Whoever's rice a soldier ate, for whom did he risk his life?
How simple, and how painfully realistic, those few words were.
Miao Ne instinctively wanted to offer a few words of comfort, but swallowed them before they left her throat. Her Sovereign wasn't the late Lord of Qi Country; she didn't need to seek spiritual gratification from other people's flattery. Miao Ne felt somewhat helpless. "Are we really left with no choice but to be controlled by others?"
Even if Cui Xiong was merely a figurehead someone had pushed forward, Miao Ne couldn't help taking out her anger on him. The likes of the great lineages were adept at calculating gains and losses, and Cui Xiong was no exception. It was enough to make her sick with disgust!
Shen Tang laughed. "Not necessarily."
She had built her enterprise from nothing, and Kang Country had grown from nothing into what it was now. She'd faced plenty of problems more thorny than this one. Back then, she hadn't chosen to bend the knee and make concessions; how could she swallow her anger now? If she couldn't truly control a place, could she even call it her territory? They wanted to play local emperors on her land, parasitizing her body and drawing on her nourishment to fatten themselves... Had they even asked her opinion?
She wasn't made of mud.
Miao Ne's spirits lifted. "Does Your Majesty have a way to break the deadlock?"
"This situation never truly trapped me, so what is there to break?" Shen Tang said. "The Kang Country Royal Court's treasury is indeed... a little short of funds. The Royal Court's officials have increased in number, and their salaries can't be delayed. We can't shortchange the soldiers who distinguished themselves in this war, either. So my plan is to