Hong Dashou listened to the comments from passers-by, and to be honest, he was not very touched. Considering his current situation, he really has no ability or energy to help others.

But reality does not take Hong Dashou's thoughts into consideration. The further north you go, the more shocking the situation becomes.

The situation in the counties and counties close to Ji Dao is slightly better. At least no one is starving to death. Concubine Jin, who listens to politics from behind the curtain, is using various methods to fight for power with Jin Zuchun and Suibin Park's father Pu Zongqing. She can control Ji Dao.

It is no longer easy for the people.

And who is the observer of Hwanghaedong at this moment? His name is easy to remember. He is the same generation as Jin Zuchun and is called Jin Dalshun.

Do you think he is from Kim Jo-soon's faction? You are absolutely wrong. This eldest brother, who was born in the Andong Kim clan and is a cousin of Kim Jo-soon, happened to be on the side of Princess Jeongsoon of the Gyeongju Kim clan.

He is actively arresting Catholics and has achieved great results. It is said that he has arrested several people related to Jin Zuchun. [Note 1]

There is a scholar named Jin Rong, who is from the same hometown as Jin Zuchun. He and Jin Zuchun wrote novels together more than ten years ago. They are close friends. Now because he has firmly believed in Catholicism, he has also been caught by Jin Dachun and is about to torture him to extract a confession.

Woolen cloth.

Kim Dal-soon, who was working hard to please Princess Jeongsun who was behind the curtain, had no time to care about the people who were struggling under the drought for years. In other words, the empty treasury did not give him a chance to help the people.

Therefore, even if the road is frozen to death, it will not affect any of Jin Dalchun's actions. The villages and towns along the way are full of innocent people who have been persecuted by the severe disaster and the arrest of believers, and the oppressive air is almost suffocating.

Officials in local counties and counties, on the one hand, vigorously promoted the unification of the five families, on the other hand, they broke into houses and randomly accused ordinary people of being suspected of being religious. They carried out extortion on a large scale and even suspected young women of being religious.

Forced into prostitution.

All kinds of ugly phenomena are too numerous to describe, and they are too numerous to mention. And the officials of the local county government encouraged all of this to happen. Not only did they not try to help the people, but they prepared to take advantage of the disaster to make a fortune for three years.

Along the way, you can even see many young women tied up with straw ropes and sent to the government on the pretext of being suspected of being believers.

The officials were not in a hurry to set off, so they stopped at the roadside at the entrance of the village, waiting for family members to come to bribe the redeemer. Those who still had some wealth moved relatively valuable things such as cotton cloth, rice grain, copperware, etc. to the roadside and cried for help.

The officer released him.

But the official was unmoved. He tore open the cotton cloth to see the length of the hem, and used a large scale to weigh the rice and grain. As for the other messy belongings, the pawn shop clerks directly counted the money on the spot.

The clerical clerks in the yamen also joined in, committing crimes with their arms and holding a pen. As long as they were sure that the family members had fed this group of moths, they would write a few words on the flower paper with the seal, that they were innocent and that no one believed in religion.

, who is the guarantee, the words of a certain year and a certain month.

But the people who spent all their wealth got nothing except this unreliable flower paper.

They could only return to the dilapidated thatched hut amidst the ridicule of the official servants, and what awaited them was the cruel fate of either freezing to death or starving to death.

These people who still have family wealth can at least get their families together to face death. Those families that have been robbed and have no savings can hardly fill the appetites of these moths. Even if they fall to the ground crying and scream miserably, they will not impress anyone.

An official errand.

I could only watch the official dragging my daughter away. As for whether she was sold to some place or was someone's house filler, you can figure it out after thinking about it.

Of course, this was only the first round. Before the escort had gone far, the domestic servants from the local and rural classes [Note 2] rushed up to them.

They didn't just greet anyone, but specifically looked for family members who still had land in their names.

In this case, there is no need for any coercion or inducement at all. Just "Sell the land to my lord, and your daughter will be released immediately!" is enough!

Sure enough, those servants had already prepared the documents, and they had already figured out whose land was where, and there were no mistakes at all.

As long as the family members put their fingerprints on the document, their daughter will be released within a few minutes.

Seeing this scene, no matter how unhappy they were, the family members of the children whose children had been taken away could only stamp their signatures on the paperwork with tears in their eyes. Then, with the children who were put back, the family fell down on the dirt ground by the roadside and cried each other, holding each other's hands.

Their fate has actually been sealed.

When Hong Dashou saw this, his eyes turned red, his fists were clenched, and he was shaking with anger.

The people have reached a point where they receive not the relief they should receive from the state, but the double oppression of corrupt officials from top to bottom, as well as the local tyrants and evil gentry.

After such a disaster, where can any good people survive? They will either go bankrupt and sell themselves into slavery, or they will go into exile and die of hunger and cold.

"Hey, what are you staring at?" A yamen official holding a rope felt very unhappy when he saw Hong Dashou looking unkind.

"Come on, lock it. This person doesn't look like a good guy at first glance. He might be an evildoer."

Two gangster-looking people walked through the crowd, one holding a water and fire stick, and the other holding a rope.

They saw that Hong Dashou was carrying a baggage, wearing ordinary kapok cloth, and his head was only wrapped in a cloth. He did not wear the iconic large-brimmed gauze hat, so they concluded that Hong Dashou was a businessman.

"Watch your dog eyes and look!"

Hong Dashou raised the copper-clad boxwood sign, revealing the identity of the two classes.

The three people were panicked for a brief moment at first, but after seeing Hong Dashou's poor appearance, they immediately returned to their domineering appearance and were completely rude.

"Hey, I met someone..."

The three of them actually turned around and walked away, ignoring Hong Dashou as if he were nothing. [Note 3]

[Note 1]: In September, Kim Dal-soon will be transferred to Jeolla-do Observatory, and the most important event that he will be remembered for will happen during his tenure.

He captured the great-grandparents of Father Kim Dae-geon, who is now the patron saint of Catholics in Korea and has been canonized, and tortured them in order to make them bite Kim Jo-soon. In the end, Father Kim Dae-geon's great-grandparents were tortured to death (one theory is that

execution), Jin Zuchun was not implicated.

Even so, his hard-working performance was appreciated by Queen Jeongsun, and soon he would go to Beijing and serve as a vanguard against Jin Zuchun. Of course, he was killed by Jin Zuchun, who was completely in power in 1805, and he did not jump for a few seconds.

sky.

[Note 2]: Even those who were born in Yangban in the countryside, North Korea was already facing a situation where there were too many monks and too little food. Even if they were born in Yangban and passed the imperial examination, there were still many people who could not become officials and could only go back to their hometowns to study. In other words, they had to go back to their hometowns to eat and drink.

Countryside.

[Note 3]: North Korea’s household registration system is so strict that I don’t need to repeat it. There are roughly three types of household registration cards for yangban households. The first one is for those with a third rank or above, using dental cards. The second one is for a rank official.

The horn cards are used.

The third type is people like Hong Dashou who have only status but can't even pass the imperial examination. They are similar to students and rural class members who use boxwood cards.

These household registration cards were registered and specially made, and the official seals behind them could not be faked. At that time, there were many poor households in the second class, and many of them were worse off than Hong Dashou.

Therefore, the officials in the yamen saw that Hong Dashou was in the second class. Not only did they not have any doubts, they actually laughed in their hearts. The middle-class people at their level were much better off than the poor people in the second class. In their eyes, Hong Dashou was that kind of person.

Plant bed bugs.
Chapter completed!