Chapter 62: The King's Troubles
His Majesty King Rodney XVI of the Auldo Kingdom had been plagued by quite a few troubles lately.
The first was that the grain warehouses in the Royal Capital had been burned down by rebel spies. With the pitiful amount of food left, forget about marching south to suppress the rebellion—even providing daily supplies for the capital's one hundred thousand residents had become a problem.
The government immediately sent officials to gather grain from the Royal Family's directly administered territories. What they discovered nearly made His Majesty faint again—the actual grain reserves in most local warehouses did not match the records at all. Rodney XVI flew into a thunderous rage. After a thorough investigation, they discovered that some of the discrepancies were caused by officials secretly reselling the grain, while others stemmed from local officials exaggerating their accomplishments and concealing the truth in hopes of gaining rewards.
His Majesty was furious. He sent law enforcers to haul the offending officials back to the Royal Capital one by one, then summoned the people to hold public trials.
After the judges announced their crimes, the executioners shoved the criminals into the enraged crowd. "These vermin are the reason you're starving now!"
The fate of these corrupt officials was easy to imagine. The trials began at eight in the morning, and announcing the crimes took less than an hour. After that came "execution time," with the common people doing the work themselves. It lasted a full three hours, and the crowd only dispersed at noon, exhausted. When the executioners went to collect the bodies, the criminals were already unrecognizable. Their heads were cut off and hung above the city gates. As for whether any of them had been scapegoats—who could say?
At the recommendation of many military commanders,