In Yan'an Prefecture, near the almost dry Xichuan water, a middle-aged man stood with his hands behind his back. Although his clothes were stained with dust, his face was rosy and his body was solid, which was incompatible with the bleak and desolate surroundings.

"Master Ma..." The man squatted down, grabbed a piece of yellow earth on the bank of the river, and stared at it carefully. The two followers on the left and right, who were arched and held sticks on their backs were unknown, and whispered, "Dirty soil, don't stain your clothes."

The man ignored them and thought for a moment, then threw the soil and stood up, sighing: "You two don't know that although I was an official in the court and had a peaceful and elegant dress, I came from here. My ancestors and father dealt with this thing all his life and offered me an imperial examination. I was lucky enough to be able to abandon farming and become an official. If I despise this land, I would not have become a person who forgot my ancestors?"

The two followers looked at each other, and were speechless. They were assigned by the mansion and kept protecting this master named Ma Maocai. But this master was different from the other officials. He did not sit in the Mingtang. He had been visiting the towns and towns of the mansion for several days. They were confused and did not dare to talk too much, because according to the clerks in the mansion, although Ma was not a high official, this time he came out, he was in charge of the current emperor's personal order, and was a person who could reach the heaven's hearing and could never afford to offend him.

Knowing the pros and cons of this, the two of them were diligent and hardworking, and never slackening.

Their caution was not wrong, because this Ma Maocai was indeed one of the several "army and pedestrians" who were specially sent by the emperor to patrol the place.

Last year, Emperor Tianqi of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youxiao died, and his half-brother Zhu Youjian was ordered to take office. At the end of that year, he defeated the eunuch party that had been in chaos, successfully stabilized the internal situation and changed the year name to "Chongzhen" at the beginning of this year.

When the new emperor was first established, he was expelled from the eunuchs, and his business was full of energy and his internal energy gradually stabilized, so he naturally turned his attention to the outside. At that time, there were two major hidden dangers outside the Ming court. First, he repeatedly invaded the border and looked at the Later Jin outside; second, he poisoned the natural disasters and chaos in Shaanxi. Among these two, the inner and outer Jin was the outer, and Shaanxi affairs were the inner.

To fight against foreign countries, we must first stabilize the country and govern the country. At the beginning of Chongzhen's administration, the disaster situation in Shaanxi was listed as the primary focus, and therefore some people, including Ma Maocai, were sent as envoys to perform their eyes and ears and ears, and to investigate the disaster situation in the local area.

Ma Maocai went out to study in his early years. He had not returned home for many years since he passed the Jinshi in the fifth year of Tianqi. He was from Ansai Prefecture. In his memory, although the Xichuan water that stretches across Ansai County was not large, it flowed all year round, deep and knee-length. When he was young, he played in the river water a lot. But now, if he hadn't seen the almost cracked Xichuan Riverbed, he wouldn't believe that the river that raised him would have grown up to be like this today.

The natural disaster in Shaanxi has begun since the Tianqi period. This year, the drought is abusing, and the plants and trees wither. Walking along the road from the Qingjian, where you see it, you will be in the naked land for thousands of miles and nine out of ten rivers withered. However, the blessings are unparalleled, and the drought is not over. The locust plague and plague are coming one after another. People have no food and are sick, starving and dying, and are full of poison.

Ma Maocai made a special trip back to his hometown to take a look. Because he had his own relationship, his family and several close relatives were still alive. However, more people had to dig grassroots because they were desperate, picking white stones for food, and selling their children and wives for some food. What made him even more terrified was that he heard that some places even "people eat each other".

This is no longer the world, but the Avici Hell!

Ma Maocai ended his investigation of the disaster in Shaanxi in May, and recorded in detail what he saw and heard in "The Commentary on the Great Hunger of Chen" and submitted a report to Emperor Chongzhen.

Among them, there are not only the miserable descriptions of "the people compete to collect grass in the mountains to eat, but their grains are like bran, and their taste is bitter and astringent, and they can only be sustained to death." "The most pity is, for example, there is a manure field in the west of Ansai City, and two or three babies will be abandoned every morning. Some cry, some call, some call, some call, some call, some eat their dirt" and other words, and there are also words such as "The people are unwilling to eat stones and the dead are gathered as thieves, and the people who have accumulated a little storage are robbed and plundered. Some officials cannot prohibit the treatment. Some people who have gained something are also calm and fearful, and they say: Die from hunger and die from thieves. If they sit and die from hunger, why do they still die from thieves?"

Artificial theft.

Perhaps at this time, the court level was just a few hungry people. But they could not imagine that in one year, three years or even ten or twenty years, these hungry people would join deserters, miners and even White Lotus scholars from all over the country, making the spark of resistance to the court eventually a prairie fire!

And this day came soon.
Chapter completed!