Bizarre Taxes

The old Village Chief knelt on both knees, like a guttering candle in the wind, carefully cradling seven or eight bits of silver as if they were family heirlooms.

These bits of silver had been cut into bizarre shapes with scissors, like scraps of silver filings.

He knew perfectly well that all these pieces of silver combined probably would not even be enough to buy the city lords a cup of tea, so he feared Chu Jiang would look down on them.

There was no helping it. Apart from their wretched lives, this was the village's entire fortune. They did not have a single extra coin of silver.

But if they gave too little, their fate would only be worse.

"Keep it for yourselves!" Chu Jiang glanced at it and continued walking toward the edge of the village. After hesitating for a moment, he stopped, looked at the old Village Chief, and said, "You will not have to pay the Demon Extermination Tax from now on."

"If anyone asks, tell him to come find me directly."

The so-called Demon Extermination Tax was nothing more than a method for petty officials to extort money.

The imperial court had no such tax. They were all newly invented taxes created by local officials.

The imperial court already rewarded officials who participated in suppressing demons and monsters with silver, but people's greed knew no bounds. They already had plenty of silver, yet they wanted more.

Besides, fighting demons and monsters was far too dangerous.

Squeezing the common people directly was the surest business without risk. In any case, they endured humiliation and submission without resisting, and even if some did resist, they would simply be suppressed.

They collected the Demon Extermination Tax without exterminating a single demon. At most, they drove demons and monsters away. That was the current state of Baishi County.

As for other places, he did not know, but they were probably much the same.

As the old Village Chief stood there in a daze, a flawless piece of silver about the size of a thumb fell into his hand.

"This can count as what the imperial court owes you!"

With that, Chu Jiang strolled away.

All that remained was his receding back, carrying a pig demon's head and a sheep demon's head, gradually vanishing into the distance beneath the sunlight.

"Thank you, my lord!"

The old Village Chief watched Chu Jiang's departing figure and bowed deeply, knocking his head against the ground three times.

This bow came from the bottom of his heart.

Every word Chu Jiang had said had shaken his soul.

Even if it was only for this moment, it was real.

The villagers of Daxing Village looked different now. It was not respect that had appeared in their eyes, but something far more complicated.

Lord Chu, the Great King of Hell who squeezed the common people dry every day, had declared that they no longer needed to pay the Demon Extermination Tax and had even left them a piece of silver. The heavens had changed.

"Shouldn't we thank him too?"

Yes, they should thank him.

Without another word, the nearby villagers followed the old Village Chief's lead and knelt in worship.

The villagers farther back did not know what was happening. Seeing those ahead of them kneel, they also dropped to their knees. Before long, a great dark mass of people had knelt down.

At this moment.

They seemed to have forgotten that the demons and monsters from yesterday had originally been brought there by Chu Jiang.

Baishi County yamen.

Chu Jiang knew the way well as he entered his own work area, the Demon Hunting Office.

The Demon Hunting Office specialized in demon and monster affairs. At minimum, one had to be a martial artist at the First Stage of Body Refinement to be selected into the Demon Hunting Office. After all, anyone who was not even an acquired martial artist would be seeking death by fighting demons and monsters.

The Demon Hunting Office had four chief constables. Other than the previous owner of this body, every one of them was at least at the Seventh Stage of Body Refinement.

As for Li Feng, the head of the Demon Hunting Office, he was an innate expert.

Amid the broader struggle against demons and monsters, the Demon Hunting Office's status had risen in a straight line. Years ago, it had already broken away from being the yamen's seventh division and become the county yamen's largest violent institution.

Though the previous owner's strength was not particularly impressive, within the entire Demon Hunting Office, almost no one besides Li Feng dared provoke him.

What he relied on was naturally his special relationship with demons and monsters.

On that basis alone, he could run rampant through Baishi County without restraint, a genuine local tyrant.

Baishi County had generally remained stable in its struggle against demons and monsters, repeatedly muddling through inspections sent from above and preserving most people's official hats.

The previous owner had also maneuvered through it all, working the relationships on every side.

Just then, a thin figure hurried inside.

The moment he saw Chu Jiang seated in the official chair, he immediately put on a fawning expression. "Lord Chu, you have finally returned! Without you here, our Demon Hunting Office would have lost its backbone."

