Chapter 653: Conquering the South

Sweeping Jiangnan didn't take much time, and Bai Lang didn't even have to do it a few times—even Hangzhou was opened without blood. Because the fake emperor and the regent took tens of thousands of people from the hundred officials and the imperial court and fled by boat to the sea—it was likely that they ran to Wanchai Island. Since the fake imperial court had run away, the hearts of Jiangnan were naturally scattered.

That could really be called a military parade, and no one came out to resist Bai Lang's army. The officials and gentry in the south all said that the fake dynasty's energy was exhausted—"The energy was exhausted after just three generations. This damn thing seems to be worse than the Western Jin Dynasty." Bai Lang didn't move after capturing Hangzhou, and the crusade to the south was handed over to his younger siblings. In just four months, Bai Biao reached Guangzhou, and Bai Bao was still crawling toward Guiyang in the big mountains.

"It will take at least a year to pacify the south completely, and it will take at least ten years to sort out the things inside." Bai Lang thought. Purely using force could solve many problems, and repetition was also conceivable. "So Bai Bao or Bai Biao must guard the south and lead an elite army to be ready to suppress and kill at any time." Bai Lang pacified the south including Yunnan and Guizhou by the end of the summer of the fourth year—at least in name.

"Let me help them pull out some thorns before I go back." Bai Lang flipped through the information collected by the Jinyi Guard. There were quite a few chieftains in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan who did not obey the king's orders. In name, they obeyed the imperial court, but in fact, as long as they didn't openly rebel, it was enough for the imperial court to pay tribute every year. Changing the chieftain to a flow official was a good thing, but the previous dynasty had not fully done it for nearly a hundred years.

What Bai Lang wanted to do was very simple, nothing more than killing. With his footwork, it was not a problem to walk eight hundred miles a day, so he only needed to go to the places where those chieftains were, kill their whole families, and by the way, kill the chieftain soldiers. The difficulty of changing the chieftain to a flow official was much smaller—especially in those dangerous places, even if the whole chieftain village was killed, how much effort could it take? Anyway, Bai Lang Bai Yuzhu was just venting his evil thoughts in this world.

These people also often made trouble and robbed Han people, kidnapping innocent people to be slaves. So Bai Lang didn't have any psychological burden to kill them. The Great Ming Shaobao was still righteous. "If it were the Han Dynasty, this group of bastards would have been killed long ago." Bai Lang muttered while running in the mountains and fields. He ordered Bai Bao and Bai Biao to act as regents for the time being, and he went to kill people.

This was a month stained with blood. He killed through the south, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Hunan. All the unruly chieftains who occupied dangerous places and did evil were killed, and the whole village died. Bai Lang started a massacre. Anyway, he was always fast at killing—the Nandu White Tiger Fist I watched on TV was very efficient in large-scale killing. In a month, Bai Lang killed over one hundred thousand, but few people knew about it—the government thought it was a natural disaster.

How could manpower kill one hundred thousand people in a month? Wouldn't that be killing three thousand a day? It would be exhausting to do so. Not to mention that those villages seemed to be destroyed by a tornado, and the living people were twisted into meat, which was more credible to say it was done by demons. After the massacre, Bai Lang returned to the Imperial Capital with his main force, leaving Bai Bao to inspect three thousand elites stationed in the Wuhan three towns, ready to suppress at any time, and escorting the policy of the cabinet elders left in Nanjing to push the north.

Clearing the land was simple—it was just that officials and gentry served and paid taxes together, and only needed to collect taxes according to land ownership, and there was no tax-exempt privilege for officials and scholars. And forced separation, breaking the control of those big clans over small families—especially if private lynching was used, the elders and patriarchs in the clan would be taken to the vegetable market to eat a knife. Prohibiting things like drowning in pig cages, eating the family, and prohibiting widows from remarrying, all were prohibited.

If you dare to do it, the government really dares to kill and exile—the leader is killed, the accomplices are all exiled for three thousand miles, and the land and property are confiscated and compensated to the victim's family. This could be said to be Bai Lang's virtue, but the south was shouting that this was the emperor's stupidity. So Bai Bao was exhausted, and he had to fight the second Jiangnan conquest. When the fighting was fierce, even Bai Biao put down the cabinet government and led the army south to assist.

Bai Ying and Bai Xiao were also in the south. The Bai siblings killed the south again—Bai Lang sat on the Diaoyutai, and the ministers of the imperial court were also like this. Even when the rebellion in the south was the most intense, they had no worries, because the Emperor hadn't moved yet. If the Emperor moved, where could the world find someone who could block this brave and unparalleled Emperor? And the imperial court's income in the north had been increasing over the years. Just a policy of collecting taxes according to land area and ownership collected several times more than the previous dynasty, and the folk were still chanting "holy and wise."

Since the imperial court had money, it didn't need to be restricted by the south. Almost all the big shots from the north were secretly applauding, "Let you southerners be proud!" The Bai siblings killed in the south, and heads rolled—among them were many scholars and jinshi in the academies of Jiangnan who took the villagers to make trouble. At first, Bai Bao and Bai Biao didn't dare to take action, and wrote to ask Bai Lang what to do.

As a result, Bai Ying and Bai Xiao couldn't help it, and killed a few, which forced Bai Bao and Bai Biao to take them all. Then Bai Lang's edict arrived, "Kill them all!" Bai Lang's meaning was so simple—this edict was a middle edict that didn't need to be drafted by Hanlin scholars and didn't need the cabinet's signature. In this imperial court, the middle edict was the biggest.

So the people in the Jiangnan Academy who dared to make trouble were unlucky. The Bai siblings who took the middle edict directly revealed the most brutal fangs. If the academy was obedient and didn't move, it was just banned and the mountain chief would sit in jail for a few years and come out. If they talked nonsense and moved—teachers and students would be exiled for three thousand miles and their property confiscated. If they went further and gathered villagers to make trouble and besieged the government? Then kill them all without mercy.

Jiangnan scholars liked to make trouble. Originally, they made trouble and the government only advised them with good words, but now making trouble meant losing their heads. The Bai siblings were not Bai Lang. Bai Lang didn't care about scholars cursing him in the tavern, but the Bai siblings were not such tolerant characters. If they dared to curse, they would kill the whole family. So Jiangnan was silent, and even the big clans of the scholarly family that had been passed down for hundreds of years from the previous dynasty and the previous previous dynasty were destroyed.

For example, the Xu family in Songjiang... The previous previous dynasty and the previous dynasty both produced cabinet elders and ministers of the six ministries. Songjiang occupied hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. Now it was overturned, and more than ten people in the whole family were beheaded, and the rest of the women, children, and old people were exiled to the north. The family property was all confiscated and would be gradually distributed to farmers according to the laws set by Bai Lang—as for whether they could keep it later, that was not something the government would care about. ===== CHAPTER 654 =====