After Mi Heng entered Hai City and settled down as a merchant, he began spying on the temple.
The temple was incredibly magnificent.
He immediately understood why small city-states could not build temples.
This temple alone was as large as the Forbidden City!
That was right. He carefully measured it by pacing it out, and it was indeed about the size of the Forbidden City.
Good lord, just think about how much manpower it took to maintain a Forbidden City. At the very least, it needed three thousand people, and that was probably the bare minimum.
With any fewer, even basic fire prevention and cleaning would be impossible.
In fact, throughout the dynasties, a Forbidden City required at least tens of thousands of Palace Maids and Eunuchs to maintain it.
Yet a small city-state might only have ten or twenty thousand people in total.
Could it spare several thousand people just to maintain a temple?
Of course, this might also have been because this harbor city was extremely wealthy, allowing it to raise the standards.
After all, spending more money on something both useful and capable of flaunting one's strength was well worth it.
He soon learned something else.
A temple needed proper maintenance in order to generate divine power efficiently.
If the temple was damaged, if anything was broken or dirty, it would affect the efficiency of divine power generation.
He also discovered that the temple's daily expenses were enormous.
Incense candles, spices, even fragrant sandalwood burned in braziers...
The candles had to be made from Whale Oil.
As for the people inside, their diets were even more strictly regulated.
They could not eat anything that produced an odor.
Garlic and scallions were strictly forbidden.
They had to eat all kinds of bland food.
Meat was forbidden as well,