"An edict from Governor-General Qing Chen, Northwestern Circuit-Surveying Governor and Protector of the Western Regions."
"Effective today, the Fifteen Northwestern Circuit Provinces shall implement the 'Northwestern Spirit Field and Spirit Mine Land Survey Edict.'"
"From the day this order is issued, all spirit fields, medicine gardens, mines, spirit springs, and beast pastures within the Fifteen Northwestern Circuit Provinces belonging to sects, aristocratic clans, merchant associations, military offices, provincial offices, commandery offices, temples and monasteries, and all other such bodies, whether publicly or privately owned, must be registered anew and bear fresh seals from both the provincial and county offices and the Governor-General's Office."
"Any property whose old deed has neither been reviewed by the Governor-General's Office nor submitted for sealing shall be deemed ownerless after one year."
As Xu Jiuling's words fell, several of the provincial governors of the Fifteen Provinces immediately changed expression.
Ownerless property!
Over the past several thousand years, who knew how many spirit fields and mines in the Northwestern Circuit had come under the control of local powers through ancestral military merits, written orders from imperial princes and senior ministers, old sect deeds, or even private transactions, channeling vast profits to them.
Some of those deeds were genuine; others were half true and half false.
If Qing Chen's Land Survey Edict was truly enforced and fresh seals from the Governor-General's Office were required, it would mean placing the power of life and death over every spirit field and spirit mine in the Fifteen Northwestern Provinces squarely in Qing Chen's own hands.
With concrete figures in hand, who would still dare not pay their spirit stone taxes in full?
Xu Jiuling continued reading.
"Each province shall strive to submit its original master register within one year, complete the initial survey within two years, and finish the review