Three poles up in the sun, heading down to Pidongcheng County, a convoy was slowly heading south towards Huainan.
The Zhuge family moved their troops much faster than the elders of Huangmenting Township.
In April, Zhuge Xuan left Langya with his family. In early May, when he was in Xuzhou, he was delayed for a while because Cao Cao besieged Shan County.
After Cao Cao withdrew his troops, Tao Qian heard that a small army was passing through the territory. After asking about it, he learned that it was the Zhuge family of Langya, so he invited him to come to Shan County to talk about it.
This situation was normal. Later, Zhuge Xuan was stopped by Yuan Shu on his way back to Liu Biao. Yuan Shu recommended him as the governor of Yuzhang because a bureaucratic family like theirs would be valued by the princes due to their reputation.
So Zhuge Xuan stayed with Tao Qian for a few days. It was not until the middle of May that he resigned from Tao Qian, left Donghai Kingdom, and entered Xiapi territory.
People at that time had little knowledge about the plague and did not know that the plague was caused by bacteria that rotted corpses, so Zhuge Xuan did not want to avoid the Xiapi Kingdom.
Going from Xiapi to Huainan is the shortest and fastest way, so putting aside the issue of plague, it is really best to take this route.
What's more important is safety.
Tens of thousands of square kilometers are deserted, bones are exposed in the wild, and there are no roosters crowing for thousands of miles.
Unless hundreds of thousands of people in Xiapi turn into ghosts and Xiapi becomes a ghost land, there will really be no security problems.
However..
However, Zhuge Xuan would never have thought that just because he chose the closest and safest road to Huainan, it would affect Prime Minister Zhuge's subsequent life.
At the same time, it also left a legendary deed for Ji Han, the last legitimate descendant of Liu Bang in the Han Dynasty.
It was May 16th. The convoy officially entered Xiapi and passed through Liangcheng and Siwu counties. At that time, Cao Cao asked Cao Hong to pretend to attack these two counties, but he did not attack them forcefully, so there were not many casualties.
It's just that Cao Cao massacred Xiapi, and after learning about the situation, the people in these two counties moved to Donghai Kingdom and other places in the north, making this place much less popular.
But there are still some people there.
It wasn't until May 20th, when he entered Xiaxiang County, that Zhuge Xuan realized something was wrong.
He had also heard before that there were many killings wherever Cao Cao's army passed, but after all, he only heard about it and had never seen the real situation.
After passing through Siwu County and arriving at Xiaxiang County, which is close to Surabaya, dozens of miles away, you can smell the stench.
There are many villages on the surrounding plains, but at this time the villages have long been depopulated, the houses are dilapidated, the fields are desolate and overgrown, and the original pavilions have become ruins.
Situations like this were common when Zhuge Xuan first entered Xiapi. In other words, it was not just Xiapi, but now happened all over the Han Dynasty.
For example, in Qingzhou, millions of Qingzhou Yellow Turbans left Shandong due to natural and man-made disasters. Some went to Jizhou and were captured by Gongsun Zan. Some went to Yanzhou and became prisoners of Cao Cao. Some went south to Xuzhou and were captured by Zang Ba sent by Tao Qian.
.
But after passing these villages, the closer they got to Surabaya, the worse the situation became. Soon they saw the first corpse lying on the side of the road. After nearly a month, the corpse had already decomposed.
Maggots and flies were lingering around, and it looked like it had been dead for more than twenty days. Due to the sweltering heat of the summer, it looked giant and liquid, and the yellow corpse was flowing, which was disgusting.
The motorcade slowly passed by the road. Zhuge Liang frowned slightly, gently covered his brother Zhuge Jun's eyes, and whispered: "Don't look."
"But I smell it, it stinks."
Zhuge Jun was only ten years old this year. He had glanced at it from a distance before. Even though he was blindfolded, the sight was unforgettable for him.
Zhuge Liang said gently: "Then don't think about it, don't go out of your way to smell it, just wait for the wind to blow."
"Yes, I understand, brother."
Zhuge Jun replied.
They thought that a corpse on the side of the road was nothing. After all, Xiapi had just fought a war not long ago. Cao Cao attacked Xiapi in early May, and only twenty days had passed.
But when the carriage traveled less than a hundred meters, they realized what hell on earth was.
The whole village was dead. There were corpses and dark reddish-brown blood stains everywhere in the fields, vegetable fields, in front of homes, by streams, under mulberry trees, and in ponds.
Some of them had their heads chopped off, some had their hearts pierced, and some were shot to death with arrows. The whole village was like a slaughterhouse.
Even the old, weak, women and children could not escape the disaster, and they were even the ones who died the most.
Zhuge Liang saw with his own eyes a corpse lying at the door of a house near the road at the east end of the village.
It was a man with a hoe in his hand. He was stabbed through the heart by Cao Jun. He was lying upright outside the bamboo fence at the door. There was another corpse inside the door.
It was a woman, lying on the ground with one arm stretched out towards the door, as if she was praying to Cao Jun not to kill her husband.
On the right side of the house, there is an old man holding a young child, and beside him lie an old woman and three children.