The newcomer was called Zhang Liancai. He was already fifty years old and had followed him the longest. He had been the previous owner's most trusted deputy, and outside, he represented Chu Jiang.

There was a secret saying in Baishi County: Chu Jiang was the Great King of Hell, while Zhang Liancai was the Old Plague God.

No one could stand him.

His methods of collecting wealth were even more varied than the stars in the sky. The Demon Extermination Tax had been his idea.

It had quickly spread throughout Baishi County and received high praise from the county yamen.

After tasting the sweetness of it.

He had once again put his cleverness to work and devised all kinds of bizarre taxes.

The Single Tax: commoners who remained unmarried at eighteen had to pay the Late Marriage Tax. If they did not marry for one year, they paid for one year; if they did not marry for ten years, they paid for ten years.

And if they did not have a child within three years, they also had to pay the Infertility Tax.

The Clothing Tax: as long as clothes covered your body, you had to pay tax. Some poor commoners could not afford the Clothing Tax and did not even dare leave their homes.

The Rice Tax: eating a meal required paying tax.

The Medical Tax: visiting a clinic for treatment or medicine required paying tax.

More outrageously, there was even a Sun Tax. Even basking in sunlight required paying tax. They grandly called it a gift from heaven and earth, claiming that the people were not paying the government but offering tribute to the gods.

Once the gods received their offerings, they would bless the people and protect them from harm by demons and monsters.

Yet no matter how much money people paid, the demons and monsters never ceased. They still slaughtered the common people.

There were countless examples like these.

They had simply made up excuses to rake in money. Later, the government felt there were truly too many taxes, the common people's resentment had grown immense, and even serious conflicts had erupted.

Only then did they abolish quite a few of those bizarre taxes.

But afterward, they drastically raised the tax rates and came up with a so-called Tax on All Things. From then on, people only had to pay this tax and no longer needed to pay the others.

Of course, the Demon Extermination Tax still had to be paid.

Now Baishi County only had these two kinds of taxes left. They sounded few, but the money that had to be paid had not decreased by much.

In one word: absolute beasts.

But on second thought, he himself did not seem much better. The previous owner had also been a beast.

The only difference was:

Zhang Liancai was an old beast, while the previous owner was a great beast.

The identity he had transmigrated into was truly a goddamn doomsday opening. A heap of bombs was tied to his body, and who knew what day they might explode.

Chu Jiang sighed faintly inwardly, but his expression did not change in the slightest. In an even tone, he asked, "I have not been in the county yamen these past two days. Did anything happen here?"

"My lord, I was just about to tell you about this. While you were away these past two days, our brothers suffered terribly. You must uphold justice for us!" Zhang Liancai cried miserably, wailing as if his parents had just died.

"That newly arrived chief constable, Liu Guangwu, seems to have gone mad. He opposes us at every turn. This morning, when we went to East Street to collect taxes, that damned Chief Constable Liu stopped us. Not only did he accuse us of collecting taxes indiscriminately, he even had the brothers collecting taxes beaten up."

"When we invoked your name, they beat us even harder. They said you were nothing but a local turtle, simply showing you no respect whatsoever."

"We have to teach him a lesson. In the Demon Hunting Office, in all of Baishi County, everyone gives you seven parts face. Yet he is a chief constable who has only been here for a month, and he dares put on such airs."

Chu Jiang frowned slightly and seemed quite angry as he said, "That happened?"

Knowing Zhang Liancai's nature, there had to be exaggeration mixed into it.

Liu Guangwu was one of the few oddities in the Demon Hunting Office. He was the newly acknowledged adopted son of Assistant Magistrate Liu, Baishi County's second-ranking figure. He did not fit in with others, did not covet money, and did not permit his subordinates to collect the Demon Extermination Tax.

He had only come to serve in Baishi County a month ago, yet he had already built up a little reputation.

Still, why did he feel like a villain?

An early-stage minor villain committed every evil imaginable, while the righteous protagonist feared neither power nor authority and fought bravely against the hateful great villain. In the end, he defeated the villain and won over a wave of popular support.

Then he would rise through the official ranks step by step?