My God, I am the emperor, the lord of mankind.

Chapter 60 Jin Yiwei will be at your door soon
You know, this place is only more than a hundred miles away from the capital.

What kind of monster is so bold and dares to eat people here?

Qiu Luan drew his sword and was about to lead the Jinyi guards to charge forward when he was stopped by Zhu Houcong.

Looking up, he saw a flash of sadness in the emperor's eyes.

"The others are resting here for the time being! Qiu Luan, come with me to go inside and take a look!"

Zhu Houcong got off and took Qiu Luan into the refugee camp in front of him, which looked like a market.

Unlike Dingxin County, where most refugees speak with southern accents.

Most of the refugees here are northerners, and there are even Mongols, Semu people, Jurchens, etc. mixed in among them.

Although the rule of the Ming Dynasty seems to be shaky, compared to the four directions, it has completely given up on the barbarians who care about offering blood food to the evil gods.

Even the glorious Mongol Empire in the past has now begun to use human beings to sacrifice the gods of immortality whose appetite is growing.

Not to mention the Jurchens, North Korea, Khorasan and other small countries.

For those people at the bottom who can't survive at all.

Going to Ming Dynasty often becomes the only way out.

Small sheds were built with trees on both sides, and vendors were selling in them. However, the products they sold were human corpses and living people with empty eyes.

I saw Zhu Houcong and Qiu Luan traveling in brocade clothes.

In the woods, Qiu Luan changed out of his Feiyu suit and into civilian clothes.

The surrounding vendors immediately greeted Zhu Houcong and others who obviously had more purchasing power than the victims.

Looking at the vendors selling meat in front of me, and the ordinary people beside me who were being sold as goods, their eyes were numb and empty, standing in front of the butcher shop waiting for customers to choose for sale.

Most of them were women and children.

Qiu Luan next to Zhu Houcong was shocked.

"It's really abominable. Since the founding of the country by Taizu, slaves were not allowed. I didn't expect that a hundred years later, people would still be traded in the Ming Dynasty!"

In the fifth year of Hongwu's reign (1372), Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang personally issued an order to release those who had become slaves due to war, and announced that the Ming court would permanently ban slaves. If anyone is found to raise slaves without authorization, the slave owner will be required to use a hundred rods, and the slaves will be freed. , and wrote this article into the Ming Law, and no modification is allowed.

It is a pity that once Zhu Yuanzhang died, this order to transform slaves into good men, together with the Ming laws he formulated, became a tool for the powerful to seek personal gain for themselves, and they could be interpreted and modified at will.

As a result, by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, slavery became popular again.

They also euphemistically call him "adopted son" and "housekeeper".

Qiu Luan whispered.

Zhu Houcong on the side shook his head gently, signaling him to calm down.

They were different from the group of refugees Zhu Houcong had just met in Dingxin County.

Most of the refugees from the north in front of me were young and middle-aged.

Zhu Houcong watched with his own eyes a woman in her twenties walked into the butcher shop with tears in her eyes, exchanged money from the butcher shop owner with a sinister face, and gave it to the man holding his child outside.

Then he disappeared into the butcher shop again, leaving only the man lingering outside the door, crying silently, and the crying child in his arms.

Zhu Houcong came to the two of them.

The man holding the child has an elegant face. He was obviously a scholar from a scholarly family preparing for the imperial examination before becoming a refugee.

"This brother!"

The scholar holding the child turned around in confusion when he heard Zhu Houcong's words.

Zhu Houcong took out a treasure banknote of the same denomination from his arms and handed it to the scholar.

Zhu Houcong claimed to be a student participating in the imperial examination that was postponed due to the sudden death of Emperor Zhengde this year, and Qiu Luan was his student.

Passing by here, I saw people hawking goods on the street. I felt horrified, so I asked the scholar about the situation. "My name is Ye Dan, a native of Taohe, Ningxia. Since the tenth year of Zhengde, there has been a severe drought in the northwest. Government and businessmen have colluded to strictly guard the treasury and drive up food prices. As a result, wealthy families have gone bankrupt and people have fled..."

The scholar held the child in his arms and preached slowly with a sad voice.

A story unfolds in front of Zhu Houcong, in which corrupt officials and unscrupulous wealthy businessmen took advantage of natural disasters to turn people into slaves and public land into private land, resulting in the ruin of the guard house and the bankruptcy and exile of the originally prosperous family.

"Three years ago, I was still studying in Ningxia Health University, preparing to take part in this year's scientific examination. Who would have thought... alas..."

Looking at the candidates in front of him who claimed to be going to Beijing to take the exam, Ye Dan's eyes flashed with envy.

"She was my concubine who just entered the butcher shop. She voluntarily sold herself to get money to help my wife and I go to South Zhili to join our relatives and friends..."

At this point, the man was filled with grief again.

Zhu Houcong was noncommittal.

Concubines are slaves, and life and death are in the hands of the male master.

Even if she doesn't want to, what can she do?
"How much did it cost——"

"The price of a pound is fifteen cents, and the profit is 450 cents."

Less than half the money.

When Zhu Houcong saw the man finished speaking, he turned around to leave with the child in his arms. Seeing this, Qiu Luan wanted to stop the man and say something, but was stopped by Zhu Houcong.

"What do you want to order? We have some excellent fresh meat wontons——"

The butcher shop owner saw Zhu Houcong coming in and greeted him warmly.

"How is business lately?"

"Look at what you said. There are droughts in the north and floods in the south. There are chieftains in the southwest, pirates in the east, and Tatars in the north. It can be said that there are constant natural and man-made disasters. How can business be bad?"

"It's all here?"

"It's all over the world, of course there's a meat market wherever you can find it!"

As he said that, the boss, who looked like a mountain of meat in front of him, looked Zhu Houcong up and down, with a bit of vigilance in his eyes.

"If the customer doesn't want to buy meat, please leave. I still have business to do here."

"I just want to do a big deal with you."

Zhu Houcong said, and asked Qiu Luan next to him to take out a thick stack of treasure notes from his arms.

At a glance, it turned out to be hundreds of taels. Seeing such a huge amount of money, the butcher shop owner's eyes immediately lit up.

He swallowed and looked at Zhu Houcong in front of him, with a somewhat flattering look on his face unconsciously.

After hearing that Zhu Houcong actually asked him to redeem the lives of all the people in the market who were forced to sell themselves.

He shook his head.

"Why, you don't want to?"

Zhu Houcong asked with some surprise, why did he shake his head when the butcher shop owner had no harm at all?

"If our guest has such a kind heart, he will surely become a Bodhisattva after his death. Although I, the Butcher Han, are a rough man, I also understand the right and wrong in the world. I am just forced to do this because of life! This kind of accumulation of negative virtues for future generations How can you refuse the matter? It’s just that the young master has good intentions, but I’m afraid it’s not entirely a good thing for these people?”

Indeed, these meat people were sold here by their husbands, brothers, and parents.

Moreover, they were homeless before, and there is no telling whether they will be taken in by their families again after they return, whether they can find their own family members, or whether their family members are still alive.

Even if he is redeemed by Zhu Houcong, how will he live in the future?
"You don't need to worry about the rest of the matter. Everyone has his own destiny, and God has his own arrangements."

Zhu Houcong put down a pile of treasure notes under his counter and walked away as he spoke.

There is really no need to worry, after all, Jin Yiwei will be at your door soon.

(End of this chapter)