The Shadow Tax was merely the latest, most infuriating entry in a long lineage of bureaucratic decrees.
Just last month, the village was subjected to the "Rain Permission Fee," a mandate wherein villagers were required to purchase branded wooden tokens simply to allow the seasonal rain to fall onto their own roofs without being charged with "theft of heavenly water."
Those who couldn't scrape together the funds to pay the fee had to cover their entire homes in a waxed canvas, suffocating in the humid heat while the precious rainwater slid off into the public gutters.
The true source of this misery, Lord Magistrate Xiang, was a phantom to the people. No one in the village had ever actually seen the cultivator who had claimed dominion over the valley five years ago.
His shady ass remained permanently secluded behind the towering walls of the Vulture Pagoda, a fortress perched ominously on the cliffside, overlooking the town.
