Wang Yan swung his blade in three directions.
First, he cracked down on crime and lawbreaking. Second, he began collecting his own exclusive sanitation fee. Third, he surveyed farmland and investigated household registrations.
Each of these measures was enough to provoke fierce resistance, let alone all three at once. And this was a border region, where the authorities' way of doing things had long been wild. The great households would only be wilder.
But that was fine. Even if all three were carried out together, the main focus was still on crime and lawbreaking. After all, once the people were dealt with—once the ringleaders of the opposition were dealt with—the sanitation fee, farmland, and household registrations would all fall into place.
Those who resisted would be suppressed by the garrison troops and killed without mercy. Those who fled would be ignored; they could run wherever they wanted, since their family property would still be there. This was not a thousand years later, when a flexible financial system could turn wealth into strings of numbers that circled the globe a hundred and eighty times in no time, leaving no trace behind.
If he had to rank them, Wang Yan preferred those who accepted their fate and did not resist. Next came those who ran away. Only when there was no other choice would he deal with those who resisted. Because resistance meant weapons, casualties, and a sum of money and grain set aside for pensions and compensation. That was hardly ideal. With that effort, wouldn't it be better to go provoke trouble at the front lines?
Thus, Wang Yan's approach was to plow through courtyards and sweep out nests—to sweep away fallen leaves with the autumn wind. He would suppress the great households within his territory as swiftly as possible, with