Chapter 754 The Power of Heaven and Earth

Chapter 754 The Power of Heaven and Earth

Chapter 754 The Power of Heaven and Earth
It's mid-to-late May and it's still raining in Jinyang.

The farmers, wearing straw raincoats, swarmed into the farmlands under the command of the fort commanders and manor owners, and pulled open the ridges to release the accumulated water.

This behavior happens almost every once in a while.

Some irrigation canals were so full of water that the water couldn't flow out. The people just sat in the mud and cried bitterly.

There was a war the year before last, and there was a good harvest the year before that. Last year there was heavy rain and there was a war, and this year it is raining heavily again. Can we still live like this?
This was the scene that Yu Liang saw when he arrived in Jinyang.

"Is there going to be a severe famine in Bingzhou this year?" He was a little surprised.

"Yuan Gui, it's not that serious." Zhongshan Shihui, the governor of Bingzhou who came to greet him, said, "The high fields are still okay, but the low fields are seriously flooded, but the harvest is not completely lost. To be honest, Jizhou and Youzhou are the worst hit."

Shan Shihui was born in the Shan family in Hanoi.

His grandfather Shan Tao was a famous scholar and one of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove". He once served as a Zhonglang of Sima Shi, and was later ordered to guard Yecheng and monitor the royal family of Cao Wei. During the Taikang period, he retired as Si Tu.

His father, Shan Gai, was once the governor of Bingzhou and has passed away.

Shan Shihui also has an elder brother, Shan Wei (with the courtesy name Yanzu), who had joined his uncle Shan Jian (former General of the Southern Expedition and Governor of Jingzhou) in his early years and was now in Jianye.

Shan Shihui served as a Palace Attendant, a person with little power, but he followed the emperor around all day long to give him advice. Later, he felt it was too dangerous, so he resigned and returned home. This made the current emperor very resentful - even Henei Shanshi, who had deep interests entangled with the Sima family, abandoned him, so what else could he say?

But not being an official is not an option either.

The Shan family's hometown was in Huai County, which was destroyed beyond recognition during the years of war, and the family members fled to Luoyang. The whole family was living off their savings, and they couldn't afford it!
Shan Shihui once thought of going south to Jianye, but his brother Shan Wei wrote back, asking him to serve in the north for the sake of the family.

After various schemes, he established a relationship with the prime minister through an old friend of Yu Chen when he was the prefect of Ji County.

Pei Chun was promoted to the governor of Bingzhou. The two officials, Beijia and Zhizhong, were his assistants. According to regulations, they should be selected by the Ministry of Personnel, while the officials of the Ministry of Personnel should be appointed by the governor Pei Chun himself.

It was in this context that Shan Shihui was appointed as the governor of Bingzhou, in charge of the documents of various departments. This position was somewhat similar to that of a staff member, without any rank, which was actually a defect of the official system of the Jin Dynasty.

Sun Xun, another senior official and deputy governor of Bingzhou, was born in the Taiyuan Sun family. He served in the court in his early years and later wanted to be the governor of Yingchuan, but failed. When Sima Yue was cleaning up the court, he was implicated and lost his job. He lived in Luoyang for many years and finally got the connection with Wang Yan and was appointed deputy governor of Bingzhou.

At this time, he had been ordered to move the governor's office to Lishi - Bingzhou could now only manage one main county (Xihe) and one tributary county (Kelan), and theoretically it could also manage Yanmen County, but in reality it had no control over it.

It can be seen that both the Yu and Wang families were trying hard to win over scholars. It might be too much to recruit cliques, but it was inevitable to place their own people in the family.

Yu Liang knew that Shan Shihui was one of his own, so he was more friendly. He only heard him say, "Yanjie, why are you still staying in Jinyang?"

