After receiving a good beating, Lu Heng finally understood that herding cattle was not an easy job.
Because he is free, it means that his child's labor has not been fully used.
This is unacceptable to the father of the family and the landlord in the village.
Lu Heng led the landlord's cow and came to the village entrance again.
I broke off a branch from the sapling next to me and kept driving away mosquitoes for the old cow.
The oxen was the most important property in ancient times, so its value was much higher than that of a cowherd boy. Because the oxen could provide a lot of labor, if you wanted to cultivate and plow the land, you couldn't do it without it.
Therefore, the plowing ox cannot be starved of food or lack of strength. Its labor must be reserved for farming and cannot be wasted.
Carrying a shepherd boy on his back is obviously a serious waste and is absolutely not allowed.
Moreover, cattle herding does not mean just throwing the cattle into the grass and leaving them alone, because mosquitoes breed in the wild and will bite not only people but also old cattle.
The hairy parts of the cow's body are not easy to be bitten, but the mouth, nose, corners of the eyes and other places without hair are often bitten. These places have dense nerve endings and will be particularly itchy.
Once a cow is bitten, it will become more irritable and will not eat grass well. Over time, it will lose fat and become more and more emaciated.
If the landlord discovers that the old cow has lost weight, Lu Heng, a young cowherd, will inevitably receive a severe beating.
After all, this opportunity to herd cattle was something my father had worked hard to get. It was given by the landlord out of trust because he had been a tenant farmer for so long. I don’t know how many children from poor families wanted to get this job of herding cattle.
But couldn't find it.
In addition to driving mosquitoes away from old cows, Lu Heng also has other tasks, including collecting firewood on the road and collecting cow dung.
The broken basket he carried on his back was used to hold cow dung.
In ancient times, cow dung was also an important resource that could be used to fertilize and increase the fertility of the land.
In short, if you fail to do something well, you are bound to get beaten.
Sometimes, even though you have done your best, you still get beaten. This is normal. After all, the landlord is not a philanthropist. If you pick a fault and beat you, you have to be grateful.
Fortunately, herding cattle is just a bit torturous and not too difficult in itself.
Lu Heng figured out these details and worked hard for a day. This level was passed safely.
But this is just the beginning.
During this period, Lu Heng ate the same food. One meal a day was some rice porridge.
Because the humidity in this area is relatively heavy, it is impossible to pound all the rice, remove the husks and store it in the tank, which will easily cause mold. I can only pound a batch every two days, and the husks cannot be completely removed, so I can only make do with the husks and rice.
eat.
Moreover, rice is mainly for the strong laborers in the family. Only when you are extremely tired can you eat a little bit of salt, otherwise you will not be able to bear it at all. As for other people, they can make do with a bowl of soup, as long as they don't starve to death.
Being practical and capable may be barely considered a virtue in later generations, but in this era, it is a necessary condition for survival.
Lu Heng drank rice porridge and wondered if he was about to enter the next stage?
During this period of time, he was barely competent at the job of herding cattle. Perhaps according to the next progress, a natural disaster will occur, his parents and brothers will die one after another, and he will be forced to become a monk.
However, this trial illusion did not develop as Lu Heng predicted.
There was no natural disaster, the family's financial situation did not continue to deteriorate, and they were barely able to survive.
This is not bad. After all, tracing back to the origin, although Sheng Taizu's lineage has been farming for generations, they were once a large family. The reason why they were reduced to tenant farmers was because they wanted to avoid court taxes.
My grandfather's generation and my father's generation had all left their hometowns, and almost all of their family property was in kind and could not be taken away. Every time they escaped, their family fortunes were ruined. By this generation, there was nothing left.
Why evade taxes?
Because officials impose excessive taxes and increase the tax at every level, subordinate officials take advantage of the opportunity to exploit them. They may sell houses, land, children and daughters, but they may not be able to pay. If they cannot pay, they will be prosecuted, directly imprisoned, or even have their families destroyed.
So I had no choice but to escape. Maybe I could live a peaceful life in a new place for a few years. If I was lucky, I could barely save some food like I am now.
Even if you work hard every day and get a little food to live on, you can't have too many extravagances.
Lu Heng also gradually grew up and became a teenager. He could start working in the fields, and his parents also began to make arrangements for him to get a wife.
But before he could marry a wife, something unexpected happened.
Winter has arrived, the work in the fields has become idle, and the government has sent people to collect corvee labor. Lu Heng's identity now is no longer a shepherd boy herding old cows, but a strong laborer who can work in the fields. Of course, he is also included in the collection of corvee labor.
The so-called corvee is actually hard work. There are many kinds of work to be done, but in general it is definitely much more tiring than working in the fields.
And the rations provided by the government were definitely not sufficient, because officials in the DPRK also hoped to take this opportunity to make a fortune.
