Shen Le: Kill the Alligator Dragon? Me?

Shen Le had thought that the memories he saw would continue from where they had left off:

In other words, he would see the little girl and little boy become betrothed, marry, perhaps have children, and live long, happy lives.

There might be quarrels, there might be storms and hardships, but overall, they should still have been happy, right? Otherwise—

Otherwise, what this wedding procession made him feel should not have been joy and delight. There might have been more melancholy, anger, and grief.

Yet the tides surged, and light and shadow shifted. When Shen Le regained his sight, he found himself standing beside a river. Before him stood a middle-aged official, his brows tightly furrowed and his trouser legs rolled above his knees:

"The dike breach toppled fifty-three houses, destroyed 6,372 mu of farmland, and left several thousand people displaced."

His brow was knotted tight, a vertical crease rising straight up, nearly reaching the top of his forehead:

"And this isn't the first time. This county frequently suffers from floods. Over the past twenty years, there have been dike breaches of varying sizes in at least ten of them..."

The county he had come to inspect lay where the river bent, and where upstream waterways flowed into the great river. Whenever it rained heavily upstream, or the great river stirred even slightly, they were bound to suffer.

If they were lucky, only one or two zhang of unimportant dike would collapse, ruining a few hundred mu of farmland;

if they were unlucky, the entire county seat would be submerged.

The disaster he had encountered this time was not especially large. Yet disaster relief, disease prevention, subsequent aid, and resettling the people were not matters a county magistrate could handle alone. Support from the prefectural city was necessary.

—Otherwise, why