Song Zhiwen's worries about maintaining food and grass in Bingyuan City finally came to light after several months of closing the city. The butchers in the city had not slaughtered pigs and sheep for a long time, and the stalls and hawkers had no place to buy raw materials. These were all relying on Bingyuan.
The goods brought in from the highways extending in all directions outside the city cannot be supplied due to the blockade of barbarian rangers. Even if there are merchant carts that dare to risk their lives to enter the city, most of them are delivering some urgently needed and expensive medicines in the city.
As for you common people who are unappetizing after eating cabbage and sweet potato in the cellar, what do you have to do with them doing business? They just live with their heads in their hands when doing business, and out of ten groups of carts, there may not be three or five groups that can arrive together.
For Yuancheng, the price offered to the garrison army has naturally increased by an unknown amount.
However, the Jinzhou State Army in Bingyuan City had no choice but to hold their noses and buy these medicinal materials. Currently, there is far from sufficient medicine in the city, especially these medicinal materials for promoting muscle growth and stopping bleeding. The garrison yamen raided every drug store in the city.
It's just a few hundred servers. How can it be used when the war breaks out?
However, generally speaking, there is plenty of rice and food in the city. Vegetables and meats only depend on how much stock is stored in each vegetable cellar. Recently, there have been more and more petty thefts in the city. Most of them went to other people's courtyard vegetable cellars to steal two cabbages and put them away.
The pickled fish and bacon hanging from the eaves were brought back in a bunch, and they were only worth a few scraps of silver. They were taken to the yamen and there was no way to convict them. In the end, they just gave them a few slaps and were released. The prison is now overcrowded, and there is another one.
Opening your mouth doesn't mean you have to pay for it from the Yamen.
There are more and more soldiers coming to the city these days. Many people who live close to the city wall are wondering whether to go to relatives who live further away. After all, I heard that the barbarians are very powerful with bows and arrows. If one day there is a war and arrows come in,
What should I do if it accidentally falls on my head?
Therefore, the city is getting more and more chaotic these days. The rich and powerful families are willing to pay a lot of money to hire strong warriors to look after their homes and guard their homes. Although the Wuhe Escort Bureau has no escorts to guard, the money these families can spend hiring escorts is more than
The first-class oil and water darts also need to earn their heads.
"The people in the city can hardly even eat cabbage. How come these wealthy households can still put out such food and wine?" Wei Changpan frowned while gazing at the table of delicacies in the garden with his hands tied, and there was a prop in the middle of the table
The steaming copper pot came to cook, and the wealthy family sat happily around the table.
In the compound of Yu Wuhe Escort Bureau, he would go out to practice swordsmanship and accompany the old man, whose health was deteriorating, in the ancestral hall. Listening to the dusty Jianghu accidents was so heart-stirring, and thousands of stories were all expressed in his words.
The old man, whose days are numbered, is very talkative, but Wei Changpan is a little unclear. Much of what the old man knows about Jinzhou's current affairs and military affairs is information he has never heard of. Why are these top secrets in the military allowed to stay in the ancestral hall of the Wuhe Escort Bureau all day long?
The frail old man who lived behind closed doors knew about it. However, the old man avoided talking about it, and it was not convenient for him to ask.
"Being bored in the ancestral hall all day long is not the way to live. Young people should go out and walk around more." One day the old man said to Wei Changpan.
"Your body..."
"You'll be fine if you have someone by your side? Don't worry, nothing will go wrong these days, but don't believe it, the food you've eaten in this life is not as salty as the food we have eaten."
Wei Changpan murmured in a low voice, "That's because I didn't have enough food to eat when I was young and you have such a strong taste..."
"piss off!"
Then Wei Changpan was kicked out of the ancestral hall and came to this wealthy family to work as a nursing home.
, he can earn thirty taels of snowflake silver in just monthly money, which is an amount he could not even imagine before. Now he, Wei Changpan, has become a person who can earn thirty taels of silver in a month?
Today the weather is sunny and cloudless, and the sun is warm on people. The owner of the family where he works as a nursing home suddenly decided to go to the garden and set up a table for the family to eat and drink. Wei Changpan was standing there
He looked around boredly on a nearby rockery.
"Who knows, rich people have their own ideas, which are not something that we people can think of." An elderly gardener who was pruning dead branches nearby approached him and said, "But young man, look at that
If you don't have twenty or thirty taels of silver on the table in peacetime, you can't buy it, let alone at this time. If you come up and say something auspicious to please you, you might be rewarded with a few taels of silver.
Already."
"I'm the nurse they hired." Wei Changpan scratched his head and rejected the gardener's suggestion, "They already gave me a monthly salary, so there's no need to ask for rewards from them."
"What a fool! How can you have too much money?" The gardener put down the scissors in his hands, patted the dust on his body and winked at Wei Changpan, "Look at it."
Then Wei Changpan saw the gardener come up and say a lot of auspicious words with a smile on his face, and also told two amusing jokes to relieve the boredom, which made the young lady of the family burst into laughter. Not long after, the gardener came back with a happy face,
He took out the money bag from his waist and showed it to Wei Changpan. It was bulging.
