Chu Qiguang glanced at the innocent, clueless look on the cat's face, then set it back down on the ground. He turned to his sister and said in a grave voice, "If I find out that you're using cats to wipe your ass after you do your business, then I'll use you to wipe my ass!"

His sister stared back at him in shock.

"Can you groom yourself as well?" Chu Qiguang asked.

"Mother!" his sister screamed in panic.

She was only six years old, and she immediately started shouting incoherently, only to be silenced as Chu Qiguang clapped a hand over her mouth.

"I was joking! Little girls like you shouldn't go around saying such dirty things, got it?" Chu Qiguang reprimanded.

After scolding his sister, Chu Qiguang's attention returned to the impulsive urges surging through his body, and he desperately tried to think of a way to ease his discomfort.

Thinking back to his past experiences on Earth, he knew that once his condition flared up, it was very difficult to endure through willpower alone. He would have to find a way to ease the psychological pressure somehow.

Chu Qiguang's sister could see that his complexion was growing paler by the second, and cold sweat had already begun to form on his forehead.

He must be holding in a huge dump! she thought to herself.

All of a sudden, the faint sounds of an argument rang out from inside the house.

A curious look appeared on Chu Qiguang's face as he asked, "Who's come to visit?"

"Our neighbor, Aunt Chen. She came with some people to see our mother," his sister replied.

"Aunt Chen?"

Based on what Chu Qiguang had seen and heard around the village over the past few days, he had a rough idea of the reason for Aunt Chen's visit. He jogged over to the entrance of the house and eavesdropped on the conversation taking place inside.

***

The tiny mud house was completely empty aside from a short table and a brick bed, but at this moment, there were six people crammed into the small space.

Besides Ergou's mother, there was also Aunt Chen, the warden, the steward, and two servants from the Wang Clan.

Ergou's mother was speaking to the middle-aged steward with a sullen look on her face.

The steward was wearing a headscarf and a round-collar robe with tapered sleeves. As he stroked his goatee with his right hand, his eyes occasionally darted around in a shrewd and calculating manner.

"Steward Wang, the average price for each acre of nonirrigated farmland in Azure Sun County is ten taels of silver. Even in years of crop failure, the land can still sell for at least five taels of silver per acre, yet you want to buy our farmland for only four taels of silver per acre. How can we survive with so little compensation?" Ergou's mother protested quietly

Steward Wang continued stroking his goatee as he said in a slow and measured voice, "I'm not treating you unfairly, Mrs. Zhou. The harvests have been poor this year, and it's been difficult for everyone."

"But—"

Before Ergou's mother could protest further, Steward Wang gave her a cold glare as he snapped, "Given the recent drought, no one is able to pay the required grain tax to the imperial court! My master is offering to purchase your land out of the kindness of his heart so that everyone in the village can pay the grain tax, and next year, he'll rent the land back to you for cheap! How can you be so ungrateful?"

There was another man in the room with rugged skin, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt. He was the warden responsible for collecting the grain tax.

The current policy of the Great Han Empire stipulated that each ward would consist of a hundred households, and the ten households with the most farmland and people would take turns serving as warden. Each term lasted a year, and the warden was responsible for collecting taxes and conscripting men for forced labor.

"If you're unable to pay your grain tax, the county will send constables to collect the tax by force, and they're not going to be as kind and lenient as we are," the warden grumbled.

"If you're unwilling to sell your farmland, then you can take out a high-interest loan to pay your grain tax," Steward Wang proposed.

Ergou's mother hurriedly shook her head in panic at the proposition of taking out a high-interest loan. The interest rates on the loans that the Wang Clan offered were so high that she would never be able to make the repayments, even if she were to sell Ergou! Many families in the village had already been completely destroyed by these loans, so she knew that this was definitely not an option that she could consider.

Ergou's mother was already close to giving in, and after much persuasion, she nodded in a daze as she prepared to sign and seal the document to approve the sale of her land.

"Hold on a second!" the pale-faced Chu Qiguang interrupted as he barged into the room, then gave the unwelcome visitors a cold glare. "We're not selling our land!"

"This has nothing to do with you, Ergou," Aunt Chen scolded with tightly furrowed brows. "Go outside and play with your sister."

Chu Qiguang turned to Ergou's mother as he warned, "Mother, if we sell our land now, then we're going to be slaves to the Wang Clan for generations to come!"

Aunt Chen was furious at being ignored, and she scoffed, "Countless people want to submit themselves to the Wang Clan, yet can't get the opportunity! As long as you serve the Wang Clan well, you won't have to pay taxes, nor will you be conscripted into forced labor. It'll be the best thing to ever happen to you!"

"Please forgive my son; he doesn't know what he's talking about," Ergou's mother said timidly. "I'll sell my land right away."

Chu Qiguang knew that the Wang Clan was taking advantage of the drought to extort people into selling their land, and he immediately stopped his mother, then asked, "How much grain tax do we have to pay this year?"

"Two stones of wheat, which equates to two taels and two qian of silver," his mother replied.

Chu Qiguang's brows furrowed tightly upon hearing this. There were grain collection tubs in the county, and a level tub contained a bushel of grain, while one stone equated to ten bushels.

As for the silver equivalent of two taels and two qian, this was a standard that had been established by Azure Sun County a few years ago, and it provided households with an option of paying their grain tax using silver instead of wheat.

Each tael of silver was equivalent to ten qian, so two taels and two qian of silver was 2.2 taels of silver.

"Wasn't the grain tax only five dou last year?" Chu Qiguang asked.[1]

The warden was already losing his patience. He explained, "There's a new county magistrate this year, and he's recovering all of the taxes owed over the past few years. Right now, the entire Azure Sun County is scrambling to pay the owed taxes, and your family certainly isn't the only one having to make up for past deficits."

"Our family has to work in the fields throughout the four seasons every year, harvesting, preparing, planting, fertilizing, watering, unhusking... On top of that, we're also conscripted into forced labor, so there's not even a single day of rest, and in an entire year, we only harvest around five to six stones of wheat," Chu Qiguang said. "In addition to the yearly land and poll taxes, we also have to submit to the county office an equity tax, material tax, transportation tax, storage tax...

“There are taxes for everything, and even after all of those taxes are paid, we still have to offer money to the deities in the Daoist temples, as is tradition. In addition, we are further exploited when we go to the grain merchants to exchange for silver to pay our taxes. The wheat that we submit has to be sun-dried and unhusked, yet the wheat that we buy from them has been soaked in water, so just a simple exchange puts us out of pocket by over ten percent of what we initially submitted.

“After a year of hard work, we end up with only just over four stones of wheat if we’re lucky. For a family of three like ours, that equates to an average of only about four ounces of wheat per person each day, yet some of that has to be allocated to exchanging for oil, salt, and clothes, so how much is left? Do you think it's enough for us to eat?

“If we couldn't supplement our diets by catching some fish and prawns from the rivers and digging up some bamboo shoots from the mountains, we would've starved to death long ago!"

"The grain tax has always been around, and it's the law of the land! You can't just talk your way out of this!" the warden snapped.

Not only was Chu Qiguang not intimidated, but his symptoms were rapidly subsiding as he spoke.

Encouraged by his receding discomfort, his confidence grew as he continued, "The higher-ups want us to pay the taxes that we've owed in previous years, but we've paid our full quota of grain tax every single year, so who exactly are the ones that owe tax to the county office? Does the deficit come from the farmland offered up to the Daoist temples by the affluent clans of the village, or does it come from the farmland of the households that are already uninhabited? You were the ones who caused this mess, yet you expect us to clean it up for you?"

1. Ten dou make a stone. ☜