Chapter 3 Return to Mengze
Hiding during the day and moving at night, another night of drifting.

When daybreak approached, the boat anchored on the north shore and this time it was not towed ashore.

On the south bank of this place, there is a sizable settlement called Ge Township.

He can buy weapons in Ge Township and has related memories. His original father was engaged in a small business of smuggling weapons.

He bought a ring-handled sword in Gexiang, hid it in a boat, sailed down the Wei River into the Si River, and sold it to people in Xuzhou.

A ring-handled sword could not earn much money, but it could be exchanged for precious Wuzhu coins, which could be used to pay the head tax.

Now that the population of Xuzhou Anding has dropped significantly, the local armed forces have less frequent fighting, and there are no civilian customers, locally manufactured weapons have begun to be sold outside.

There were no laws such as the Sword Hunting Order during Cao Cao's rule, and there were enough weapons in the civilian population, so smuggling always existed.

The year before last, the two states of Yan and Yu simplified the tax collection procedures and implemented the household adjustment system, exempting the head tax and collecting two pieces of silk and two catties of cotton from each household. The demand for Wuzhu coins among the people dropped significantly, and the monetary significance of Wuzhu coins declined.

However, Qing and Xu states still had the traditional head tax. Although the value of Wuzhu coins declined in Yan and Yu states, it still served the purpose of paying head tax in Qing and Xu. Therefore, Wuzhu coins flowed from the people to Qing and Xu... Qing and Xu then escorted the collected Wuzhu coins to Xudu.

Black Bear was a little confused about the changes, but he felt that bartering was an economic regression.

The war has caused serious damage to the economy. It seems that Cao Cao has some trouble handling currency and cannot maintain the currency circulation framework. He must have overdrawn too much.

Just barter and do as much work as you receive.

It seems that the process of requisitioning and utilizing materials has been simplified, but it is still not as good as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when people still had currency to use.

Currency is a great invention. Cao Cao's abandonment of currency is definitely a regression. The reason for the regression is either that Cao Cao could not handle it well, or that the people under Cao Cao could not handle it well.

As he was thinking, the sun gradually rose, and the black servants in front of him dissipated and disintegrated.

Hungry and lacking in strength, Black Bear summoned a willow branch and forced the last magical berry into his mouth, while the willow branch in his hand also disintegrated and turned into a new card.

'Mana crystal, can upgrade the land card Taoyuan.'

When the casting medium is destroyed, the mana will precipitate and form crystals, which can be used to upgrade and strengthen the land card.

The information flashed in his mind, and Black Bear threw the new card away casually. Instead of summoning out the crystal, it directly merged into the Earth Card and could never be summoned again. When enough crystals accumulated, the Earth Card would naturally be upgraded and strengthened.

Only after finding a truly safe place can you expend mana to precipitate crystals.

At this moment, mana is combat power and cannot be wasted easily.

As the sky brightened, Black Bear began to paddle with a piece of charred wood as thick as his arm. It was a rafter of a house he found in a ruin.

The houses in the ruins had also been destroyed, and this rafter was dug out by him from the ashes. It was only about four feet long.

The surface was charred and carbonized, and he also polished it slightly to make the paddling part flat, which was convenient for paddling.

The sampan went downstream, and with the speed of paddling, the boat went at a good speed, and we could get home before dark.

The so-called home is something you can only pass through but cannot go back to.

Whether they were reported by strange neighbors or discovered by the military officials, the original family would be in trouble.

Cao Cao was harsh in his military discipline and used military law to rule counties. The worst that could happen was that he would lose his head.

To avoid meeting acquaintances on the river, black bears smear their faces with charcoal powder.

Not long after, a boat was seen downstream slowly coming upstream. A man on the boat was sitting cross-legged at the bow, and two people were sitting face to face at the back, rowing a pair of oars.

The man at the bow painted his face with white powder, and he felt relieved when he saw the black bear painted with black powder. When he got closer, he asked, "How is Ge Xiang?"

