As Zhang Tie's feet slowly left the room in Prince Guangnan's manor, Han Zhengfang and Han Yuanhong, father and son, were seated in the study of the Grand Minister of Agriculture's official residence in Imperial Emperor City, leisurely drinking tea and talking beneath the screen-like calligraphy bearing the two words "Beyond Compare."
As Great Xia's Grand Minister of Agriculture and the head of the Golden Power Way, the man who held the economic lifeline of an empire as vast as Great Xia in his hands, the Grand Minister of Agriculture's residence was, in many people's imagination, bound to be resplendent with gold and jade. Even a floor paved in gold bricks and lamps made from luminous pearls might seem insufficiently extravagant. Yet at first glance, aside from its unusual location within Imperial Emperor City, the entire residence differed little from the homes of ordinary wealthy families in Great Xia's provincial cities. Indeed, the manor estates of many newly rich upstarts lacking a proper heritage in the provinces were far larger and far more luxurious than this one.
Judging by the residence alone, many who paid their way through life would never have guessed that its occupant was a Great Xia minister drawing an annual salary of thirteen thousand shi—equivalent to a base salary of over thirty million gold coins a year.
Upon a low table in the study, a small bronze incense burner shaped like a beast's mouth released a faint, ghostly wisp of blue smoke. No crystal fluorite lamps were used in the study; instead, several red candles as thick as cucumbers burned upon the candlestands. That alone would likely have drawn endless scorn from certain country magnates with a little money to flaunt.
Of course, only people who had never seen the world would scorn it. Had the