Chapter 2 The First Blood (2)
After coming out of the bank, the bank was closed. After the middle-aged man closed the door, he bowed his hands to Zhang Jianliang and left.
I didn’t ask Zhang Jianliang again what to do with his gold.
Zhang Jianliang did not leave and continued to stand in front of the bank. He believed that it would not be long before someone would ask him about gold.
Sure enough, within less than a moment of burning the incense, a man wearing a sheepskin coat in the summer came to him and whispered: "One tael of gold and eleven silver coins."
p>Zhang Jianliang said: "I want thirteen."
The man sneered and said: "Eleven is better than being confiscated by the government."
Zhang Jianliang said: "You don't look like someone who can redeem my gold."
The man spat on the ground and said: "Whether a man from the northwest has money depends not on his clothes but on his ability. If you don't sell it to us, there will be no land to sell it to. In the end, the gold will still be mine."
Zhang Jianliang laughed silently.
"So you are planning to rob. Have you ever thought about the consequences of robbing the emperor's people?"
The man smiled and said: "This is the Great Gobi."
p>Zhang Jianliang looked around and said, "Are you going to rob here? You can't do it alone, right?"
The man raised his hand to pat Zhang Jianliang on the shoulder, but Zhang Jianliang dodged the slap and patted him. After it was empty, the man looked at Zhang Jianliang and said: "A soldier like you has already killed a soldier. I heard that the body was thrown into the desert and only one shoe was left at dawn... That's miserable, don't leave Jiayuguan if you can." ”
After watching the man in the sheepskin coat leave, Zhang Jianliang squatted on the spot and continued to wait.
After another stick of incense, the man in the sheepskin coat came back and said to Zhang Jianliang: "Master Dao wants to see you."
Zhang Jianliang finally smiled; His teeth were very white and his smile was bright. However, the man in the sheepskin coat had some inexplicable heart palpitations.
Soon, he knew something was wrong, because Zhang Jianliang had already grabbed his throat and lifted him up.
He wanted to scream, but he couldn't shout a word, and then he was thrown to the ground by Zhang Jianliang. He heard the sound of his own bones breaking, and as soon as his throat became relaxed, he was like killing a pig. Howled.
Zhang Jianliang's eyes were cold, and he raised his foot and crushed the other leg of the man in the sheepskin coat.
The double severe pain made the man in the sheepskin coat snort and fainted.
Zhang Jianliang took out a stick from his backpack and tied it to one foot of the man in the sheepskin coat, dragging him towards the bazaar on the left.
The broken leg was pulled hard by the rope. The man in the sheepskin coat woke up again from the pain. He had no time to beg for mercy and fainted again from the severe pain. After a short distance of a hundred steps, he had already fainted and woke up again. As many as three times.
Jiayuguan is a frontier fortress.
People here are not surprised by this scene.
A month ago, at the Bazaar in Jiayuguan, there was a man whose arms and legs were broken. He was also dragged with a rope and paraded through the streets of the Bazaar.
Zhang Jianliang finally dragged the man in the sheepskin coat to a stall selling mutton, grabbed the bright meat hook, easily passed through the man in the sheepskin coat's chin, and then lifted it hard, and the man in the sheepskin coat was hung. At the mutton stall, the hooks will be occupied by two skinned fat sheep beside you.
The man in the sheepskin coat woke up from the severe pain again, groaned and grabbed the crossbar to free himself from the hook.
Unfortunately, as soon as he raised his hands, they were chopped off by Zhang Jianliang with a thick-backed machete used to chop mutton.
Everyone looked at the two hands that had fallen into the dust, and then looked at Zhang Jianliang, as if they were looking at a dead person.
The body of the man in the sheepskin coat was writhing hard like a fish that had been fished ashore, and the blood from the wound was bubbling out.
Zhang Jianliang wiped the machete clean on the man in the sheepskin coat and placed it again on the meat table.
He took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Then, like a real butcher selling meat, he squatted at the mutton stall and looked at the crowd of onlookers with a smile, as if waiting for these people to follow him. Buying meat is average.
There are many people looking at the meat, but no one buying it.
Until the fresh meat became stale, no one bought it.
The tax collector stood in the crowd, looking at Zhang Jianliang with some regret, turned around and wanted to leave, but finally turned around and said to Zhang Jianliang: "Let's go, the sheriff here is not that easy to be. "
Zhang Jianliang shook his head and said with a smile: "I am not here to be a peace officer, I just want to take revenge."
The tax officer sighed and said: "I have a horse in my backyard. Horses are not good horses. I don’t want to raise them anymore.”
Zhang Jianliang said with a smile: “You can continue to raise them. In the Gobi Desert, no horses mean no feet.”
When the tax official heard that Zhang Jianliang was living like this, he stopped answering and turned around to leave.
In his opinion, this captain officer is actually here to act as a peace officer.
Today, killing people to establish his authority in the bazaar should be the first thing he does before acting as a peace officer.
