"Well..." Ma Liang slowly opened his eyes, and his younger brother Ma Su fell asleep lying on the table beside him.
"You Chang?" Ma Liang wanted to get out of bed, but was in pain all over his body. He had no choice but to call Ma Su.
Ma Di woke up when he heard the noise. When he saw Ma Liang waking up, he quickly walked to the bed and said, "Fourth brother, you're awake. How do you feel?"
"By the way, I'm going to get the soup." After saying that, he walked out without waiting for Ma Liang's reply.
"Squeak!" As soon as he opened the door, he met Liu Cong. Behind him, Xu Feng was holding a plate with decoction on it.
"I have met Mr. Liu." Ma Di looked at this scene and hurriedly saluted Liu Cong.
Liu Cong held Ma Su's arm and said, "Youchang, please don't be too polite. Is your brother awake?"
Ma Su said with a bit of joy on his face: "I just woke up and I was about to get the soup."
"The soup over there has just been brewed, and my lord has brought it over." Pang Tong said with a smile, his dark face full of sincerity.
"Thank you Mr. Liu, thank you Mr. Feng Chu, and General Xu." Ma Di said to everyone again.
"Let's not talk about this for now. Let's go see how Ji Chang is doing." Liu Cong walked in the door with a nervous look on his face.
Ma Liang looked at the people coming in and raised his hands with difficulty: "Youchang, but these people saved us?"
Ma Di hurriedly knelt beside the bed and said: "Fourth brother, these are Liu Cong, the son of Jingzhou Mu, Fengchu Pang Tong, and General Xu Feng. Fortunately, I met them on the road, otherwise..."
Ma Liang was shocked every time Ma Su said a name. The general stopped talking. Zhou Mu's son Liu Cong and Feng Chu Pang Tong, both of whom were important, actually let him see them today.
"Excuse me for being injured and unable to salute, Mr. Liu Haihan." Perhaps because of the pain he felt when he woke up, Ma Liang's face looked like gold paper.
Liu Cong also squatted beside the bed and said: "Ji Chang, there is no need to be polite. Take good care of your health first, and then talk about other things."
"Shanrong, medicine." He said and asked Xu Feng behind him for the medicine bowl.
Liu Cong took the medicine bowl and handed it to Ma Su and said, "I won't disturb you two anymore. You Chang, please give your brother the medicine."
After that, he led Pang Tong and others out of the house.
Ma Di fed Ma Liang some medicine, and Ma Liang's face finally turned a little red.
"Youchang, how did you meet Mr. Liu and the others?"
Ma Liang asked weakly while lying on the bed.
Ma Di immediately told him everything that had happened since he met Liu Cong.
"Yong'er is gone?" Ma Liang also expressed sadness when he learned that the scholar had died.
Yong'er is the little book boy. The family's surname is Zhou, and the little book boy's full name is Zhou Yong.
Ma Di also lamented: "Fourth brother, people cannot be resurrected after death, you should heal your injuries first."
Three days later, Ma Liang was able to walk around.
Liu Cong asked Ma Su about the little book boy's hometown, which was in a small village called Zhoujiazhuang outside Yiyang City. Liu Cong originally wanted to return the body of the little book boy Zhou Yong to his parents.
But Ma Liang had to deliver it in person, and he couldn't go to the field for the first three days, so he had to wait until today.
Liu Cong asked Zhang Zhongjing that the body would not start to decay within 15 days, so he waited for Ma Liang to be able to move before setting off.
At dawn, Ma Di helped Ma Liang to the pavilion in the backyard. Liu Cong had already ordered the sergeant to build a coffin for little Zhou Yong.
Ma Liang lay on the coffin and cried bitterly, confessing that he had harmed little Zhou Yong.
After everyone was relieved for a while, Ma Liang stopped crying and asked Liu Cong to help send them to Zhoujiazhuang.
Liu Cong naturally agreed very readily, and Zhang Zhongjing also packed his bags and went to Jiangling with his son Zhang Heng and two grandsons.