How much you deduct depends entirely on your conscience.
Many people starved to death and died of exhaustion while doing corvee labor. Lu Heng once again managed to persevere because of the talent of "enduring hunger".
After finally finishing his corvee service, he returned home and lived a stable life for several years.
The scene in the trial illusion changed rapidly, and Lu Heng found that he had become a middle-aged man in his thirties. His parents were still alive, and he had several children.
Although life has not improved much, it is finally a little better than before.
The busy farming season of the year has begun again.
Only this time, the natural disaster finally came.
Severe droughts and locust plagues caused all the green seedlings in the fields to die, and those that were not dead were also eaten up by locusts.
After a major disaster, there must be a major epidemic. As more and more people die, the plague begins to spread.
Both parents were also infected with the plague. They had no money to seek treatment from a doctor, so they could only watch them lying in the weeds and groaning in pain. A few days later, they all died one after another.
Because he was a tenant and had no land of his own, he had to scrape together his family resources and buy a small plot of cemetery from the landlord, and then wrap the body in a straw mat and bury it.
All the green crops have withered and all the food has been eaten. In order to survive, we have to climb out of the thatched hut with difficulty and go outside to find something to eat. But you have to be careful when you go out. You might get caught by hungry people if you go the wrong way.
Drag it back and put it in the soup pot. After all, the record of "people eating each other in a big disaster" has never been exaggerated.
Finally arriving at a wilderness outside the village safely, the hungry and anxious people could only try their best to eat everything they could.
Grass roots and tree bark are obviously too luxurious, and have been eaten by other villagers long ago. As for the fish in the water, the birds in the sky, and the beasts in the forest... I think too much. During droughts, either the rivers dry up, or the rivers dry up.
There were no fish, or I was too hungry to catch those birds and beasts.
Hungry people dare to go deep into the mountains to hunt. Not to mention whether they are lucky enough to find wild animals, even if they do find them, it is not certain who will eat them.
As for eating locusts, that is even more nonsense. Not to mention that the locusts are all over the sky and can eat up the green crops in half a day. The key is that even if you are lucky enough to catch a few, they will not be able to satisfy your hunger at all.
Locusts contain very little energy, not to mention that locusts in disaster years are often poisonous.
The victims were so hungry that their chests were pressed against their backs. They no longer had the strength, nor the corresponding tools, to catch anything edible on a large scale, otherwise there would be no famine.
After the hungry people had eaten up everything they could eat, there were only two options, either to eat humans or to eat Guanyin soil.
Lu Heng saw the villagers next to him carrying back a bag of Guanyin soil from outside with great difficulty. He was so exhausted that he was out of breath and exhausted his last remaining strength.
The texture of this soil is very fine and contains almost no sand or gravel.
The villagers carefully sifted the Guanyin soil again, poured water on it, spread it into cakes, and steamed it in a pot. Thus, a pot of cakes that seemed to be able to fill the stomach was made.
Of course, Lu Heng knew that this food was inedible, but when his sons were extremely hungry, they secretly ran to the neighbors and asked for a piece of cake to eat.
Eating Guanyin soil will indeed make you feel full, but it does not contain any nutrients. Moreover, you will feel very thirsty after eating it, so you need to drink a lot of water. When Guanyin soil encounters water, it will expand and then It solidifies and cannot be excreted without digestion in the stomach.
This behavior is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst.
Therefore, Lu Heng could only watch these little sons die on the kang one by one with their hard bellies.
In the village of thousands of people, no one moves at all during the day. Even if you open the door and go in, you can only see a few people lying naked on the kang, skinny as a stick, only the chest rises and falls slightly, and the eyes slowly move.
Their clothes had already been sold or cooked and eaten. They had not eaten for a long time, so they could neither move nor dare to move.
And at night, those who still have some energy can squat in the windows of other people's houses to see who is dead, and then they can make a fire and eat meat at night.
Lu Heng persisted for a while, and finally lay down on the kang and died silently.
…
Back to the original starting point.
Lu Heng was a little confused. He said that... he could rebel?
How can this be a rebellion?
When he was a child, he wanted to rebel? His father could pick him out and beat him up, not to mention the landlord.
Want to rebel when you grow up? So many people were captured to do corvee labor, and countless people were beaten to death and starved to death. No one dared to fight against the officers and soldiers.
Want to rebel during a natural disaster? You are so hungry that your chest is pressed against your back. Whether you can leave the village is a matter of doubt, so why rebel?
After this process, Lu Heng's strongest feeling was helplessness!
Theoretically, he can choose, but in reality, no matter which way he chooses, there is only a dead end.
After thinking about it for a long time, I still couldn't come up with an idea, so I had to continue choosing the talent of "enduring hunger" and start over.
