Likewise, there were travel permits.
The household registration system ensured the stability of the population.
Travel permits, on the other hand, ensured the legality of people's movement.
When countless people spontaneously, almost completely disregarding the usual rules, ignored household registration and paid no attention to travel permits, leaving their homes to live elsewhere,
this was a calamity for both the north and the south.
The northern population became even smaller.
In the south, the influx of refugees was immense. Society, already teetering on the brink of collapse, fell apart at the slightest touch.
Robbery, slaughter...
They continued one after another.
Righteous armies rose up in rebellion.
If they were within the jurisdiction of those armies, things might have been relatively peaceful.
But that was only relative.
Because many of those righteous armies were, in essence, no different from bandits gathering together and terrorizing the mountains and forests.
At most, they had merely changed to a more pleasant-sounding name.
That was all.
However.
Five-year-old Man Sui was unfortunate, yet she was also fortunate.
What was unfortunate was that she had been born into this crumbling era, on the verge of witnessing yet another period of darkness and upheaval.
It was better to be a dog in peaceful times than a person in a chaotic age.
This was something everyone knew.
Yet it was also the helplessness everyone knew.
From the day she was born, she had never had enough to eat or enough clothes to keep warm. Going hungry for three days out of every nine might well have been a regular occurrence.
But.
Why, then, could she also be called fortunate?
It was quite simple.
She had seen the child next door being sold away.
That was simply how things were.
People had even come to her family and asked