The scorching sun hung in the sky. The land of the Third Jin had not seen rain for a long time. The cracks on the ground were like a spider web, densely packed and extending everywhere.
A gust of hot wind blew past, and the yellow soil on the official road flew up.
When the dust settled, a few small black dots appeared in his field of vision. As he walked closer, he could see that it was a family of five carrying luggage.
They were the refugees.
Behind them, groups of disaster victims could be seen at regular intervals. They walked slowly on the ground. It had been a long time since they had eaten, and they had no strength left. They could only follow the people in front of them numbly.
From time to time, there would be people falling down in the long and loose line, and the people behind would just walk past numbly. No one had the energy to care about these victims who had fainted or starved to death.
In a year of great calamity, the number of people dying was increasing every day.
At this moment, the sound of horse hooves could be heard. The disaster victims who were walking in front looked up and looked at the carriages coming from the opposite side in shock.
This was a caravan carrying carts of grain to the land of the Three Jin to make a fortune.
Disaster-related wealth had always been despised by people. Once the Imperial Court pursued it, it would also be a capital crime. However, in the face of benefits, there were always people who were willing to take risks.
Once he succeeded, it was likely to be worth a lifetime of hard work.
However, some money was not that easy to earn.
The carriages carrying food were soon targeted by the starving disaster victims.
After driving for a few kilometers, a disaster victim finally couldn't help but jump onto a carriage.
Following that, more people swarmed forward like a pack of wolves that had been hungry for a few days. They quickly robbed the few carts of food.
The people who escorted the caravan were either beaten away, killed, or knocked unconscious. The merchants who escaped were heartbroken and fainted on the scorching ground.
In Taiyuan and other counties, disaster relief had already begun.
However, the Darming Dynasty had taken over the world from the Yuan Dynasty, and its foundation was relatively weak. Even the imperial court did not have much money at the beginning of the founding of the country, and the common people did not have any food.
They had been recuperating all these years, but there were internal and external problems. There were also many wars, and the people did not have much surplus food.
This year, there was a great drought and no harvest.
The common people either sold their children or sold their land, living a difficult life.
Although some people had sold their children or their land, they could still hold on. However, the people at the bottom had already gone bankrupt.
Some people began to beg, while others were reluctant to sell their land. They dragged their families to other areas to find a way out. After the disaster was over, they would bring their wives and children back home and start farming again.
There were more than three million people in Sanjin. More and more people were displaced and became disaster victims.
From a few thousand people at the beginning, it quickly expanded to tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands.
In this farming era, hundreds of thousands of people opened their mouths to eat every day, but they could not produce any value. For the land of the Three Jin, it was an incomparably huge burden.
The food that the imperial court had mobilized was sent over in wagons, but it was not enough to fill the hundreds of thousands of disaster victims.
Moreover, the disaster was still spreading. If it could not be controlled, it might even continue until winter.
At that time, the number of disaster victims could even reach a million!
This was a very terrifying thing, because once it was not controlled well, it was very likely to trigger an uprising or rebellion.
The common people were very simple and honest. They did not have high expectations. They only wanted to eat their fill. However, if they did not eat for a long time, the people around them would die one after another. They would have no way out.
The food that the imperial court had mobilized had been exploited many times, and in the end, less than half of it was used for disaster relief.
The land of the Third Jin could no longer bear the huge number of disaster victims.
Those who weren't willing to wait for death took their families and spread out, becoming refugees.
Most of them headed east and headed straight for Qi Land. In their impression, Qi Land had countless fertile fields and was rich in food. If they went there, they should be able to eat their fill.
The imperial court kept mobilizing food and sending it to Jin, and Jin kept sending back news of the expansion of the disaster and the increasing number of deaths. They continued to ask for money and food.
In the land of the Third Jin, millions of people were like a bottomless pit, wanting to empty the Ming family's assets.
At the same time, the price of grain soared. With the Three Jin as the center, the closer one was to Jin, the higher the price of grain. Not all merchants dared to sell grain in Jin.
It was not that they did not love money, nor was it that they were afraid of being killed by the imperial court. In the face of huge benefits, some risks were worth taking. However, there were too many refugees in the land of the Three Jin. It was unknown whether their food could be sold in the market.
It was very likely that the food would have been robbed before they reached their destination. Even the caravan escorting the food might have been killed by the disaster victims.
In the face of life and death, any law, shame, morality, and all restraints would no longer exist. Survival was the most important thing.
In order to survive, some of the disaster victims even exchanged their children for food. The scene was extremely tragic!
In the court, Zhu Yuanzhang flew into a rage and reprimanded the six departments for embezzling grain and fodder.
Anyone involved in this matter would be killed without mercy!
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。