Qin You watched with great interest.
Halfway through, he couldn't help nudging his colleague with an elbow.
When there was no reaction, Qin You turned to look.
For some reason, Wei Lou had a hand pressed to his forehead and seemed unwell. Since they were colleagues, Qin You offered a perfunctory show of concern.
"What's wrong? Did her foolish behavior make you cry?"
Setting everything else aside, by the standards of the warlords of the day, Shen Tang's behavior was so foolish it was rotten to the core—a wasteful spendthrift squandering a fortune. She had money, grain, and land, yet instead of building up her military strength, she was playing house with tenant farmers. What good would it do to keep these tenants happy? All of them together weren't as useful as recruiting a single Martial Gall Warrior. If a battle went badly, they'd be the first to run for their lives. Giving them precious food was no better than throwing it into the water; at least then you'd hear a splash. Qin You mocked her, but he still rather liked Shen Tang. She was a good person.
Qin You couldn't help sighing. "You don't have to get so worked up. It's not our fortune she's spending... Tell me, if my parents and the others had run into a landlord like her back then, the world would've been peaceful long ago. We wouldn't have ended up living in such a hellish age."
Where you sat determined how you saw things.
As a warlord, Qin You naturally couldn't stand Shen Tang's foolish actions. If he were her advisor, she'd drive him mad. But if he were one of the emaciated tenant farmers below, man or woman, he'd only hope there were more immortals like her—ideally, that everyone was like her.
Wei