"The Wu witch Lu Ban wields power over court and country, promotes her relatives by marriage, previously murdered her younger brother, and now even harbors thoughts of killing her own younger sister."
Wei began another court assembly.
The ministers once again feasted on gossip.
Once again, the gossip concerned the Wu Kingdom. After Sun Quan's daughter Sun Luban married Quan Zong, she began actively seeking great power. A daughter of the Quan Family was made empress, and the Quan Family enjoyed considerable preferential treatment as imperial relatives, with five of its members granted noble titles.
Even Sun Jun, who now held the posts of chancellor and Grand General, had an elder sister married into the Quan Family. He himself served Sun Luban with fawning flattery. The two acted like wolf and jackal in collusion, filling the Wu court with even more foul smoke and murky fumes, while Sun Luban held great power in her hands, her position as secure as Mount Tai.
Because Sun Luban loathed Sun He's mother, she ordered Sun Jun to force Sun He to take his own life, killing her own younger brother.
Now she wanted to move against her own younger sister as well.
As they listened to the affairs of the Wu Kingdom, the faces of Wei's ministers brimmed with smiles.
Among the three kingdoms now, the contest was not at all about whose national strength was greater or whose momentum of expansion was fiercer. Everyone was competing at being rotten, simply seeing whose rot was not quite so thorough.
Only after they finished feasting on the gossip and, as usual, condemned the many evil policies of the Wu Rebels did the court assembly turn to its main business.
And the first to submit a memorial was, unexpectedly, Director of the Secretariat Lu Yu.