Everyone knew that Zheng Qiao had slaughtered entire cities several times to vent his rage.
But some massacres were about more than simply killing people, because there was no profit in that. Why did soldiers go to war? At the end of the day, they were only trying to put food on the table. Apart from a rare few bloodthirsty, depraved monsters who had lost all humanity, almost no one treated killing as entertainment.
Seal off a city and lay siege to it.
The ultimate goal was to plunder its wealth. It was also a "reward" for the soldiers under one's command. Their regular pay was meager, so to make them more loyal and willing to risk their lives in battle, they needed to be "rewarded." Whoever seized money, food, or women got to keep them.
The wealthy households in the city bore the brunt.
Every last one of them. No one could escape.
Next came the city's "middle class."
And last came the commoners, who made up the largest group.
The commoners could hand over their money and live another day, but they weren't fools. How could they possibly hand over their entire life savings so easily? And how could the soldiers believe that such a small amount was all a household had saved over a lifetime?
The more money the commoners hid, the less the soldiers who came to plunder would get. The two sides were locked in an irreconcilable "conflict." At first, some soldiers couldn't bring themselves to do it and were moved by the commoners' pleas. But that only meant watching everyone else strike it rich.
Those soldiers had to make a living. They had hungry children waiting at home and elderly parents who needed their care. Keeping them fed required money and grain. Only by