Chapter 49 Encouraging Agriculture and Sericulture (5)
Seeing the village chief weeping on the ground, the entourage fell silent.
After a while, Magistrate Meng instructed Meng Guanqi: "Check each household and register the household registration and land ownership truthfully."
Meng Guanqi's face was ashen. He bowed and agreed, then left with Ah Sheng and Li Xiaoxiao.
Officer Shi couldn't help but step forward: "Sir, please think twice. The roster must not be reported truthfully."
If they report the actual situation based on their inspections, Biyang County will lose one-tenth of its population, and tax revenue will plummet by more than 20%. Were all those county magistrates mentally challenged or foolish? Don't others know the true situation in Biyang County?
Of course not. Rather, it's because every county magistrate dared not uncover the truth, dared not let the responsibility fall on their own shoulders. Anyway, Biyang County had always been this poor. If taxes couldn't be collected, they would simply be left unpaid. When questioned, the excuse was always a bad harvest and no surplus grain in the people's homes. Although the taxes couldn't be collected, the accounts were kept clear. When one magistrate was transferred, the accounts were handed over to the next magistrate. The people even had taxes owed from more than ten years ago that hadn't been paid, but no one would bother to collect those taxes from more than ten years ago. Everyone with eyes could see what was going on, and everyone knew that this messy debt was absolutely impossible to recover, but no one was willing to risk their head to report the actual situation to their superiors.
Anyway, Biyang County isn't a particularly important county, otherwise, Chief Constable Shi and his men wouldn't have gone decades without ever seeing any disaster relief funds from the imperial court.
No county magistrate dared to inform the Ministry of Revenue or the Emperor of the actual situation. Would Magistrate Meng dare to be the first? Moreover, Magistrate Meng was seriously ill when he took office, and the seal was temporarily managed by Clerk Peng. The previous magistrate was in a hurry to leave, so Clerk Peng signed the handover form on his behalf without any specific verification. Clerk Peng turned around and left, but Magistrate Meng had to bear all the responsibility after signing the form.
The arrow, shot more than half a year ago, has only now pierced Magistrate Meng's heart. Only now does Magistrate Meng belatedly realize that all of this may have been a trap set by others, and that he had already unknowingly stepped into it.
If he reports the actual situation, and the higher-ups seriously investigate, the previous magistrate can completely shirk responsibility. The handover list is clearly written, so the loss of population, household registration, and taxes can only be attributed to Magistrate Meng alone.
After all, he signed the handover form when he took office. If the situation is not consistent, why did he sign it?
Master Peng...
Meng Ying immediately thought of him, because he had been ill when he first arrived, and Peng, the clerk, handled almost all the official business of the yamen. He had stamped countless documents with his seal.
So, was Peng Shiye's departure along with his other trusted confidants also a move by the other side? Was he trying to trap him in Biyang County so he couldn't escape?
Magistrate Meng's face was ashen, and after a long while, he finally managed a bitter laugh.
It turns out that all of this was a setup, a setup that was designed against him long ago.
As his most trusted confidant, Peng Shiye took advantage of his illness to hand over the reins to the previous magistrate using his seal, and then hurriedly resigned and left.
He always thought that Master Peng resigned because he couldn't adapt to the poverty of Biyang County and felt that he had no future. In his impulsiveness and anger, he not only failed to thoroughly investigate the reason for his departure, but also allowed him to take most of his confidants with him.
So this is the truth? How come he never considered that there might be another reason for his departure?
Biyang County did not suddenly become impoverished after he was demoted; it had always been like this. Master Peng already knew about the situation here when he was in the capital. If he had already been disloyal, why would he have traveled thousands of miles, wading through mountains and rivers, and bringing his family to follow him, only to resign and leave in less than three months?
When did he become disloyal to him? And who bribed him and lured him into this mess?
You've been schemed against for so long, and only discovered the truth today. Meng Ying, you're so slow to realize it. If the other party wanted to kill you, you'd probably be long dead by now.
But even if the people who brought him into the bureau don't kill him, they already have a handle on him.
Once he realized this fact, he knew there was nothing he could do.
Officer Shi was still trying to persuade him, but Meng Ying whispered, "I know, I won't report it. I just want to know the actual situation and see what else I can do..."
Officer Shi breathed a sigh of relief. Living a quiet and uneventful term, and avoiding the limelight, was the only way for Magistrate Meng to survive.
Magistrate Meng's face was ashen as he muttered, "The 323 newly added households are not enough to fill the missing households. Moreover, these 323 households are already registered, and taxes will be collected in three years. At that time, the tax rate in Biyang County will increase. It is impossible not to increase it..." With the tax rate increasing even under these circumstances, he did not know how the people were going to survive.
He had to find a way out.
Otherwise, more and more people will starve to death.
Officer Shi stepped forward: "Sir, I have an idea, and I hope you will approve it."
Magistrate Meng said, "Speak."
Chief Constable Shi said, “Sir, as you can see, all the fields under those missing household registrations have become wasteland. But these lands are still better than true wasteland. At least the land where wheat and rice were originally grown is still relatively flat, with only small trees and weeds growing on it. However, there are almost no stones to clear. As long as the weeds are cleared, it can be cultivated again. If the newly settled migrants can cultivate such land, they won’t have to wait three years to collect taxes…”
His idea was to make the displaced people pay taxes directly!
