It was like a horse grazing leisurely beside a river lush with grass suddenly taking a red-hot steel saber in the rump.
With over half its posts vacant, Great Wei's Imperial Court erupted with an administrative efficiency it had never achieved even at full strength, clearing every obstacle to stabilizing grain prices with the speed of a thunderbolt that left no time to cover one's ears.
Large numbers of junior officials left Capital City, racing toward the Fourteen Provinces along unobstructed official roads. Wherever they passed, stubbornly high grain prices cooled rapidly amid clouds of smoke, like braziers doused with water...
The great landlords who had kept insisting they had no grain suddenly had grain.
The grain routes that had been clogged by every imaginable obstruction suddenly ran clear.
Even the Grain Transport troops and officials, who had previously complained of wind or rain whenever grain shipments came up, suddenly became model pioneers, fearless of the elements and eager to answer others' urgent needs!
The common people were utterly bewildered by this sudden transformation, like a ten-foot monk unable to find the top of his own head.
The poor had already taken their entire families onto the roads to flee famine, only for grain prices to suddenly return to normal?
Those with a little property had already prepared to tighten their belts and endure a lean year, only for grain prices to suddenly return to normal?
They sobbed aloud with joy, embracing their families and shouting in unexpected delight...
They wept at finding life where death had seemed certain!
They shouted that Heaven had eyes!
Countless refugees who had fled halfway to nowhere pulled their handcarts home, brimming with hope and energy.
Countless people who had tightened their belts and eaten "coarse food" for months tasted their first mouthful of