Han Yu read the decree under the lamp light but his face did not change. Though in his chest a coil of tension unraveled, then re-knotted itself.
"What did you expect," he told himself. "You pulled too far, someone was bound to release it."
He sat with the decree and a blank slip. Then he wrote quietly for an hour. He mapped what the decree truly meant.
The hall would fix a price band.He could no longer spike demand with tailor made shortages.He could no longer trigger panic buying.He could no longer let the people starve then feed them the next.
That was one side of the coin.
The other side gleamed.
Centralization meant the hall would absorb fluctuations. Clerks would manage inventory buffers. When he delivered at scale, clerks would smooth the flow for him. Buyers would no longer bother him directly.
