Zhu Yunwen smiled and nodded, saying:

"That's right, I'm from the imperial court, here to investigate the implementation of local land reform policies."

If you have anything to say, you can tell me. Is it possible that the land in this area was not allocated to you according to the imperial court's regulations?

Upon hearing Zhu Yunwen's words, the commoners all stepped forward.

The old man began, "The imperial court's policies are good, and they have indeed distributed land to us. But..."

Zhu Yunwen asked, "Since the court's policies are good and the land has indeed been allocated to you, how could this lead to the situation you described where you have no land? And isn't the land you are currently reclaiming yours?"

The young man said, "Young master, you don't know this. The court's policies are good, and the land has indeed been allocated to us. We are very grateful to the court. But no matter how good the court's policies are, they can't outweigh the ruthlessness of those landlords."

These lands were originally allocated to us by the imperial court, but the landlords used some extreme methods to force us to rent them out at a low price.

We had no choice but to rent the land to them and then farm our own land. We worked for them. The only difference from before was that, nominally, the land belonged to us, but in reality, it still belonged to those landlords.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Yunwen immediately said:

"The imperial court has a regulation that properties cannot be bought or sold, only rented. If the rent they offer is too low, you can simply refuse to rent to them, right?"

The old man smiled and said:

"Not renting? If we don't rent, we'll probably get beaten. And we can forget about growing any crops on this land. In the end, we're just ordinary people. How can we possibly fight against those landlords and nobles?"

They have ways to turn our fields into wasteland. They might even kill us if we don't rent to them at a low price.