Great Zhou's Qingzhou lay south of Pingzhou. Under Pingzhou's jurisdiction was a commandery called Changshi County, which governed eight counties. Yet the most famous of them was Dongxi County.
Dongxi County leaned against Great Chang Mountain, with an endless plain before it. At the center of that plain lay a vast lake spanning three hundred li.
With its favorable climate, Dongxi County was a land of fish and rice, quite prosperous.
Great Chang Mountain behind it was especially rich in all kinds of ores. There were more than thirty officially registered veins alone, while rumor had it that over a hundred private veins were being mined in secret.
Mining veins required a great many laborers, which resulted in Dongxi County having an enormous population.
Counting slaves and ordinary laborers, Dongxi County's population exceeded ten million.
That population already surpassed that of Great Zhou's lower-ranked commanderies.
For example, North Sea Commandery, which Ye Zhen had first taken over, had not even had ten million people.
Yet this tiny Dongxi County before him not only had a population exceeding ten million, but also saw merchants and travelers from all directions coming in an unbroken stream. Aside from daily necessities and slave trading, its ore trade was exceptionally booming.
It could rightly be called the ore capital of Pingzhou, even of the regions surrounding Pingzhou.
Such flourishing commerce and agriculture had made Dongxi County immense. Its county seat was already larger than Changshi County.
Even its city walls were one-third taller than those of Changshi County's commandery seat.
In Great Zhou, this was a violation of protocol. Great Zhou Law stipulated maximum heights for provincial cities, commandery cities, and county cities. Exceeding those limits was overstepping one's bounds.
Yet Dongxi County had overstepped those bounds and violated protocol, but nothing had happened.
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