Magistrate Meng's expression changed. "No! Absolutely not! If this decree is issued, the newly settled refugees will immediately cause chaos. The worst thing a government decree can do is to change it overnight. I just used a three-year tax exemption policy to reassure them and get them to settle in Biyang County. How can I immediately turn around and exploit them? Moreover, although these wastelands are relatively easy to cultivate, they have lost their fertility after years of being uncultivated. Even if they are forcibly cultivated and crops are planted, there will be no good harvest. If the people have no food to eat, how will they pay taxes?"
But if you don't do it this way, other county magistrates do it this way too, don't they? Looking at Magistrate Meng's gloomy face, Chief Constable Shi swallowed his words. After a long while, he lowered his head and said, "Yes, I was talking nonsense. Please forgive me, Your Excellency."
Magistrate Meng sighed, "Let's record the actual situation first and take it one step at a time."
Meng Guanqi, the temporary clerk, was in no better mood than Magistrate Meng. He had walked around the village twice and counted twice, but there were still only twenty-seven households. Two of the households only had a single old man left, who was so thin that he was almost skin and bones. He wore a homemade straw hat with leaves on his head in the hot weather and used a hoe to turn the soil bit by bit. Half a day had passed, and he had only turned over an area the size of a bed.
Li Xiaoxiao looked at the hoe in his hand, worn down to only half the size of her palm, almost like a stick poking the ground. And he wasn't the only one in the village in such a state; almost every family was in the same predicament. How could turning the soil with such a tool be efficient?
Some families with many members only have one or two hoes, which are given to the strongest person. The others have to use sticks to pry and sharp stones to dig, just to loosen the surface soil and plant the seeds.
Without tools, good seeds, fertilizer, or livestock to help turn the soil, and deep in the mountains where wild animals and birds would come down to steal the crops during the harvest season, it was no wonder that the farmers could not harvest any grain.
Li Xiaoxiao has always been optimistic, but after following Meng Guanqi to all the villages in Biyang County for the past half month, her mood has become heavier day by day.
The poor in this era don't actually have it much easier than those in the apocalypse.
Extremely backward productivity and heavy taxes made it difficult for these people at the bottom of society to breathe.
What's even more disheartening is that the group of nine had come here on patrol, and they had long since run out of the dry rations they brought, so the village chief had to take care of their meals.
The village chief's wife carried a bowl and went from house to house collecting grain. She collected a handful of coarse rice from each household. After one round, it wasn't enough. She hesitated for a moment and then decided to go around again.
An elderly man, holding an empty bag of rice, said apologetically, "There's no more."
Li Xiaoxiao felt a little short of breath.
Eating in a village like this makes one feel guilty.
Magistrate Meng tried his best to dissuade him, saying that was enough. The village chief was an old man nearing fifty, his clothes patched one after another, but he still wanted to provide Magistrate Meng with a full meal and asked his wife to dig out the remaining sweet potatoes for the magistrate to eat.
The village chief's wife, looking utterly helpless, took a small hoe and went to dig on the mountainside.
Knowing they couldn't stop it, Li Xiaoxiao and Asheng went to help. When they arrived at the place where he grew sweet potatoes, they saw that it was full of potholes.
The village chief's wife sighed, "There are too many wild boars. They've destroyed all the sweet potatoes we planted."
Li Xiaoxiao's ears twitched: "Since wild boars are a plague, why don't you fight them?"
While searching for the remaining sweet potatoes, the village chief's wife said, "We tried to catch them, of course we tried. But these pigs run too fast. Old man Nie from the east of the village dared to try and block them, but he got gored by one of their snouts. He lost a chunk of flesh from his leg and nearly died. He's been raised for two years now, and he's still lame... The men aren't well-fed and don't have the strength to chase them. We've only managed to trap a few piglets. We can't trap the bigger ones anymore. When the sweet potatoes are ripe, we have to take turns keeping watch at night. If we don't keep watch, we won't be able to save a single one."
But people can't stay by their side 24 hours a day. There are always things to do at home and work to be done in the fields. Anyway, those pigs either come looking for a crack to root around, and the sweet potatoes are often almost gone.
The village couldn't grow good crops; most of the harvest went to taxes, leaving very little for the villagers. They relied on a local purple sweet potato as their staple food. The villagers collected seeds from the vines and planted them in the fields near the mountains. It didn't grow as well as the wild ones, but it still yielded some harvests and gradually became an important food source for Xiaoye Village. However, they didn't expect that planting too much of it would attract wild boars.
Wild yams emit a strong odor when ripe and have a high starch content, which easily attracts wild boars. Therefore, during the yams ripening season, villagers take turns keeping watch at night for at least half a month, otherwise the wild boars will dig them all up.
The village chief's wife joked with a smile, "These sweet potatoes will only be available to us after the wild boars have eaten them."
Li Xiaoxiao and Asheng felt a pang of sadness upon hearing this, but the people of Xiaoye Village were already used to it.
They were used to not being able to grow crops well in the fields, and they were used to the fact that the grain they grew was eaten by wild boars before they could get any. When these hardships became their daily routine, they felt that this was just how life was, and they could no longer feel any pain.
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