Above the great hall, all was silent.
Everyone was carefully savoring the poem Zeng Anmin had just composed.
Zeng Anmin, meanwhile, sat down as if nothing had happened. Smiling, he raised a cup of wine toward the Princess and Tian Ji.
"Please."
Only when his voice rang out did Tian Ji snap back to his senses. A smile appeared on his face as he lifted his cup toward Zeng Anmin.
"You brat, at least you've got a brain."
"Bottoms up."
The Princess also slowly took her seat and drank with them.
At the sight of this,
the entire hall looked at one another.
Zeng Anmin had said he had no poem.
Yet with a single poem, he had resolved both questions His Majesty had just raised!
Everyone looked at him with exceedingly complicated expressions.
This brat
was far too shrewd!
Duke Ning, Li Jian, sat in the distance, and a dangerous sharpness flickered in his gaze as he watched Zeng Anmin.
Zeng Anmin had just said that he had no poem.
The implication was that he was subtly telling His Majesty that he absolutely had no desire to contend for profit.
Yet he had still used a poem to rename Bi Xuan Valley.
He had directly crushed all the limelight in the great hall beneath his own.
One poem had solved two problems.
This was truly having it both ways!
Could one not see that Emperor Jianhong, seated upon the Dragon Throne, could no longer suppress the corners of his mouth?
He watched Zeng Anmin with great interest.
Those eyes of his practically had I like you so much written all over his face!
Among the assembled ministers,
Minister of Revenue Lou Yingqi suddenly spoke.
Stroking his beard with narrowed eyes, he drew out his voice.
"Though I have