Gongshu Wu was persuaded by the two of them working in tandem.
Only after Zhai Le had let them finish did he speak. "If you ask me, Brother Shen, you'd be better off finding a way to leave the northwest and head southeast."
Shen Tang asked, "The southeast? Isn't there war in the southeast?"
She had expected Zhai Le to say something like, "The situation among the southeastern states is stable," but instead he immediately said, "Of course there's war. How could there not be? At this moment, is there even a single feudal state that isn't fighting? But the southeast does have one advantage over the northwest—it doesn't suffer droughts at the drop of a hat."
Qi Shan could not even be bothered to lift his eyelids. He laughed. "It's true that the southeastern states get plenty of rain and don't suffer droughts so readily, but they have floods instead. Some floods are natural disasters beyond human control, while others are man-made. The feudal states upstream control the waterways. Before the rainy season, they dam the rivers and leave the lower reaches parched. Once the rainy season arrives, they release water on a massive scale to flood downstream, ensuring the stability of the upper reaches..."
And that was not the end of the underhanded tricks made possible by geographical advantages.
As far as he knew, one feudal state had risen to prosperity through the secret of "selling water." If the feudal states downstream disobeyed or refused to pay tribute, it cut off their water supply. If they still would not cooperate, it would deliberately release floodwaters and drown that small feudal state, filling its treasury by collecting "protection fees."
Because it had gone too far and incurred the wrath of both Heaven and man, it was eventually destroyed by