"How can I leave without permission when the governor has not left?" Shan Shihui sighed, "Envoy Pei and Lord Shao are accompanying the king on his southern tour to Qi County, Jingling, Zhongdu and other places, so I have no choice but to stay. Besides, the governor's mansion has not been vacated yet, so someone has to guard the door."

"I see." Yu Liang looked at the rain outside the shed and suddenly became curious about what would happen in Hebei.

"Why is Yuan Gui going north this time?" Shan Shihui asked after carefully considering his words.

"Henei is transporting grain and grass northward and storing them in the mansions of Shangdang. When transporting grain, the teachers and servants complained that the roads have been in disrepair for a long time, damaging carriages, horses and even people." Yu Liang said: "I have been traveling all the way and I have been thinking about how to repair the post road."

"Yuan Gui, you can't do that!" Shan Shihui heard this and quickly advised: "We just fought a big war last year, and the people are exhausted this year. It's time to rest and recuperate."

"Don't I know about this?" Yu Liang said unhappily.

The Ru'nan uprising that year made him look disgraced. When he saw his brother-in-law's gloomy face, Yu Liang was really a little scared. He still remembers it vividly.

"Of course we need to provide food to build roads." He continued, "This spring there have been heavy rains that have continued into the summer. We are about to have a poor harvest, so perhaps we can use the work as relief. I will report this to the king. The post roads in Shangdang, Jinyang, and Xinxing should also be repaired. Otherwise, how will we transport food and supplies for the future northern expedition to Dai?"

Shan Shihui looked embarrassed.

Yu Yuangui seemed to have become more "sensible". This was good. If he was still useless, what would he do in the future? He had already been branded as a member of the Yu family, and it was too late to jump ship.

"I won't go into the city. I'll go to the north to have a look." Yu Liang looked up at Jinyang, a hint of ferocity emerged on his dark face. He found a straw raincoat and put it on, called his followers, and headed north.

******
There is Sanjiao Posthouse thirty miles north of Jinyang, named after the intersection of three roads.

A small earthen city was built next to Sanjiaoyi. I heard that it was the headquarters of a certain Longxiang Prefecture, and it seemed that it was used to house the palace soldiers.

I just don’t know if there will be money and food to be settled after the flood.

When they arrived at Shiling, they found a small earthen city built on the mountain, called "Shiling Pass", which was also the seat of Longxiang Prefecture.

There are a few soldiers guarding Shiling Pass, and from their accents they are from Qingzhou - at the beginning of the year, the first batch of Qingzhou soldiers brought by Liu Ling, a foreign soldier, had returned to their hometown to farm (there were 10,000 people when they went to the battle, and only more than 6,000 were left when they returned home), and the second batch of 5,000 people came to replace them.

Shiling Pass was filled with grain, about 400,000 hu, so much that the soldiers had no place to live.

Yu Liang felt relieved after seeing this.

The grain reserves in the Yangchang Warehouse in the northwest of Jinyang are slowly increasing, and it is said that it has exceeded 700,000 hu.

These two places are located at higher elevations and are not likely to be flooded. They will surely play a huge role in the future.

On the first day of June, Yu Liang and dozens of his followers passed through Jiuyuan (now Xinzhou) and Jinchang (now south of Yuanping and northwest of Dingxiang) and arrived at the junction of Xinxing and Yanmen counties.

When he climbed up the riverbank, he saw the mighty water rushing in, mixed with many fallen trees, and the bodies of people and animals that were swept away. There were also living people floating in the river, shouting with arms outstretched, but they were silent in a moment.

No one dared to go down to rescue them, as that would be sending them to their deaths.

Yu Liang frowned and looked at the mountains and hills on both sides.

The herders shouted and hid with a large group of cattle and sheep in a place they thought was safe. But as they hid, they found something was wrong. It turned out that the stream in the mountains that had been dry for many years suddenly flooded, sweeping a large number of livestock down.

The creek was full of bluestones, and after the collision between people and animals, it quickly sank.

The rain is still falling and the water level is still rising.

