Hearing Hu Yuanchong's words, Zeng Fengxian curled his lips slightly. If he had not been forced to flee by Su Hao, he would have been like Hu Yuanchong, afraid of making things worse. He learned from his own experience
Zhong knew that there was no way to avoid this matter. If he wanted to avoid being eaten by Su Hao, he could only take risks.
"Brother Hu, you misunderstood." Zeng Fengxian said calmly, "I didn't ask Brother Hu to directly confront the government, nor did I ask Brother Hu to send his servants out. To deal with people like Su Hao, I'm afraid we have to be the head of the family.
Only a hero like that can do it."
"You mean...inviting strong men to come out to deal with Su...er, deal with that person named Su?" Hu Yuanchong asked stammering. Of course he knew that the Pangda leader Zeng Fengxian mentioned was the famous local bandit Pang Dengkui.
Zeng Fengxian said: "That's right. What does Brother Hu think?"
Hu Yuanchong was silent. It was not that he had never thought about finding someone to assassinate or warn Su Hao before, but when he heard that Su Hao had more than 200 soldiers in his hands, he gave up the idea, because such a large-scale assassination would almost be
Conspiracy. Now that Zeng Fengxian mentioned it, he began to evaluate the feasibility of this method.
Yes, instead of just waiting for death, why not fight back? Maybe there will be a glimmer of hope?
"Brother Zeng, I heard that Chief Su has more than 200 soldiers with him. The leader of the Pangda family does not seem to have that many brothers. Can he be the opponent of Chief Su?" Hu Yuanchong asked.
Zeng Fengxian said: "Brother Hu didn't know something. I made a special trip to visit Master Pang Pang a few days ago and told him about this matter. Master Pang Pang said that people are not a problem. He can invite other heroes from Huai'an Prefecture to help. In fact,
No, you can also ask the heroes from Yangzhou and Sizhou to come over and help, and we will make sure that this guy named Su never comes back."
"Are you really so sure?" Hu Yuanchong's eyes lit up. He was not the one fighting anyway, and he would never be too excited to watch the excitement.
Zeng Fengxian smiled and said: "It's not like Brother Hu has never done business with Master Pangda. When did he break his promise? However, Master Pangda said that there was a big stir in this matter and he wanted to invite heroes from several surrounding provinces to come and help. Some
The hard-earned money for running errands must still be paid."
"Hey..." Hu Yuanchong took a breath. He had indeed asked Pang Dengkui to deal with the disobedient villagers for him in the past, and invited a few minions to come over and beat them up, which cost more than a dozen taels of silver.
.Now if we deal with more than 200 officers and soldiers, and if we ask strong men from several surrounding provinces to come over and help, the cost will probably be sky-high.
"Brother Zeng, did Mr. Pangda give a specific number?" Hu Yuanchong asked.
Zeng Fengxian said: "He said, 20,000 taels of silver, half of it will be paid as a deposit first, and half will be paid after the work is completed."
"20,000 taels!" Hu Yuanchong's eyes widened, "This is too expensive. With this money, I might as well pay the tax."
Zeng Fengxian said: "Brother Hu, don't worry, don't forget, this is not your business alone. How can you be asked to pay this money alone? In the past few days, I have also contacted five or six family members, and they all said they were willing to spend the money."
Money is used to eliminate disasters. What I mean is that if you find 20 families, each family can collect 1,000 taels, and jointly ask Master Pangda to come forward, this cost is not too high, right?"
"Yes." Hu Yuanchong came back to his senses. His family was not the only one who hated Su Hao. Among all the powerful landlords in Huai'an Prefecture, who didn't want to eat Su Hao's flesh and sleep on his skin? If everyone joins forces to invite Pang Dengkui, everyone will
Each household doesn't have that much money to spend. 1,000 taels is still a better deal than having their fields confiscated.
He also thought about a further point. If this matter is completed, no official will dare to do it again in the future. In this way, the landlords in Huai'an Prefecture can safely and boldly embezzle their fields and hide their taxes. Spending money once will save a lot of money.
After ten years of peace, this account is still worth it.
"Brother Zeng, are you thinking, can Mr. Pangda manage to defeat Chief Su? Chief Su leads officers and soldiers. I heard people say that those officers and soldiers are much taller than ordinary guardsmen. It's not easy to do this.
Defeated." Hu Yuanchong asked.
Zeng Fengxian sneered, stood up, walked to Hu Yuanchong, put his mouth to Hu Yuanchong's ear and whispered something. Hu Yuanchong was stunned for a moment, then laughed out loud and said: "If this is true, then Hu will be relieved.
Brother Zeng, do you think I should give this money to you now, or wait until you send someone to get it?"
No one knows what reassurance Zeng Fengxian gave Hu Yuanchong, but when Hu Yuanchong sent Zeng Fengxian out, his face was full of relief. The dark clouds that had shrouded the Hu family in the past few days seemed to have disappeared without a trace in an instant.
.
Zeng Feng said goodbye to Hu Yuanchong first, got into the tightly covered carriage compartment, shouted, the coachman waved his whip and whipped the horses, and the carriage flew towards the next Zhuangzi.
Su Hao's intelligence network in Huai'an Prefecture was very weak. Chen Guanyu pretended to be mysterious and haunted the villages every day, and only got some scraps of information. He was completely unaware that Zeng Fengxian was secretly contacting big families to collect money to hire bandits.
