Chapter 70

At the end of the forty-fourth year of the Great Jin Dynasty, in the Zhu family's ancestral land of Chilong Prefecture in Chong'an State.

This was a massive private fortress of a noble family, situated amidst mountains and water, covering an extensive area. It could be considered a mountain city in its own right.

The walls of the fortress stood three zhang high, winding and circling several hills and lakes. Outside the fortress, vast tracts of fertile land had been cultivated, spanning hundreds of thousands of acres.

As the ancestral land of a noble family, it was naturally chosen for its auspicious feng shui, which made the land fertile. Therefore, every noble family's ancestral land was inevitably a land of fish and rice.

The main residents within the Zhu family's ancestral fortress were the Zhu clan members, numbering about ten to twenty thousand. As noble descendants, they did not need to work and enjoyed their privileges.

In addition, there were household servants serving the Zhu clan, numbering about forty to fifty thousand in total. On average, three to four servants served each Zhu clan member.

Outside the fortress, scattered around were thousands of natural villages of various sizes. The commoners in these villages were also serfs under the Zhu family's name, totaling at least five to sixty thousand people.

This was the family wealth of the Zhu family, one of the top noble families in Chong'an State. It was the production of hundreds of thousands of serfs that allowed the ten to twenty thousand Zhu clan members to live a carefree and luxurious life.

Of course, in addition to these household and agricultural serfs, there were also an unknown number of slaves working in the Zhu family's mines and workshops. These slaves were not counted in the population.

In the Great Jin Dynasty of Xuanping Continent, everything was divided into different classes.

As the ruling class, there were the imperial family, the royal family, and the noble families. For the noble families, a nine-rank system was used to legally determine the rights and status of different ranks of nobles.

The ruled class, the commoners, were also divided into three categories: citizens, serfs, and lowly slaves.

Those with relatively higher status were the citizens, also known as the people, who formed the basic population of the Great Jin Dynasty and local feudal states. Most of them owned private land, enjoyed personal freedom, and also bore the obligations of corvée and taxes.

A family like Liu Ping, a poor noble, belonged to the wealthy class among the citizens. Even if they worked under a noble family, they only had a mutually beneficial relationship with the main family. As a noble guest, the main family also showed them a certain level of respect.

Below the citizens, there was another class of commoners called serfs, also known as private people. They were directly attached to the noble main family, in a semi-sold, semi-free state.

Serfs were considered to be sold to the noble family as household servants, but they could own private property. Therefore, if they accumulated enough money, they could buy their freedom from the main family and become free citizens again.

However, most serfs sold themselves to the noble family due to poverty and were unlikely to accumulate much wealth. Only a few could buy their freedom again.

Of course, some serfs preferred to give up their free citizen status and sell themselves to the noble family as slaves. This was not because they were lowly, but to avoid heavy taxes. They had to sell themselves to the noble family to avoid tax burdens.

According to the current laws of the Great Jin Dynasty, if you could not pay your taxes, you might be sentenced to a crime or even sold by the government as a lowly slave. This was the harshness of the law, forcing people to give up their freedom and become slaves of the noble family.

According to the laws of the Great Jin Dynasty, once a serf sold themselves to a noble family, the corvée and tax obligations they originally had were taken over by the noble family.

In this way, serfs no longer had any affiliation with the state and only had a master-servant relationship with their noble main family.

Since nobles often had the right to be exempt from corvée and taxes, the laws of the Great Jin Dynasty also stipulated that different ranks of nobles could have a certain number of serfs.

Otherwise, if all the people in the country became serfs of the noble families, the state would lose its tax revenue, and the country might collapse.

Only by setting population ratios could the imperial and royal families maintain their rule over the noble families, ensuring a stable and peaceful world.

In this sense, the imperial and royal families were just higher-ranking noble families, and the citizens were also serfs under the imperial and royal families.

Of course, whether the life of a serf was good or bad depended on the conditions provided by the noble main family they sold themselves to. Therefore, many serfs would choose their noble main family before selling themselves, as once they sold themselves, they would be at the mercy of their main family.

The sycophants around Zhu Lingwu, such as Liang Cai, and the maids like Chuyang, Xiayang, and Qiuyang, were all from serf backgrounds. The private soldiers of the Zhu family were also recruited and trained from serfs.

