Great Millet Country—judging by the name, some bookworms at court thought it was some land of fragrant rice and millet.
They did not know that this millet was not that millet.
For an entire country to endorse something evil was a disgrace.
They had built their fortunes on trade and plunder. To reclaim the trade routes to the East, they had successively defeated many maritime hegemons.
Now, carried eastward by the winds of steamships, they had finally reached the East and begun their campaign.
"What? A monster belching black smoke and white vapor?" In Huaquan Palace, Lu Zhi looked over a memorial and suddenly rose to her feet.
"Old Buddha, Old Man Liu does not understand Western arts. This is clearly a steamship, not some monster." Chao Ying's seventh reincarnation, the Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial who had submitted the memorial, said with a smile...
Lu Zhi glanced at him, then removed her earplugs.
Then she heard the thoughts of Chao Ying's seventh incarnation: Old Liu, that stubborn old bastard, acts all incorruptible. He dares oppose me, dares investigate my seven madams outside the palace. I'll kill the bastard today.
She put her earplugs back in.
One was a stubborn old fossil, yet an upright official.
The other was enlightened, yet a eunuch—and insatiably greedy.
None of that mattered. She suddenly realized a major problem: she had solved the dynasty's cycle of order and chaos through a mixture of deception and bluffing.
It did not matter if the common people had no land, as long as they had work.
The court assigned them work: river works, seafaring, overseas migration... But how could the court manage without money or grain? It swindled money and grain away from those who possessed land—along with their lives.
That amounted to carrying