The Empress Dowager personally issued an Imperial Edict.
Normally, edicts were issued in the name of the nominal emperor. This was one of the rare times she issued one herself.
"By the mandate of Heaven, the Divine Empress decrees: Any who offer high-yield crops, superior crop varieties, or effective methods of increasing production, regardless of rank or background, may join the Royal Academy of Agricultural Science and be granted a fourth-rank official post."
"I shall not begrudge them a marquisate, gold, or even the hand of my descendants in marriage."
It was a simple Imperial Edict. To others, it meant little, but Wenren Sheng saw a different significance in it.
The chuuni girl Lu Zhi had begun transforming into a truly ruthless Empress Dowager.
There was no other reason. A modern person would find it hard to speak of arranging their children's marriages, let alone those of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
If the person offering superior seeds were an eighty-year-old old farmer with no family, would she still marry off her great-granddaughter to him?
It was unimaginable to modern people, yet to the powerful figures of the court, it was perfectly ordinary.
Liu Jian saw the edict as well.
To be honest, before Teacher Wen taught him about the Republican era, he had not truly understood the importance of food.
The Eastern Continent was too vast. Food had always been cheap and abundant, used to make liquor or turned into meat. Even if one did not work, there were all kinds of free food to collect.
Food with a shelf life of merely half a day would be put on shelves at eight in the morning and disposed of after noon.
In Liu Jian's childhood memories, food simply grew in supermarkets.
Big supermarkets grew more of it, while small supermarkets