Gu Chi did some calculations for Shen Tang.
Based on current farmland yields and the bare minimum needed to live, three or four mu of poor land could feed one person. That assumed taxes were low and there weren't too many kinds of them. Add up things like rent, household taxes, poll taxes, and corvée labor, and the common people were under tremendous pressure.
They were basically hopping back and forth along the line between starving and not starving.
Ignoring all other factors and looking only at the average yield per mu, one person needed four mu of land to survive. Shen Tang had brought commoners from Sibao Prefecture, incorporated soldiers, and the thousand men under Zhao Feng—about five thousand people in all. By the bare minimum, they needed to cultivate twenty thousand mu!
And that was before counting Fugu City's original smallholders, tenants without land of their own, and all the rest. Altogether, there were more than ten thousand people. The families that had joined forces to dominate Fugu City controlled sixty percent of the farmland in Heyin. Most of what remained in the hands of the commoners was poor land.
And that was before taxes...
Forget four mu. Even adding another two would barely be enough.
Looking at Gu Chi's calculations, Shen Tang felt her whole soul nearly go numb and fly out of her body. Was she really watching Gu Chi do bookkeeping?
No. She was looking at her own "poverty"!
She fought down the throbbing in her head and rubbed her forehead.
Gu Chi noticed her discomfort at once.
He asked with concern, "My lord, are you listening?"
"I am, I am..." Shen Tang said. "It's just that listening to this gives me a headache. It's a subtle feeling, hard to put into words. It's like