Old Liu walked along the bustling streets, crossing the city through streets and alleys. Before long, he left the inner city and reached the outskirts of the urban area.
The Supernatural Era.
Actually, you could encounter people anywhere in the city-state.
After all, its area was limited.
Yet it had to accommodate a large population.
So it seemed extremely crowded.
The area near the river, however, was an exception. Weeds grew everywhere, the ground was covered in mud, and the river often flooded in summer, so the nearby residents were few and scattered.
Of course.
The people who lived here were usually quite poor.
Even among ordinary people living in extremely harsh conditions, they were considered the worst-off.
Most of their houses were shanties.
On ordinary days, they mainly relied on doing odd jobs for nearby villages to get a little food.
These days.
Mechanized farming was out of the question.
Scientific breeding was even more ridiculous.
Agriculture had basically returned to the Old era, or was even worse than it. Most of the people farming now had never worked the land during the Peaceful Era and were typical city folk who could not tell one grain from another.
Now, those who knew how to farm,
and those who knew how to raise chickens,
had all been taught by old farmers summoned by the city-state's higher-ups.
And the old farmers only relied on experience.
They might be skilled farmers themselves, but that did not mean they were good teachers. With students learning in a haphazard manner, the skills they picked up varied wildly.
In an environment without farm machinery—not even oxen—
cultivating the fields relied entirely on human labor.
The number of people needed to participate had risen sharply, while yields had plummeted compared with the era of chemical fertilizers