A Thorn in His Heart

There it was again—this habit of taking everything upon themselves. It was nothing but a pie in the sky. Zhou Sheng thought to himself that when Jinxia City had carried out that currency reform and started issuing its own paper money, he had known the rebels' finances were in trouble.

When the Affairs Bureau had gone all out building Academies and sending every child in the city to school, he had realized that this day would come sooner or later. A substantial portion of Yancheng's income came from the salt trade, but now that Jinxia had become a thorn in the court's eye and flesh, it naturally could no longer receive vast sums of salt revenue from the Capital Region as it once had. With expenditures far exceeding income, it would be stranger if the treasury did not grow tighter by the day.

And for Princess Guangping and the others to keep the people from noticing, they naturally had to make some new grand gesture.

The prosperity Jinxia City displayed at present was in truth built upon a pavilion on the verge of collapse—though he could not see the Affairs Bureau's accounts, he could guess that the current government was drowning in debt.

What a pity. A small place would always be a small place; there were not many who could see through this.

"Well, Brother Zhou, do you want to give it a try? I can recommend you." Seeing that he had not answered for a long while, the other man continued to persuade him.

"...Why can't you see it clearly, Brother Chen?" Zhou Sheng said impatiently. "There are so many examples in the books. Rebels are ultimately nothing more than a wisp of cloud and smoke. Even if they flourish for a time in the beginning, they are