1942, I lived on hunting

Not long after the glucose was infused, the old man regained consciousness, and his weakness and look of dying at any time disappeared. It must be said that the poor people of this era are really tenacious. If it were a fragile college student in the future, he would die in a minute!

Seeing that he was awake, Li Lahu explained that they were the Eighth Route Army, not bad people. When the old man heard that they were the Eighth Route Army who stood up for the people, he felt like he had finally found his savior. He grabbed Li Lahu, cried miserably, and told Li Lahu about his miserable experience.

He was an ordinary villager from a nearby mountain village. His family had a few acres of thin land. He could weave baskets with thorns and reeds. He could sell some of them to make a little money to supplement his family income, so he could live a decent life. He married a wife when he was young, but she died of dystocia during childbirth. Since then, he has never been able to start a family again and has always been alone. The old man was a down-to-earth person. He had lived his life toiling and honestly for half his life and had never quarreled with anyone. But he was struck by a disaster. One autumn day, he went to the county town to sell baskets. He came back a little late and was blocked by several people before he entered the village. The man put a knife or a gun to his neck, took him to the wilderness, and began to interrogate him.

The old man was very scared, and he answered whatever the man asked him. After questioning him, the man found out his background. It turned out that he was a peddler selling baskets in the countryside. Today he went to the county town to sell baskets. He sold a bunch of baskets for only a few copper coins. The man was so angry that he cursed.

The old man heard the curses from the other party and realized the reason. A family in the village had connections with the bandits and was a spy planted by the bandits in the village. He was spotted! He informed the bandits that he was a wealthy family. Not only did he own land, but he also did some small business and had a lot of extra money. He had saved a lot of money after years of frugality.

The bandits caught the man and interrogated him, but it turned out that it was not the case at all. How could they not know that he was being used by his spies?

The old man had no successor, and his family only had a few acres of thin land and a yard worth a few dollars, so the family had a plan. Once the old man was killed or abducted by bandits, his land and house could be transferred to their own name. Who would take care of an old widower who had no children and was harmed by bandits?

A thief never leaves empty-handed. The exasperated bandits took the few copper coins from the old man and beat him up to vent their anger. They were still not satisfied and dragged the old man to the mountain village to build a bunker!

The old man was caught in a disaster. He was frightened all the way. When he arrived at the mountain stronghold, he was thrown into a dungeon. The dungeon was full of laborers and kidnapped hostages. After asking the first person who was arrested, I learned that this was the mountain stronghold of Black Crow and the people who arrested him were the bandit Black Crow's men. Black Crow has several teams that are responsible for going down the mountain to rob and kidnap people. The teams compete with each other. Whoever wins will be rewarded with good guns, weapons, cloth, food or women in the women's prison. There are KPI indicators every month. If they fail to meet them, they will be punished. It can be regarded as a disguised form of working!

In the year of the disaster, food was in short supply, and the bandits had a hard time. The old man in the bandit village not only did not have enough food, but also had to dig soil and carry stones under the whips and sticks of the supervisors. It didn't take long for the old man's body to collapse and he couldn't work! The bandits didn't want to support some useless people who couldn't work at this time, so they drove the children who were kidnapped from somewhere in the village, the men who couldn't work, and the sick women down the mountain. They didn't kill them. After all, in the eyes of the bandits, these useless people were not worth wasting energy and bullets. If they were killed, they would have to arrange people to carry the dead bodies. It was a great mercy to drive them away and let them fend for themselves. The earth pit outside the village was full of corpses, all of whom were starved to death, died of illness, their families were killed because they couldn't afford the ransom, and those who dared to resist and escape.

Li Hao later watched some short videos that said the relationship between bandits and the people was interdependent, and that bandits generally smuggled salt, allowing ordinary people to eat cheap salt, and would protect the people in their own territories. He also said that bandits had their own rules and morals, and generally would not abuse women, would release people after receiving a ransom, and would not kill them all. However, the reality that faced him at that time was completely different from what was described in the short videos.

Do you expect a group of vicious bandits to talk to you about rules and morality? Anyway, after Li Hao came to this era, he heard of bandits who robbed all the food of the people and didn't care about the lives of the people at all, bandits who slaughtered the village when they encountered resistance, bandits who released people only when they saw the ransom and killed the hostages when they didn't pay the ransom, and even bandits who didn't release people even after getting the ransom and wanted to squeeze more money and water, bandits who robbed women, and bandits who forced villagers to build mountain strongholds and bunkers. But I haven't heard of bandits selling cheap salt, bandits who robbed beautiful women and sent them down the mountain, and bandits who distributed the stolen money and food to the people. Sometimes bandits do give out some money and food generously, but that's because the bandits are recruiting people to expand their power. If you don't join them, don't even think about it. It's not given to the people for free. There may be bandits who are good to the people and follow the rules, but which one is more common, the bandits who follow the rules or the bandits who don't follow the rules? The common people gnashed their teeth in hatred when they talked about bandits. How many families had been destroyed because of bandits!

Why do bandits have to exist? If they didn't harm you today, it might be because they didn't want to harm you today, or it might be because you are poor. Who knows, it might be your turn tomorrow! Would you like to live like you are holding a bomb that will explode every day without knowing when? Without bandits, ordinary people would have one less oppression and one less shackle. I don't know where those bloggers in later generations came up with such a ridiculous conclusion!

After a group of people were driven out of the mountain village, those who could go home hurried home, and those who could not go home were also anxious to get away from the bandit village. Some people fell down while walking, and the two children in the crowd gradually fell behind. The old man walking behind saw that no one was taking care of them, so he asked them which village they were from. The two children were not very old, and they only remembered that they came out with their parents to escape famine, and they could not tell where their home was. The kind old man saw that they would definitely die in the mountains if they continued like this, so he took the two children with him.

After much trouble, he returned to his home in the middle of the night, only to find that it had been occupied, and his rags and quilts were thrown into the yard. The old man did not dare to make a sound, but took advantage of the fact that the people in the house were asleep, sneaked into the yard, dug out some of his hidden money in the corner, and simply packed up some things in the kitchen and the east room that was used as a utility room, and quickly fled with his clothes and quilts and two children. The next day, he used his little money to buy some herbs and food in the neighboring village and hid in this valley.

In the past, when there was famine, the elderly had come here to pick wild fruits and dig yams. They knew that they could barely find something to eat here, and if they were lucky, they could survive until spring.

But time is not forgiving. He is no longer young. The hardships in the bandit stronghold have damaged his vitality. It is not easy to survive, let alone feed two children. Wild yams are not so easy to dig. Gradually, as the food ran out and the weather became colder, the three of them had to further tighten their belts and became what they are now.