A low table, two cups of Spiritual Tea—Wang Chen and Yu Feihong sat facing each other, talking.
It was a long story.
What had happened today in this desolate mountain temple was directly tied to Great Qian's current national fortunes and destiny.
During the previous Emperor's sixty-year reign, he had consistently pursued a policy of honoring the civil and restraining the martial, treating scholars with exceptional favor.
To look after those who studied, any scholar who had earned scholarly rank could enjoy reductions in land and commercial taxes.
Xiucai, juren, gongshi, jinshi—the higher the rank, the greater the reduction!
This had originally been good governance. Many scholars came from impoverished families, studying by the light of cold windows while barely having enough to eat, with no other means of making a living. How could they compete with the sons of wealth and privilege?
As a result, many people of outstanding talent had been buried and overlooked!
Such preferential treatment could undoubtedly help capable scholars.
Yet after several decades, the gentry class had rapidly swelled.
To pay less tax, vast numbers of merchants and farmers registered their shops and farmlands under the names of scholars.
And great numbers of hidden households, hidden lands, and hidden assets emerged!
Great Qian's annual revenue consequently plummeted.
During the Supreme Emperor's reign, Great Qian's annual revenue had always exceeded fifty-five million taels of silver.
By the time the previous Emperor passed away, that figure had sharply fallen to around thirty million taels.
Nearly half had vanished!
Meanwhile, Great Qian had always faced the threat of Great Xia in the northwest. Last year alone, border military expenditures had reached eight million taels.
The national treasury ran a deficit year after year, sustained only by the hard-earned reserves accumulated over centuries.
After the current Emperor ascended the