Hey, you are reborn too?

This hilltop is far away from the Dayuan Imperial City. As the saying goes, the emperor is far away and the sky is high. Even if the emperor has supernatural powers, it is difficult for him to really control these remote places.

Besides, the emperor doesn’t care about this at all now.

Not to mention these bandits, even the officials sent here to govern are lacking this and that, and their monthly salaries are pitifully low.

Even the officials sent by the imperial court to govern the local area were short of money. One can imagine how hard life was for the people in this land.

This place is located in the north, is mountainous, has little flat land, and is relatively barren, making it unsuitable for growing crops.

It is precisely because this place is mountainous that transportation is inconvenient and there is little communication with other places.

The advantage of less communication is that many of the landscapes and trees here are well preserved.

But the bad thing is that trade is relatively underdeveloped and food prices are extremely high.

The common people living in this land are generally in a situation where there is no rice in the pot, only wild vegetables dug from the mountains.

But there are limits to the wild vegetables on the mountain.

When everyone in this land goes to pick wild vegetables instead of buying food, even if there are many wild vegetables on the mountain, they can recover on their own, but they will eventually be picked up.

What's more, how could the local merchants who became rich by selling grain miss these business opportunities?

He said it was done secretly, but in fact he blatantly ordered his men to surround the mountain and prevent the common people from picking wild vegetables.

If everyone eats wild vegetables, who will eat the food they have stored?

The local people were unarmed, so how could they defeat those strong and armed guards?

No matter how much you hate it or how helpless you are, you can only choose the remaining two paths.

One option is to give up the idea of ​​picking wild vegetables and save money to buy the ridiculously expensive food.

The other is to take a different approach.

Go to remote and dangerous places without guards, guard against wild beasts while relying on your own legs to walk through the dense forest.

Just for that little bit of wild vegetables.

Wild vegetables that can keep the whole family alive.

Obviously, neither of the two options is a good solution. Many people have to save money to buy rice and become starving.

Many people have died on the cliffs while going to dangerous places to pick wild vegetables.

Under this strange oppression, many people simply chose to go up the mountain and become robbers.

The locals were not easy to rob. After everyone turned down their sleeves and searched their bodies, they could only find a few coins.

But the distinguished guests from other places are different. They are not only rich, but even extremely wealthy.

The location of this hill is also very coincidental, it is almost the only way to leave from Dayuan to the north.

At the same time, it is also the only way to go from the central part of Dayuan to the north.

Although the relationship between Beili and Dayuan is still a bit tense, there are still many businessmen who smell business opportunities and go to the border between the two countries to trade.

It is called sharing what we have.

In fact, it is just a mutual agreement, and you are just making a profit by taking advantage of the scarce items in the other party's place.

And those merchants who want to travel from the prosperous southern part of Dayuan to the northern part to trade with Beili must pass through this mountain.

Those merchants could never have imagined that they would be stripped of at least two or three layers of goods while happily pulling cartloads of all kinds of goods from the south through this difficult-to-defend mountain pass.

Even the oil on the body had to be scraped off several times.

The local bandits will not let go until all the flesh and blood is eaten away and only the bone marrow is left.

Most merchants see that even if only one out of ten goods can be saved, at least that one is still there.

With that little bit of goods, they could still make a fortune by going to the border. So they just swallowed their anger and chose not to report the case to the authorities.

I just learned to take some silver and goods in advance on the way back to entertain the local forces so that I could pass through more smoothly.

Among these businessmen, there are naturally some with bad tempers and bad tempers.

As soon as they passed the mountain pass and entered the city, they immediately chose to report the case to the government.

The government's attitude was positive and they cooperated with them in writing the report.

However, the authorities suggested that they could leave first, saying that the case was not urgent and could be discussed slowly.

After all, the timeliness of goods is important. It will take at least ten days or half a month for the government to investigate the case. People can wait, but the goods cannot.

Moreover, they would hint from their words that investigating the case is troublesome and there is a high possibility that no result will be obtained, and more important things will be lost instead.

After hearing this, most businessmen already understood what was going on.

The government had no intention of investigating the case at all. They were just pretending to write a document to appease them.

Those who understood did not waste time here and left angrily.

Of course, there are also some who are really stubborn.

They didn't even consider their own goods, but just came to the government every day, wanting an explanation.

The amazing thing is that these people usually appear for less than half a month and then disappear without a trace for unknown reasons.

As time went by, the news spread among the businessmen through their network of connections.

As a businessman, profit-seeking is instinctive.

After hearing about this, everyone was planning to give some tribute to the local government and forces so that they could get through this smoothly.

The disappearance of those businessmen with some temper was slowly submerged in the torrent of time.

As more and more caravans came and went, the rumor that "filial piety would allow safe passage" spread more and more widely.

The merchants were very tactful and would leave their tributes outside before entering the mountains.

They were even grateful to the local authorities.

Because I heard that the ratio of filial piety was originally 70% and 30%, with 70% from the local forces and 30% from them.

After the local government intervened, the split became 50-50, and after passing this place, they could still keep half of the goods.

While the merchants were grateful to the local government, they completely ignored the fact that local officials and bandits were colluding with each other.

This created a situation where officials and bandits colluded openly.

The local people did not resist this situation.

After all, it was not the locals who were robbed, and there was nothing for them to rob.

The local people were unable to make ends meet, so they asked the men to go to the villages to become bandits and deliver some food to their homes.

Over time, a strange sight appeared here.

Almost everyone in this land knows that there are bandits who specialize in robbing outsiders, but no one exposes them or reports them.

Local officials clearly knew about similar incidents, but they did nothing about it.

One of their eyes was open, but the other was completely closed.

After all, they themselves are already busy taking care of themselves.

There is almost no taxation locally, but higher authorities are eager to collect taxes.

No matter what the local officials said, their superiors refused to extend the tax payment deadline. The local officials had no choice but to collude with bandits, rob outsiders of their property, and then share the spoils with the bandits.

It's true, since they started to earn money by robbing outsiders, the pockets of local officials have become fatter, and they can pay local taxes and even stand up straight when their superiors come to inspect.

Xie Yongwei frowned as she thought of this local legend.