In years of famine and drought, their village even rejected fatty meat.

Chapter 792 Joyful Bloom

In an instant, the entire Chencun Avenue was teeming with people, a sea of ​​people.

Merchants like Mengmai on Chencun Avenue were overjoyed. The ten-day holiday brought them so many more customers on just the first day. In the ten days, the goods they sold were probably equivalent to two months' worth of goods in the past!

Seeing this, the merchants in the village were overjoyed, and the workers who were on holiday were equally happy. They brought their families into the various shops to select goods. If they saw something they liked, they would immediately bargain with the shop assistants and then generously pay for it.

In short, Chenjia Village was bustling today, and the whole village was filled with a joyful atmosphere.

…………

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The next day arrived in the blink of an eye.

On this day, Chenjia Village witnessed a return-home rush reminiscent of the Spring Festival travel rush in China in the past. A large number of workers who came to Chenjia Village from other places to make a living carried large and small bags and embarked on their journey home, either on foot or by renting donkey carts.

"We've been away from home for a year, and we don't know how things are back home!"

On a donkey cart, young Huang Ming clutched his bundle tightly, muttering anxiously.

Compared to other refugees from Liangzhou who fled to Qingzhou, Huang Ming was undoubtedly more fortunate.

The relatives of other refugees either starved to death in Liangzhou or on their way to escape famine, while Huang Ming was driven out by his own family.

Huang Ming's family is large, with 10 people including adults, the elderly and children, but they only have three acres of farmland!

Three mu of land was not enough to support such a large population, so Huang Ming's father had to go to the city to work, leaving the farmland to Huang Ming, his mother, and his sons to manage, in order to barely keep the family alive.

However, with the arrival of the cold disaster and the outbreak of war, Huang Ming's family's situation deteriorated rapidly.

The cold snap caused a sharp drop in crop yields, and the outbreak of war led to the devastation of all industries in Liangzhou...

Under such circumstances, Huang Ming's father lost his income from odd jobs, and the crops produced in the fields were not enough to feed them. All 10 members of the family were in a state of food insecurity and could starve to death at any time.

In order to leave the family's food rations for the adults and children, Huang Ming's grandparents chose to commit suicide. They went up the mountain together, and when Huang Ming's parents found them, they had already silently starved to death on the mountain...

Huang Ming still remembers the self-reproach in his father's eyes that day. He seemed to be blaming himself for his incompetence, for not being able to support his parents, and for not being able to feed his wife and children properly...

However, since the people were dead, there was no use in blaming himself. After a hasty burial of his parents, Huang Ming's father was sad for a few days, but then he cheered up and went to the county town every day from dawn to dusk, hoping to find a job and earn some meager income to support his six hungry children.

But his efforts were in vain. As crop yields declined, a large number of farmers flocked to the city to work, and the city's labor market was already in a state of oversupply. Even though Huang Ming's father was not afraid of hardship or fatigue, and was willing to work hard as long as he was paid for some money or food, there were still very few employers willing to hire him. The copper coins he earned were not enough to support his family, let alone himself!

At that moment, Huang Ming's father was in despair, especially after returning home and seeing his wife and children, who were pale and emaciated. He knew that things could not continue like this.

After discussing it with Huang Ming's father all night, Huang Ming's father finally made up his mind to let the older Huang Ming and his two older brothers flee the famine!

Making this decision was undoubtedly extremely difficult for Huang Ming's parents. Apart from a few beasts, no parent would not love their child and would be willing to let their child face an uncertain future!

But they had no choice but to make this decision, because if Huang Ming and his two siblings stayed in the village, they would all die. Not only would they die, but their three younger siblings would also die. Only by sending Huang Ming and his two siblings to escape the famine and leaving the remaining food for their three younger children could the family possibly survive!

So, the next day, Huang Ming's parents, having made this decision, took sticks and, with tears in their eyes, drove Huang Ming and his two brothers out of their home.

"Father, Mother, I don't want to leave you!"

"Father, Mother, please! Let me stay at home! I can go to the city to work with Father."

"Dad, mother~"

"..."

Even though the three Huang brothers were extremely reluctant, and even though they didn't understand why their parents were so heartless, they were still forcibly driven out of their home by their parents with sticks and embarked on the road of fleeing famine.

The journey of fleeing famine was undoubtedly extremely difficult. Along the way, with no food to eat, they dug up clay to eat, gnawed on tree bark, and even ate insects that crawled out of the ground. They also saw countless corpses and countless people who were so hungry that they ate these corpses...

The horrifying sight sent chills down the spines of the three Huang brothers, who retched incessantly, almost vomiting their bile.

"Brother, are we going to starve to death too? To be eaten like these corpses?"

"No, Xiaoming, we definitely won't starve!"

Brother Huang Ming's words seemed to be comforting Huang Ming, and also to comfort himself. They endured their hunger and continued their southward escape from the famine!

Finally, they arrived at the gate of Taiping County.

The three brothers thought they would find a way to survive once they arrived in Taiping County, but to their utter surprise, they were greeted by the tightly closed city gates. They could only hide outside the city and eke out a living, enduring the agony of hunger and thirst every day, hoping that the city gates would open so that they could enter the city and find a livelihood!

Perhaps it was a case of heaven rewarding those who persevere, or perhaps the three brothers were simply lucky.

They waited for the Zhang He incident to happen!

The magistrate of Taiping County, together with Zhang He, the leader of the refugees outside the city, slaughtered all the powerful families in the city overnight, and then used the grain confiscated from the families to distribute porridge to the refugees outside the city!

After that, Xu Zhiwen handed over the farmland he had seized from the powerful clans to the people in the county to cultivate, while also organizing refugees from outside the city to reclaim the land that had been abandoned for a long time.

From then on, refugees like the three Huang brothers outside the city had a way to survive and no longer needed to worry about starving to death.

It was during the land reclamation that the three Huang brothers heard about the existence of Chenjia Village. After considering it for several days, they finally gave up their work for the government and chose to go to Chenjia Village to look for opportunities.

The three brothers were lucky. When they arrived in Chenjia Village, they first worked for a shop. While working to earn money to support themselves, they also learned the craft from Liu Qiaoshou, a well-known carpenter in the village.