At the end of the previous dynasty, the court was already very confused. The emperor did not want to govern the country well but only thought about beautiful women and cultivating immortality. However, he did not follow the right path in cultivating immortality but worshiped an evil cultivator as a master.
What do you think this evil cultivator relies on for his cultivation?
It is blood and tears, and the lives of countless people.
How good can such an emperor be to the people?
At that time, there was something that sounds very absurd now. The first decree issued by the last emperor of the previous dynasty as soon as he became emperor was, "If a family has two children, the country needs one." What does it mean? It means that if there are two children in the family,
You have to hand one over to the country/home.
I didn’t tell you what to do if you hand it in. Anyway, it’s an imperial edict, and you have to hand it in even if you don’t want to.
These boys and girls handed over were naturally the nourishment for the emperor and his master to cultivate.
The emperor is already like this, and the courtiers will naturally follow his example.
Some people follow the so-called cultivating immortals, some openly occupy the fields and private property of ordinary people, and some people use their good records as slaves to drain the last value of the people.
To say that the people are in dire straits is to praise the last period of the previous dynasty.
But even at times like this, there are still some people who truly care about the people and serve the people wholeheartedly.
Liang Minzhong, the prefect of the former city, was the one.
Liang Minzhong was born into a noble family, and his father and eldest brother were both officials in the court. He was originally supposed to take the path of becoming an official in the court.
But this person is a genetic mutation in the Liang family. He has three views and cares about the people, instead of thinking like other people in the Liang family that they are just messing with the people and their death is not enough.
Therefore, after Liang Minzhong was admitted to the imperial examination and became an official in Beijing, he was really unable to integrate into the changed officialdom at that time, and others saw him as an anomaly.
He wanted to change, but he was reluctant to do so.
Finally, at nearly thirty o'clock, he left the capital and invited himself to go to the border town of Xicheng to serve as a local official.
As for the Xicheng side, because it is really far away from the capital, it has not been affected much. It is just poor.
Liang Minzhong was able to adapt to his ambitions here.
He is also really capable. In less than ten years, he has completely transformed a poverty-stricken area that was once so poor that even his family might not even have a complete set of clothes.
I can't say that I dare to sleep with the door open, but at least everyone can avoid freezing to death or starving to death. Yes, it sounds so sad.
Because of its remoteness, Xicheng was not disturbed by the imperial court, and it also did not attract the attention of the capital.
Then, the Xicheng area is a plain area, the surrounding mountains and forests are far away, and the water source is not abundant.
As we all know, growing food cannot be separated from water. No matter what kind of food you grow, no matter how drought-resistant it is, you need some water, but not none.
And there is a small river in Xicheng, which is about half way away from Xicheng. The common people are struggling to use water every day. As for farming...
In addition, there are no truly drought-resistant crops at the moment. They all grow millet, that is, millet. Although this crop does not have the same water requirements as rice, it does have water requirements.
The river is far away, and there is no waterwheel here. It is purely manual, so irrigation becomes difficult. The natural yield per mu is not high, and taxes are paid...
Before Liang Minzhong came to Xicheng, it can be said that people starved to death every day, and people froze to death every day when the weather was cold. The common people were still alive, but they were just gasping for air in a numb manner.
Liang Minzhong is not that kind of time traveler, and he does not understand the technology of later generations, but he is a good official who truly serves the people.
After he arrived in Xicheng and learned about the serious water shortage in Xicheng, he looked at the river, which was not very wide. He was afraid that one day the river would dry up and the people in Xicheng would have no way of living, so he began to walk along the only river in person.
All the way up, he wanted to find the source of the water.
It took him more than a month to finally find it.
The water source of the river comes from one of the several giant peaks in the natural barrier to the east.
These giant peaks are all high in altitude, almost like the Himalayas. Halfway up, they are covered with snow. The rivers in Xicheng are formed by the accumulation of snow water melted by the snow on the mountains.
However, nature doesn't seem to be particularly fond of Xicheng. How could the snow and water only merge into one river, but Xicheng only has one river?
God doesn't hurt us, so we can hurt ourselves.
Liang Minzhong led the people in the city to dig canals to divert water from several nearby rivers. This man was truly moral. He did not directly divert all the rivers to his own side, but only diverted part of the water source.
What if there are cities and villages downstream of those rivers? If all people’s water sources are taken away, wouldn’t that be a desperate way for people to survive?!
Just like that, Liang Minzhong spent one year widening the Xicheng River, which was originally less than five meters wide, by two times.
He also artificially dug another river channel from the upstream area directly into Xicheng, and spent nearly ten years to make Xicheng, a poor city with only loess, have an aorta and blood vessels, and truly come to life.
.
Water is the origin of human beings. With water, people's lives will naturally get better.
Liang Minzhong also asked his friends to bring drought-resistant crops—corns—to Xicheng at their own expense.
At first, the people didn't know what corn was, and they didn't believe what Liang Minzhong said about it being high-yielding and drought-resistant. Liang Minzhong planted corn himself to prove it.
When the common people see the corn that is as yellow as gold, who doesn't want to plant it if they don't really want to die?
From this moment on, although the former city seemed to have been abandoned by the imperial court, there was no help from the imperial court. Although the life of the common people in some wealthy places still looked tight, at least they no longer had to worry about anyone starving to death.
Freezing to death, I have hope for the future.
It's a pity that their patron saint Liang Minzhong died suddenly from exhaustion in the thirteenth year after he arrived in Xicheng while watching the people collect grain. He was only forty years old.
Without Liangmin Zhonghou, no matter how little the former dynasty left Xicheng alone, it was still the former dynasty's own city, so they would naturally send another prefect to come.
But this person is not that good. He is the real representative of "three years of clearing the county and one hundred thousand snowflakes and silver".
Hu Han, like Liang Minzhong, came from a noble family, but he was completely opposite to Liang Minzhong in that he regarded the common people as real people. He had the arrogance of a pure descendant of a noble family.
In his eyes, civilians are not even considered human beings. Does it have anything to do with him whether they have enough food to eat, whether they are clothed warmly, etc.?!
Oh, this is not entirely true, but it does have something to do with it. If the people's pockets are richer, they will be able to take out more.
Hu Han originally had resentment in his heart for being sent to this remote place, but this man was a coward and did not dare to direct his resentment against the people who sent him. Instead, he directed his resentment at the people of the old city.
It's all because of these people. If there was no one in the old city, why would the officials send him here?
Because of this resentment, the first thing he did when he came to the Old City was to kill a child who was less than ten years old with a stick in front of everyone outside the city before he entered the city, just because the child ran into him while running around.
From then on, the people of the old city lived a more miserable life than before Liang Minzhong came.
