The Whole City Must Pay With Their Lives

[Rebirth, System, Lordly Development, Dark, Decisive and Ruthless, Cultivation, Rules Crush All]

Reborn as the puppet ruler of a ruined city, Jiang Xingzhou has three hundred elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people, but no food and no soldiers.

The elders try to force him from power, and enemies besiege the city. Jiang Xingzhou does just one thing: bind a broken page and begin collecting taxes.

Others collect money and grain. He collects years of life.

"Anyone not on the household register pays a breathing tax."

One breath costs a year of life. Five knife-wielders turn to ash in the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, and the whole city falls silent.

From then on, this dying city becomes a finely tuned tax-collecting machine.

He draws in refugees, builds spirit-gathering chambers, and establishes tax registries and point systems. The pillar of fate, once as frail as a spider's thread, becomes a golden column driven into the firmament.

Jiang Xingzhou neither goes into seclusion nor cultivates. He uses rules to drain the fate of millions, paving an inviolable road to heaven.