A mere forty thousand taels of silver had settled the grave crime of rebellion—slaughtering hundreds and capturing over a thousand imperial navy troops.
"Absurd. Truly absurd."
"Fake. Too fake."
"Idiots. Two complete idiots."
Zhao Han had nothing to say in response to Wu Shanshan's assessment.
The truth was just that ridiculous.
Think of Dream of the Red Chamber. Jia Manor had spent nearly a million taels of silver preparing to receive the Imperial Concubine on her homecoming visit.
Yet in the end, their property had still been confiscated.
Why hadn't all that silver helped them change their fate?
Why had that happened? The answer was simple: Jia Manor had no troops behind it.
If someone wanted to crush you, they could crush you.
The Jia Family had only fallen after Wang Ziteng, the man who held military power, died suddenly.
"This means the imperial court is already very weak," Jia Lian told the two of them.
"What should we do, then?" Jia Rong asked.
"We should speed up our own progress, develop quickly, and stop hesitating."
"That's right. The officials beneath the imperial court are more tolerant than we imagined. All they care about is raking in silver."
"Reality isn't Dream of the Red Chamber. There aren't so many complicated schemes. It all comes down to strength and methods."
Once they had decided to accelerate their plans,
they began bringing in refugees in great numbers, opening up barren islands, attacking the savages, and distributing land.
This was, in fact, the foundation for establishing an imperial dynasty.
How had dynasties stabilized themselves in the beginning? By distributing ownerless land to refugees.
The first achievement of a county magistrate was to pacify refugees, assign them land, and register them in official records.
They cultivated large numbers of independent farmers.
That was the