Silver Overlord

The night was dark but the Qiyun Protectorate’s Office was still lit up.

After settling today’s situations and meetings, Yan Liqiang sat in his office looking at the documents Wang Jianbei had left behind.

This was the wealth of Qiyun Prefecture. The first thing the Qiyun Protectorate General had to do was understand his own prefecture.

After some time, Yan Liqiang stretched his back. He felt a little thirsty and drank the tea on his table. Immediately, he realized that the tea was cold. Hu Haihe had changed a few cups of hot tea for him but Yan Liqiang had forgotten to drink them all. Just when he wanted to drink it, the tea was already cold.

“Ah, my lord, let me make some hot tea for you…” Yan Liqiang’s drinking sound woke up Hu Haihe who was guarding the office.

“No need, I’m not that spoiled, this cool tea is quite thirst-quenching!” Yan Liqiang finished all the tea in one go and then waved his hand to Hu Haihe, “By the way, what time is it now?”

“It’s already past midnight!”

“It’s chilly tonight. Go sleep, I’m going to keep reading for a while!”

“There’s no reason for you to stay up and the underling to go to sleep first. Do you want supper? I’ll have the kitchen make something.”

“It’s too late. No need to trouble people, I’m not hungry!”

Hu Haihe shook his head and took Yan Liqiang’s cup and went off to make more tea.

Seeing this, Yan Liqiang shook his head and smiled.

The cold tea had a slight bitter taste which reminded him of when he was working in his company and processing documents late at night. It was like this too, staying up under a lamp every night and drinking cold tea. When he was hungry, he would make some instant noodles. When there was no water, they would sprinkle the seasoning packets on the noodles and eat it dry!

He wondered how the friends of his past life would react if they saw him like this. If he went back like this, he could earn money by being an athlete. He could easily break all sorts of records and get all the rewards. Yan Liqiang daydreamed and then continued to read the booklets.

As he read on, all the data of Qiyun Prefecture settled in his mind, allowing him to understand the entire situation.

Qiyun Prefecture had about 35 thousand square kilometers, and there were about 2.47 million people. Other than Pingxi City, there were 14 counties under it and 158 villages and towns. As for the military personnel, there were 1,184 officials working under him. There were 7 barracks with 21,877 soldiers…

One had to say, Wang Jianbei gave Yan Liqiang quite some face. Usually, with such an exchange, there pretty much wouldn’t be any food and money left in the storage units, but on these booklets, Yan Liqiang saw that Wang Jianbei had left him 170,000 taels of silver and 250,000 units of food.

What surprised Yan Liqiang was that the military equipment was also very ample. It could arm an army of 70,000. This was beyond Yan Liqiang’s expectations. After reading the documents, Yan Liqiang realized that this was because after Wei Wuji was apprehended, the military resources in the northwest were added to the Pingxi Prefecture storage as backup resources for the army. These eventually stayed with him.

Everything else before was fine but looking at those tax booklets, Yan Liqiang felt his head ache. There was a myriad of types of taxes that popped up in Yan Liqiang’s eyes.

In fact, in the official documents, tax and levy were separate things. There was only one type of tax and that was population tax. Qiyun Prefecture was a border prefecture, and in these areas, the levy was a resource that the government could take from the citizens for military activities and purposes. Taxes paid based on families were one thing, taxes paid on food harvest was called rent, and labor conscription was another type. Repairs of roads and bridges were called donations. There were also taxes on salt, iron, fishing, as well as barricade taxes…

In his past life, tax was just money, but in this world, tax was everything. Money, food, labor, resources…

Since the blacksmith shop was managed by Yan Dechang and Zhou Tiezhu, Yan Liqiang didn’t know much about the operations. After looking at these documents, he realized how much tax his dad had to pay. Since Yan Liqiang was seven years old, he needed to pay the population tax. He also needed to pay the tax on iron. As for labor, his dad paid money to avoid going and got someone else to represent him. As for their property, they needed to pay rent…

Not to mention, the most annoying part was that the Han people needed to pay all sorts of taxes while the Shatu Seven Tribes didn’t need to pay any at all…

Yan Liqiang felt the taxation of the Great Han Empire was a huge problem — there were too many types. It was a mess. Even if he wanted to change it, he didn’t know where to start. From the documents, even with all these taxes, the entire income of the province was only barely afloat. In its 15th year, the entire prefecture had only earned less than 80,000 taels of silver and more than half had to be handed up…

If Qiyun Prefecture was like this, then the other prefectures were probably no better.

No wonder Lei Sitong’s eyes lit up upon mention of money — he was scared of being poor.

After reading all these documents and closing the last one, it was already three in the morning. Yan Liqiang realized what he lacked the most now — talented people!