Outside Yiyang City, a group of ragged men were lined up. They were all tied with their hands tightly, and there were hemp ropes that were used as shackles on their ankles. Each hemp rope was two fingers thick, and they had no tools to make it impossible to do it with bare hands.

Next to the team, several people looked at the men surrounded by guards, selecting them like they were picking chickens, ducks and geese. Those who were healthy and healthy and well-aged were put on grass marks and pulled out of the team and were behind these people.

Xiang Ba walked in the queue and accepted the other party's "choice" with the others. Looking at the fierce and powerful man holding weapons around him, he lowered his head blankly. As one of the surviving villagers of Luo Qiu Village, he has not yet come back from his nightmare.

Luoya Village is located in the mountains and has no contact with the outside of the mountains. The village people have lived in the deep mountains for generations, and have made a living by reclaiming slopes to plant crops and hunting wild animals. From time to time, they have conflicted with the surrounding villages for trivial matters. More than ten people died and injured on both sides, and then they shook hands and made peace. After a period of time, they continued.

Life just goes on like this, and it has been like this since Grandpa Xiangba's grandfather. Everyone has become accustomed to this kind of life until things change drastically.

Tian Yunshan, the leader of Heiwu Village, and several other leaders fought against the government officials of the Shannexian family "Zhou" who was defeated by them for the first time when the official army entered the mountain, but after the second time, things became more and more troubled.

The Black Mist Village was gone, and the Shihu Village that hosted Tian Yunshan was also captured by the official army. Many of the heads of the village leaders were cut down and displayed in public, but the only one Tian Yunshan Tian Village leader was missing. Then many of the village leaders standing on the government side sent troops to search everywhere to "capture Tian Yunshan to justice".

If the officials outside the mountain did this, the village leaders in the mountain would probably gather together to fight together. But now some of the village leaders sent people to search for it themselves, the problem would be different. The villages in the mountain were entangled with grievances and grievances, and the situation became chaotic.

Because of the suspicion of "hiding Tianyun Mountain", many villages were besieged, but the neighboring villages felt that the matter was not relevant and refused to send people to help. Some even joined the other party and found excuses everywhere to start and said they wanted to "search the suspect."

Luo Qiu Village is so unlucky. The Hong Qiu Village near the mountain is a feud with them. After many generations of fighting, I have no idea how many grudges I have made. Later, the Hong Qiu Village attracted "Yi Soldiers" and said that Tian Yunshan was hidden in Luo Qiu Village. The battle broke out later.

Luoya Village and Hongya Village are of equal strength. They are both big villages with thousands of households. They were originally evenly matched, but the other party attracted different "Yi Soldiers". The well-equipped arrows were all iron arrowheads, and some even equipped armor.

Their village knew that the situation was not good, so they contacted other villages to help. As a result, the Hongqi Village broke through their village in just one day, and all the undead people were abducted.

Xiang Ba's father was shot by a raven while guarding the village. The enemy soldiers rushed into the village and burned and killed them. Xiang Ba's enemy soldiers who broke into the gate fell to the ground. His mother and sister were dragged into the inner room. Listening to the constant begging, shouting, and the man's breathing, he felt like he had a nightmare.

Fighting between the villages is common. Xiang Ba's mother was stolen from another village by his father. Now Luoya Village has been compromised by another village, and no one can escape the fate.

The mother and sister were later carried out from the house and were taken away as trophy with other women in the village. The male man who was lucky enough to die became prisoners. He didn't know what the outcome of the elderly, weak, sick and disabled people were.

Some of Xiangbahe's young and strong people were divided into slaves by Hongqiuzhai and other villages, and some were taken outside the mountain to come here, and were bought and sold like goods.

"Raise your head!" a man shouted in local dialect, lifting his jaw with a stick, while several well-dressed men looked at him carefully.

Just like a hunter was checking a leopard that was shot to death, the other party looked carefully at his limbs and checked for any trauma on his body. Finally, he nodded with satisfaction and said something he couldn't understand.

A grass mark was inserted behind Xiang Ba's collar, and two strong men rushed him out of the queue and came to the other group of people. Everyone looked around nervously, not knowing what their next fate would be.

After a while, more and more people were putting on grass signs. The men who selected the "goods" waved their hands and said something to the mountain people standing beside them. After a while, several people carried a basket of things in front of them.

A mountain man took out a bamboo tube from the basket, poured out some snow-white things into his palm, looked at Ba with wide eyes, and vaguely recognized that it was extremely precious salt in the mountains.

Na Shanmin dipped some salt with his fingers and put it in his mouth to taste it. He poured the remaining salt in his palm back into the bamboo tube with satisfaction. He nodded to his companion, then shook hands with the well-dressed men with a smile.

‘Are you changing us for something?’ Xiang Ba was thinking, feeling very sad and angry.