"Same as before."

Black Bear had no impression of the other party, so he asked, "How is Monze?"

"Just as before, don't go to Yucheng."

The other party waved his hand and Black Bear also bowed and said goodbye. They were each observing the other's cabin. There were two baskets of big fish in the other's cabin, while he only had a squirming sack.

But no one could tell for sure whether there were swords, spears or javelins hidden, so everyone was a little cautious and tried to distinguish them.

The Huaihe and Sihe Rivers connect the four states of Yan, Yu, Qing and Xu. While the water transport and commerce are prosperous, there are also enough poor people on both sides of the river due to the Huaihe and Sihe floods.

The more than a thousand people that Sun Ce inherited from his father were mainly from Huai and Si. As he attacked Jiangdong, many poor people from Huai and Si fled there as fellow villagers, and many people were killed, which led to the establishment of the current Sun family's foundation in Jiangdong.

However, this little tyrant who made Cao Cao vulnerable was assassinated while he was out hunting the year before last.

Sun Ce’s unexpected death reduced the possibility of the world quickly regaining stability.

With a slight sigh, I couldn't help but think about the feasibility of digging out Sun Ce.

He has been strengthened to the extreme. Even if he cannot recover his memories before his death, as long as he looks similar and is powerful enough, it is enough to keep Sun Quan awake at night.

As we walked further away, the spring rain began to fall.

After passing several villages, Black Bear rowed the boat close to the south bank in the afternoon. After boarding the boat, he could see a shabby little town a mile away in the distance through the sparse rain.

Xiaomeng City, the birthplace of the Nanhua Laoxian Zhuangzi, is also a place for relocating nearby people to develop their farming practices.

There is a very obvious feature of military farming, that is, it is not mainly based on growing wheat, but mainly on growing rice.

The rice yield is guaranteed. Due to the abnormal climate in the past few decades, although wheat planting does not rely much on water, insufficient rainfall will result in reduced yields or even a total crop failure.

The output of military farms that rely on irrigation and water conservancy projects is guaranteed.

The head tax was abolished and replaced by a household tax. One mu of land was required to rent four dou of rice, and there was also twenty days of corvee labor every year... Judging from the policies of the military and civilian settlements under the rule of the Xudu court, they were actually very good and conscientious.

However, this was only a policy formulated by the court in Xudu, which was quite different from the actual collection. In addition, under the wise and powerful command of Cao Gong, the army suffered serious casualties, death from illness, and desertion.

Before, they had killed Marquis Lü Wen and driven away the Left General Liu Yuzhou. Although they had defeated General Yuan the year before last and had planned to launch an expedition to Liu Jingzhou last year, the Han army under Cao Gong was still very tired. After years of fighting, they could only rest for three or four months every year.

No one was very willing to serve as a soldier under the rule of Cao Gong.

In the muddy spring rain, many memories and thoughts of the original body emerged.

One of his elder brothers served in the army in place of his father and died in the Guandu battlefield. In the early stage of the Guandu confrontation, Cao Gong confidently gathered all the troops and fought a decisive battle with the Hebei army. He had no choice but to hold on to the confrontation after the failure of the decisive battle.

Another brother and mother died of the disease. Their faces are blurry and I can't remember their specific appearance.

Originally he was the third child, with two younger siblings; his father remarried a widow, who brought with her a son and two daughters.

The widow's first two husbands also died on the battlefield. There were many such couples in military settlements that were brought together by the government.

The family is temporarily stable until the next younger brother grows up.

The number of deaths now is still not enough. If there were more, considering the original body's father's literacy, he could be recruited as a military farm official.

On one hand, he suppressed the instinctive longing for his family in his original memory, and on the other hand, his longing for several women emerged.

Even though one of the older girls got married to a military settlement next door last year, they still keep in touch.

Putting aside all distracting thoughts, Black Bear turned around and boarded the boat. He picked up the crude charcoal-black oar and rowed towards Mengze, which was twenty or thirty miles away.

