"Daddy! That's not going to work! If this continues, my Liu family will no longer have the slightest prestige in Leping County!

Look at the officials of the imperial court, they don't take us seriously at all.

Isn't it just to let some mud legs give an extra few decades of taxes? They actually gave our fields to the mud-legged people because of this!

This is really too indifferent to my Liu family!

And those weird-looking young people, how can they actually put them in the village below to be the village head? The reason why my Liu family can have such a prestige in Leping County is because the village chiefs in most places are from my Liu family!

If there is no such foundation, how will my Liu family affect those villages? ”

Shonan County, Leping County.

Leping County is a well-known poor county, not only with a small population and little land, but also with few wealthy families in the county.

The entire Leping County can be called the Liu family.

After more than ten generations of gradual infiltration, not only the county yamen except the county order, the officials appointed by the imperial court are not the Liu family, most of the people in the yamen are not the Liu family, they are also the people who listen to the Liu family.

As far as the Liu family is concerned, what really puts them in control of Leping County is the village chiefs in the dozens of villages below.

There are 27 villages under the jurisdiction of Leping County, and at least 20 of them have village chiefs who are members of their Liu family or have taken refuge in their Liu family.

And because of this, the Liu family can be said to cover the sky with one hand in Leping County, as long as the head of the Liu family sends a word, then the entire Leping County has to tremble.

Liu Jianqiao, the eldest young master of the Liu family, even said:

"In Leping, what the Liu family fancies, it must be the Liu family!"

This shows the prestige of the Liu family in Leping.

However, since the arrival of the Qingzhang working group, the Liu family began to hold their breath.

First of all, in terms of fields, as the only wealthy family in Leping County.

Of the 13,000 acres of land in the entire county, at least 8,000 acres belong to the Liu family.

However, the Liu family always pays very little or no taxes every year.

But what about Leping County's annual taxes?

The county magistrate of Leping County had no choice but to watch the people below join forces and spread these taxes evenly among the people below.

The people of Leping County often have to pay a tax of three or five acres of land, so that one day they will not be able to bear it.

Then there is the sale of the land.

Then the field entered Liu's house.

This is also the main reason why the Liu family's fields are increasing year by year.

The more land the Liu family has, the less land the people have, but the more taxes the people have to bear.

The more taxes the people beared, the more they could not survive, so they had to sell the land, and then the Liu family pocketed the land, and a vicious circle was formed.

In this way, the Liu family can also sit back and wait for the fields to be automatically collected into their own homes.

This also made the Liu family richer and richer, the people became poorer and poorer, and the yamen also became poorer.

The people paid more and more taxes, but the yamen was still poor, and the amount of taxes paid every year was getting smaller and smaller year by year, and finally all the money went to the Liu family.

Such a situation quickly attracted the attention of the Kiyojo group.

The members of the Qingzhang group immediately set Leping as the place where they needed to be the first to clear Zhang, and they went straight to Leping with people.

As soon as they arrived in Leping County, they first began to inventory the fields and found that the land owned by Leping County was far more than the 13,000 acres in the atlas.

These 13,000 acres of land are still the account books left at the beginning of the founding of the country.

Hundreds of years have passed, and the newly reclaimed land has added up to nearly 20,000 acres.

But there was not a single acre of newly cultivated land on the imperial court's ledgers

At a glance, the members of the working group understood what was going on, and it was not the first time they had seen this kind of thing in this time, it was nothing more than the local wealthy clan who had hidden the land.

The working group's approach was simple: since the land was not registered in the atlas, it was terra nullius and all nationalized.

At this moment, it was as if I had touched a hornet's nest, and all kinds of difficulties and obstacles followed.

However, it caused a lot of trouble for the working group.

However, with its extensive experience, the Working Group dealt with them one by one.

However, the Working Group found itself in difficulty when it came to identifying the land that was registered.

Everything is displayed in the gallery as normal.

But because of this, it seems more and more abnormal.

The official surnamed Zhong who presided over the work of Qingzhang in Leping County was called Zhong Changwen.

It was joined by the Ministry of Officials last year after the old group of officials were cleaned up during the Gyeonggi Cheongjo period.

He also participated in the work of Gyeonggi Cheongjo.

After hearing the situation reported by his subordinates, he immediately smiled and said: "This is just a trick, if the account book of this official government is not normal, then won't they be exposed?"

Send a few men to the countryside and ask them how they pay their taxes every year.

By the way, don't go in official uniforms, just pretend to be refugees from other places, otherwise you won't see the truth. ”

The men looked at each other, but then nodded in unison and went to prepare.

Following.

Huangshan Village.

It was early in the morning, the rooster crowed three times, and every household had people carrying hoes and walking towards the fields with heavy faces.

When the morning comes, it's time to work, otherwise the whole family will have to drink the northwest wind, and the taxes will be heavy, if you are lazy, the family will really not survive.

However, when everyone walked to the entrance of the village, they suddenly found that under the big tree in front of the village entrance, I don't know when a few people in tattered clothes appeared and were huddled under the tree shivering.

Seeing these people, the villagers stopped with some curiosity.

At this time, someone couldn't help but step forward, and when he saw that these four people were all young people, he said with a puzzled face:

"What are you doing here, you descendants?"

One of the thinnest young men, raised his face covered with dirt and said bitterly:

"Uncle. We fled from the next county, and we met the red dragon at home, and we fled all the way, can the uncle give saliva to drink? ”

These grizzled people are none other than the ones sent by the working group to inquire about the news, these people are all specially selected to have thin bodies, and they have put on makeup to have this appearance, although they can't guarantee that they can be exactly the same as the people who really fled, but there are still seven or eight points of similarity.

The people in Huangshan Village have probably never been out of the county in their lives, so they don't know if what they said is true, so there is no doubt when they say this.

The old man who came to ask sighed, and then beckoned a young man in the crowd behind him and said, "Three babies, go get some water for them, they are all fleeing." ”

A young man with a hoe behind him answered and hurriedly went back to fetch water, and the old man turned to a few people and said helplessly:

"Housheng, I'm sorry we can only give you some water here, there is no food, the village is poor, many of us dig wild vegetables and don't have enough to eat, there is really no extra food for you."

The old man's thin body and sunken face all proved what he said.

Not long after, Sanwazi brought water, and also brought a few broken pottery bowls with missing mouths, which was already the best bowl in Sanwazi's house.

Several people took the water and hurriedly gulped it up, looking like they hadn't drunk water for a long time.

After drinking the water in the bowl, the young man who asked for water just now wiped his mouth, and then looked at the onlookers and said suspiciously:

"The old man sees that you are going to work in the fields like this, so in this case, you should have a field, why do you still have enough to eat?

You haven't been plagued here, have you? ”

The old man sighed when he heard this, and waved his hand: "What about having land, this tax is getting more and more year by year, and no matter how much land you have, it is not enough to pay taxes......"

After speaking, the old man showed a helpless expression on his face, and the other villagers around him also lowered their heads.

"Huh? What did you say, sir?

Isn't the Holy Son of Heaven in the court now?

The annual field tax has now been reduced to 80 catties per mu per quarter of land, why can't you pay the grain? ”

Now it was the old man's turn to widen his eyes suddenly!

…… (End of chapter)