tears and said, "Well, at least I can write and count, and I used to be a county official in Chenliu. Even though I am over 40, I can still help Marquis Luyang for another ten years at the risk of my life. Let's encourage each other."

"Let's encourage each other!" everyone responded.

On the plateau, Shao Xun looked at the bones buried one by one, scattered the offerings with his own hands, and sang: "Who doesn't covet glory in life? Suddenly he returns to the earth and how can the world be peaceful... His sons and daughters weep blood and cry to the sky and the earth, burying their gold and jade in the dust to forever protect their hometown."

The trumpeter played again.

The sounds of drums and horns resounded throughout the world, echoing endlessly.

Shao Xun scanned countless new graves and said loudly, "A real man should do what he wants and not what he doesn't want when he lives in this world. I don't want to live in peace and comfort in the south, but I want to kill the bandits with my sword, protect my hometown, and give the people a peaceful world. This is my lifelong wish. If you have spirits, please help me!"

After that, he drew out an arrow, broke it in front of the new grave, and said, "If you break this oath, God will strike you with lightning!"

A breeze suddenly blew, and the offering coins danced in the wind, humming and circling around him.

******
The entire process of collection, burial and memorial service lasted until the end of May.

There were no magistrates in the counties, but powerful elders came one after another to pay homage to the Marquis of Luyang.

Shao Xun took the time to talk with them one by one, selecting the best ones to serve as county officials, and even arranged a few assistants from small aristocratic families. After the prefect Lu Zhi took office, he wrote to the court to request an official position - the governor, prefect, and county magistrate could recruit subordinate officials, but they had no right to arrange assistants in prefectures, counties, and counties.

The vacant unowned land is mainly used to house the families of the Silver Spear Army soldiers.

They were considered semi-recruited soldiers, eating food as soldiers. In theory, there was no need to allocate land to their families.

But theory is theory, in reality the land still has to be divided. Even if it is just a small amount, 20 or 30 acres for a family to cultivate, it can make their lives better.

In this way, the living standards of the Silver Spear Army soldiers should be relatively good in Xiangcheng.

Shao Xun assigned this work to Lu Zhi and Mao Er, with the cooperation of officials from various counties in Xiangcheng. It took three or four months to complete the arrangements.

Along with this work, there are also issues of compensation and incense offerings for the fallen soldiers. "Do many of the soldiers who died in battle have descendants?" Shao Xun asked Wu Qian on the way out of Xiangcheng County.

This matter has always been managed by Old Wu.

"Most of them are married." Wu Qian's temples were already gray, and he was followed by several nephews and nieces, who were brought here specifically to show their faces in front of Shao Xun.

"Not many of them have offspring," Wu Qian added.

"If you don't have any offspring..." Shao Xun pondered for a moment and said, "I'll allocate some money. You can find the relatives of the fallen soldiers and find a way to adopt one so that your sons can also enjoy the sacrifices in the underworld."

"Yes." Wu Qian replied.

This task is extremely tedious and time-consuming. You need to run around everywhere, talk to people, and even be looked down upon.

It's up to him to do it. He's not afraid of what others say anyway.

"The most troublesome thing is the government soldiers." Shao Xun said, "You must find a good heir, and the land will not be taken back. It will be inherited by the heir when he grows up. You go and check regularly. If anyone encroaches on the land, the government soldiers of this village and defense will send people to arrest and convict them."

If it is a Fubing system that has been operating normally for many years, this problem does not actually exist.

Historically, the Fubing system took shape in the late Northern Wei Dynasty, gradually developed in the Eastern and Western Wei Dynasties, and finally reached its peak in the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In theory, the land granted to Fubing by the imperial court should be taken back by the imperial court after the Fubing died of old age or in battle.

However, in practice this is not usually done. Instead, one person is chosen from the sons and nephews of the palace soldier to inherit the throne.

Now that the government soldiers are being set up for the first time, there is a problem: what to do if the government soldiers have no offspring or their offspring die in battle before they grow up?
We can only find a solution from the family of the palace soldier.

It was actually unreasonable and too generous of Shao Xun not to take back the land of the government soldiers.

If a soldier died in battle, the land allocated to him should be taken back and passed on to his son, nephew or other relatives who were willing to serve as soldiers. The family members of the soldier who died in battle were raised by his family and relatives.

This is the meaning of the existence of family and even clan, and it is also what has been done in history.

In order to avoid risks, the soldiers would marry each other and become relatives so that their families would be taken care of by their relatives if they died in battle.

Over time, there developed a culture of "sticking to the party", where everyone helped each other, formed a cohesive collective, and developed the unique values ​​of military men.

Now that the government soldiers were newly established, some of the soldiers were even from other places, and their families were also in other places, but there was no such group of people who intermarried and helped each other.

Then we can only be generous, since there is a lot of unowned land here anyway.

After a few decades, when the soldiers had grown into branches and expanded their clans, the situation was different.

On the sixth day of June, Shao Xun arrived at Guangchengze, and the first thing he did was to check the "Xietian".

There are more than 1,300 hectares of land in the village. Last year, scholars from five counties and states reclaimed the land and planted a season of millet, with an impressive yield.

This year the crops were cultivated by the captives of the Jisang tribe and were millet sown in the spring. It was not yet time to harvest them, but something could already be seen.

"My lord." The person in charge of this area was Zhongdian Mu Le Kuan. When he saw Shao Xun coming, he immediately saluted.

Le Kuan was an official appointed by the imperial court, not Shao Xun's personal servant.

However, he did not have many livestock and had a lot of free time, so he helped to manage the farmland.

He has more than a dozen people under him, all of whom were sent by the Nanyang Le family and are very familiar with running the farm.

He can read and write official documents, manage accounts, and has management skills, and even formulated reward and punishment measures...

Without this group of people, Shao Xun really wouldn't be able to manage the Xutian business - being able to manage and managing well are two completely different concepts.

The resources in the hands of these aristocratic families are truly abundant and can help you manage logistics very smoothly, allowing you to concentrate on training troops and fighting without any worries.

Shao Xun loved and feared them.

What he loved was their management and business capabilities, which reduced the frequency of disturbances while increasing output - to be honest, this was much better than using military law to control prisoners of war and cultivate land.

What we are afraid of is that they will continue to infiltrate our group and gradually grow stronger.

But there is no other way at the moment. War is the top priority and consumes most of the resources. We can only be half-guarded and half-utilized.

"I came to see it last year." Shao Xun pointed at the fields and said, "The five commanderies and state officials cleared the stones from the fields, cut down the bamboos and trees, burned the fields, and dug up a batch of tree and bamboo roots. In the end, the yield per mu was less than two hu, and some even had only one hu and five or six dou. If they dig up tree roots again this year and sow in the spring, can the yield per mu be more than two hu?"

"Yes." Le Kuan replied affirmatively.

Shao Xun was overjoyed when he heard this, the Le family's management team was indeed professional.

The pension land is related to the pension of soldiers who died in battle and is very important.

If the yield per mu can reach two hu, after deducting the rations and rewards for the captives in the military farms, there will be about 100,000 hu of grain left. After paying out pensions, most of it can be taken away as salaries.

Plant a millet in spring and harvest ten thousand in autumn.

Farming is addictive because the harvest can give people a great sense of pleasure and motivate you to continue to farm deeper.

Shao Xun is well aware of this.

Well, my previous attitude towards Lan Ji was not quite right. I have to change it in the future and be more gentle.

(End of this chapter)