And this is what every sheriff must do before taking office.
The sun is gradually heading west.
In the afternoon, the wind usually blows up in the northwest, and the bazaar will disperse at this time.
The mutton selling business was disrupted by Zhang Jianliang. Not a single sheep was sold. This made him feel very unlucky. He took his two sheep off the hook and threw them over his shoulders. His thick-backed machete left.
Only a man in a sheepskin coat was left hanging alone on the crossbar.
Since the Ming Dynasty began to implement the "Western Autonomy Regulations", the area north of Zhangye has implemented residents' autonomy, and every settlement of a thousand people should have a peace officer.
These peace officers generallyIt is filled by retired military personnel, and the military also regards this position as a reward.
The first batch of veterans of the Lantian Dynasty were basically illiterate masters. It was unrealistic for them to return to the mainland to serve as commanders. After all, the officers appointed in the past two years Among officials, reading and literacy is the first requirement.
The first group of soldiers who followed Yun Zhao in rebellion had nothing special to offer except the ability to kill people.
After all, these peace officers are the top administrators of these places. They combine administrative and law enforcement powers, which is a good job.
As for those scholars who were sent to serve as officials in the Gobi Desert in the west, it would be difficult for them to survive here for a year...
If the officials die, this is undoubtedly a rebellion, and the army will They wanted to come over to quell the rebellion, but after the army came, the people here immediately became kind-hearted people. When the army left, the officials who were re-sent would die for no reason.
Whether it is the eleventh day killing order or drawing a circle on the map to start the massacre, it is not very suitable here, because in the past few years, people who left the war-torn mainland and came to the west of the Ming Dynasty a lot of.
This tug of war went on for a long time, and the Lantian Imperial Court suddenly discovered that the cost of governing the west was too great.
And the officials are no longer willing to send domestic elites to the west to die.
When officials could not be in place, only Kuracao was unwilling to give up. After sending out troops to kill rivers of blood, he finally established a consensus in the northwest that the tax collectors were sacred and inviolable.
As for the empire, the only requirement for these places is taxation.
In order to collect taxes, tax collectors in these places, as officials truly appointed by the empire, only have the power to collect taxes for the empire.
There is no way to enforce such regulations. The West is too big.
The dynasty could not keep a vast northwest in a state of anarchy for a long time. In this situation, the "Western Autonomy Regulations" naturally appeared. Since the people of the northwest are fierce and stubborn, If it doesn't work, then apart from civil rule, the only other option is to use force to govern.
North of Zhangye, any Ming people who want to farm have the right to go to the west to encircle a piece of land for themselves. As long as they cultivate this land for more than three years, the land belongs to the Ming people.
North of Zhangye, mineral deposits discovered by individuals are owned by individuals.
In the north of Zhangye, the savages captured by individuals belong to the individuals.
To the north of Zhangye, the people exercise autonomy in a positive sense except that they must pay taxes.
People north of Zhangye were all delighted when they heard the news, and then the melee began. In just one year, this place became a lawless land.
Just when these mixed-race Western Ming people were cheering and encouraging for their achievements, they suddenly discovered that too many Ming people came from the mainland..
And these Ming people seem to be even more vicious than them.
There are two reasons for this result.
Any prisoner who has been sentenced to more than three years in prison and below death row can leave the prison and go to the wild west as long as he applies.
Any rogue bandits who lost their allocation of land in the interior because of their participation in the rebellion of Li Hongji, Zhang Bingzhong, etc. can go to the west to own their own land.
Many people know that what really attracted these people to the West was not the land, but the gold.
The reason why there are so many people leaving the mainland has a lot to do with the gold in the west.
The news of gold was brought back by the soldiers who returned to the mainland. During the battle and march, they discovered a large number of gold mines when passing through many no-man's lands, and they also brought back many overnight riches. legend.
After these former bandits and thieves arrived in the northwest, they quickly occupied all the places where they could see benefits... and quickly regrouped into countless groups of thieves.
They robbed, killed, and ran rampant in the northwest. Some of the bandit leaders had already lived a life comparable to that of a prince... At this time, the army came again...< /p>
Every time, the army will accurately find the richest bandits, find the most powerful bandits, kill the leader of the bandits, steal the wealth gathered by the bandits, and then leave behind the poor little bandits. They continued to populate the west.
After doing this three times in a row, the thieves no longer gathered into large groups of robbers, but continued to survive on this land in a sporadic way. They paid taxes, they farmed, they They herd cattle, pan for gold, and occasionally do small things like robbery and murder.
Generally speaking, they have become a lot more docile. There are no more people who are willing to really raise their heads and be the boss. These people have changed from thieves who can run rampant in the world to ruffians.
Even these people didn't notice this.
The sky was getting dark, and Zhang Jianliang was still squatting next to the corpse, smoking. The surroundings were dark, and only his cigarette butt flickered in the dark night, like a will-o'-the-wisp.