TO ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY, I CULTIVATE USING QI LUCK

Chapter 1086: Chapter 442 Disaster Relief and Sympathy Chapter 1086: Chapter 442 Disaster Relief and Sympathy Bitter winter in the twelfth lunar month, with wind and snow enveloping the sky.

Extreme cold compels the people across the Nine Provinces to stay indoors for warmth, unless absolutely necessary.

The activity of all living beings on Earth also reaches its lowest at this time.

And the nations of the Nine Provinces, after the mutiny at Xian An in Liang, have fallen into a deep silence, with no other significant events occurring.

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Under the protection of severe cold, everyone begins to hibernate and conserve.

Chu State starts to get busy.

Now, it’s November, the time when the annual Winter Tax is collected.

After two years of Great Wars, each involving over ten million people, the expenditure of money and grain has flowed out ceaselessly, like running water that cannot be stopped.

Originally, Lu Yuan had estimated that he had enough savings to wage wars for several years, but when he truly began to spend money, he found he had been somewhat optimistic.

If it were only for supplying the army and immigrants, then indeed, Chu would have enough for several years.

But in reality, his expenditure wasn’t limited to just these two areas.

For example, if you conquered the land of Central State, weren’t the tens of millions of common people living there now citizens of Chu?

If so, then would you take care of them or not?

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War brings great destruction.

Although Chu managed to conquer half of Central State rather smoothly and kept the duration of the war extremely short, avoiding protracted conflict…

Even the shortest war is still war.

The devastation that two years of war involving tens of millions of people can wreak on civilian life is unimaginable.

Most directly, due to this war, the population of the sixteen counties in Central State now under Chu’s control has decreased by more than twenty million people.

And among these lost populations, over eighty percent are the precious labor force of able-bodied men.

You must understand, even when combined, these sixteen counties had a total population of barely ninety million people.

Currently, with a direct loss of twenty million people, mostly men, the damage to the local population structure and ecology is almost cataclysmic.

The entirety of Central State under Chu’s control is now, apart from places like Qingzhou to the south, and regions like Jiangxia and East Sea, which Chu occupied rather smoothly at the beginning…

The rest of the areas suffer from depopulated lands, a scarcity of men, and everywhere one looks, there are only women and children.

Almost every family has lost fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands.

The pillar of a family, just like that, has been depleted due to the war.

The remaining population of nearly seventy million elders, women, and children, without sufficient labor, even with the land provided by Heaven and Earth, finds it immensely difficult to sustain themselves and their families.

Moreover, with Chu’s policy of local conscription of supplies in the northern territories imposed on these already struggling northern folk, they are being exploited all over again, which is pushing them further to the brink.

Especially in regions like Yuzhou, where due to its isolation by Sea, there have already been large-scale incidents of starvation and death.

And in Qingzhou, Yong State, and other places, there have been isolated cases as well.

Under such circumstances, once the reports from various places were compiled, they naturally attracted Lu Yuan’s attention.

This lack of labor, and widespread famine, could not go unaddressed; otherwise, the famine that broke out in Liang because of Chu’s handling could be replayed under Chu’s own rule.

If it were to escalate, those sixteen counties under Chu’s control might suffer several million, or even tens of millions of starvation deaths.

Although Lu Yuan could steadfastly continue with the wartime death tolls without batting an eye…

It’s because he understood the cruelty of war and recognized the necessity, which is why there was no pity.

But for those defenseless common people, although he could still be firm-hearted, he ultimately had a soft spot and was unwilling to watch a large-scale starvation incident unfold.

Therefore, the issue of aid and support for the people of Northern Central State, to help them overcome this difficult time, was put on the agenda.

After discussions with various officials, three main directions were proposed.

One was disaster relief, where the Chu government would transport grain to regions suffering from famine, ensuring at least the minimum food provision for the local people to prevent starvation.

The second was tax relief for families that were truly impoverished or lacking labor, with no productive capacity, to temporarily suspend their Tribute.

The specific tax relief period would be based on the time it took for the next generation of able-bodied men in these families to come of age.

That is, the government would collect Tribute once your children had grown up.

The third was official marriage arrangements.

It’s an old tactic.

For those families in Central State who have lost all their men but still have eligible women, the government would take charge and recruit unmarried men from Chu’s mainland and allocate them directly to these families.

Thus, the vast number of unmarried young men in Chu’s mainland would immediately have wives and children, land and a house, reaching the pinnacle of life in an instant.

And those vulnerable women, children, and elderly people would gain the protection of a man, providing them with some assurance for the future and preventing starvation or destitution.

It should be noted that in this underdeveloped society, the termination of a family line is not merely a term but a natural phenomenon.

In a society where survival of the fittest is the rule, if you are poor and weak, then you deserve to perish.

This almost instinctive simple notion, especially during times of war, is especially pronounced.

This is why many cities and villages in Northern Central State have lost their men, where everyone is weak, and no one can bully another.

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