The Central Allied Army had fallen on hard times lately.
They had suffered defeat in the field, and internal tensions were growing more intense by the day.
A roar erupted inside the tent.
"Didn't you swear up and down that the Shen woman was doomed to fall? Didn't you insist that one locust plague would be enough to finish her off? Well? Where's the plague? That Shen woman's already started reclaiming wasteland!" The man currently roaring in a fit of rage happened to be the Great Family Clan Leader whom the Central Allied Army had fooled into abandoning his ancestral holdings and allowing them to scatter locust eggs across his farmland.
If the locust plague had succeeded and forced Kang Country's troops to retreat, he could have gone back and reclaimed his property. At worst, he would have lost several years' income from the fields; if the Central Branch gave him some compensation, it wouldn't have been a bad deal. But man proposes and Heaven disposes. This time, he had been swindled out of even his fundoshi. First, he'd received a mysterious tip early that morning, warning him that the locust eggs were poisonous and could contaminate the fields until not a blade of grass would grow. Before he could even get angry, news had arrived that those shameless barbarians from Kang Country had started reclaiming land.
The latter news had felt like a hard slap across his face.
It had left his head ringing.
"I never knew the assembled grandees could be so useless, letting a worthless woman run wild! She fights us on one front and still has time to reclaim wasteland on another—and on my land, no less. Ancestors above, your descendant has failed you. I can't even protect the family tomb..." Anger had clouded his reason,