Chapter 167 – Heaven and Earth Shift, People Return; Seeds Are Sown, Living Ghost - Part 2
Early August.
A letter arrived for Li Yuan, sent through a trading guild. It was from Yan Mu, and it was filled with disappointment. However, the letter never spelled out exactly why he felt that way; it only said he wanted to come back.
Li Yuan gazed at the letter thoughtfully, suspecting a hidden story behind Yan Mu’s words. Through a few rounds of correspondence, he pieced together that Yan Mu was most likely a disciple of some major power on par with the Sacred Fire Palace.
Before long, Li Yuan used his own channels to dig up news of yet more upheaval in the Central Plains. The previous year, the emperor had gone back on his promise to open the Great Zhou Treasury. Though he had once vowed to share its contents, he ultimately reneged, something Li Yuan could understand. After all, the treasury held the imperial family’s deepest reserves; once the emperor allowed outsiders to strip those treasures away, how could the throne still call itself the throne?
But naturally, large sects like the Sacred Fire Palace would not take no for an answer. They were no less than a coalition of debt collectors, demanding the payment they were promised. An emperor who couldn’t even handle the Red Lotus Prince, who had once overrun the Jade Capital, certainly wouldn’t be able to stop those who had bested the Red Lotus Prince himself.
This year, the solution began to emerge, pieced together from rumors brought south by fleeing merchants and wandering martial artists. In simple terms, the emperor had chosen to rely on undying husks. More specifically, he chose to appoint one as an advisor and bestowed him the title of Imperial Tutor.
When Xue Ning heard this, she could only shake her head in disbelief. “Isn’t the emperor just being foolish? Doesn’t he worry the undying husk might covet his imperial treasury?”
Li Yuan offered a guess to clear up her doubts- “Perhaps the undying husk truly doesn’t care about the Grand Zhou Treasury.”
“But why wouldn’t he?”
“Because being a undying husk isn’t about normal cultivation. In ages past, many ghost domains didn’t exist, and treasures in the imperial treasury are mostly suited for martial cultivation. They’re worthless to an undying husk. So the emperor likely thinks it’s perfectly safe to give him power. But clearly, the undying husk must have their own designs. Ghost domains run too deep. Whoever allies with the emperor is scheming for something significant.” Li Yuan paused, mulling over a suspicion he’d nursed for a while. “I even wonder if our yearly farmland famines are related to all this.”
Xue Ning understood what he was implying. Every harvest brought disappointment, yet the meat fields grew more and more productive. In simpler terms, as the farmland failed, the meat fields thrived. And wherever such meat fields appeared, one would inevitably find terrifying ghost domains nearby, as if yin inevitably followed yang.
“This pattern wasn’t how it used to be,” Xue Ning sighed. “Some years the harvest was bad, some years it was good. That was just life. But now, it’s been five straight years of famine. If we hadn’t opened more farmland, recruited more farmers, and lowered the grain tax, these five counties would already be a living hell. It feels like Heaven itself won’t let people survive. And this year’s harvest time is just around the corner...”