The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

On the first day of May, Heifu stood in front of the simple gate of Blind Mountain again, and his mood was a bit complicated.

Perhaps because he felt that the household registration would definitely not meet the standard this year, after the trial results were passed to the township, the township official of Yushui Township gave up and simply ordered people to sweep away all the livestock and property that should be confiscated in Blind Mountain, and then burn down the village!

Anyway, it takes a long way to get to that place. Now the system has disappeared, and the houses left are also used as nests for desperate bandits.

This task, of course, fell on the local pavilion chief...

Revisiting the old place, everyone in Huyang Pavilion also felt a little emotional. This was the most dangerous case they had encountered since they took office. If Xiao Tao hadn't shot the fugitive who instigated the killing of officials in time, who knows what would have happened? Maybe he had been smashed into a pulp. Thinking about it afterwards, he was still scared.

After walking around, they found that the village, which used to be somewhat populated, was now deserted. Sparrows landed on the stove, and the yellow dog that couldn't find its owner ran around everywhere. It was a mess everywhere.

Seeing this, Ji Ying was also a little confused. When he passed by a family, he remembered that when he first came to deliver a letter, he went in to ask for a sip of water. The family was quite kind to him.

When he saw the miserable state of those women who were kidnapped and sold, Ji Ying wanted to kill everyone in the village. But after hearing the verdict, the more than ten people who were sentenced to death were certainly not worthy of pity, but the more than a hundred people in the village were reduced to prisoners together, which was shocking.

Not to mention that there are still a dozen or so children who are not yet adults, who will become orphans in the hidden officialdom...

So Ji Ying suddenly turned around and asked Hei Fu:

"Brother Hei Fu, is what we did this time right or wrong?"

...

"To save four people, we sent two hundred people to jail. Is this worth it?"

Ji Ying asked this question, and the other people looked up at him. It can be seen that they were also full of doubts.

After a long pause, Hei Fu said: "One person's violence against one person is a crime, and one hundred people's violence against one person is also a crime. According to the law, it is impossible to judge the majority because there are too many people."

Most Confucians believe that human nature is good, just like water flowing downwards, it is a natural thing. Even if someone has evil thoughts, it is forced by the situation. It only needs morality and education to make people go on the right path.

However, the fact is that even after more than two thousand years of education, things like drowning and trafficking have never stopped in remote places.

In order to solve the problems that moral education could not solve, the Legalists took a completely opposite path, believing that human nature is evil, and everything is caused by "liking profit and hating harm". This kind of relationship exists between monarchs and ministers, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives.

For example, Han Feizi said with great sorrow, "When parents give birth to their children, they congratulate each other if they give birth to boys, and kill them if they give birth to girls." This is a common phenomenon in this era. There are more boys than girls in Blind Mountain, which is caused by this.

When parents give birth to children, if they give birth to boys, they congratulate each other, and if they give birth to girls, they will cruelly kill them. Why? Because of benefits, boys can carry on the family line and can also work in the fields, but girls have to pay a dowry when they grow up. There is not much food in the family, and it is not worth it to support a daughter-in-law for someone else's family.

In the eyes of the Legalists, even biological parents and children are so concerned about benefits and harms, let alone ordinary people? Therefore, likes and dislikes are deeply buried in human nature, and it is impossible to change them through acquired efforts!

So the Legalists simply gritted their teeth and said that we should simply not talk about good and evil, but only look at right and wrong!

In a country, those who abide by the law are good citizens, and those who harm others are evildoers.

It is wrong for one person to do evil to one person, and it is also wrong for a hundred people to do evil to one person. Such evildoers and mobs, no matter how many there are, must all be punished.

After sending a large number of "evildoers" to prison, the Legalists said proudly that punishment generates force, force generates strength, strength generates prestige, prestige generates virtue, and virtue is born from punishment. As long as severe punishments and laws make people dare not break the boundaries, the world will be well governed.

But they look at society and human nature too simply. Those who have not committed any crime but have suffered from it have since regarded the law as evil law, Qin as tyranny, and one man makes trouble, and the world responds.

Pure moral education is naturally undesirable. Is the simple Legalist punishment enough?

Hei Fu fell into deep thought.

The case they handled this time was right in its original intention and direction. It was a good thing that the women who were abducted and sold were able to return home. The abusers who abused them received the punishment they deserved, which was enough to make people happy.

But the entire population of Blind Mountain, regardless of gender, was punished as slaves and concubines according to the collective crime, and even Heifu was a little uneasy, because he knew the fate of those people.

In the past month, whenever he went to the county town to participate in the trial, he would go to the slave market in Anlu County to take a look.

Those two-legged goods were filled in the cattle and horse pens, and the air was filled with strange smells, sweat, blood, and the stench of the slaves and concubines in the prison (ling yu). Looking at the slaves and concubines imprisoned in cages, wearing wooden shackles, or tied together with straw ropes, they were all haggard and disheveled, and had long lost hope in life. Only a few young slaves with bright eyes stretched out their dirty hands to him, as if begging for salvation.

