Liu Chengzong waded anxiously into the shallow Wuding River, lifted up the hem of his fluffy red armor skirt, squatted down and pressed the water bag into the river with trembling hands.
In February, the ice-covered river water was bitingly cold. When poured into the throat, it was so cold that the roots of the teeth ached, and then it felt as if the entire throat was being squeezed.
He stood up and took a few steps back, squinting his eyes and looking across the dry river bed and withered grass on the other side to the undulating barren mountains in the distance.
The drought has changed the appearance of northern Shaanxi.
After a long while, when the panic caused by hunger in his belly subsided, he pressed the hilt of the Yanling knife at his waist and stepped on the dry cracked sand river bed toward the official road.
A Mongolian horse is tied to a dead tree beside the official road.
The horse is very well-behaved, but a little thin and has a huge head. A few months ago, his long bangs were white, and his name was Sanfat.
But later, his owner got mad and used red vermilion dye to turn his bangs red, and changed his name to Hongqi.
Hongqi carries a lot of things on his back, not to mention the bridle and saddle, the bow and arrow are hung on the left side of the horse's hip, and there are two wild geese pinned to the right.
Underneath the wild goose is a lean, black-haired Shaanxi fine dog. It has the same fate as Hongqi. It used to be a big cockroach, but later it became a little diamond.
The hair on Xiao Zhuanfeng's body was wet and tingling. He was shivering with cold and still couldn't forget to move his nose to smell the wild geese. His clear saliva flowed down the side of his mouth and formed a puddle on the ground.
Liu Chengzong has a problem.
He has two memories.
Not long ago, after a high fever, in addition to the memories of the past eighteen years, there were also memories from four hundred years in the future.
The two memories are intertwined and contradictory, seriously affecting normal life.
Let’s talk about this mount.
Once upon a time, when he saw this black-haired Mongolian horse, his first reaction was to call him "sanfa" kindly and add some fodder.
Now I have dyed the pony's hair red, and I call it a red flag when I see it, and I even want to put an engine on it.
Regarding what happened to him, Liu Chengzong guessed that the soul of the owner of that memory might have been swallowed by him... because he was really hungry and had not eaten enough for several months. Let alone a soul in his head, even if there was only one If a ghost is in front of you, you might as well make him eat it.
Now he likes to find a place to sit quietly when he has nothing to do, recalling the bizarre world in his mind four hundred years later, learning strange new knowledge, and even wants to experience a life without starving.
It's a pity that every time I finish daydreaming, I still have to go back to drought-ravaged northern Shaanxi.
The straight-seam cowhide boots belonging to the frontier army's horsemen stepped on the cracked loess. In the distance, half-collapsed houses in disrepair and cave dwellings covered with adobe made the official road look particularly desolate.
The dead old elm tree had no bark and was still standing stubbornly on the ground. The broken branches fell all over the ground and no one picked them up.
Liu Chengzong let go of the reins, walked across the official road to the collapsed house beside the road, picked up a large adobe brick, smashed a hole in the sealed cave dwelling, looked into the cave dwelling in the dusk light, and got in.
After a while, he took out a clay jug outside. There was half a candle, a hemp rope, and a black whetstone in the jug.
When he crawled out of the hole, a dirty water ladle was pinned to his waist, and an ancestral tablet was tucked under his ribs.
As for the most valuable item, he held it in his hand and wrapped it in a piece of gray cloth. It was a bronze mirror whose surface could not be wiped clean.
As Liu Chengzong walked towards the big elm tree on the opposite side of the road, he muttered: "I guess your descendants won't come back. Let me, Liu Shizi, take you to Yuhe Fort, so that the thieves can come back and set you on fire."
He is neither a beggar nor a robber. He has a reputation as a scholar and an enviable and serious job.
The national active border defense force is subordinate to Yansui Town, one of the nine border defense military regions in the north of the Ming Dynasty. The direct commander is He Renlong, the garrison of Yuhe Fort.
The position is to select a frontman for the servants. He has practiced martial arts for six years and served in the army for one and a half years. He can ride a fast horse with a neighing wind and shoot a hundred-jin strong bow. He is the best among the best.
But no matter how elite you are, you can't beat the imperial court without paying military pay.