"Let's go, go here, if you are not honest, you will have a whip to eat!" Someone shouted in local dialect and pushed them outside a house where they were cut off their hair and stripped off their clothes, and then rushed to the house to take a bath with pungent water.

He was also brushed with a big brush on his body, just like a pheasant about to be plucked with hot water. Xiang Ba was worried and finally changed into a coarse cloth clothes and was lifted out.

Wearing new straw sandals, he lined up with others to walk towards a large ship by the river. After entering the cabin, Xiangba found that the warehouse was full of people, all men who had their hair cut and changed their clothes like him.

"Everyone listen carefully. If anyone dares to make trouble, tie up a stone and throw it into the river to feed the fish!!" A man with a fleshy face shouted in the divine dialect. The hatch door was then closed, leaving only some small holes to ventilate.

Listening to the sound of water coming from outside the cabin, Xiang Ba and the people in the cabin looked at each other. They were caught out of the mountains and locked up in a big ship and unknown where they would go.

The familiar mountain village has been burned down. My mother and sister have not been taken to where they are, and I don’t know if I have a chance to return to my hometown in my life. Thinking of this, Xiang Ba couldn’t help but burst into tears.

There were sobs from countless people from the cabin, blending with the sound of waves outside the ship, floating downstream with the river.

......

At the new wharf on the northeast lake in Xiyang City, Xu Shao and Hao Wu Bo in Zhizhong are supervising the unloading of the "cargo". The goods are prisoners transported by ships in Yangjun on Bashui, and are "delivered" to the government here.

"Don't let's go, the number of people has been counted, a lot of them." An official reported, Xu Shao nodded at the "treats" who were passing by in front of him. He looked at each person carefully, but did not find any broken hands and feet, nor did he look sick and unhappy.

"Set up well, but the guards must be strengthened, and no unexpected situations are allowed..." Xu Shao explained one by one that he had been managing Chen Jun prisoners of war for more than half a year and was already very "experienced". These newly arrived mountain barbarians are also precious labor force and must not cause problems easily.

The boss of the ship who was escorting the ship approached under the guidance of the official, took Xu Shao's order to sign the order, nodded and bowed to the city to collect the "freight". Seeing an empty boat going back home, Hao Wu Bo was a little moved.

"When I was building the drainage channel last year, I specially explained that it should be wide enough. Judging from the current situation, it is probably not enough."

"I can only do it carefully at the gate. If it is really not enough, it may be possible to widen the ditches." Xu Shao sighed helplessly, "Who knows that this pier will be so lively after less than a year."

There is no formal wharf on the edge of Xiyang City. Although the south of the city is bordered by the Yangtze River, the rapid river water makes it very troublesome to dock large ships. It is not suitable to set up a fixed wharf. On weekdays, water and land transfers are carried out at the Bakou wharf in the eastern suburbs.

However, since the big lake in the northeast of the city built drainage ditches, it has communicated with Santai River, Bashui and even the Yangtze River. It is considered to use water transportation. The drainage ditches are very wide at the beginning, in order to facilitate cargo ships to travel, so it is natural to have a lakeside dock.

There are two new brick kilns in the northeast suburbs of the city, one official and one civil. The bricks burned are loaded at the wharf and transported to Bahe City at the mouth of Bahe, or to Santai River and all over the Bashui.

The stone collected along the Santai River and Bashui also enters the lake through waterways, unloads the goods at the lakeside wharf and transports them into Xiyang City not far away. At the same time, fishermen who are fishing in the lake also unload the goods from then on, and more and more people settle down by the lake.

The Bazhou navy also set up a water camp by the lake, guarding the dock and practicing water war techniques. After Xiyang East City was put into use, the popularity of Xiyang City in the northern suburbs will only become more and more prosperous.

"Let's go, the next group of people will come in a few days." Xu Shao turned around and left, talking with Hao Wu Bo while walking. This place is not far from the city, so they were too lazy to ride horses and simply walked.

Yuwen Wen used troops to the mountain barbarians and brought in a large number of prisoners as laborers. This behavior was nothing surprising, because the Jiangmian area had done this in all dynasties. In order to incorporate the barbarians, countless wars broke out with the chiefs.

The name of Jiangmian area has existed since ancient times. "Jiang" means the Yangtze River, and "Miang" means the Mian River (Han River). The Han River is an important tributary of the Yangtze River and is injected into the Yangtze River in Jiangxia County.

The so-called Jiangxi area refers to a region during the Jin Dynasty: Jiangxia, Nanjun, Xiangyang, Yiyang and Nanyang five counties. In the Han River Basin, they were three counties across Jiangxia, Nanjun and Nanyang. During the Southern Dynasties, they were limited to the Jianghan Basin in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, including Jing, Yong, Ying, Si and neighboring areas.

