Anle Commandery had suffered the worst disaster in all of Spirit Prefecture. Seven or eight out of every ten people had fled, while those who remained either hid in the city or became refugees.
Others had taken to the hills as bandits, raiding everywhere.
One glance across all of Anle Commandery revealed a deathly silence.
Even the commandery city was half empty, let alone the counties below it.
The porridge sheds outside the city distributed only one bowl of thin gruel each day, mixed with large amounts of bran and sand. Even then, more than half the people could not get any.
Liu Yuanfeng, the Governor of Anle Commandery, had only just returned when the servants following behind him brought news of what had happened at the Governor's Yamen.
Upon hearing the news in the rear courtyard of the Commandery Office, Liu Yuanfeng burst into laughter.
"Good! They died well, and they were killed well."
"These beasts in official robes—the common people under their rule have already eaten even the grass roots clean and begun exchanging children to eat, yet they still had the nerve to hold some birthday celebration?"
"And they actually dared to openly divide up the disaster relief silver they had embezzled from the court at the Governor's Yamen."
Liu Yuanfeng sat down and slapped the table so hard that even the paperweight jumped.
The Commandery Assistant happened to be seated beside him. Shaking his head, he sighed. "But that still does not solve the problem. Without grain, how can we provide disaster relief?"
Liu Yuanfeng's expression turned utterly cold. "I heard Xu Xuanming say that the disaster relief grain sent by the court was never delivered at all. The grain carts and granaries were all empty. There is definitely more to this matter than meets the