There is no one left in Yuhebao. It is closer to Outer Mongolia across the Great Wall than to Yan'an Prefecture, so it has no ability to withstand drought.
Last year, the crops and seedlings in the fields outside the fort were destroyed by the sun in large areas even though they were carefully irrigated. The people who farmed the fields either committed suicide or abandoned their fields and fled south to famine.
The old elm tree survived the drought, but it did not escape the hungry people begging for work. The bark was stripped clean, leaving a bare trunk without water, which soon withered.
"Pity."
Standing under this old elm tree, Liu Chengzong looked up at the branches without any new buds, licked his chapped lips, and continued to lead his horse forward.
Yuhe Fort is not far away, and the burning clouds in the sky reflect the shadow of the castle in the distance. If this tree is still alive, in another month it will be a good time to eat Yu Qian Wotou with white noodles.
It's a pity, not a pity that the tree is dead. Although the tree is dead, the person who has never met the bark can live.
What was a pity for him was that there was neither white flour nor elm money in Yuhe Fort. There were only more than 400 hungry frontier soldiers and millet that was only enough to feed them for a month and a half.
It was time to recruit refugees in the spring to plant the 145 hectares of military farmland, but there were no seeds and no cattle.
This year, most of the army's farmland will be deserted, so it's a certainty.
It's not surprising that the land is deserted. Liu Chengzong has been a soldier here for more than a year. The people farming the land have changed twice, and there are fewer people each time.
In the seventh year of the Apocalypse, he and his brother were expelled from the Yan'an Prefecture's martial arts examination and were recruited as servants by He Renlong, who was the deputy examiner. They arrived at Yuhe Fort just as the people from the military camps fled to Guanzhong in large numbers.
The farmers have worked hard for a year, but they have harvested so much food that they have not yet sown the seeds in the ground. What else can they do if they don’t leave?
In the spring of last year, another group of refugees came from the mountains and worked hard for another year. In the end, they were still the same, either going south to escape famine, or going to Dongshan to become bandits.
There is no shortage of land in northern Shaanxi these days.
The soil in northern Shaanxi is poor, so you have to plant extensively and get little harvest. If you plant one bushel of millet and reap seven bushels, you will be a master. Yuhebao has a lot of military farmland that needs people to cultivate. As long as the people are willing to come, there will be a lot of land for them to plant.
But this land, which has experienced nine droughts in ten years, cannot retain people.
Fish River Fort can't keep people in either.
When he was recruited by He Renlong, it was agreed that the servants would receive double pay and double food. The monthly salary would be one tael and five qian of silver, and the monthly ration of millet would be two shi.
A stone is a unit of volume. Millet particles are small, and two stones weigh nearly three hundred kilograms.
In addition to the monthly salary of one tael and five taels of silver, there is very little silver circulating in Shaanxi. A government whip law stipulates that people must use silver to pay taxes, so this is hard currency. One tael of silver can be exchanged for one tael of silver when paying taxes in summer and autumn.
It’s not difficult to get three kilo of rice.
Excellent treatment.
Liu Chengzong's father was a tax collector of the ninth grade in Yan'an Prefecture two years ago. He was a serious court official with a monthly salary of only five shi meters.
But, his military salary is the same as the monthly salary of 120,000 to 20,000 for job recruitment in future memories, and the latter one does not count.
In fact, he guarded the border for Lao Zhu's family for fifteen months, and Qiufang even took the heads of captives. However, the court's rations were insufficient, and military pay and silver rewards were not paid.
Not only do we have to eat more than a hundred kilograms of millet, but we also need salt, vegetables, sauces, and fabrics. All the food and clothing expenses have to be exchanged for grain. I can't even eat the rest. I also have to find a way to feed the war horse Hongqi and the hound Xiaozuanfeng.
It's very stressful.
Now the Emperor of the Zhu family owed him sixty-two taels of silver, and the official exchange of Tongbao forty-three thousand seven hundred and fifty yuan.
This allowed Liu Chengzong to take advantage of the opportunity of hunting to go into unoccupied shabby houses and buy some things to supplement his family's income.
The presentation of a waste pottery jar made Liu Chengzong feel very good. He clapped his hands and said with satisfaction: "Big head, you have got enough fodder at night!"