For the time being, Reform had indeed come to a halt.
With Di Luonan and Cang Yuan gone, the reformers were a flock of dragons without a leader. They had no support from the emperor at the top, and among the common people—well, calls for Reform were not particularly loud yet.
The bloody night in the Divine Capital had left people trembling with fear. Apart from those who truly had nowhere left to turn, no one wanted anything like it to happen again.
And thanks to the reformers' efforts over the preceding months, aid for the poorest people in Great Xia had already begun to show results.
At the end of the day, it really did not take many resources to keep someone alive. If the wealthy and extravagant skipped just one feast of delicacies or one night of wine and revelry, they could feed hundreds, even thousands.
It was like the world of Pan Long's previous life. "Shared prosperity" required a world war to hang from lampposts the two percent who controlled over eighty percent of humanity's resources. But "lifting everyone out of poverty" could be accomplished for less than the cost of maintaining a single overseas garrison.
The poor of Great Xia really did not ask for much. For now, all they wanted was to survive. Living with their heads high and their pride restored still seemed a distant dream.
Of course, sooner or later, they would want that too.
After all, a person could not live on survival alone.
The conflicts in Great Xia had eased somewhat for the moment. In the ancient history of Pan Long's previous life, the coming decades might even have been called the "Gui Mao Golden Age."
But everyone who knew the truth understood that Great Xia probably did not have decades