Zhou Hong was pushing a wheelbarrow, and lying on the wheel was his mother. She was holding her three-year-old son in her arms, followed closely by his mother-in-law, who was holding her seven-year-old son.

The family stumbled forward in the darkness.

Zhou Hong, who was wearing only a single piece of clothing, was immersed in pushing the cart. The tattered jacket he was wearing was now cushioning the wheelbarrow to make his mother lie more comfortable. The only piece of raincoat was also covering his grandfather and grandson.

There is a fine drizzle floating in the sky, and it falls on people. If you are not careful, you will catch cold, and you will definitely become seriously ill afterwards.

The elderly and children absolutely cannot bear such torture. If they really get into trouble, they will be dead.

From time to time, people passed by them and ran forward.

These are the people who are running away.

To be precise, I was running towards Bozhou.

They were all common people from Song County under the East and West Road of Beijing, but now Song County and other places have become the territory of King Zhao.

If there was still a little chance of survival, who would run away on such a cold rainy night?

If the local officials or the troops stationed there find out, the consequences will be disastrous.

But compared to the risk of being caught and caught, running seems to have a brighter future.

The original life was not like this.

The Zhou family can be considered a well-off family.

In addition to having dozens of acres of land at home, Zhou Hong also has some skills as a bamboo craftsman. After returning from working in the fields every day, he would sit in his small courtyard and weave some dustpans, hall nests, dustpans, etc.

Various utensils were made, and then my wife took them to the market to sell.

The guest is also a capable person. In addition to helping him with work, he is also good at tea and rice, especially good at making some snacks. Most of the small fish caught from the river are fed to chickens and ducks by other families.

The guest at home took a different approach, washing these small fish and shrimps and grinding them into foam, then adding some various ingredients that he couldn't figure out, and after sealing for a while, it became a delicious fish sauce.

The small fish are caught in the river ditch, and most of the leftover ingredients are picked from the fields. These things, which seem to be completely incompatible, are mixed together, but they become the best things to eat.

Whenever the dishes are in season, this fish sauce becomes a good side dish.

If you can't finish the food at home, you take it to food collectors and sell it, and you get a lot of harvest in a year.

His family is an enviable family locally.

Others will be happy if they can make a living and have no debts after a year.

His family always has extra money every year.

Zhou Hong had even made preparations for his son to go to the Enlightenment School.

I don’t expect my son to be able to pass the exams and gain fame or anything like that. As long as he can read and write, he can go to the city to find a place to work. It will be much better than asking for food in the fields.

The longing for the future and the yearning for a better life collapsed last year.

Zhou Hong didn't know what happened, but he knew that people from the Liao Kingdom came and fought all the way to the place where the emperor lived, and captured the emperor and many nobles.

Zhou Hong actually didn't feel anything when these people were captured.

The Liao people did not come to them. Although they were a little afraid of the Liao people who were said to be extremely vicious by those who escaped, they actually did not have much personal experience.

I just feel a little lucky.

The officials in charge of them have not changed, they are still the same, but they are still obeying the orders of King Zhao.

In the past, people always talked about officials and His Majesty the Emperor.

Oh, the emperor was captured.

This King of Zhao is said to have been granted the title by the emperor of Liao.

Originally, all this had nothing to do with Zhou Hong and the others.

Whoever comes here, don’t they, the common people, have to cultivate land and pay for food? Whoever comes here, they have to pay taxes and do corvee work!

But what happened next made Zhou Hong begin to gnash his teeth and hate him.

Taxes suddenly became heavier. All kinds of taxes, together, were several times more than before. His family still had some savings and could barely cope with it, but the surrounding neighbors couldn't pay the taxes.

, he was captured, put in the shackles and put in public display, and then he was taken to build the city and build roads.

In less than a year, Zhou Hong's family was completely squeezed, and even food became a problem at home.

There is no more food.

All the food in the family was first required to be paid, then it became a forced requisition, and finally it became an open robbery.

Moreover, the people who were captured and sent to work as corvees to build cities and roads have not returned yet.

