novelraw Chapter 235 This small world is a cage that imprisons them.
Chapter 235 This small world is a cage that imprisons them.
Fortunately, there's no rule that poor people without property can't get married, otherwise most of the men here would be bachelors!
Families with cultivators, on the other hand, hope to have more children to continue their privileged lineage. Therefore, it is stipulated that cultivators can marry a maximum of five wives, in order to increase the proportion of children with spiritual roots.
There are some relatively wealthy families here, but they generally don't take many wives. After all, the area is only so big, the land is only so much, and the output is limited, so they can't support too many women and children. Even the landlords don't have much surplus grain!
Newborn babies are allocated one or two acres of terraced fields. Every year, people without children die here, and their land is taken back and redistributed. Children here are still treated well.
The rules here stipulate that the maximum amount of land a family member can own is five times the average amount of land owned per person; anything exceeding this amount will be reclaimed.
One can buy and sell their own land up to this limit. If one sells all their land, they can only work as laborers or tenants for others. However, these people still have a chance to own land. As long as they are free commoners, they can be re-allocated some land after their children are born.
This rule is quite good. It prevents large families from acquiring too much land, leaving ordinary people without a source of livelihood, and maintaining the balance within this small world.
The caregivers do not charge any fees to the children until they are seven years old, including any per capita fees; the families only need to support them.
If a family has a child with spiritual roots, it's like having a golden baby! The family will receive many benefits as a result, so everyone will raise the child to be healthy until the age of five when they can test for spiritual roots.
If any family abuses children or pregnant or postpartum women, the village chief can order them to be flogged. There's no such thing as a family matter being none of anyone else's business here. So the children here live the happiest lives.
At the very edge of the barrier lies the public land, whose produce supplies the salaries of those who govern it. Of course, the work on these fields also requires labor from all the common people's households, with each village responsible for a portion, and the village chief in charge of arranging for people to work for free.
Some families are quite hardworking and are willing to cultivate some mountain land. After registration, this land will belong to them, but they will have to hand over 30% of the harvest as public resources to support the elderly, weak, women and children who have no one to rely on.
Tong Yuheng thought to himself: If it weren't for the severe shortage of supplies, this place would truly be a wonderful "Shangri-La"! The management system here is quite comprehensive; it's practically a mini-court!
No wonder the villagers all want to leave; this tiny place is so hierarchically divided! Ordinary people can only hope to change their social class by giving birth to a child with spiritual roots, which is far too unreliable!
It's clear that the villagers live in poverty and hardship, subjected to layers of exploitation and oppression. They can't leave, and they lack the power to resist those in power. What they long for most is an outsider like her to change everything here!
"Are there many people cultivating here? What is the highest level of cultivation?" Tong Yuheng asked her the question she was most concerned about.
"There are very few people who cultivate, after all, there are very few people with spiritual roots. Moreover, we don't have many cultivation resources here. Because of our ancestors' status, we couldn't obtain any good cultivation techniques..."
By the time Tong Yuheng arrived at Wangxian Village, he had already gained a basic understanding of the situation there:
Their ancestors have lived here for nearly eight hundred years, which means they were migrated here at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty or the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.
At that time, the world was in chaos and wars were frequent, but they were able to live peacefully under the protection of their master's family. It was their master who said that he had built this "Shangri-La" to keep them away from the war and asked them to move here.
They also made extensive preparations for this: using magic to create terraced fields on the mountain, build lakes to store water, and introduce rivers to flow through, thus constructing the prototype of this Flying Immortal City and the eight surrounding villages.
To ensure these people could live well, they even moved the entire salt mountain, providing various suitable seeds, seedlings, and livestock breeds. Their ancestors were very happy when they first arrived and were extremely grateful to the families who had taken them in.
However, since then, the main family has never appeared again. Although their lives here are peaceful and there are no major natural disasters, after several generations, living supplies have become increasingly scarce, and cultivation resources are also extremely limited.
The energetic young people, naturally unwilling to be confined to this small place, tried every possible way to find a way out, but all their efforts ended in failure. Eventually, their will was worn down, and they accepted their predetermined fate!
This small world is their prison!
Due to the scarcity of resources, life became increasingly difficult for the people living here. Later, their ancestors used some animal control techniques to tame the animals in the mountains and take advantage of their ability to freely pass through the barrier to bring things from the outside mountains into the area.
They also considered having the animals carry messages in writing, hoping that outsiders would discover them out of curiosity, or that someone knowledgeable in formations would break the barrier and let them out.
Unfortunately, animals can only take things out of nature; anything with traces of human creation cannot be taken out. However, they can bring things from outside into the world!
The population here has remained relatively stable, with a significant number of children born each year. However, the elderly rarely live past fifty, except for cultivators.
Therefore, in order to live longer, anyone with a spiritual root will cultivate desperately. Even those with the lowest level of mixed spiritual roots, who might never reach the third level of Qi Refining in their entire lives, still work just as hard.
The old man we just saw was only a cultivator at the second level of Qi Refining. He was over seventy years old and was a rare long-lived person in Wangxian Village!
When they arrived in the village, the villagers looked at the two sisters as if they were rare and exotic objects. Almost everyone who could come came, wanting to see how outsiders differed from them.
Everyone was very welcoming, treating them like family. Some women even invited them to stay at their homes, saying that if they wanted to build their own houses, the whole village would help them.
Tong Yuheng understood that they thought that since her sisters couldn't get out either, they were now one of their own! So they told her everything about this place without reservation.
Of course, they still harbored some illusions: if the elders of these two sects came looking for them, would there be a high-level cultivator who could release everyone?
"Everyone, please stop arguing. Let these two fellow Daoists stay in the side courtyard of my house. My house is spacious!"