The shepherds hiding nearby watched the flood gradually reach the shore, and they struggled to climb higher.

Some cattle and sheep accidentally slipped into the water and were swept away in an instant.

Some people fell into the river, hugged trees that were washed down from upstream and shouted.

The power of heaven and earth is as great as this!
Yu Liang's legs trembled with fear, and his followers also looked solemn.

Many of them had been to the battlefield and fought face to face with the enemy, but they felt powerless when faced with the power of nature.

"If Bingzhou is like this, what will become of Hebei? The Hutuo River flows to Jizhou, right?" Yu Liang murmured, "The rain in Jizhou and Youzhou is heavier than in Bingzhou. How many people will die?"

Even with complete water conservancy facilities, disasters of this magnitude cannot be prevented, not to mention that many ponds have been silted up and abandoned due to years of war.

"Boom!" A loud noise erupted from the north. Yu Liang looked up and saw many trees being swept down and repeatedly hitting the river bank.

His eyelids twitched.

There seemed to be quite a few civilians and soldiers mixed in among the trees. They should be the people from Yanmen County in the north.

"General, we should not stay here for long." An attendant advised: "The power of heaven and earth cannot be resisted by human power. If we stay any longer, there may be unexpected disasters."

Yu Liang turned his head and looked around.

The village was deserted and the population was sparse. Apart from a few shepherds, there were few farmers.

In this situation, the bad side is that we can't recruit enough people for disaster relief, but the good side is that there doesn't seem to be much need for disaster relief...

"Where is Lord Liu?" Yu Liang suddenly asked.

"I heard that he went to Dingxiang County. This county straddles both sides of the Hutuo River, and it is likely that the disaster has been severe. Lord Liu should have gathered people to reinforce the embankment." An attendant replied: "This is barely the upper reaches of the Hutuo River, and the middle and lower reaches are probably horrible."

Yu Liang suddenly realized, and after a moment, he sighed: "Let's go back to Jinchang County."

Such a disaster is rare in the world and cannot be reversed by human power.

Besides, this may not be the worst time of the disaster...

At this time, should the King of Liang be thankful that Henan did not suffer any disasters? In the end, Bingzhou and Hebei still depended on Yuzhou and Yanzhou for support.

This is not the first time. King Liang should know who is his strongest backer, right?
Things turned out just as Yu Liang and others had guessed.

By mid-June, the Taihang Mountains were flooded and mudslides were frequent.

The giant pines that had grown for many years fell to the ground under the power of heaven and earth, and were swept by the flood to the land of Hebei.

Some valleys were directly filled by mudslides.

Some river valleys have directly turned into natural ponds, and some barrier lakes are hanging dangerously on the top like time bombs.

Changshan, Zhongshan and other counties had already suffered from floods due to heavy rains, and after the Hutuo River surged, they were in even dire straits.

After the mountain torrents washed down countless mud, rocks and huge trees, the northern counties of Jizhou were completely paralyzed.

Liu Chou, the governor of Jizhou, reported: "It has rained heavily, especially in Zhongshan and Changshan. The Hutuo River has overflowed, flooding the valleys. Giant pines have been uprooted and floating on the Hutuo River. The rain has spread eastward to the Bohai Sea, and the plains and marshes are all piled up like mountains."

From the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain to Bohai Sea, across the entire Hebei Province, fallen trees can be seen everywhere in the plains.

Some people roughly estimate that millions of trees were washed down.

There were probably few survivors in the Taihang Mountains, and the people of Jizhou and Youzhou also suffered heavy casualties.

After reading through history books, it seems that there has never been such a severe flood.

The drought and locust plague that occurred about ten years ago were also rare in ancient times. The Luo River and the Yellow River dried up, and the Huai River could be crossed directly. The locusts ate all the plants and even the hair and leather of cattle and horses...

The Jin Dynasty was truly filled with disasters!

(End of this chapter)