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Chapter 173 The People's Livelihood Is So Difficult

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After being beaten by a good opportunity, Lu Heng finally understood that herding cattle is not an easy job.

Because idleness means that his labor as a child has not been fully used.

This is unacceptable to the old father in the family and the landlord in the village.

Lu Heng led the landlord's cattle and came to the entrance of the village again.

I broke off a branch from a small sapling next to me, and kept repelling mosquitoes for the old cow.

Cattle are the most important property in ancient times, so its value is much higher than that of a cow herding boy. Because cattle can provide a lot of labor, if you want to cultivate and plow the land, you can't do without it.

Therefore, the cattle must not be hungry or lack of strength. Its labor must be reserved for farming, not wasted.

Carrying a shepherd boy on his back is obviously a serious waste and is absolutely not allowed.

Moreover, grazing cattle is not just throwing the cattle on the grass and leaving them alone, because mosquitoes breed in the wild, which will not only bite people, but also bite old cattle.

It is not easy to be stung on the hairy parts of the cow, but the snout, eye corners and other places without long hairs are often stung. Nerve endings are densely packed in these places, which will be extra itchy.

Once the cow is bitten, it will be more irritable, it will not eat grass well, and it will lose fat and become thinner over time.

If the landlord finds that the old cow has lost weight, Lu Heng, who is a cowherd boy, will inevitably be beaten severely.

After all, this opportunity to herd cattle was also obtained by my father's hard work. It was rewarded by the landlord out of trust after seeing my father as a tenant farmer for so long. I don't know how many children from poor families want to take this cattle herding job. But can't find it.

In addition to repelling mosquitoes for the old cow, Lu Heng also has other tasks, including collecting firewood and cow dung on the road.

The broken basket on his back was used to hold cow dung.

In ancient times, cow dung was also an important resource, which could fertilize and increase the fertility of the land.

In short, whenever one thing is not done well, it is inevitable to be beaten.

Sometimes it is normal to be beaten even though you have tried your best. After all, the landlord is not a philanthropist. If you pick a fault and beat you up, you have to be grateful.

Fortunately, the matter of herding cattle is only a bit torturous, and it is not too difficult in itself.

After Lu Heng figured out these details, he spent a whole day steadfastly feeding the cattle, and he passed this level safely.

But that's just the beginning.

During this period of time, Lu Heng ate almost the same food. One meal a day was rice porridge.

Because the humidity in this area is relatively heavy, it is impossible to remove all the rice shells and store them in the tank. It is easy to get moldy, so you can only pound a batch every two days, and the shells are not clean. You can only make do with the shells and rice. eat.

Moreover, the rice is mainly for the strong laborers in the family, and they can only eat a little salt when they are particularly tired, otherwise they will not be able to withstand it at all. As for the others, just make do with a bowl of soup and hang around, as long as they don't starve to death.

Practical and capable may barely be regarded as a virtue in later generations, but in this era, belonging is a necessary condition for survival.

Lu Heng drank rice porridge, wondering if he was about to enter the next stage?

During this period of time, he was barely qualified for the job of herding cattle. Perhaps according to the next progress, the natural disasters came, his parents and brothers died one after another, and he was forced to become a monk.

However, this trial illusion did not develop as Lu Heng guessed.

There was no natural disaster, and the family's financial situation did not continue to deteriorate, so he was barely able to survive.

This is not bad, after all, tracing back to the source, although Sheng Taizu's lineage has been farming for generations, it was once a big clan, and the reason why they were reduced to tenant farmers was because they wanted to avoid court taxes.

The grandparents and fathers have all left their homes, and almost all the family property cannot be taken away in kind. Every time they escape, the family will be ruined once, and there is nothing left in this generation.

Why do you want to evade taxes?

Because the bureaucrats extorted and extorted money, the subordinate staff took the opportunity to exploit, and selling houses, land, children and daughters may not be able to afford the payment. If you can't pay it, you will have to sue, be directly thrown into prison, or even have your family ruined.

So I had no choice but to escape, and maybe I could live a peaceful life for a few years if I fled to a new place. If I was lucky, I could barely save some surplus food like now.

Hard work every day, in exchange for a little food that can survive, it is impossible to have too many extravagant demands.

And Lu Heng gradually grew up and turned into a young man who could start working in the fields, and his parents also began to arrange for him to marry a wife.

It's just that before he got married, an unexpected incident occurred.

When winter came, the work in the fields was idle, and the government sent people to collect corvees. Lu Heng's current status is no longer a shepherd boy grazing old cows, but a strong laborer who can work in the fields, and of course he is also included in the collection of corvee.