Zhuge Liang quickly sketched a picture in his mind.
Cao's army entered the village, burning, killing and looting everywhere. When the man heard some noise outside, he went out with a hoe and met the oncoming Cao's army.
After the man was hacked to death by Cao Jun soldiers, his wife witnessed all this at the door. She called to the elderly at home to take the children and escape through the side door, while stumbling toward the man's body.
As a result, the woman was killed by the cruel Cao Jun while still on the road. The body was lying down facing the gate of the outer courtyard with its arms stretched out, which can probably prove this.
As soon as the old man and his children came out of the side door, they encountered the soldiers who came in. Two old men, three children ranging from six to seven years old, and a two or three-year-old child in the old man's arms were all attacked.
slaughter.
At this time, their corpses had already liquefied, and the fishy smell assaulted their nostrils. The densely packed flies were as dense and frightening as the locusts flying all over the sky during a locust plague.
Zhuge Liang himself closed his eyes and couldn't bear to look at it anymore.
But he thought that the massacre of villages was just the most terrifying thing in the world, but as he got closer to Surabaya, he realized that the slaughtered villages he passed along the way could only be regarded as appetizers.
Xiaxiang County is located at the junction of Suishui and Sishui. Zhuge Xuan went this way because there is a ferry crossing the river. Then he went south to Tongguo, Xu County, Huailing, and Dongcheng. This road has the most county towns and the smoothest roads.
, and it is also the fastest direction to Huainan.
But Zhuge Xuan did not expect that it was precisely because this route had the most county towns, township pavilions, and villages and the best roads that it suffered the most serious massacres.
They passed by Xiaxiang County in the morning.
At a glance, what I saw was a devastated city, a ruined city, a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
The entire city is no longer inhabited, corpses are scattered on the roads, and the city walls are black because a fire broke out in the city and burned the entire city. Only the rammed earth walls remained, witnessing this period of history.
Zhuge Liang raised his head, and the carriage slowly passed by outside the city. There were hundreds of corpses hanging on the city wall. The summer wind blew and swayed, bringing countless fishy smells, like a jungle of corpses.
In the afternoon, they finally arrived at the Surabaya River.
Wherever they passed along the way, they had seen pits with thousands of corpses, mulberry forests of flesh and blood, and ponds filled with dead bodies, but it wasn't until they came to the Sishui River that they finally understood what true terror was.
Surabaya is not a small river. It was called one of the Four Rivers and Eight Rivers in the Han Dynasty. Although it is not as good as the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the Huaihe River, and the Jishui River, it is also a large river second only to the four major rivers, especially the downstream area is about to flow into the Huaihe River.
, the width of the river is very large.
On the river, which is more than a hundred feet wide, there are countless corpses floating in dense masses, as far as the eye can see. It is summer time, and corpses are piled up on the beach on the river bank, and the fishy smell can be smelled from miles away.
Their corpses were floating down the river. If you look upstream, you can see endless corpses slowly floating down. If you look downstream, you can still see countless corpses.
At first glance, it seemed that the river was not flowing. Corpses blocked the entire river section, flies covered the sky, and the world was a blood-red color.
Even hell is more like the world than here.
"vomit!"
The accompanying guards couldn't bear it any longer, and one by one they vomited out their overnight meals.
In fact, they vomited more than once along the way.
The soldiers sent by Liu Biao to protect Zhuge Xuan were also elite. They protected Zhuge Xuan from Jingzhou to Chang'an. They fought with bandits and bandits along the way, killing the enemies on the battlefield without blinking an eye.
But in the face of such a great terror, each one of them is as fragile as a child, or even worse than a child.
Because at least Zhuge Liang didn't spit it out.
only.
It's just that what makes me uncomfortable is not physical, but the sight of countless corpses floating densely on the river...
Zhuge Liang looked at everything in front of him blankly.
His eyes first flashed with fear, then sadness, then pity, and finally everything turned into an indescribable sorrow.
They were once all living people.
They are not animals in the mountains and forests.
Not livestock beasts.
They are all just like you and me, people who can laugh, be sad, be happy, and be sad.
How could this happen?
Why are they like this, like lambs being slaughtered...
The body was thrown into the river.
Let their bodies rot, stink, dissolve, and finally disappear silently from this world.
Not even a name was left behind.
Zhuge Liang's eyes were filled with sadness. He closed his eyes and didn't want to look at it anymore. A drop of tear gently left the corner of his eye.
He couldn't understand.
Why did Cao Cao want to avenge his father, instead of going to Tao Qian, he wanted to vent his anger on these people?
He couldn't understand, did Cao Cao have a father, but didn't these innocent people?
Use your own grief to exchange the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Is this what is called filial piety?
at this moment.
Zhuge Liang's mood cannot be described in words.
perhaps.
In this world, there are some things that need to be done, and there are some hatreds that need to be settled.
But who can tell him what crime these innocent people are guilty of?
Why are these people, who are already struggling to have enough food and clothing all day long, treated like this?
Is it the world's fault?
Or is it Cao Cao's fault?
Maybe both.
The young Zhuge Liang looked at this terrifying scene in his heart and couldn't come back to his senses for a long time.