I heard that people will be drafted into corvee service next time.

Earlier, there was only one adult male in Zhou Hong's family, so the corvee had not yet been imposed on him. However, I heard from a friend who worked as a yamen servant in the city that the corvee that was about to be imposed would not care about this.

Zhou Hong was afraid.

He is the breadwinner of the family, with an old mother on top and a young child on the bottom. If he were to be sent to do corvee labor, the whole family would be ruined.

run!

Run to Bozhou next door.

The place is not under the control of King Zhao, and the people there are said to have a bad relationship with King Zhao and often fight.

The key is that Haozhou is still the territory of the Song Dynasty!

It’s better not to know. I used to always criticize the court and the government. Now that the original court and government are gone, and new ones have come, I realize that the original one is better.

Zhou Hong pushed the wheelbarrow, put his mother and child on the wheel, took his wife and son, and started his escape.

And along the way, he discovered that there were so many people fleeing.

The closer we got to Bozhou, the more people fled.

Zhou Hong was more thoughtful. On this stormy night, when most people were looking for a place to take shelter from the wind and rain, he decided to run away quickly.

If there are too many people, someone will definitely take care of it.

The government will not just watch them escape.

They are the ones who have to pay grain, pay taxes, build roads, and build cities. If they run away, who will the government find to do these things?

He was extremely tired, his legs were weak, and the single clothes on his body had long been soaked, but he did not dare to stop.

There was a bright light in front of me. It was an angry wind lantern that was lit in mid-air, swinging back and forth in the wind.

And there is more than one lamp, there is such a lamp every hundreds of steps.

This made Zhou Hong, who was struggling desperately in the miserable wind and rain, feel full of strength in an instant.

Almost there,

That is his destination.

That was the sentry tower of the Song Army.

There was wind under his feet, and Zhou Hong moved forward desperately.

More people rushed past him.

A buzzer flew up into the air with a sharp whistle, and shouts of rebuke came from the front.

Immediately, piles of fires were ignited, illuminating an area of ​​more than a hundred steps.

"Stop!" The neat and powerful shouts made these running people stop involuntarily.

Immediately, they saw, from the darkness, groups of fully armed soldiers slowly pressing forward with their spears pointed out, and behind these spearmen, there were rows of crossbows holding up crossbows.

soldiers.

"Shangqiu, we escaped from Song County, we are ordinary people!" A man waved his arms and shouted loudly.

"Everyone get down, get down!" On the opposite side, without letting down their guard because of their shouts, a man who looked like an officer came out, pressing his hand on the handle of the knife, and shouted sternly.

Everyone lay down on the ground, even Zhou Hong was no exception. He picked up his mother from the wheelbarrow and sat on the ground. He, his mother-in-law, and his seven-year-old son lay on the ground obediently.

The three-year-old son, held in the arms of Madam Zhou Hong, still stuck his head out a little restlessly, looking around.

The soldiers rushed over and started searching.

Zhou Hong suddenly felt his heart sinking. He still had two coins on the wheelbarrow. These were all his belongings. They had been buried in the backyard so that they were not taken away by the Zhao soldiers. Now he was afraid that he would no longer be able to keep them.

.

A soldier came over, touched Zhou Hong's body first, then looked at the woman beside him, frowned, ignored her, stood up and turned over the wheelbarrow again.

With a clanking sound, the bag containing the copper coins fell to the ground. The soldier bent down, picked it up, and opened the bag.

Zhou Hong closed his eyes sadly.

But the next moment, he heard the ding sound again, opened his eyes, and saw the soldier throwing the copper coins into the wheelbarrow again.

"Get up and go forward!" the soldier said to Zhou Hong: "More than ten miles further, there will be someone to take you in. When you get there, you will have food to eat and hot water to drink!"

Zhou Hong glanced at the soldier in disbelief, but the soldier walked forward and searched for other people.

At dawn, Zhou Hong finally arrived at the camp where the soldier said he would take them.
To be continued...