Forced to be a concubine, I went to my husband's place to become a wealthy merchant

Chapter 354

She wore a veil and walked on the street accompanied by Yan Wu and his party.

She went to the porridge stall she used to go to and found that there were even fewer people queuing, which made her very confused.

She found a shady place to sit and kept staring at the situation at the porridge stall.

When she saw a young man holding a bowl and waiting to get the porridge, she was surprised when the person who was serving the porridge asked him to show the fingers of his right hand.

The young man seemed to hesitate for a moment, and hesitated for a long time without showing the fingers of his right hand.

The man making porridge was a little impatient and glanced at the soldier standing guard next to him.

The soldier immediately stepped forward and started to pull the young man's right hand apart. Ye Xi then saw that the thumb and half of the finger on the young man's right hand were all black. [1]

Ye Xi was curious, wondering if the man was injured, but it didn't look like that.

The soldier saw the black finger and shouted:

"People who have registered for food distribution are not allowed to take porridge here. If they do it again, their registration for food distribution will be cancelled and they will be punished with ten strokes of the cane."

Hearing this, the young man begged for mercy, saying that he was just very hungry and promised not to do it again.

The soldiers seemed to want to make an example of him, so they dragged the young man away and started executing him in front of everyone.

During the execution, Ye Xi noticed that several people in the team secretly left one after another.

Ye Xi asked Jin Ling to find someone to find out what was going on. Jin Ling was an experienced person who had traveled all over the country, so it would be easy for her to find out this little thing.

After a while, Jin Ling came back and brought back the answer that Ye Xi wanted to know.

It turned out that three days ago, people from the government office began to publicize in the porridge stalls, requiring all the people in Huzhou City to return home immediately, and then started to register house by house.

The number of people in each household was registered, and after confirmation, an unknown medicine was applied on the thumb of each person's right hand.

Once the medicine gets on the skin, it slowly turns black and cannot be removed no matter how you wash or rub it.

The government explained that the juice was harmless to humans, but the color would remain on the body temporarily for about ten days, so people didn’t need to worry.

During this period, no one had to go to the porridge stall to get porridge every day.

Let them wait at home at a fixed time every day. After the responsible soldier comes to count the number of people, each household can send a woman or child to collect food.

As a result, the only people queuing in the porridge stall were refugees from outside.

Most of these people came here from the surrounding small towns, thinking that the prefect here could provide them with some food.

Ye Xi didn't understand why women or children had to be specified to collect food. What if there was no such person in the family?

Jin Ling knew the answer to this question. If there were no women or children, an older man would lead the group.

If they don't have any of these, then there will be no food distribution and they will have to come to the porridge shed to get porridge.

Having said this, Jin Ling leaned close to Ye Xi's ear and whispered to her:

"When I was out delivering convoys with my father, I also heard about this kind of disaster relief and grain distribution.

I heard that the amount of food distributed to each person is not much, it can only keep people from being too hungry but not enough to fill them up completely.

In order to have enough food, the young and middle-aged people in some families snatched the food belonging to the women, children or the elderly, causing these people to starve to death even though they had food to eat.

The local government probably fears that this situation will happen again, so they made this rule. "[2]

At this point, Jin Ling added: "I heard that these were all requested by Lord Wei."