Chapter 1071 - 1073 Why am I so poor_1
Su Ma became troubled upon hearing this, "But Commandery Princess, we barely have any silver left. If we go out to dine and stay at an inn, I’m afraid it won’t be enough."
"Ah..." Hearing they were out of silver, Commandery Princess Dongyang suddenly lost all her energy and then she looked up to the sky and howled, "Why am I so poor?"
Su Ma and a few guards twitched at the corners of their mouths upon hearing this.
They too wanted to ask, why was there such a poor Commandery Princess?
"Commandery Princess, do we still want to go to the inn?" Su Ma asked cautiously. Why the Commandery Princess was so poor, others might not know, but she did.
Their Commandery Princess was just too filial and kind-hearted, giving away all the silver she received, only keeping a very small portion for herself.
"Forget it, let’s not go," Commandery Princess Dongyang drooped her head, shaking it weakly. Then she turned to Su Ma with a pitiable look and said, "You might as well stop calling me Commandery Princess from now on. The title sounds so wealthy, but look at me; do I look like the image of wealth? I’m completely destitute, it’s simply a disgrace to the name. Ah..."
In the end, unable to hold back, Commandery Princess Dongyang cried out loudly a few more times before she spurred her horse and left.
Mu Shaoling watched the retreating figures, pondering.
He then turned to the servant beside him and asked, "Why is she so poor?"
So poor that she doesn’t even have the money to dine at an inn?
The servant shook his head, indicating he didn’t know. In his memory, every Commandery Princess was surrounded by attendants and adorned in gold and silver. Unlike this one, it seems from the day he met her, she was wearing nothing but a headscarf each day.
"Young master, your subordinate knows!"
The servant might not know, but a hidden guard stepped forward.
"You know?" Mu Shaoling raised an eyebrow. "How would you know?"
"I was also one of the people who accompanied the young master to Yunnan the year before last," the hidden guard replied.
"Tell me what’s going on."
A Commandery Princess claiming to be poor was strange, just like the second princess in the palace who, even when claiming to be penniless, would somehow manage to amass thirty thousand taels to buy jewelry. It made no sense that she would have to consider whether or not to have a meal at the inn.
"After the Tayun tribe gathered the nearby eighteen tribes, they didn’t actually reap many benefits. Instead, it deepened the financial burden on the Tayun tribe..." the guard reported one by one.
Only then did Mu Shaoling understand why the Emperor had awarded gold, silver, and jewels instead of a noble title that year. In Yunnan, there were many mountains but little land, and too many monks for the porridge. Each tribe was desperately poor. It was said that the Tayun tribe used to be one of the richer ones and thus, the tribal chief set out with ambition to conquer the other tribes.
But after subduing all the tribes, the problems emerged. The families in the tribe could hardly afford food, or they had only one meal a day. As the tribal chief, you have to solve that, right?
Because of the difficulty in getting food, people’s health deteriorated, and more fell ill. So, with sickness being prevalent and skilled doctors scarce, medical fees were high. Ordinary people simply couldn’t afford to get sick. Naturally, if the people of the tribe didn’t have the money for treatment, you, as their leader, had to pay, right?
Mu Shaoling suddenly saw the light. No wonder Dongyang had been so adamant about learning medical skills from him.
Thus, every year, the Tayun tribe would have to subsidize the subjugated tribes with a significant amount of money. This resulted in their own tribe’s supplies being insufficient. As the daughter of the tribal chief, how could she not worry upon seeing her father distressed over finances? Therefore, every entitlement, gift, or salary she received from the court was given to the chieftain of the Tayun tribe, while she kept only a minuscule part for herself.
So when Dongyang said she was very poor, it was true. She was truly very poor!