It couldn't be that someone simply disliked the old emperor and insisted on removing him to put a new one on the throne. In fairness, the old emperor hadn't governed badly. But given his obsession with cultivation and immortality, he couldn't have had much thought to spare for governing. It was more as though he had been deliberately trying to be a good emperor.
"Last time, you said your fortunes were bound to Great Sheng's National Fortune. How exactly were they bound?"
Lan Qiao whimpered, unable to get out a complete sentence. Whatever he was trying to say, it clearly wasn't anything pleasant.
"Brother, what do you think of the Great Sheng Dynasty as it is now?"
He called me brother again! Zhou Jia perked up at once. "I'd say the people still live and work in peace, and all is calm across the land. But natural and man-made disasters have struck one after another these past few years. Even the South of the Yangtze, the richest region, isn't what it used to be."
In the last two years especially, the two river basins had flooded every summer. The south suffered floods while the north endured drought. Even a fairly full treasury couldn't withstand disasters this frequent. Lan Qiao had always said misfortune would turn to blessing. Thinking back, Zhou Jia feared those had been lies.
"No wonder. It doesn't seem as lively as it did nine years ago."
Wen Xu tossed Lan Qiao aside and took an iron sword from a nearby guard. "Once we rule out everything else, if there's no problem with how the country is governed, then the problem must lie somewhere else."
Where?
Boom! Wen Xu raised the sword and split the Star-Seizing Tower beneath the ground in two. No matter how ingenious its arrays