Zhu Lao San was quick to distribute the money. After all, it was distributing money, not collecting it from the people. With Zhu Lao Er assisting, the speed was naturally as fast as it could be.
However, Zhu Xiaosong was pondering something else.
He had overthrown the local tyrant Liu Juren, confiscated the wealth and land that Liu Juren had accumulated through years of cruel oppression of the people, and some villagers in Liu Miao Village were willing to join him. This basically meant that Zhu Xiaosong's long march had taken its first step.
This was a small step for Zhu Xiaosong, but a giant leap towards tolling the death knell of the Great Qing Dynasty.
Next, he had to leave Liu Miao Village with those who were willing to join him.
The question was, where should they go after leaving Liu Miao Village?
Previously, Zhu Xiaosong had told the villagers that they would go to Jade Emperor Mountain, and he had told the Zhu brothers that they would go to卧牛山 (Woniu Mountain).
This wasn't because Zhu Xiaosong had a bad memory, but because Zhu Xiaosong hadn't been sure if he could persuade the young men in the village to join him, so the statement about going to Jade Emperor Mountain was merely a smokescreen.
But now it was different. Of the thirty-two men, excluding Liu Er Niu, who was a bachelor with no dependents, the rest all had families. Thirty-one able-bodied men with families, almost a quarter of the entire village, were pulled into this venture!
After careful consideration, Zhu Xiaosong looked at the thirty-two men before him, and the villagers standing behind them, and said loudly, "Liu Juren and Master Man are dead. The authorities will definitely investigate this matter."
"If you follow our three brothers and become outlaws, and if you are caught by the authorities, you will surely lose your heads. You might even implicate your families!"
"If anyone regrets it, if anyone is afraid of death, you can withdraw now!"
As Zhu Xiaosong finished speaking, Liu Er Niu glared with his bull-like eyes and shouted, "What is there to regret? I dared to follow you, I'm not afraid of death!"
Liu Huaiwen also cried, with tears streaming down his face, "If you can let me avenge Xiao Cui, then my life is yours from now on. Even if I'm caught by the authorities, I won't betray you!"
The remaining thirty men also shouted one after another, "What is there to be afraid of!"
"Better to die on the battlefield than live in shame!"
"A severed head is just a big scar, eighteen years later we'll be good fellows again!"
"They say our Shandong produces famous bandits, I want to try what it's like to be a famous bandit!"
The villagers standing behind these men, however, remained silent.
Everyone knew that Zhu Xiaosong's words just now were seemingly addressed to the thirty-two men, but in reality, they were addressed to everyone in the village.
Zhu Xiaosong was not in a hurry. Instead, he smiled and said, "As we said, if anyone regrets it or is afraid, you can choose to stay. Push any responsibility onto us."
With Zhu Xiaosong saying this, the hesitant villagers in the audience became resolute once more.
"The rest of you, led by Uncle Huaiwen, carry some provisions, and each bring some pots and pans. Let's head to Jade Emperor Mountain first. Once we get to the mountain, quickly set up some shelters. We need to look like proper outlaws."
To be more secure, Zhu Xiaosong took more than a dozen men to Liu Juren's house. First, he found a set of Liu Juren's clothes and changed into them. Then, he had those men disguise themselves as guards and household servants. The cart pushed by Zhu Er Dan also carried some preserved chickens, cured meats, and other items seized from Liu Juren's house, making them look like they were going to visit relatives at Scholar Liu's house in Shāwō Village.
...
Just as the saying goes, dragons give birth to dragons, phoenixes give birth to phoenixes, and mice's sons can burrow holes. Liu Juren of Liu Miao Village was wicked in his oppression of the people, and Scholar Liu of Shāwō Village was not much better than Liu Juren. Liu Juren fell victim to Zhu Xiaosong's surprise attack, and Scholar Liu also met the same fate.
More importantly, Scholar Liu was just a scholar. Whether it was the number of household guards or the scale of his courtyard, both were inferior to Liu Juren's estate.
When Zhu Xiaosong, with only his three brothers, dared to launch an attack and capture Liu Juren, he now had more than a dozen subordinates who had seen battle to assist him. Capturing Scholar Liu was even easier, simpler, and more enjoyable.
Moreover, as Zhu Xiaosong had predicted, after distributing a large portion of the money and grain that Scholar Liu had gained from oppressing the people to the villagers of Shāwō Village, more than a dozen young men from Shāwō Village were willing to join Zhu Xiaosong as outlaws.
Therefore, two paths now lay before Zhu Xiaosong.
Either they take over Geng Zhuang Village next to Shāwō Village and quickly lead these young men to Jade Emperor Mountain, or they take advantage of the expanding force and divide into two groups, taking over both Geng Zhuang and Zhu Family Village.
The former was the most secure, while the latter offered the highest return.
After half an hour of careful consideration, Zhu Xiaosong finally decided to divide into two groups. He mixed the young men brought from Liu Miao Village with the dozen or so young men from Shāwō Village into two teams. Zhu Xiaosong and Zhu San Shun led one team to directly attack Geng Zhuang, while the other team was led by Zhu Er Dan and Liu Er Niu, heading straight for Zhu Family Village.
After Zhu Xiaosong explained the plan to divide into two groups to everyone, Zhu Lao Er immediately nodded in agreement, looking at Zhu Xiaosong and saying, "I'll listen to you. Whatever you say, we'll do."
Zhu Lao San also looked at Zhu Xiaosong and said, "They say that even with a thousand mouths in a household, there is only one master. Now that we are outlaws, you are not only my elder brother, but also the great chieftain of our mountain stronghold. We will all listen to you."
As someone once said, attacking local tyrants and distributing land is a matter of doing it once and becoming familiar with it. With the practical experience gained from following Zhu Xiaosong in Liu Miao Village and Shāwō Village, Zhu Er Dan and Liu Er Niu quickly took down Zhu Family Village and, by the way, persuaded more than a dozen young men to join them.
Zhu Xiaosong's side was similar, except that Geng Zhuang Village was a larger village. Not only was the money and grain seized greater than in Liu Miao Village and Shāwō Village, but even the young men willing to follow Zhu Xiaosong as outlaws numbered more than twenty.
As a result, the number of young men willing to go up the mountain and become outlaws with Zhu Xiaosong reached over eighty. The process was so smooth that even Zhu Xiaosong found it hard to believe, leading him to be grateful for the divine assist from the deaf old dog Qianlong.
According to江湖传言 (jianghu rumors), Emperor Qianlong would go south of the Yangtze River six times in the first month of next year. "Six times south of the Yangtze River" meant that he had already been there five times, and each time he had plundered the people along the way to the point of utter misery. Tai'an Prefecture and Yanzhou Prefecture happened to be on Emperor Qianlong's mandatory route, and they could not escape being plundered no matter what.
Simply put, if it weren't for the fact that the deaf old dog Qianlong was about to go south of the Yangtze River six times, and if it weren't for the fact that this damned world had suppressed the people to the point where they couldn't breathe, even barely surviving was a luxury, perhaps few people would have been willing to risk their heads to become outlaws with Zhu Xiaosong.
And for Zhu Xiaosong, having more than eighty young men from these four villages follow him as outlaws was more than just having eighty subordinates.
Consider, how many families were behind these eighty young men? How many households were there in total in these four villages? If people in their own village had followed Zhu Xiaosong to become bandits, would the common people in these four villages still report them?
Even if the authorities learned of Zhu Xiaosong becoming an outlaw, and wanted to attack Jade Emperor Mountain, would the common people in these four villages inform Zhu Xiaosong in advance?