.
In a cautious attitude, Deng Kui ordered the reconnaissance camp to strengthen its vigilance and released scouts within ten miles of his own area of activity. In the terminology of the time, it was called "no harvest at night". Veteran Xu Guangzu also came after hearing the news.
He walked around the team every day, breathing in and out through his nose from time to time, and then said to Su Hao and Deng Kui: "I think this smell is wrong. There is a fishy smell in the wind. Could there be a big fight in the near future?"
As soon as he said this, Deng Kui's muscles tightened and his eyes looked around, wishing to immediately find the opponent hiding in the dark. Su Hao, on the other hand, looked helpless, patted the old man on the shoulder and said: "Xu Hao
Uncle, if you want to eat seafood, just say so. This is near the East China Sea, and if there is no fishy smell in the wind, it will be evil."
Xu Guangzu said awkwardly: "What should I say instead? Can the fishy smell I smell be the same as the fishy smell of sea water? It's up to you to believe it or not... However, I will get a few large yellow croakers to go with the wine at night.
It does have a different flavor."
Even though everything is under control, things still have to be done. Su Hao led the survey battalion to advance from village to town. Everywhere he went, he started surveying and mapping work. On the one hand, he was preparing basic data for the future construction of the Huaihe River channel into the sea.
On the one hand, it is to carry out land clearance and thoroughly investigate the evil deeds of powerful landowners in concealing their land.
Tian Younian, the general magistrate of Huai'an Prefecture, stayed with Su Hao and worked with him to check the taxes of the landlords' families. At first, Tian Younian was a little worried that this work of clearing the landowners would be resisted by the landlords, but after more than 200 people
Under the coercion of the officers and soldiers of Kanyu Camp, the landowners wherever they went were obedient and did not dare to make any mistakes. In the past, the work of clearing the land that everyone thought was difficult to carry out was going very smoothly at this time, and the landowners paid back the taxes.
The amount of fines has reached tens of thousands of taels of silver, and the land confiscated and returned to the public has reached more than 10,000 acres.
With this extra money and official land, Huai'an Prefecture's disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction work will have financial security, which means that the victims crowded in Huai'an City will be resettled quickly, and social security will be greatly improved.
People's lives will also be greatly improved. As a local official, how can we not be happy to see this situation?
"Master Su is really a talented person. Many officials in the past have failed to clear the land. As soon as Master Su took action, he succeeded immediately. Tian is so impressed that he fell into admiration." Tian Younian sat in the sedan chair and opened the curtain of the sedan chair.
, said to Su Hao who was walking with the soldiers outside.
These days, he invited Su Hao to ride in the sedan with him, but Su Hao refused. He also tried to get off the sedan and walk with Su Hao, but he couldn't walk very far and his feet couldn't bear it. After Su Hao's persuasion,
He had no choice but to half push and half sit on the sedan chair and move forward.
Hearing Tian Younian's words, Su Hao smiled slightly and said: "Tian Tong's judgment is serious. Su just came down on an errand on the order of Prefect Han. Other officials could not do this before because they all had selfish motives."
, I don’t dare to offend powerful people. If Su is public-minded, it will be easy to handle errands.”
"That is, that is." Tian Younian replied insincerely. Su Hao said that the previous officials had selfish motives, including Tian Younian. In fact, he was also helpless. These powerful landlords bribed the grassroots people below.
There are some unfathomable backers among the officials at the top. Who else, except for a guy like Su Hao, would provoke them like this.
"Tian Tongpan, actually this matter has just begun. The reason why we are able to progress so smoothly is because these powerful landowners did not expect that we would be so tough. They were not ready to take action at the moment. Wait until they come to their senses
, we will definitely encounter a lot of trouble." Su Hao said to Tian Younian.
Tian Younian said: "Since Chief Su has thought of this, he must have thought of countermeasures, right? Chief Su, how do you think these powerful people will cause trouble for us?"
Su Hao raised his head and looked ahead and said: "They will definitely go to Beijing to complain and use their connections to put pressure on the Huai'an government. However, we are moving very quickly now. They will file a complaint and wait until the pressure in Beijing subsides.
Some people's thirst cannot be quenched by water far away. I thought that they should resort to some violent methods. This is the simplest and most effective method."
"Violence!" Tian Younian felt a little unsteady under his butt, "Does Chief Su mean that they will kill officials and rebel?"
"It's possible to kill officials, but it's not possible to rebel." Su Hao said with a smile, "They just want to protect their family wealth. It's impossible to rebel for this reason."
"Then...if they really want to kill officials, Mr. Su, can these officers and soldiers you lead protect our safety? Otherwise, let's find a town to stop, and I will write a letter back to Huai'an Mansion and request the Huai'an Guards
Send thousands of officers and soldiers to protect us?"
"I'm afraid it's too late."
Su Hao suddenly stopped, and Tian Younian's sedan also stopped at the same time. Tian Younian poked his head out of the sedan and found that the entire team had stopped. The soldiers raised their spears and formed a small circle.
A small defensive circle.
In the east, there was a loud noise, as if thousands of troops were charging towards this side. (To be continued. Please search Piao Tian Literature, the novel will be better and updated faster!)