Chapter 76: The Crime of Gender 76
Recently, whenever the common people of the border city gathered together, they would often discuss a major event: the court suddenly issued a shocking order, the Kill Hu Order!
The reason was that recently, many small groups of barbarians suddenly started raiding the borders during a time of year when they shouldn’t have, and their methods were brutal, burning down houses completely, killing men, the elderly, children, even infants, and capturing the women along with the belongings!
Of course, if the nearby stationed troops responded too quickly, before these soldiers could come to the rescue, those women would still be killed by the barbarians.
This incident enraged the Emperor greatly. Initially, he was planning to appease the barbarians, even expanding the Mutual Market to trade with them for the goods they needed, all to reduce their border raids. But who would have thought the barbarians would be so audacious? Naturally, the Emperor couldn’t tolerate it and directly issued the Kill Hu Order!
The so-called Kill Hu Order encouraged the common people to behead barbarians, and for every barbarian killed, as long as their head was brought to the government, one could receive a bounty of five taels of silver! Since the barbarians had distinct features, with high noses and deep-set eyes, different from the looks of the common people of our dynasty, there was no fear of someone killing their own people to claim the reward by pretending they were barbarians.
After the news was conveyed, many common people indeed became restless. The people of the border city were naturally valiant due to the frequent intrusions by the barbarians; everyone carried weapons when they went out and could engage in combat whenever they encountered them!
So although the common people of the border city had been harassed by the barbarians for years, they were full of vigor and not as fearful of them as the people in the inland!
At this moment, stimulated by the high bounty of the Kill Hu Order, many commoners indeed became tempted. Although not everyone would actually go out to find barbarians to kill, they all made up their minds to seize the opportunity to behead a barbarian if they met one, to earn some extra money.