Once upon a time, a group of people migrated to their "Promised Land."
There is a small river called the Zhizhi River, which nourishes the shoals downstream, making it very suitable for farming.
The group decided to settle down here, forming a small village. Due to its unique natural environment, the village is quite rich.
However, over time, a small number of people in the village began to think carefully.
They prepared for a long time, took the villagers' weapons in advance, and came upstream along the Zhizhi River, built a dam to divert the flow, and cut off the water source of the villagers downstream.
Once the water stops, life is difficult to continue.
Just when the villagers downstream were still overwhelmed, the upstream people sent a letter, which probably meant that it was okay to reopen the floodgates and release water, but you should hand over half of the grain you will grow later to us.
The villagers were naturally furious and spontaneously organized to resist. However, the other side had prepared earlier, built the fortress in advance, and their weapons were rich, and the villagers suffered extremely heavy casualties after several unsuccessful attacks.
At this moment, someone in the village suddenly said: Just give them a good one, and it is better to pay grain than to starve everyone to death, right?
It has been a hundred years since travelers came to this village surrounded by mountains and rivers.
He found that the products here were very rich, but the villagers had no surplus food.
After asking, I found that most of the grain planted by everyone had to be paid to the grandfathers in the upstream fortress, just like that, the grandfathers would not immediately release water, and their water release must be after everyone paid enough grain before it was opened in stages, and at that time, everyone had to kneel by the Zhizhi River to thank the grandfathers for their gifts.
The traveler did not understand the strange custom of the village, but he heard some people in the village say, "This custom has been like this since ancient times, and it has been passed down in this place for thousands of years." ”
The traveler reached upstream, and his grandfathers received him.
The grandfathers admired the traveler's erudition and insight, and wanted to invite him to the fort to improve various works outside the city, such as dams and trenches.
But they were all rejected by the travelers.
The travelers carefully inspected the upstream garrison and found that their weapons were indeed much more advanced than those of the villagers, but this was not enough to completely crush the villagers, the number of villagers had an absolute advantage, and the grandfathers still relied on the strong defense of the fortress itself.
So, the traveler who returned to the village told the villagers what he saw and some of his thoughts.
He found that the villagers in the village were roughly divided into three factions.
The first faction of resistance has a strong sense of confrontation, because every time the grandfathers come to collect rent, they wear white silk clothes that represent purity and impurity, so they call the grandfathers "white bandits" behind their backs;
Most of the second faction of the coordinator is to help the grandfathers coordinate the rent, and the grandfathers are not willing to do the work of persuading people to pay the grain themselves, so everything is handed over to the villagers of the coordination faction, who will persuade the villagers to pay the grain in time, otherwise the grandfathers will be angry, and everyone will have no good fruit to eat.
The Coordinators worshiped the grandfathers upstream, but did not dare to wear white silk clothes across the border, so they only wrapped a white ribbon around their arms to distinguish them from other ordinary villagers.
The last faction is ordinary villagers, they heard that the grandfathers want to increase the rent to 75%, so they have some rebellious thoughts, but they also want to live a stable life, thinking that as long as the grandfather does not push too fast, back to the original 70% rent, they can also get by.
The travelers themselves joined the rebels and gradually began to guide the rebels against them.
The rebels mobilized to woo the villagers, exhort, or isolate members of the coordinating faction.
On the occasion of an autumn harvest, the leaders of all the villagers collectively refused to pay grain.
At this time, the grandfathers had already received the news, and while they asked the villagers of the coordination faction to spread the news that the grandfathers had "executed the temporary workers who proposed rent increases", they asked the villagers not to listen to the rumors of outsiders, and everyone would die if there was no water.
However, the travelers were experienced in fighting, and he had the villagers rely on each other to centrally manage the distribution of food, and isolated those in the coordinating faction who tried to provoke internal infighting, and eventually finally reached the fortress to cut off food.
As the gates of the fortress opened, the battle that followed was something that the travelers did not want to mention until later—the young men with ideals died one by one under the blades, their vibrant bodies trampled like dirty dirt, fiery blood spurting out, and the red rivers boiling.
Watching their comrades die one by one, the traveler's hatred for the white bandits became more and more intense.
In the end, in the face of the people's vast ocean, except for a few fish that escaped to the deep mountains, the white bandits were almost completely wiped out.
The rebels were killed and wounded, and the travelers wanted to lead the villagers to continue the pursuit, but by this time the villagers had rushed into the fortress, and they were constantly fighting for the food that should belong to them, and no one paid any attention to the travelers...
The traveler left the village because it had been renewed.
He began his own journey again, and some villages accepted him, and some villages did not welcome him, so he stopped and went for another forty or fifty years.
Now, he was back in the Zhizhi River once again, and he wanted to see what kind of fruit had been borne in the place where he had buried his comrades.
However, he was greeted not by flowers and applause, but by a sharp arrow flying from the shadows.
The sharp arrow went straight into his chest, and it seemed that there was indeed someone here who remembered him.
The traveler collapsed by the river, his body slowly getting colder.
The young villagers looked at the strange face from a distance, and from time to time let out a few sneers of the newborn calves without fear of the tiger.
Finally, a faltering figure came out of the crowd, and he trembled and came to the dying traveler under the arch of the crowd.
"It's me, comrade." The old man picked up the traveler, the old tears flowed, and his eyes were full of the past.
The traveler finally remembered that the old man was the only remaining rebel villager, his only comrade-in-arms.
"Why is this comrade?"
"We failed, we failed completely, the white bandits stepped on our heads again, we..."
The traveler did not hear the last words again, and his body had cooled down.
On the occasion of his final death, he saw the white ribbon on the arms of his comrades-in-arms, and saw his own blood flowing into the familiar river, and the blood flowed into the river and quickly disappeared...
"Their blood is in vain." Before he died, he thought so.
Bandits and The People
-Ends-