Chapter 2: The First Blood (2)

After coming out of the bank, the bank was closed, and after the middle-aged man got on the door panel, he arched his hand to Zhang Jianliang and left.

He didn't ask Zhang Jianliang again what to do with his gold.

Zhang Jianliang did not leave, and continued to stand in front of the bank, believing that it would not be long before someone would come and ask him about the gold.

Sure enough, in less than a stick of incense, a man wearing a sheepskin jacket in the summer came to his side and whispered, "One or two gold, eleven silver coins." ”

Zhang Jianliang said: "I want thirteen." ”

The man sneered and said, "Eleven is better than being confiscated by the government." ”

Zhang Jianliang said: "You don't look like someone who can exchange my gold. ”

The man spat on the ground and said: "Whether the Northwest man has money or not depends on his clothes, it depends on his ability, if you don't sell it to us, there will be no land to sell, and in the end, the gold is still mine." ”

Zhang Jianliang laughed silently.

"So you're going to rob, have you ever thought about what the consequences of robbing an Imperial soldier are?"

The man smiled: "This is the Great Gobi. ”

Zhang Jianliang looked left and right and said, "Are you going to rob here?" You might not be able to do it alone, right? ”

The man raised his hand to pat Zhang Jianliang's shoulder, but Zhang Jianliang dodged it, and after the shot, the man looked at Zhang Jianliang and said: "A soldier like you has already killed one, I heard that the corpse was thrown on the Gobi, and there was only one shoe left at dawn...... That's miserable, don't leave Jiayuguan if you have the ability. ”

After seeing the man in the sheepskin jacket leave, Zhang Jianliang squatted in place and continued to wait.

After another stick of incense, the man in the sheepskin jacket came back and said to Zhang Jianliang: "The sword master wants to see you." ”

Zhang Jianliang finally smiled, his teeth were very white, and his smile was very bright, but the man in the sheepskin jacket had some heart palpitations inexplicably.

Soon, he knew that something was wrong, because Zhang Jianliang had already grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up alive.

He wanted to scream, but he couldn't shout a word, and then Zhang Jianliang threw him to the ground, he heard the sound of his broken bones, and as soon as his throat became relaxed, he howled like a pig.

Zhang Jianliang's eyes were cold, and he stepped on the other leg of the man in the sheepskin jacket when he raised his foot.

The double sharp pain caused the man in the sheepskin jacket to snort and faint.

Zhang Jianliang took out a body from his backpack and tied it to one of the feet of the man in the sheepskin jacket, and dragged him to the bazaar on the left.

The broken leg was pulled hard by the rope, and the man in the sheepskin jacket woke up again in pain, and he had no time to beg for mercy, and fainted from the severe pain, and in just a hundred or so steps, he had fainted and woken up three times.

Jiayuguan is the land of border stops.

People here are not surprised by this kind of scene.

A month ago, at the bazaar in Jiayuguan, there was a man whose hands and legs were broken, and he was also dragged by a rope through the streets of the bazaar.

Zhang Jianliang dragged the man in the sheepskin jacket and finally came to a stall selling mutton, grabbed the bright meat hook, easily passed through the chin of the man in the sheepskin jacket, and then lifted it hard, and the man in the sheepskin jacket was hung on the mutton stall, and the two skinned fat sheep next to him will fill the hook.

The man in the sheepskin jacket awoke from the pain again, and snorted and grabbed the crossbar to free himself from the hook.

It's a pity that his hands were only raised, and Zhang Jianliang cut off his hands with a thick-backed machete that cut mutton.

Everyone looked at the two hands that fell into the dust, and when they looked at Zhang Jianliang again, it was like looking at a dead person.

The body of the man in the sheepskin jacket was like a fish that had been fished ashore, churning hard, and the blood from the wound was bubbling outward.

Zhang Jianliang wiped the machete on the man in the sheepskin jacket and put it back on the meat case.

He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, and then, like a real butcher selling meat, he squatted on the mutton stall and looked at the crowd of onlookers with a smile, as if waiting for these people to buy meat from him.

There are many people who look at meat, and there is not a single one who buys meat.

Until the fresh meat becomes stale and no one buys it.

The tax officer stood in the crowd, looked at Zhang Jianliang with some regret, turned around and wanted to leave, and finally turned to Zhang Jianliang and said, "Let's go, the sheriff here is not so easy to be." ”

Zhang Jianliang shook his head and smiled: "I'm not here to be a sheriff, I just want to take revenge." ”

The tax collector sighed and said, "I have a horse in my backyard, it's not a good horse, and I don't want to keep it." ”

Zhang Jianliang said with a smile: "You can continue to raise, on the Gobi Desert, no horse is equal to no feet." ”

When the tax official heard Zhang Jianliang live like this, he didn't answer and turned to leave.

In his opinion, this captain officer is actually here to serve as a sheriff.

Today, killing people at the bazaar should be the first thing he did before he became a sheriff.

