"We've reached the point where this is no longer something we can simply give up on if we want to!" Fatty Liu swept his gaze back and forth across everyone. "Are you really willing to let your ancestors' legacy be ruined in your hands?"
"Either way, I'm not willing!"
"Liu Bei's hostility toward our great families is etched into his bones. Just look at this string of moves: first, he seized our power; then, he attacked the status of our family members; deliberately spread books, reducing us scholars to the same level as peddlers and laborers. Now, he appears to be merely relocating people, but what will be affected the most?"
Fatty Liu looked around at everyone and said, word by word, "The land!"
As soon as he said this, everyone drew in a sharp breath.
"Think about it. Without all these commoners, if we don't want the land under our names to lie fallow on a massive scale, then we can only bow to Liu Bei and become the laughingstock of the scholars forever. Otherwise, we can only leave our ancestral homes. But neither of those options is something any of you want to see, am I right?"
In the modern industrial social system, leaving farmland fallow was already illegal. How much more so under the ancient agrarian system? If anyone dared to leave the land under their name uncultivated, the land would be confiscated at best, and they would be prosecuted at worst.
Besides, whether or not one cultivated a plot of land, not a single coin of tax could be withheld. Things had still been manageable under the former Han, when enforcement was lax and tax evasion had become commonplace, but now...
Taxes alone would be enough to leave these great families unable to cope.
Of course,