Chapter 16 Section Four Three Years Jianghu Road

It is conceivable that a child from a peasant family that values ​​reputation and good face has to break through a great psychological barrier when asking for food for the first time. For a long time, the door opened, and the person inside took a peek, and closed the door impatiently with a bang.Zhu Chongba felt cold in his heart.Just as he hesitated and turned to leave, the door opened again, and a hand holding a spoon came out.Chongba quickly stretched out the earthen bowl, tilted the spoon, and a handful of worm-infested brown rice slid down: "Today, three beggars have passed, that's all, let's go!"

At noon, Zhu Yuanzhang found a few stones in the ruined temple by the village, set up a clay bowl, poured water on it, boiled the rice until it was half-cooked, and barely filled his stomach. This is the beginning of the hard life of wandering.He first went south all the way to Hefei, and then went west to Gushi, Henan.In the following years, he wandered to Xinyang and Linru in Henan, turned east to Huaiyang in Henan, passed through Luyi in Henan, Boxian in Anhui, and returned to Fuyang in Anhui.All the way through the mountains and rivers, the clouds and waters are flying.It is conceivable that a seventeen-year-old child will experience hunger, loneliness and hardships that ordinary people cannot experience on the road of begging.He has eaten white flour steamed buns given by benevolent people from big households, as well as grass roots and wild vegetables.He has lived in the servant's house of a wealthy family, lived in a ruined temple near the village, and slept in caves and cliffs, in the snow and in the wind and rain, with the sky as a curtain and the ground as a mat.He recited the Buddha's name along the way, and also helped others to do part-time jobs.In many towns he fought beggars, and on occasion he joined local beggar gangs.When he was really hungry, he even acted as a thief several times. When the villagers were busy farming, he jumped over the wall and entered people's homes, stealing food from the kitchen, money from the cupboard, and chickens and ducks from the courtyard.

It is said that one day in late autumn, Zhu Yuanzhang went to a place called Remaining Chai Village. He hadn't touched his teeth for several days, and suddenly found a persimmon tree beside the village, with many frost-beaten red persimmons hanging on it.Gathering up his last strength, he climbed up the tree, ate more than a dozen in one go, and finally survived.After making a fortune, in the 15th year of Zhengzheng (1355 A.D.), Zhu Yuanzhang led an army to pass by here again and found that the persimmon tree was still there.Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help feeling a lot of emotion. He got off his horse and hugged the tree and wept bitterly. He took off his red robe, put it on the tree, and said, "I will be named Lingshuanghou!"

Zhu Chong wandered around in 1983, which was equivalent to studying in a social university for three years.Due to his high savvy, his grades are also very good.After the initial discomfort, he has become a veteran of wandering.This kind of life opened his eyes. Compared with the peaceful Guzhuang Village, the outside world is too complicated, too huge, and too prosperous.He has seen all kinds of social phenomena that are impossible to see in Guzhuang Village. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the population became more and more prosperous, the ruling power of the government declined, the society became more and more diversified, and the world became more and more complicated.As far as liars are concerned, there are so many.All kinds of deceptions in Chinese society today have been popular in Jianghu thousands of years ago.The records in the documents of the Yuan Dynasty are too brief. We can refer to the market situation in the Song Dynasty recorded in "Old Things in the Wulin" for reference:

In a bustling commercial area, densely populated, there are too many idlers.There are so-called beauty bureaus (using prostitutes as concubines to lure young people), Guifang Road Bureau (using gambling games to form parties and other means to defraud money), and water merit bureaus (seeking officials, finding jobs, favors, transfers, and lawsuits) , transactions, etc., under the guise of momentum, omission of property), and so on.There are also people buying and selling goods, taking fakes as real, and even using paper as clothing, copper and lead as gold and silver, and earth and wood as fragrant medicines.As a result, stubborn people like "blockers" and "nine dragons" are especially harmful to the market.

After three years of walking in the dangerous rivers and lakes, Zhu Yuanzhang has a deep understanding of Chinese society.When dealing with people of all kinds, he has come to know kindness and generosity, as well as cruelty and evil, bravery and loyalty, as well as embarrassment and depravity.Three years of wandering gave him a deep understanding of human nature. In Zhu Yuanzhang's later years, he proudly said to his descendants: "I have read a lot of people, and I am also familiar with history", "human feelings, good and evil, true and false, all involve history", "human feelings and falsehoods are also quite Knowing", this ability to know people is to a large extent obtained from three years of experience in the rivers and lakes.

Jianghu profoundly changed his character.When he walked out of Guzhuang Village, although he had shown boldness and cleverness different from ordinary children, he was still a simple rural boy in essence.The vagabond life greatly damaged his moral qualities.For him who struggles with hunger every day, living is the purpose, and being full is the value.People are not for themselves, heaven and earth are destroyed, and pragmatism has inevitably become the life philosophy of waifs.He'd do anything as long as he could get food.He snatched food from people who were hungrier than him, carried corpses for others, and even dug and robbed graves.The long time of being in the rivers and lakes made Zhu Yuanzhang used to the unimaginable theft and deception.

He changed from a submissive and passive peasant to a bold and cunning beast.Walking out of Guzhuang Village, his first life lesson is to dare to take risks.If he hadn't stolen food several times at critical times, he would have starved to death on the wandering road.In the face of opportunities and risks, if you do not take the initiative, you will have to pay a heavy price.He has fought with beggars on the street many times, often one-to-many.In this case, the desperate ruthlessness at the critical moment saved him.Over the course of three years, an adventurous spirit became part of his character.In the face of opportunities, he is quick to respond, proactive and aggressive.Because he knows that passivity equals death.

He went from a compassionate person to a callous person who took people for granted.The suffering of life has already blunted people's pain nerves.The arena has always worshiped violence, and the heroes in the arena are the bosses of the underworld who kill without batting an eyelid.The experience of the rivers and lakes made him understand that to survive successfully in this world, one must be hard-hearted, cold, and ruthless. "A small amount is not a gentleman, and non-toxic is not a husband." After many painful lessons, he believes that only the most vicious people can seize the perhaps only opportunity in the vicious competition for survival.Returning to Guzhuang Village from the outside world, people found that this young man had grown into an adult, the enthusiasm and innocence in his eyes were gone, but there was a tinge of creepy coolness in his eyes.In the words of the history books, it is "the will is clear, and people can't predict it."