Those two little medicine boys were Zhang Zhongjing's grandson and Zhang Heng's son. Zhang Zhongjing said that he would train them from an early age to become good doctors who could help the world and save the people.
Liu Cong sent three hundred knights to escort Zhang Zhongjing to Jiangling. He did not want the medical saint he had just obtained to be taken care of by bandits or Manchus before he could put it to good use.
After bidding farewell to three generations of Zhang's descendants, Liu Cong ordered people to put the coffin containing little Zhou Yong on the carriage. The group went to Zhoujia Village.
Changsha County is located in the south of Jingzhou, with a population of nearly 130,000. The entire Jingzhou area sounds like it has a lot of people, but in fact, in a large county like Changsha County, the population density is not very high.
Before Cao Cao went south, Jingzhou's population was really prosperous! Liu Bei took Xinye and the people along the way and fled south, with more than 100,000 people.
Xinye is just a county town, and on the way to Xiangyang, there is only one big city, Fancheng. By the time we get to Xiangyang, there are nearly 200,000 people following Liu Bei.
From this point of view, most of Jingzhou's population density is concentrated in Xiangyang, and the two major counties of Nanjun and the two cities of Jiangling and Xiangyang, the seat of Nanjun, are the essence of the entire Jingzhou!
Walking on the country road, Liu Cong and others looked at the people working in the fields and felt a sense of pastoral joy.
For the dignitaries, it is pastoral joy; for the common people, it is just a miserable life.
Just like today, rich people go to the countryside to experience life; and what they experience is a life that is difficult for you to have.
Liu Cong only brought fifty horses and asked most of them to stay outside the village. Otherwise, if so many horses came in, they would trample the fields.
But even the fifty riders made the farmers working in the fields panic. There were about 200 people in the fields, many of whom were children who followed the adults to play in the fields.
Seeing Liu Cong and others heading towards the entrance of the village, almost every household called a child over, gave instructions in the child's ear, and then the child ran towards the village.
"Shi Yuan, I can understand that the people will be panicked when they see us, but why are some children just running away?" Liu Cong was a little confused as to why such a scene happened.
Pang Tong was born in a poor family. Although he was not a poor family, he had experienced the life of the lower class and had some understanding of it.
"Lord, these children have gone back to report the news. Inform the women and children staying at home to hide the food and be prepared."
Sitting on the carriage, Ma Liang also stuck his head out and said: "Oh, don't say that the world is in chaos now. Even during the Taiping years, the people also resisted and resisted the government's arrival!"
Liu Cong understood. Although it was not like the Japanese invaders who entered the village in later generations, the principle that the people did not fight against the officials since ancient times was deeply engraved in the bones of the Chinese people.
Most officials in the feudal era did not consider the life and death of the people. Most of them only thought about how to exploit the people reasonably.
Officials will not go to the countryside in person. The collection of grain taxes and money is all done by the officials. When collecting, it is they who have the final say on how much to collect.
This long-term practice has created a sentiment among the people that they are both afraid of and disgusted with officials.
Even in later generations, he wearing a police uniform will have a certain degree of shock to ordinary people.
What's more, in this feudal era, officials would not say pleasantly to the people, "Hello, it's your family's turn to pay taxes."
They will only use the name of the court and the government to show official power that does not match their official position!
Riding his horse to a stop, Liu Cong looked at the farmers working in the fields and at the same time looked at his group of farmers.
"Prosperity means people suffer; death means people suffer." Liu Cong sighed, and became more determined to change all this.
Behind Liu Cong, Pang Tong and others looked at Liu Cong sitting on the horse, looking a little thin. But in their eyes, he was so majestic.
"Prosperity means people suffer; death means people suffer." Brothers Ma Liang and Ma Di savored Liu Cong's words carefully.
After getting along with each other for the past few days, they also realized that Liu Cong was not at all like the uneducated, dandy and perverse person rumored to be.
What Liu Cong did in Jiangxia and Jiangling is already known to the officials in Jingzhou. However, Jingnan is a remote place, and Liu Cong's recent deeds have not been spread among the people.
Ma Liang looked at Liu Cong's worried sigh. It was not artificial at all, but came from the heart!