The Emperor positioned himself beside Su Bin and remained there for an extended period.
As the Emperor perused Su Bin's responses, he noticed a significant departure from the other candidates' submissions. The more he read, the more engrossed he became in Su Bin's ideas.
While the royal treasury stood depleted, Su Bin's approach deviated from the conventional path. He advocated commencing the effort to replenish the treasury by targeting the royal family, nobility, and the wealthy, rather than further burdening the commoners with increased taxes.
He emphasized the heavy tax burden already borne by the common people, such as the rural farmers who were subjected to an extensive array of levies. Their obligations ranged from military service taxes to national taxes, labor taxes, paddy taxes, dryland taxes, head taxes, bull head taxes, pig head taxes, and even taxes on something as modest as raising a chicken.
