This was a tried-and-true trick used by great households: taking advantage of natural disasters to lend at usurious interest, control more tenant farmers, and at the same time swallow up the fields of self-farming peasants and minor landlords.
But the great households had never expected to run into an idiot county magistrate like Zhao Yuankai. If you wanted silver, they could scrape together a little more for you—so why did you have to embezzle even that tiny bit of old grain?
Was Zhao Yuankai an idiot?
Of course not!
He simply felt that even if he did not relieve the disaster victims outside the city, nothing would go wrong.
They were only a few thousand disaster victims. Let them starve for a few days, and once they realized there was nothing to eat around the county seat, they should scatter.
In his view, driving these disaster victims away was far less troublesome than providing relief for them.
Relieving disaster victims might draw even more disaster victims over, and it might also make the disaster victims keep gathering not far outside the city instead of dispersing.
But if he did not provide relief, then in a few days these disaster victims would either starve to death or go elsewhere to ask for food, and then there would be nothing more to do on his side.
Yet Zhao Yuankai never, ever expected that these disaster victims would be so wildly audacious as to charge the county seat.
Seeing more and more disaster victims jump into the county office, Zhao Yuankai shouted in panic, "Lord Chen, Lord Chen, quickly, kill these rioters!"
Chen Tong was the county deputy of Dachang County. He was broad and burly, with a fierce face, looking like someone no one should provoke.
At this moment, the main fighting