"You can get five taels of silver just by saying a few words. People are happy to listen and you are happy to talk. It doesn't matter." Seeing that Wei Changpan was still unmoved, the gardener shook his head, "Young people today, what are you talking about?"
You know how hard it is to get money, but if you don’t learn how to make money, do you really think that you have a family background of gold and silver?”
Perhaps he was a little afraid of Wei Changpan's sword on his waist, so the gardener trotted away after saying that.
The aroma of the pot reached Wei Changpan, and he couldn't help but swallow when he smelled it. Although eating in this family was much better than eating in a big pot at Wuhe Escort House, there were meat and vegetables for every meal, even though the portions were small.
It's not big, but it's better to cook it well, but now I'm on an empty stomach and see this family eating and drinking down there...
Fortunately, he still had half of the pot helmet on him that was frozen solid. Wei Changpan took it out and took a few bites, but in the end he regretted that his teeth had not been able to deal with the pot helmet.
"It seems that the white rice in the town is more delicious..." He whispered to himself.
Jinzhou treated him well, but it was not his hometown after all.
They agreed to arrange for the escort team to go out of the city with him secretly in the next month or so. Song Yanchao had told him not long ago when he came to see him, saying that a family in the city had paid a large sum of money to hire an escort from the Wuhe Escort Bureau.
"Human bodyguards?" Wei Changpan was also surprised when he heard this, and then asked tentatively, "Is it possible that one of the families wants to escape and go to Yuancheng?"
"It's close. He has obtained all the documents in the city guard's office. He can open the city and let people out at midnight any day, but it will not be easy to enter the city again." Song Yanchao rarely got drunk that day.
, "The escort brothers will escort you all the way to Suzhou."
"Do you still have enough money on you?" Song Yanchao stuffed him with a hundred taels of silver notes, "It doesn't matter if he has enough money or not, take it. When the time comes that you don't have enough money, you can exchange it for money. Don't expose it easily outside."
, be careful that some Taoist priests with evil intentions treat you as a fool."
"Martial Arts is a three-story building. It doesn't matter whether it's high or low." Song Yanchao finally said, "You can't kill people, but you have to protect yourself."
There was movement not far away, and Wei Changpan had to deflect his gaze. The rockery he was on was more than a foot high from the ground, and he had a panoramic view of the conditions in the nearby streets and alleys. This is what the people in the escort agency taught him. If you are the only one
To protect something being guarded, you have to stand in the place with the best view and look around before making a plan.
"Those are... people from the state army?" A group of sergeants rushed north outside the park. Wei Changpan recognized their costumes and saw that they were a whole centurion. "How could the state army's centurion be so urgent?"
The number of soldiers on duty in the city has almost doubled these days, how can there be..."
After the centurion, there is another centurion, and then another group of people rushes past, and three centurions rush to support a city wall?
Then he heard the sound of a bell. It was the ancient bell at the City God's Temple in Bingyuan City. It was struck with a heavy bell and pestle and made a deafening sound. It could be heard clearly in even the most remote places in Bingyuan City.
"One...two..." Wei Changpan turned around and stared at the direction of the bell. "Three..."
The bell rang three times, then three more, and the sound continued, heavy and long.
The ignorant wealthy families in the garden were uneasy when they heard the ringing of bells. Only the owner of that family had drunk about half a kilo of wine. Instead of panicking, he continued to eat and drink while shouting.
"Master Wei? Why are the bells ringing so noisy today?" The man blushed and raised his head. Seeing Wei Changpan standing on the rockery looking at the north city wall, he shouted again, "Can you hear it, Master Wei?"
"
The garden was only a few hundred steps away from the north city wall. Wei Changpan could clearly see the movement of soldiers and horses on the city. The powerful sergeants carried jars and jars filled with kerosene and heavy rolling stones to the top of the city.
The roller crossbows were also retreated behind the battlements, and the entire team of archers was gathered near the city gate tower.
This kind of mobilization is to defend the city, which means that after two months of waiting, the barbarians will finally attack the round city?
Song Zhiwen wore heavy clothes and two armors, wore a long sword on his waist, and went up to the city to be escorted by his own soldiers.
"General." Zhang Ziwen, who also wore armor and sword, saluted, and then said, "The nine hundred men in reserve have all arrived at the city, and all the defensive equipment has been taken out and ready for use."
After conquering two county towns and more than ten neighboring county towns, the barbarians, whose appetite was getting bigger and bigger, finally couldn't help but covet the city of Merger.
Now that you have a big appetite, you have to be prepared to burst your belly.
Without any warning, the mobilization in the barbarian camp was completed in a very short time. The first person to see the barbarian army marching in the distance was the eagle-eyed sergeant on the city.
Song Zhiwen's prediction was correct. The large number of siege equipment built by Dunmao, the leader of the Taijige tribe, allowed him to have sufficient quantity to place siege equipment in another place. The Jinzhou Rangers led by Wei Changpan succeeded.
Only half of them were burned, and now the barbarians came and surrounded the city, bringing with them all their siege equipment and their most capable men and horses.
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind, which was filled with the sound of drums.