Xiahou Zuo had long heard Li Chi say that ever since becoming Emperor, his daily life had grown even more straitened.

Xiahou Zuo had also long assumed that Li Chi was only saying this for effect — what Emperor could possibly be that short of money?

Until — the very moment Gao Xining walked through the door, and Xiahou Zuo saw her eyes light up at the sight of those few taels of silver. At that, he believed.

Li Chi let out a quiet sigh: “Now do you understand what I’m dealing with?”

Xiahou Zuo let out a quiet sigh in kind: “From now on, if Your Majesty encounters difficulties… it would be best not to mention them to me either. I couldn’t bear the shame of it.”

Li Chi shot him a glare, then moved with the utmost speed to tuck those few taels of silver away.

Gao Xining said: “Look at that petty manner of yours — as if I’m going to snatch away those measly few taels.”

Li Chi: “And you haven’t?”

He glanced at Xiahou Zuo: “Do you know what it looks like when a person loves money to the degree the Empress does — and still never spends any of it?”

Gao Xining said: “Why spend silver? Looking at all that glistening white silver and gleaming gold — isn’t that satisfaction enough?”

Li Chi: “Not for me…”

Gao Xining said: “I’m not particularly concerned whether you’re satisfied or not.”

Xiahou Zuo: “……”

He couldn’t help but ask Gao Xining: “Your Majesty the Empress — if you don’t spend the money, why do you keep accumulating it?”

Gao Xining answered with complete sincerity: “Just because it’s fun to look at!”

Xiahou Zuo shook his head: “I don’t believe that.”

Gao Xining: “I’m not particularly concerned whether you believe it or not either.”

Xiahou Zuo: “……”

When she finished speaking, Gao Xining extended her hand toward Li Chi. Li Chi had no choice but to pull out those few taels of silver he had just this moment tucked into his pocket.

Gao Xining took those few measly taels and genuinely seemed quite satisfied, walking away with a cheerful smile.

She came, and she left. She arrived empty-handed. She departed fully content.

Li Chi said: “You see? She came here just to rob me!”

Xiahou Zuo asked: “Why does the Empress do this?”

Li Chi was silent for a moment, then slowly exhaled: “She has always been finding ways to accumulate silver — and every so often, she takes what she’s saved and gives it to the Tingwei Offices, to send to the families of those who died in battle in years past, in my name.”

After saying this, Li Chi smiled slightly: “I’m just too soft-handed in how I squeeze the rest of you for silver ordinarily, so for now she can only look after the Tingwei Office’s people. If I were a bit more ruthless and had more silver, she’d probably find ways to send money to more and more families.”

“All these years, the soldiers who fell in battle fighting for me — she has never once asked me to think about them. She has been looking after them herself, all along.”

“When a soldier falls, the dead were the pillars of their households. Once the able-bodied man is gone, the death stipend issued is not small, but it won’t last a lifetime.”

Li Chi gestured toward the world outside. Xiahou Zuo fell into step beside him, and the two strolled through Qing Garden, talking as they walked.

Li Chi said: “So that’s why I’m in a hurry to fight this battle with the Westerners. Once this battle is done, trade with the Western Regions can be properly restored.”

“Only after fighting this battle will the Westerners do business honestly and stay in their lane.”

“Once trade is restored, we can draw considerable gold and silver from the Westerners. I intend — from then on, to send a portion to the families of fallen soldiers every year.”

“But right now Great Ning has everything still to rebuild, and there truly isn’t enough silver to spare. I can’t keep squeezing just Cao Lie alone…”

The subject had carried a certain heaviness to it, but the moment Cao Lie’s name was mentioned, Xiahou Zuo couldn’t help breaking into laughter.

Cao Lie, young Master Cao, and the Cao family — what they had given for Great Ning was already more than enough.

Li Chi continued as they walked: “We’ll wait. I had Master Yan do some calculations earlier — the people need a few years to recuperate and recover. After a few years, when every trade and industry begins to flourish again, the treasury won’t always be this pinched.”

Xiahou Zuo nodded.

Then he smiled again: “So that’s why Your Majesty sent old Tang to train troops in the northwest.”

