Chapter 361 Distortion
Sister Xiaocao is obviously very dignified in front of other brothers and sisters, but she becomes very abnormal when she is in front of her.
But in Zhu Xiaocao's eyes, Shang Hongxiu is the most abnormal person. To be precise, almost all members of the Pingtian Sect think she is abnormal.
Her in-depth communication with Bai Qingge caused her thoughts to become too avant-garde, and because she had been locked up at home, she seemed a little naive about the ways of the world.
It's like a college student who traveled through time from the modern era and is out of tune with this world.
Children who grew up in an era where they had no worries about food and clothing and who grew up under the red flag would probably want to change something when they see such a tragic situation, but no one can tell what the outcome will be.
The world rarely changes because of one person, but that doesn't mean such people don't exist.
Shang Hongxiu sighed and decided to skip this topic.
"Do you want to go together?" Shang Hongxiu asked casually.
Zhu Xiaocao raised her head excitedly, as if she had received a great honor, and responded: "It is my honor... my pleasure."
But she actually didn't want anyone to follow her, because the senior rarely showed up in front of people other than her. Now that Sister Xiaocao was following her, the senior would most likely not come out.
This place is close to the capital, but it is not as prosperous as imagined, and most of the places are dull.
This is a manifestation of lack of oil and water. Logically speaking, the people under the emperor's feet should not be short of food and clothing. The clothes worn by the common people are quite neat, and they basically have no shortage of two meals a day. However, they are lacking something important in food.
Oil, salt, spices, etc.
Spices are fine, as they are not affordable for ordinary people. Moreover, people only care about having a full meal and do not care about the taste. As long as it is edible, they will eat it even if it is rotten.
But it is not okay without oil and salt, which are necessities for the human body. The importance of these two is even comparable to that of staple foods.
Logically speaking, people can refine their own oil, and although salt is expensive, even the lowest quality coarse salt is not unaffordable. This matter has to do with the fact that the imperial court could not collect taxes.
This country has a serious underworld atmosphere, and official positions are sold privately and recklessly.
It is said that someone knew about this matter, but he turned a blind eye to it and even participated in it. However, few people know whether it is true or not.
After spending a lot of money to buy an official position, one naturally wants to earn double the money while in office.
As for where to make money, is there any need to explain it? Of course, it is easy to make money from ordinary people. Although the amount is small, it is large in quantity.
Usually, we would add some taxes like 'the hard work tax for officials who work day and night for the country and the people', 'the protection tax for suppressing another bandit', etc. There are only taxes you can't think of, but no taxes that officials can't collect.
In the past, everyone tacitly regarded wealthy businessmen as the big bosses, and ordinary people were just incidental.
But now the sale of official positions is serious. There are many rich people who are not officials. Even if they do not have real power, they are not targets that can be targeted at will. There are many twists and turns behind this.
Since we can't extort money from the rich, we can only settle for the next best thing and target the poor to accumulate small amounts.
Although it is happy when making money, it is painful when collecting taxes.
On weekdays, the officials collect a lot of "hard work tax", which is far from enough to cover the national taxes. If they can't collect enough, they have to fill the gap themselves. But with such a big hole, they can't take out loans to work every year.
So a common problem arises: buying an official position, making money, and retiring to one's hometown, all in one go.
This results in the money that should have been circulating in the market being abnormally concentrated in the hands of a few people, resulting in less and less money in the market.
So much so that a copper coin that could only buy one bun before can now buy five or six, and in extreme cases even eight or nine.
People had no money, so they only spent money on food. They would not buy other things if they could avoid it. In many places, there was even a situation where several people wore one pair of pants.
Human vitality is always strong in strange places, both physically and mentally.
They can survive by eating grass, tree bark, and even soil for a while.
They can even eat the least, simplest and roughest food like mules, do the heaviest, most tiring and most miscellaneous work, and endure whipping every day until death.
But if you come to collect taxes again, it would be like putting a knife to their necks. They endure this just to live a miserable life.
You can whip him and he can endure it. You can cut his flesh with a knife and he can also endure it.
But if you want to drink his blood, eat his flesh, peel off his skin, and chop off his head with a knife to eat some fresh brains.
At that time, who knows, someone might say that Heaven is dead, and then followers would flock to him. This is the situation of the Pingtian Sect now.
In short, they can accept a slow death, but if it is death today or tomorrow, then it becomes a question of why must I die and not you?
The people were being exploited to the extreme, so there was no way of collecting taxes, and then someone came up with this bad idea.
Since the "personal taxes" in the hands of the people cannot be forcibly collected, why not force them to hand over the money in their hands?
Isn’t it a good idea to raise the price of salt and impose salt tax?
It’s okay for you not to pay taxes, but you can’t not eat salt, right?
Tax revenue increased, the emperor was happy, and the person who came up with the idea was rewarded. Everyone was happy.
Once this idea was brought up, the officials in the court had endless thoughts in their minds, like a surging river.
All the daily necessities of the people were targeted, but fortunately not everyone was obsessed with money, and in the end only an "oil tax" was added.
Not only are taxes levied on oils produced by official oil mills, but also on the sale of oils by private individuals. Even if individuals’ own refined oils are found to be produced, they have to pay additional taxes.
Although this is what was said above, in official circles, the most important thing is that leaders set an example for their subordinates.
Finally, with the efforts of local officials, various taxes were increased to cover the most daily necessities, "rice, noodles, firewood, charcoal, and oil." This is still the most basic.
Shang Hongxiu once went to a rural area, where there was actually a "breathing tax". In short, you had to pay tax for every breath you took.
Her journey of killing officials also started from that time.
The place where she is now is not that outrageous. She can still have enough to eat two meals a day, but the high prices of oil and salt make it difficult to solve the problem.
Oil can at least be secretly refined from domestic animals, but salt is not the same. Not only do you not know the method, but if you are caught it is a capital crime. Basically, people don't eat it if they can. Some people even eat the "poisonous salt" directly.
The emperor could still sit firmly on his throne thanks to the people below who sold official positions indiscriminately. Once they received the money, they would give out the official seal, official uniform and other formalities and would not care about anything else. They would not even verify in person whether it was the person or not, as long as the name was correct.
This leads to another situation, as long as you have something that proves you are this official, then you are.
Therefore, there are also many local officials who are actually bandits pretending to be killers, or they are guys who slay dragons but end up becoming evil dragons.
These people are different from the rich man who only keeps servants as bodyguards. Almost all of them have blood on their hands.
In addition, since he was originally a killer and was afraid of being treated like this, he simply raised private soldiers.
The rebels had not even started shouting slogans when they were chopped into meat paste by 800 executioners.
The emperor probably couldn't have imagined that his current throne was supported by a group of criminal killers.
"A twisted country," is how Bai Qingge described it.
But what is even more twisted is the human beings themselves.