The World's Discrepancy

"Ugh..." Ning Wanjun suddenly clutched her forehead as violent pain surged through her mind.

"Your Highness!" Major Xu hurried forward to support her. "Are you all right?"

"I..." She opened her mouth, yet did not know what to say. For some reason, she had kept having the same dream over the past few years—a dream utterly different from reality. In that dream, Jinxia had flourished by the day, and even the Bureau of Military Affairs could do nothing to her. Great numbers of capable people had gathered around her, neighboring powers had defected and pledged allegiance, and she had drawn ever closer to her goal. Everything had seemed like a fantasy.

No, it had been a fantasy.

Ning Wanjun gave a bitter smile.

What could she say at a time like this? Tell her generals that things should not have turned out this way? Tell them about her pipe dream?

Even harder to voice was the fact that the dream itself was hazy and indistinct.

At times, she wondered whether it had been a revelation from Heaven. If she followed what happened in the dream, perhaps she could reap the same results. For example, establishing the Mechanical Bureau and spending heavily to recruit artificers; or reforming the salt laws and trying to dry salt in the sunlight. All of it had achieved some measure of success, some of it even remarkably so. Yet compared to the dream, it still fell far short, as though something crucial were missing...

Unfortunately, a dream was only a dream. Once she woke, she could no longer remember those details.

Suddenly, Ning Wanjun heard shouting.

It was the enemy army outside the city calling for surrender.

"If the princess surrenders, Jinxia will be spared! Resist any longer, and the entire city will be slaughtered!"

"If