Monze can be roughly divided into two areas, north and south. The southern part is slightly higher in terrain and is mainly composed of swamp wetlands. When floods occur, large areas of shallow water will be formed, and small boats can barely navigate at normal times.

To the north is a normal lake, and there are large areas of reed marshes in both the north and south regions.

It was getting dark, and I rowed along my memory to the reed plateau that my family had originally developed and built. It was surrounded by reeds, and the house in the middle had long been burned down, with the earthen walls collapsed.

As I recall, according to what my original father said, this was built here by my grandfather, his three sons and son-in-law during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and it has a history of twenty years.

Now only ruins remain. Even the painstakingly built earthen walls have been knocked down and destroyed by officials who relocated the people of Mengze.

Carrying the charred wooden oars and sharp bamboos, they climbed to the high ground, circled the ruins to find the marked tree stumps, squatted down immediately, and used the sharp bamboos to dig the soil softened by rainwater.

Soon they dug out a long and narrow wooden box. They expanded the excavation area, dug out the entire wooden box, lifted up the slippery wooden boards, and saw three four-foot-long thick bamboo joints sealed with mud inside.

He took out one with both hands, carefully removed the mud seal, and poured the ring-handled knife and the sealed semi-solidified fish oil inside into the pit.

He reached out his hand and grabbed the handle of the ring-handled knife from the slippery grease and lifted it up. A sense of security arose from deep within his heart.

With the ring-handled knife in hand, he immediately summoned his black servants to go cut reeds together, brought bundles of reeds and spread them on the ground, then dragged the wooden boat up, and used relatively long reeds to support the broken wall, barely building a low shelter to protect against rain and wind.

After he got in, he ordered his black servant to grab a ring-handled knife and cut the reeds. He piled the reeds to form an open space and released the three geese in.

Geese have great economic potential...In the entire Little Meng City, he has never seen a goose in his memory!

Not to mention eating goose!

Not to mention this life, even in previous lives, there are many people who have never eaten goose.

The spring rain continued, and when the sky brightened the next day, the dark clouds were still there. Although there was no direct sunlight, the black servants still dissipated very slowly. After a long time, their bodies collapsed and turned into cards.

Instead of continuing to summon, Black Bear took the six mana cards and pondered over the subsequent usage plan.

To upgrade the Black Servant, four mana cards are needed, but after the upgrade, it is still unarmed.

If you want to add equipment to the opponent, you have to use mana to refine the equipment when strengthening it. After equipping, strengthen them together to form a follower card with fixed equipment.

Willow branches have their limits, and so do black servants. I estimate that they can only be strengthened twice at most.

Therefore, next time you strengthen yourself, you must prepare instruments and equipment. Wearing equipment refined with mana can effectively resist the erosion of sunlight.

When strengthening for the last time, be sure to apply enough gold paint to the outer layer so that you can move freely during the day.

A large amount of military equipment is difficult to purchase, and there is no possibility of making it by ourselves now...we can only search near the battlefield.

Whether searching in mountain ruins or salvaging in rivers and ponds, it is feasible.

In today's world, there is no question of personal safety without the use of force.

Without personal safety, how can we talk about personal dignity?

No matter what you want to do in the future, it is best to save up some money quietly to avoid being passive.

Without outsiders, there is no need to worry about food problems for the time being.

Therefore, in the long term, he would have to go to Xia Pi to look for the weapons scattered during the battles over the years; and in the short term, he would have to hide well, restore his health, and accumulate white mana to assimilate the three geese.

It's not about the profit from raising white geese, it's just to enrich the diet and make material reserves.

Another thing is to find a way to obtain some daily utensils and tools, either by making them yourself or buying them in Xiaomengcheng.

If you don’t have money, you can only rob.

We must also prevent it from being robbed, so this first black servant must be strengthened tonight.

There was no armor or helmet, no clothes or shoes, not even a shield.

He simply used white magic to refine the two ring-handled swords and strengthened the black servants into black warriors with swords.

(End of this chapter)