And this is what every sheriff has to do before he takes office.

The sun is gradually turning westward.

In the afternoon, the wind usually picks up in the northwest, and the bazaar disperses at this time.

The business of selling mutton was disrupted by Zhang Jianliang, and he did not sell a single sheep, which made him feel very unlucky, so he took off his two sheep from the hook and threw them on his shoulder, grabbed his thick-backed machete and left.

Only one man in a sheepskin jacket was left hanging alone from the crossbar.

Since the Ming Dynasty began to implement the "Western Autonomy Regulations", the localities north of Zhangye have implemented residents' self-government, and every settlement of 1,000 people should have a sheriff.

These sheriffs are generally held by retired soldiers, and the military also sees this position as a reward.

The first batch of veterans of the Lantian Dynasty were basically masters who could not read a single word, and it was unrealistic for them to return to the interior to serve as lieutenant governors, after all, among the officials appointed in these two years, reading and writing was the first condition.

The first group of soldiers who followed Yun Zhao's rebellion, except for the ability to kill people, they had no other growth.

After all, these sheriffs are the highest administrators of these places, and they combine administrative and law enforcement powers, which is a good errand.

And those scholars who were sent to serve as officials in the western Gobi Desert could hardly survive here for a year......

If an official dies, this is undoubtedly a rebellion, and the army will come to quell the rebellion, but after the army comes, the people here will immediately become good people again, and when the army is gone, the officials who are re-sent will die for no reason.

Whether it is the eleventh slaughter order, or the massacre on the map, it is not very appropriate here, because, in the past few years, there are many Ming people who have left the war-torn interior and come to the west.

After such a tug-of-war dragged on for a long time, the Lantian Imperial Court suddenly found that the cost of governing the west was too great.

And the officials are not willing to send domestic elites to the west to die.

In the case that the officials could not be in place, only Cangcao was unwilling to give up, and after sending troops to kill rivers of blood, he finally established the consensus on the sanctity of tax officials in the northwest.

The empire, on the other hand, had only a requirement for these places to be taxed.

In order to receive taxes, the tax collectors in these places, as the officials actually appointed by the Empire, only have the power to collect taxes for the Empire.

There is no way to enforce such regulations, and the west is just too big.

It is impossible for the imperial dynasty to let a huge northwest remain in a state of anarchy for a long time, and in this situation, the "Western Autonomy Regulations" naturally appeared, since the people of the northwest are fierce and stubborn, then, in addition to the rule of culture, the only way to govern by force is to go.

To the north of Zhangye, any Ming man who wants to cultivate has the right to go to the west to enclose a piece of land for himself, as long as he cultivates this land for more than three years, this land belongs to this Ming man.

To the north of Zhangye, the mineral deposits found by individuals are owned by individuals.

To the north of Zhangye, the wild men captured by individuals belong to individuals.

To the north of Zhangye, the common people exercised autonomy in a positive sense, except for the requirement to pay taxes.

The people north of Zhangye were all overjoyed when they heard the news, and then the scuffle began, and in just one year, it became a place outside the law.

Just when these mixed-race Western Ming people were cheering for their achievements, they suddenly discovered that there were too many Ming people from the mainland.

And these Ming people seem to be even more vicious than them.

There are two reasons for this result.

Prisoners who have been sentenced to serve more than three years in prison and below death row can leave their prisons and go to the barren west to break through as long as they apply.

Those who have lost the land allocated to the interior because they participated in the rebellion of Li Hongji, Zhang Bingzhong, and other rogues can go to the west to own their own land.

It is clear to many people that what really attracts these people to the west is not the land, but the gold.

The reason why there are so many people leaving the interior has a lot to do with the gold in the west.

The news of the gold was brought back by the soldiers who returned to the interior, and in the course of their march, they found a large amount of gold mines when they passed through many no-man's lands, and also brought back many legends of getting rich overnight.

These former rogues, former thieves, soon after arriving in the northwest, automatically occupied all the places where they could see the benefits...... and soon regrouped into countless bandits.

They robbed, killed, and rampant in the northwest, and some of the bandit leaders had already lived a life comparable to that of princes...... It was at this time that the army came again......

Each time, the army will accurately find the richest thieves, find the most powerful thieves, kill the leaders of the thieves, rob the wealth gathered by the thieves, and then leave the poor and white thieves to continue to thrive in the west.

After doing this three times in a row, the thieves no longer gathered into large bandits, but continued to live in the land in a sporadic way, they paid taxes, they ploughed, they grazed, they also panned for gold, and occasionally did a little robbery, murder.

On the whole, they have become much more docile, and there are no more people who are willing to really carry their heads to be the bosses, and these people have gone from being thieves who can run rampant in the world to ruffians and hooligans.

Even these people didn't find out about this.

The sky gradually darkened, Zhang Jianliang was still squatting next to the corpse and smoking, the surroundings were dark, only his cigarette butts were bright and extinguished in the dark night, like a ghost fire.