"Is that truly so?"
They had clearly switched to new crops, and last year's reduced harvest at Chentang Pass had been confirmed. How had production increased this year?
That shouldn't be possible! How could they master growing rice and wheat in just one year?
Even if those below had failed to implement the switch to new crops, production still should not have increased.
Seeing how urgently King Zhou pressed them, Xiao Sheng and Cao Bao hastily replied, "We would never dare deceive Your Majesty."
Zi Shou asked again, "Why did production increase?"
"Naturally, it was-" Barely had Xiao Sheng and Cao Bao begun before they noticed something amiss. The assembled ministers were utterly silent, and even Li Jing had lifted his head to gaze at the sky, pretending he knew nothing.
"We do not know!"
They had nearly made a disastrous mistake!
Who among the court's civil and military officials did not know that manure fertilizer had increased production?
Although many fields had yielded poor harvests because of insufficient experience growing rice and wheat, every field that had successfully produced a crop and used manure fertilizer had enjoyed a bumper harvest.
The yield per mu had increased. Though some fields had poor harvests, total grain production was roughly comparable to previous years, even showing a ten-percent increase.
This could not be made public, because the method used to spread manure fertilizer was rather embarrassing to discuss: it involved theft. If exposed now, when the laws were being strictly enforced, it would become a major affair implicating countless people.
Thus, even though all the civil and military officials in the hall understood what had happened, they could only keep that unspoken understanding bottled up inside. Otherwise, King Zhou would be the first to find himself in a difficult position.
In fact,