Though time was short, the still found it long; though years were few, the busy found them ever more pressing.
When one was busy, the days always seemed to fly by.
Winter had barely passed before spring returned. Within less than three months, scorching heat had already begun to ripple through the air—but before the heat could spread, the drizzle came first.
Plum Rain Season...
Within Yi Xing County, the Eternal Spring Tree climbed steadily skyward, its branches lush and leafy, its offshoots neat and orderly. Rainwater trickled down from the tips of its emerald leaves. This noon brought a rare clear day; the rainwater around it had dried beneath the sunlight, leaving behind rings of faint ripples.
As the bridgehead and gateway to the Thirteen Fiefdom Ports, Liang Qu had not planted the Eternal Spring Tree in the original Yi Xing Town. Instead, he had placed it next door, in Nan Xun Village, which the imperial court had marked within Yi Xing County's boundaries.
There were only two reasons.
First, after ten years of development, Yi Xing Town had been driven forward by Pingyang Prefecture and imperial policy. Its population was enormous, leaving nowhere near enough free land for him to plan freely and spread his wings.
Without natural disasters or man-made disasters, a household on the local registry often contained six people. That was a very healthy average.
Usually, each family had one elderly person or none, a married couple, and—excluding children who died young—three or four children.
When a tree grew large, it put forth branches; when sons grew up, they established separate households.
Moreover, "If commoners had more than two adult sons and did not divide the household, their taxes would be doubled."
Thus, one thousand households meant roughly six thousand people locally. Among them, able-bodied