Chapter 868 - 113: Decision!_3
The old farmer laughed: "What a joke."
"As if we aren’t being oppressed here."
He pushed his wooden cart, using his shoulder to shove aside Sui Lingbo, the scholar, and cursed: "You old sour bookworm, move aside, don’t block the way!"
Sui Lingbo was stunned, then simply smiled, unconcerned.
In August of the eleventh year of Tianqi, the Qilin Army entered the Ying Country with the people. Among the people across Ying Country, there were also refugees fleeing, wanting to join the Qilin Army. Hence, the Ying Country officials were all furious, unlike in Central State, where the bureaucratic families had very low control over the people.
However, Ying Country had extremely harsh demands on the people, almost not allowing them to leave their places of residence, but for various reasons, some people lost their land and family members, becoming landless, powerless, and homeless refugees, wandering around.
These people had no land, no way to farm or plant crops, couldn’t pay taxes, yet still had to spend money on disaster relief. In the past, Ying Country officials disliked these refugees, as they refused to allocate land to them—
After all, this land belonged to their families.
They couldn’t possibly see themselves as cutting flesh off their own bodies.
They also couldn’t completely abandon them.
They merely ensured that these refugees didn’t starve, turning them into a kind of cheap, almost free labor force, but when the time came and these refugees saw hope for a better life and planned to leave, they suddenly realized the issue.
They couldn’t let these refugees leave.