Fearing being killed for his overwhelming merits, the empress decided to marry him.

Inside the inn, Ding Shizhen finished the hardware and software work at a kiln, but when he saw that Ban Dingyuan was missing, he hurriedly sent people to search for him.

Fortunately, Ban Dingyuan returned to the inn just before 9 PM, where he was severely reprimanded by Ding Shizhen, who also strictly ordered the inn not to let Ban Dingyuan leave.

Fortunately, Ban Dingyuan did not stay in Huizhou for long. Two days later, the Huizhou River Management Office summoned waterworks to help Ban Dingyuan load the supplies he was carrying onto the boat and continue northward.

The journey was very smooth, except that Ban Dingyuan and his party were strictly restricted in their movements. Moreover, the mission discovered that the further inland they went, the stricter the local government control over the enemy became.

Three days later, Ban Dingyuan and his party stopped at a dock in Anping County for a temporary rest.

Meanwhile, the waterworkers recruited locally in Huizhou also finished their mission and began their return journey on foot.

Ban Dingyuan originally thought he would have to stay in Anping County for another three to five days, but to his surprise, only half a day later, more than a dozen water workers gathered at the dock under the leadership of the river officials.

However, all the waterworkers had long faces, clearly very dissatisfied with this journey north.

One of the waterworkers knelt before a minor official and pleaded, "Your Honor, please have mercy! Spring plowing is just around the corner, and the fields at home haven't been plowed yet. If I leave, who will farm them?"

The minor official looked disgusted and said sternly, "What kind of behavior is this, crying and wailing? Let me tell you, you've been selected for the mission to the north to assist in the tribute mission."

That's an immense honor, and you dare not go? Are you trying to defy the Emperor?

The waterworker hurriedly said, "But if I don't plant the crops on my land in time, how will I pay this year's grain tax?"

"Can your family's grain tax be compared to the Emperor's important affairs? Dare to say another word, and I'll throw you in the dungeon!"

The waterworkers immediately dared not express their dissatisfaction. Under the pressure of these petty officials, they could only silently board the boat and begin to take over the work of the Huizhou waterworkers.

Ban Dingyuan witnessed the whole scene. How could a mere minor official frighten these people like this?

Judging from this situation, these waterworkers were clearly forced to go north by the river management authorities.

"Lord Ding, doesn't the Water Conservancy Department have its own dedicated waterworks?"

"The envoy is joking. Where would the river administration get so much money to support a bunch of idle people?"

Hearing Ding Shizhen's words, Ban Dingyuan felt extremely sad.

An indescribable emotion gradually spread through my heart.

The boat only stayed in Anping County for half a day before continuing northward along the waterway.

The next ten days will be spent mostly on the ship.

According to Ban Dingyuan's estimate of the journey, at this rate, it would take at least a month to reach Shengjing.

But Ding Shizhen told him that the journey would not be so easy once they entered the Xuanhe River channel.

Perhaps these sailors were in a hurry to go home and farm, or perhaps they didn't want to waste their time on this unpaid boat.

By the morning of the ninth day, they had sailed to the entrance of the Xuanhe River, to a dock in a place called Jingyuan County.

After mooring the ship, the hydraulic workers immediately began their journey back to Anping County.

They still need to cultivate their small plot of land at home, so they have no time to waste and must rush back as quickly as possible.

Along the way, what Ban Dingyuan saw gave him only one impression – poverty.

Moreover, this was especially true further north; along the coast, all one could see were low, dilapidated houses, and the pedestrians were all dressed in rags, no different from beggars.

Is this what they call a golden age? Why is it different from what I understood?

In Ban Dingyuan's mind, a prosperous era should be one where the people have no worries about food and clothing, officials are honest and upright, scholars are unrestrained and bold, and the border areas are free from war for a long time.

However, the first impression that the prosperous Wuzhao era gave Ban Dingyuan was poverty, poverty that was truly heartbreaking.

Apart from the government offices, all the buildings in the area were extremely simple and looked as if they had been chewed by dogs.

There is a world of difference between people. Common people are poorly dressed and suffer greatly, while officials and nobles are well-dressed and look respectable.

Aside from the huge gap between the rich and the poor, Ban Dingyuan also discovered that the status of ordinary women was so low as to be incomprehensible.

As he traveled to several docks and ports, he often saw men beating their wives in the street, and beating them so severely that they didn't care about their pleas for mercy.

Moreover, after the beating, these women had to endure it silently. If they couldn't bear it and wanted to go to the government office to go through the divorce process, they had to first endure thirty strokes of the cane and then be imprisoned for six months before they could go through the divorce process.

Of course, most of the divorce requests made by women are ultimately rejected.

In fact, this can be seen from the fact that it is common for poor people in Huizhou to sell their wives and daughters into prostitution.

I just didn't expect that this was the case throughout the entire Wu Zhao Kingdom, and this phenomenon became more and more obvious the further north you went.

The local government's vicious exploitation of the people was an eye-opener for Ban Dingyuan and his delegation.

Is this truly an unprecedented golden age?

Ding Shizhen, however, disagreed and gave his own answer to Ban Dingyuan's question.

"Women deserve to be beaten. If you don't beat them for three days, they'll start climbing on the roof and tearing off the tiles. Only by beating them until they're scared and dare not have any other thoughts will they obediently stay at home to be good wives and mothers."

“That’s not called exploitation, that’s the power that officials have all the time. Think about it, what are you studying hard for for ten years?”

Isn't it all for the sake of becoming a superior person? It's because those poor people have low expectations and don't work hard. If they could also become officials, would anyone still bully them?

Ding Shizhen seemed quite proud as he uttered this fallacy.

After all, in his mind, women can only be made to obey their husbands' families by being beaten, and it is only natural for officials to oppress the people.

Since their values ​​were different, Ban Dingyuan was too lazy to have much more interaction with Ding Shizhen.

Due to the recent accumulation of silt in the Xuanhe River, the river management department is currently arranging for manpower to dredge the silt, so the journey north has to be temporarily suspended, and Ban Dingyuan and his party can only stay in Jingyuan County for the time being.

Inside the inn in Jingyuan County, Ban Dingyuan was organizing what he had seen and heard along the way, planning to compile it into a book and publish it domestically after returning to the State of Chu.

Today, the State of Chu is open and inclusive, and is very curious about new things from the outside world.

As the saying goes, "when people are well-fed and warm, they think of lustful desires." With the improvement of fertilizer technology, the development of high-yield grain varieties, the reserve grain purchased from various parts of Southeast Asia, and the development of land in Liaodong, the people of Chu were basically able to feed nearly 200 million people.

After satisfying their most basic physiological needs, people will urgently want to enter a higher spiritual realm to fill the void.

Everything overseas is something that the people of Chu are currently talking about with great interest.

Ban Dingyuan believed that once this biography was published, it would cause quite a stir.