Xun Zhen had been beaten into submission by his colleagues, but he refused to admit it.
"...Since they've asked to borrow grain, as their allies, we naturally can't stand by and do nothing. It's just—" He deliberately drew out the word "just," keeping his colleagues on tenterhooks. "How many cooks will it take to transport the grain the Qu Kingdom needs? And how many soldiers will we have to send to guard it along the way? Several major battles have drained the treasury, and we're barely scraping by. We simply can't spare the funds."
Everyone wanted to roll their eyes at Xun Zhen.
That stingy miser was whining about being broke again.
The trouble was, Xun Zhen wasn't whining without reason. He had facts and figures to back him up. Accuse him of exaggerating, and he'd itemize every expense, down to the last coin! Anyone who wasn't good at calculations would hear that endless string of additions and subtractions and forget what they'd been about to say. How could they possibly argue back and forth with Xun Zhen?
Anyone who regularly marched to war knew that for every ten portions of grain the royal court sent out, frontline troops normally received only two or three. Where did the rest go? A large portion was eaten by the cooks transporting the grain and the soldiers escorting it. Some was lost to unavoidable circumstances on the way, like food spoiled by wind and rain. Those were normal transport losses. The longer the journey, the more grain was consumed along the way, and the less remained upon arrival.
The Qu Kingdom had probably taken into account that Kang had just gone through a major war and wasn't exactly flush with funds. The amount of grain they'd asked to borrow was neither small nor