The so-called corvee is actually a coolie, and there are various kinds of work to be done, but in general it must be much more tiring than working in the fields.

And the rations given by the government must not be sufficient, because the officials in the court are also counting on this opportunity to make a fortune.

How much to deduct depends on conscience.

Many people died of starvation and exhaustion during the corvee service. Lu Heng once again managed to persevere because of the talent of "enduring hunger and starvation".

After finally finishing the corvée and returning home, he 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 slightly better than before.

The busy season of the year has begun again.

Only this time, the natural disaster finally came.

Severe drought and locust plagues caused all the young crops in the field to wither, and those that did not die were eaten up by the locusts.

After the catastrophe, there must be a catastrophe. As more and more people died, the plague began to spread.

Both parents were also infected with the plague, and they had no money to find a doctor for treatment, so they could only watch them lying in the weeds and groaning in pain. A few days later, they all passed away one after another.

Because I was a tenant and didn't have any land of my own, I could only scrape together the family fortune and bought a small cemetery from the landlord, and wrapped the corpse in a straw mat to make do with it.

The young crops are all dead, and all the food is eaten. In order to survive, they can only climb out of the thatched hut with difficulty and go outside to find something to eat. It’s just that you have to be careful when you go out. You might be dragged back to the soup pot by hungry people if you go the wrong way. After all, there is never any exaggeration in the record of “people eating each other in a catastrophe”.

Finally, they came safely to a wilderness outside the village, and the hungry people could only try their best to eat everything they could eat.

Grass roots and bark are obviously too extravagant, and they have already been eaten by other villagers. As for the fish in the water, the birds in the sky, and the beasts in the forest... If you think too much about it, in times of drought, either the river will dry up and there will be no fish at all, or the hungry will stick to your back and you will not be able to catch those birds and beasts at all.

People who are hungry dare to go hunting in the deep mountains, not to mention whether they will be lucky enough to find wild animals. Even if they do find wild animals, it is not certain who will eat them.

As for eating locusts, that is even more nonsense. Not to mention that the locusts can cover the sky and eat up the young crops in half a day. The key point is that even if you catch a few by chance, you will not be able to eat at all.

Locusts contain very little energy, not to mention that locusts in catastrophic years are often poisonous.

The victims were so hungry that their chests were stuck to their backs, and they had no strength, let alone the corresponding tools to capture anything edible on a large scale, otherwise there would be no famine.

After the hungry people have eaten up all the edible things, there are only two ways, either to eat people, or to eat Guanyin soil.

Lu Heng saw the villagers next to him carrying back a bag of Avalokitesvara soil from the outside with great pains. He was out of breath and exhausted his last bit of energy.

The texture of this soil is very fine and contains almost no sand and gravel.

The villagers sifted the Avalokitesvara soil again, poured water on it, spread it into cakes, and steamed them in a pot, so a pot of cakes that seemed to fill their stomachs was made.

Of course Lu Heng knew that this food was not edible, but his sons sneaked to the neighbor and asked for a piece of cake when they were extremely hungry.

Eating Avalokiteshvara does give you a feeling of fullness, but it does not contain any nutrients. Moreover, you will feel very thirsty after eating, so you need to drink a lot of water. When Guanyin soil meets water, it will swell and then solidify, and it cannot be digested or excreted in the stomach.

This behavior is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst.

Therefore, Lu Heng could only watch helplessly as these little sons died one by one on the kang with their hard bellies.

In the village of thousands of people, no one is active in the daytime. Even if you open the door and go in, you can only see a few naked people lying on the kang, skinny, with only a slight heaving of the chest and slowly turning the eyes.

Their clothes have already been sold, or cooked and eaten, and they have not eaten for a long time, so they can neither move nor dare to move.

And at night, if you still have energy, you can go to the windows of other people's houses to see who is dead, and then you can start a fire and eat meat at night.

Lu Heng persisted for a while, and finally lay on the kang and died silently.

...

Back to the original starting point.

Lu Heng was a little puzzled. He agreed...can he rebel?

How does this rebel?

Want to rebel as a child? Not to mention the landlord, his father would have directly picked him out and beat him up.

Want to rebel as an adult? So many people were arrested and served in corvee, and countless people were beaten to death and starved to death, and no one dared to fight the officers and soldiers.

Want to rebel during a natural disaster? They are so hungry that their chests stick to their backs, whether they can get out of this village is a matter of two opinions, and there is no rebellion.

After this process, Lu Heng's strongest feeling is helplessness!

In theory, he can choose, but in reality, no matter how he chooses, there is only one dead end.

After thinking for a long time, I still couldn't come up with an idea, so I had to continue to choose the talent of "Hunger and Starve" and start again.

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