Li Chi smiled: “If it were purely a matter of fighting, Dantai Qi would be enough to beat the Westerners until they couldn’t lift their heads.”

“But Dantai has a softer heart than old Tang. Winning the fight isn’t the problem with Dantai — but asking him to win and *then* squeeze the Western Regions dry afterwards, he probably wouldn’t do it ruthlessly enough.”

Xiahou Zuo nodded: “One trip through the Western Regions with old Tang, and the treasury’s current lean state should improve considerably.”

Li Chi said: “I originally thought about sending you.”

Xiahou Zuo: “……”

Li Chi said: “In that particular respect, you’re even better than old Tang.”

Xiahou Zuo: “……”

Li Chi shot him a sideways glance: “Look at you, putting on that innocent act as if I said something wrong.”

Xiahou Zuo broke into a full laugh.

Truthfully, if one was talking purely about having the nerve to squeeze the Western Regions dry, Xiahou Zuo really did surpass old Tang in that regard.

The two talked on for a while longer, until Xiahou Zuo suddenly remembered that the Black Warrior assassin had not yet been dealt with.

He asked: “Your Majesty — how do you want to handle that Black Warrior?”

Li Chi said: “He’s already crippled. Killing him outright at this point doesn’t really accomplish anything. Send someone to take him north, out through the border, and hand him back to the Black Warrior side. And have him carry a letter to the Black Warrior Khan-Emperor while he’s at it.”

Xiahou Zuo said: “Once he’s back, the Black Warrior Khan-Emperor probably won’t spare him either.”

Li Chi nodded: “Sending him back means he’ll tell the Black Warrior Khan-Emperor everything he saw and heard in Great Ning — especially about the war with the Western Regions.”

Xiahou Zuo thought it over for a moment and then understood Li Chi’s meaning.

The Black Warrior Khan-Emperor had sent an assassin not because he truly believed Li Chi could be killed.

The Black Warriors had simply wanted Great Ning and the Western side to keep fighting — endlessly wearing down Great Ning’s national strength.

Once that Black Warrior assassin was sent back and the Khan-Emperor learned what had transpired, he would certainly not allow the Western nations to submit to Great Ning so easily.

Xiahou Zuo said: “The Black Warriors originally planned to apply pressure to the Western nations by ordering the iron-falcon tribes and other clans of the outer steppe to drive westward.”

“But now the outer steppe is in our hands. For the Black Warriors to pressure the Western nations again, they would first have to retake the outer steppe.”

Li Chi nodded: “So the Black Warriors — even if only symbolically — will have to move against the outer steppe.”

He let out a slow breath and said: “The people of the outer steppe still fear the Black Warriors in their hearts. If we don’t let them fight a battle against the Black Warriors — real and feigned mixed together — they’ll never cut off the thoughts they still harbor about submitting to the Black Warriors.”

Xiahou Zuo said: “That’s the second reason for sending old Tang to the northwest.”

Li Chi made a sound of agreement: “Yes, exactly.”

He walked to the edge of the lotus pool and stopped, watching the fish that seemed to swim so freely through the water.

“With old Tang’s troops massed in the northwest, the various tribal clans of the outer steppe will have no choice but to stiffen their spines and stand against the Black Warriors.”

“And with Bor Techi Na remaining in the outer steppe, this battle won’t be fought too fiercely — because the Black Warriors’ national strength has taken great damage; they don’t dare commit to a hard fight.”

“But as long as the battle is fought at all, the many clans of the outer steppe can no longer dream of sitting on the fence.”

Li Chi said: “I have said it before — every battle that needs to be fought, I will fight while I am still here, so that future generations a hundred years from now will not need to bleed and give their lives.”

“Things look hard now, but this is precisely the moment when we are least afraid of fighting, and most able to.”

Li Chi continued: “Once the Western frontier is stabilized, once the outer steppe is stabilized — the foundation for a hundred years of peace for Great Ning will truly be complete.”

Xiahou Zuo said: “If the Black Warriors apply symbolic pressure to the outer steppe, those fence-sitters among the outer steppe clans will expose themselves as well.”