It was not an exaggeration to say that the private domain of a noble family was an independent kingdom, as the life and death of serfs were controlled by the main family.

The last and lowest class was the lowly slaves, also known as lowly people. They did not even have a household registration and could not own private property. This meant they could never escape their slave status unless their master freed them.

Lowly slaves were not even considered human but were treated like livestock or objects, and in value, they were often less than the master's possessions.

Initially, lowly slaves mainly came from enemy soldiers and civilians captured in wars. After the Great Jin Dynasty unified Xuanping Continent, local wars largely ceased, so the main source of lowly slaves became criminals.

These included citizens who could not pay their taxes and were sold by the government, but more often, they were people who were implicated in serious crimes like treason, and even some noble families might become lowly slaves.

Therefore, even if you were once a noble, you could become a lowly slave in a single night.

Zhu Lingwu looked out of the carriage window, seeing the grandeur of the Zhu family's ancestral land. He couldn't help but sigh inwardly, wondering what the current wealth and glory would be like in a few hundred years.

Although the imperial family of the Great Jin Dynasty had been on the throne for thousands of years, how many emperors had lived to see such longevity?

Even though the Great Jin Dynasty was protected by sects from the outside world, the same was true for the empires before it. Yet, these former empires had also fallen.

Wealth and glory are like passing clouds!

Perhaps in this life, you can live a luxurious life as a noble, but in the next life, you might become a lowly slave.

Since obtaining the memories of Meng Yishi, Zhu Lingwu was even more determined to follow the path of cultivating and seeking immortality. Meng Yishi, who came from a sect outside the world, had a deep disdain for the so-called nobles of the secular world in his memories.

Meng Yishi had traveled through various regions and countries of the Great Jin Dynasty during his escape, naturally seeing all kinds of noble descendants.

Although the Xuanming Sect, where Meng Yishi once belonged, was an evil sect rejected by the righteous path, the cultivation techniques he practiced were still orthodox cultivation techniques with a long history.

In his view, these noble descendants were originally outer disciples of sects outside the world. They were placed in the secular world by their sects to do trivial tasks because they had no hope of becoming immortals.

Therefore, the cultivation techniques possessed by these nobles were all low-level techniques. With such low-level techniques, it was naturally much harder to cultivate and build a foundation.

Moreover, these noble descendants, born into wealthy families, were pampered and served from a young age. How could they have the perseverance to cultivate and seek immortality? Without such perseverance, how could they overcome the difficulties of cultivation?

Even if a few talented individuals managed to reach the foundation-building stage, the path of cultivation was long and arduous. These flowers grown in a greenhouse would likely become dry bones by the roadside in the real world of cultivators.

Foundation-building was just the beginning of the path of cultivation, and the path of cultivation was not without risks. Especially in the later stages, one had to summon lightning and face tribulations. Without the belief to fight against the heavens, how could one transcend and become an immortal?

Therefore, as an inner disciple of the Xuanming Sect, Meng Yishi, despite having the care of his parents who were elders, only received support in terms of cultivation resources. Everything else was achieved through his own hard work.

For Zhu Lingwu, the greatest wealth he gained from Meng Yishi was not the large number of spirit stones and various cultivation materials in the Heavenly Bag, but the belief in cultivating and seeking immortality, and the determination to change his fate.

Now, as he was about to enter the Zhu family's ancestral land, Zhu Lingwu was about to truly begin his path of cultivation and seeking immortality. The cultivation and immortality experiences from Meng Yishi, derived from sects outside the world, were his greatest gain.

After the incident with Meng Yishi at Ye Liu Post Station, the rest of the journey was smooth. From Tongshan County to the Zhu family's ancestral land in Chilong Prefecture, they traveled for over ten days, enduring the hardships of the road.

Although Liu Ping had initially thought about giving up, he was convinced by Zhu Lingwu's persistence and abandoned the idea.

The merchants who had traveled with the Zhu family's convoy also dispersed after leaving Yongling Prefecture. Even the last few merchants would naturally disperse upon reaching Qinglong Prefecture.

Now, only the Zhu family's own people could enter the Zhu family's territory.

As the New Year approached, there were not only Zhu Lingwu's convoy on the official road in the Zhu family's territory. Soon, someone came to inquire about the origin of Zhu Lingwu's convoy.

When they heard that Zhu Lingwu was in the convoy, their expressions indeed became somewhat strange...