Tan County.
A county under Lancang Commandery.
A hundred li south of the commandery seat, it was surrounded by high mountains on all sides—a typical basin set in a plain.
The Moku River, a tributary of the Lancang River, ran through the basin. Its own tributaries brought blessings to countless common folk. Ponds and reservoirs dotted the land; verdant mountains rose around it, and distant waters shimmered in the sun. It was, by all accounts, a land of plenty.
Unfortunately.
That was only true in the past.
Wu Dao and his party followed the official road into Tan County.
All along the way,
most of what they saw were starving refugees, their faces like those of hungry ghosts, wandering the wilderness, gnawing on trees and eating grass. Others waylaid travelers and took to banditry, forming gangs in the name of brotherhood. They saw very few villages that still looked normal.
As for the fertile fields,
the local powerful families, gentry, and assorted factions had long since swallowed them up and carved them between themselves.
After seizing the land at almost no cost, they hired skilled farmers to work it for a pittance each month.
A single farming household
often had to tend several times as much land as before and sweat several times as hard, just to earn enough food to barely fill their family's bellies.
But in truth, those who could stay on as tenant farmers were already the lucky ones.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people leaving their homes behind, nor so many corpses lying in the wilderness.
They took your land.
Then they made you toil over it, keeping everything you harvested for themselves. And you still had to thank them for tossing you a bite to eat.
The darkness of feudal society
could hardly go