Li Chi nodded: “Precisely.”

“When the Western frontier is done, the outer steppe is done, the Southern Frontier still needs to be fought.”

Li Chi said: “The Southern Frontier is wild and ungoverned — fighting it purely with force will only intensify resistance. But without fighting at all, the entire Southern Frontier will never know peace.”

“When Gao Zhen headed south, I told him: you must hit the southern tribes hard enough to hurt them — and then after hurting them, give them something in return.”

“Help the southern tribes understand: in a fight, they cannot beat Great Ning. But show obedience, and they can be rewarded by Great Ning.”

After hearing all of this, Xiahou Zuo felt an overwhelming surge of emotion.

He looked at Li Chi standing before him — the founding Emperor of Great Ning — and for a moment felt a kind of disorientation, as if the person in front of him could not possibly be reconciled with that small, scrawny boy he had looked after back at the academy.

That younger Li Chi had been fighting desperately against his own fate. The Li Chi of now was fighting desperately for the fate of the entire people of the Central Plains.

Seeing Xiahou Zuo fall into a long silence, Li Chi smiled and asked: “What are you thinking about? You’ve been lost in thought.”

Xiahou Zuo exhaled heavily: “Your Majesty, I have been selfish — I’ve been thinking of asking to retire, rather than sharing more of Your Majesty’s burden.”

Li Chi spat: “If you truly feel for me… see if you can manage to give me back those few taels of silver the Empress took.”

Xiahou Zuo shook his head: “To give my life for Your Majesty, in the wind and rain, through mountains of blades and seas of fire, I would not hesitate for a single breath. Whatever direction Your Majesty points, I will trample through blood to get there. But Your Majesty asking me for silver — that I absolutely refuse.”

Li Chi: “……”

He sighed: “I can’t really just keep squeezing Cao Lie as my only source…”

Just as he said this, he saw the small eunuch Ding Qing’an come running from a distance, darting up to them in a flash.

“Your Majesty — Cao Lie has returned to the capital and requests an audience.”

Xiahou Zuo burst into laughter: “Cao Lie truly is a timely arrival.”

Whether or not he was a timely arrival, Cao Lie himself had no such awareness — but he was very much aware that doing things in the capital region had become somewhat tedious.

Dealing with those small-time subordinates was, for him, a kind of torment.

His opponents were on an entirely different level from him, and scheming against people like that was genuinely without interest.

He had come back to Chang’an for two reasons: first, to tell Li Chi that the hidden dealings Xu Ji had in the capital region had all been quietly brought under control. Second, to ask whether he could go back to the Jiangnan region — life was considerably more comfortable in the south.

The reason he had started to feel restless was that some time earlier, Li Chi and Xu Ji had essentially laid everything out in the open between them.

By now Xu Ji had probably accepted his lot and no longer truly continued to think about contending with the Emperor over anything.

He simply needed to continue carrying out his own mission: exposing the people who needed to be exposed, and correcting the things that needed to be corrected.

So even that most formidable opponent was gone, and of course Cao Lie found the whole thing utterly pointless.

Before long, inside Qing Garden, the moment Cao Lie saw the light blazing in the Emperor’s eyes when Li Chi looked at him, he paused in consideration — and then turned and walked away.

He called back toward Li Chi from a distance: “Your Majesty, I’ve just remembered there’s still something urgent I haven’t dealt with. I’ll come back another day to pay my respects to Your Majesty.”

Li Chi waved him over: “You’re already here — come and ask after my health.”

Cao Lie had no choice but to steel himself and come back. Standing before Li Chi, he squeezed out a few degrees of hollow smile.

“Your Majesty, it’s been a while — you look even more spirited than before.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“Your Majesty, how could this subject be mistaken? Your Majesty’s radiance is so evident, this subject could see it at a glance.”

Li Chi: “You really are mistaken. I don’t feel spirited at all.”

Cao Lie: “Since Your Majesty isn’t feeling too well, then this subject will take his leave for today and come back another time.”

Li Chi said: “Is there any point in struggling?”

Cao Lie: “……”