Seeing that he couldn't change anything, the civil official could only slump to the ground, muttering to himself, "It's over, everything's over..."
"Enough! Issue the order: starting today, each person will be subject to a war tax of 2,000! Submit it within two days!"
The first to receive the news the next day were the citizens who went to the early market.
The Land of Gold issued a notice ordering each of them to pay 5,000 silver notes as war tax.
The citizens of the market were in an uproar. 5,000 silver notes! To them, this was practically robbery.
Although the Land of Gold occupied the original territory of the Land of Fire, it occupied only border areas, resulting in a poor economy with a predominantly peasant population.
These farmers hand over 80% of their income as taxes. They only keep 20% each year for food and seeds for the next year, so their income is already meager.
The majority of their income comes from selling the vegetables they grow at the market.
The number 5,000 is not much for some wealthy or middle-class families; for a ninja, it's only a little over a month's living expenses.
However, for these farmers who are extremely poor, who rely mainly on their own food production and have almost no extra income, they simply cannot afford it.
Farmers might not even have that much savings in their entire lives; how could they possibly come up with 5,000 yuan all at once?
But those who enforce taxation don't care about any of that; no matter how much tax there is, it must still be collected.
The news quickly spread throughout the Land of Gold. In a remote town far from the Land of Gold, a farmer, upon hearing the news, carried his hoe and returned home with a heavy expression.
His wife looked at him with some suspicion and asked why he had returned so early.
The man remained silent, simply going to his room, lifting the bed frame, taking out a bag of savings, and counting it.
"1200..." The man closed his eyes after counting. Not enough, not nearly enough. 5000 was a sum he couldn't afford even if he sold himself.
Just as he sat on the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do, a series of hurried footsteps and his wife's screams suddenly came from outside the door.
The man rushed out of the room and saw a samurai barging into the house, grabbing his wife by the collar and questioning her.
He quickly stepped forward, forcing a fawning smile, and asked, "Sir, what brings you to my humble abode?"
The samurai gave him a cold look, then abruptly released his wife and said, "I'm here to collect taxes, six thousand, not a penny less!"
The man was stunned for a moment, then said incredulously, "How come it's 6000? Wasn't it supposed to be 5000?"
The samurai impatiently interrupted him, "I said 6000, so I'll pay 6000. What's with all this nonsense? Can you even read? It clearly says 6000 on it. Are you blind...?"
The man shook his head and took two steps back. "But the gentleman said it would only be 5000."
The samurai chuckled twice and said, "You believe everything you hear? I decide how much you pay. Six thousand, not a penny less. You also need to give me an extra 1,000 as a service fee. I went through all that trouble to come all this way, so asking for 1,000 isn't unreasonable, is it?"
The man plopped down on the ground. "Where did I get 7,000? You couldn't even buy me that much money by killing me!"
The leading samurai crossed his arms and said, "I don't care. I'm only responsible for collecting money. No money? No problem. Just take everything you have from your family to pay off your debts. If that's still not enough, we still have land."
The man's eyes widened. He never expected that these warriors would actually try to take his land away. His land was his lifeline, the foundation upon which his family survived. How could he live without it?
The man immediately knelt on the ground and kowtowed, while simultaneously trying to pull at the samurai's trouser leg.
"My lord, please, please don't! My lord, I will definitely find a way to hand over these 7,000. My lord, please give me some time, my lord."
The samurai stared coldly at the man's filthy hands, then kicked him to the ground. "Don't touch me with your dirty hands. Can you afford to pay for it if you get it dirty?"
The man immediately kowtowed, "Sir, please, grant me a few more days. Sir, I will definitely find a way to raise the 7,000."
The samurai merely glanced coldly at the man. "Give you a few days' grace? If everyone gave you a few days' grace, the war would have been over long ago. Hand it over right now, or I'll search your house!"
Before the man could continue kowtowing, the samurai kicked open his door and began searching his room until he had taken all of the man's savings.
The man could only watch helplessly as the samurai brutally overturned his life savings onto the ground. The samurai counted the money, then walked up to the man and stomped on him, yelling, "Damn it, you're a real pauper!"
The man dared not resist and could only continue kowtowing. However, the samurai had no intention of letting him go. After glancing at all the belongings in his house, he brutally took away everything of value that could be sold.
Finally, the samurai slowly walked to the man's only child. Upon seeing this, the man's pupils constricted, and he scrambled forward, crying, "Sir, you mustn't!"
Seeing that the man was bothering him, the samurai drew his katana and said to the man, "How much can you sell this child for? Give me the child, I'll sell him, and then I'll have the money."
Upon hearing this, the man's wife clung tightly to her child, refusing to let go. "You can't, sir! This is our only child!"
The man kept kowtowing, pleading, "My lord, I beg you! This is my family's ancestral offering! My family's lineage cannot end like this!"
However, the samurai didn't care about anything else. He roughly pulled the two apart and reached for the child's collar. The young child had never seen anything like this before and was terrified, bursting into tears.
Hearing the child cry, the man glanced at his child, then at the brutish samurai, and finally gritted his teeth, tackled the samurai to the ground, and reached out to snatch the samurai sword from his hand.
The samurai hadn't expected the man to dare to resist, and was caught off guard and knocked to the ground. However, the samurai didn't let go of his katana, but held on tightly, and so the two began to wrestle.
But the man was ultimately just a peasant, no match for a well-trained warrior. He was kicked in the stomach by the warrior, and in pain, he let go, clutching his stomach and curling up on the ground.
The samurai slowly got up, brushed the dust off himself, looked at the man, cursed, and raised his katana high, slashing down at the man curled up on the ground, howling in pain.
After two screams, the samurai, carrying a blood-stained money bag and a child who had fainted from fright, slowly walked out and headed towards the black market in the distance.
All that remained was a dilapidated courtyard, a pool of dried blood on the ground, and two corpses lying in a pool of blood.
And similar incidents are unfolding constantly in villages across the Land of Gold; the peasant men here are just a microcosm of the situation.