During the Hou Jing Rebellion more than 30 years ago and before, the Jiangmian area was mostly ruled by the Southern Dynasties, and the entanglement between the Southern Dynasties and the barbarians had lasted for more than a hundred years.

The barbarians are the names of the southern ethnic groups by the Central Plains court. The "barbarians" in the Jiangmian area are of all kinds, including Jingzhou barbarians, Yongzhou barbarians, Yingzhou barbarians, and Sizhou barbarians. There are many barbarians below, and no matter what barbarians are, they are opponents that make the government trouble.

Xiyang County and surrounding areas in the north of the Yangtze River were under the jurisdiction of Yingzhou in the south of the Yangtze River during the Southern Dynasties. The Xiyang Barbarians (Wushui Barbarians) who lived here were also the target of the Southern Dynasties' official army's attack. From the Song Dynasty to the present, the governments of various dynasties and dynasties finally collected the barbarians on the plains one after another, leaving behind the mountain barbarians in the mountains.

Although it was called barbarians by the Central Plains court, the barbarians living in the plains of the Jiangmian region were not as uncivilized as imagined. During the Song Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty (now Xiangzhou), many barbarians in Jingzhou had already walked out of the mountains, settled and built villages by the Han River to cultivate rice, and also built water conservancy to obtain a lot of "water and land fertile fields".

Some barbarians made handicrafts and sold cloths, or did business in the Han and Barbarians, and some engaged in animal husbandry, raising a large number of cattle, horses and various miscellaneous animals. For such "excellent resources", the Southern Dynasties governments since the Eastern Jin Dynasty naturally tried every means to be included in control.

After more than a hundred years of siege, the barbarians on the plains had already integrated with the Han people. Later, the governors and governors of the Song, Qi and Liang dynasties guarding Jing, Yong, Ying, and the governors of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Justice have been constantly launching wars to "request for people" from the mountain barbarians, so now Yuwen Wen is just a "subjective" to the mountain barbarians.

But then things went wrong, killing the culprit who led his troops down the mountain to harass him. The official army withdrew its troops and returned home, but the actions against the mountain barbarians were not over. Xu Shao knew that Yuwen Wen had changed his way to "seek people" from the mountains: buy it.

The government was the natural responsibility of the government to attack the mountain barbarians, but Xu Shao and Hao Wubo were very surprised that their superiors could turn such things into business. This Yuwen envoy seemed to be reincarnated and reincarnated in business, and almost anything could be associated with business.

Life in the mountains is very hard. Basically, many common daily necessities for the people of the prefectures and counties in the plains are short of. If the village owners in the mountains are lucky, they can still find small iron ore, but salt cannot be found in the mountains. Therefore, using items such as salt and iron is very attractive to the village owners.

The states in Shannan naturally do not produce salt, but Yuwen Wen can get a lot of salt when doing business. As for iron, it is easy to deal with it. However, in order to prevent ungrateful wolves from supplying limited supplies, the Bazhou Prefecture Office uses essential products such as salt and iron to "buy" people from the village owners in the mountains.

There is only one condition: people must be from the mountains, and they are not allowed to plunder the people under the rule of the government outside the mountains. As long as they do not touch this bottom line, everything is easy to say. Xu Shao and Hao Wu Bo are reserved about the effect of this transaction, but the reality is beyond their expectations.

The village leaders in the mountains actually started to kill each other!

The village leaders who were vigorously supported by the government launched an attack on the mountain villages with excellent weapons. They kept some of the household registration they stolen and sent most of them out of the mountain to "sell".

This is just the beginning. Because a large number of quarries, logging farms, lime kilns, charcoal kilns and mining farms require cheap labor, all the owners began to flock to the "human market" in Yiyang County to "purchase goods". What's more, after registering in the state yamen, they cooperated with the village leaders to organize the "Yi soldiers" to enter the mountain to capture the culprit Tian Yunshan.

Tian Yunshan had been caught and had his head cut off, but he had always claimed that he had not been "received" to the public, so this was an excuse to go into the mountains to catch labor. The government troops did not participate in the operation, but the people were transported out of the mountains by the camp leaders.

This transaction looks very cost-effective, and it kills two birds with one stone in one fell swoop. It not only solves the problem of mountain barbarians' chaos, but also brings a lot of labor. It seems that everyone is happy, but Xu Shao always feels something is wrong.

"Chengye, what would you think if this continues, what would it look like?" Xu Shao asked with some concern. Uncle Hao, who was beside him, heard the implication. He looked at the prisoners escorted by the state soldiers not far away and fell into deep thought.

Xu Shao asked "what would it become?" It seemed that he had missed a "mountain". But Hao Wu Bo knew what Xu Shao was thinking. In order to solve the problem of labor shortage, their boss Yuwen Wen could start a war to capture the prisoners of Chen State, or use things to "buy" the prisoners with the mountain camp leader.
Chapter completed!