Surprisingly, while the Qin law cracked down on trafficking and strictly prohibited soldiers from selling their wives and children, it allowed slave trade. In addition to the captives and barbarians from foreign countries, there were many Qin people who were punished and demoted to slaves and concubines every year. Their situation was worse than those women who were plundered and sold. Do you have to say that there is really a big difference between the two? Not really.

If you think about it carefully, this contradiction is not contradictory. The Qin government is a big government with a strong desire for control. Everything beyond the control of the government is prohibited: business is strictly suppressed, and the household registration is not allowed to flow freely, so that people can seek to change their class through farming and fighting, so as to achieve the goal of strengthening the army and enriching the country.

In this way, the number of people who were punished as slaves and concubines for crimes, the length of their sentences, are all under the control of the government, and these people can also serve as the bottom of the pyramid of military merit, and continuously create labor value for the country.

But private plunder is different. On the one hand, the people who lost their children will feel uneasy, creating chaos and fear. On the other hand, this kind of population class mobility outside official control cannot bring any benefits to the government, so it is regarded as a cancer that must be eliminated!

After thinking this through, Hei Fu became even more confused.

"At first, I called myself a 'heavenly dog' who hated evil, and felt that everything I did was right. But now it seems that I, the pavilion chief, am just a dog of the Qin government, just a tool to maintain the rule of Qin law?"

"Qin Law" is advanced, but there are also big problems. Perhaps this is the root cause of the fall of Qin?

But for those problems, Hei Fu's current position is helpless. He knows that this is the limitation of the times. As long as productivity does not break through the critical point one day, similar things will emerge in an endless stream.

Qin Law can save the chaotic world where rituals and music are broken, but this kind of wartime regulations, if purely magical, cannot be comprehensive and achieve great governance in the world.

But it is better to have it than not.

In this worse era, in places where the Qin Law can still be enforced, although the slave trade has never stopped, the trafficking of civilian children has been restrained. But in the six countries, even this cannot be guaranteed.

Heifu didn't know that when he was cracking down on the trafficking in Blind Mountain, a poor boy from Wei State named "Luan Bu", who was slightly younger than him, was accidentally stuffed into a sack by a group of human traffickers while working as a waiter in a restaurant in Qi, and was sold to Yan State thousands of miles away as a slave. At this moment, Luan Bu was struggling to survive in Jidu, which was besieged by the Qin army...

Twenty years later, when the Qin Dynasty was in chaos and the Qin Law became a dead letter, that was the beginning of the nightmare. Dou Guangguo, the younger brother of Empress Dowager Dou, the mother of Emperor Jing of Han, and the great uncle of the country, was also abducted and sold, and he was abducted and sold more than a dozen times. Finally, Dou Guangguo was sold to a charcoal kiln as a charcoal burner. During this period, he encountered an accident. Hundreds of workers died. Only he survived by chance. He almost played an ancient version of "Blind Well"...

The royal family can't protect themselves, let alone civilians? At that time, not only will human trafficking become more rampant, but the phenomenon of civilians selling their children as slaves will also become more and more serious, which will last until around BC, and become the most troublesome slave problem in the Han Dynasty.

Reality is so cruel. Can we be stricter?

Hei Fu didn't know these things. For the future, he only knew the general situation, not the details.

But for now, he already has his own plans.

Even if he has thoughts in his heart, he can't be kind-hearted. He can only do what he thinks is right within his authority and slowly climb up until the day when he has the ability to change.

The premise is that he will not forget his state of mind at this moment during the climb.

"I don't ask for perfection, but I ask for a clear conscience."

After answering Ji Ying in this way, Hei Fu threw the torch into the blind mountain.

The tiny flames moved on the thatched roof, like swift squirrels, they devoured the hay, slowly grew bigger, became fire foxes shaking their tails, slid over the pillars, jumped onto the beams, and surrounded the whole house.

Everyone lit fires in different places, and gradually, the houses in the blind mountain were burned, and there were crackling sounds everywhere, that was the firewood exploding. The flames swirled and twisted, and finally merged into one. In the gradually deepening twilight, like a roaring beast, it spit out long tongues of fire, burning everything that had happened in this remote village, licking those shocking crimes and ugliness clean.

The smoke became thicker and thicker. Everyone in Huyang Pavilion coughed and retreated. Only Heifu stood in front of this fiery purgatory. The wind from the flames blew his naked cap, but he remained motionless.

"I just hope that the tragedy in Blind Mountain can warn the entire Anlu County, Nanjun, and even the whole country... Killing one person is a warning to a hundred, punishing a hundred is a warning to a thousand or ten thousand people. If this can be done, it will be worth it!"

With the fire in his eyes, Heifu prayed.

This is not just a vision.

This is also what Heifu has made up his mind to do in the future.

"I only hope that one day, there will be no more Blind Mountain in this world!"

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