Not a single copper coin!

The Gao family was too greedy.

This matter shocked the entire court. By the time the news reached elsewhere, the Yan court had already followed the trail to implicate more than twenty officials of various ranks, with over two hundred people involved.

And this was not the end—it was merely the tip of the iceberg, and no one knew how many more people would eventually be dragged in. In his great fury, the Yan King demoted Noble Consort Gao to Zhaoróng, and all members of the Gao family involved in the matter were imprisoned.

Xiao Yan clicked his tongue twice: “It’s a pity Gao Zhixing wasn’t taken down.” Though the Gao clan was disgraceful, Gao Zhixing was a fierce general who had won several campaigns against the Pu Kingdom, and his prestige was at its zenith.

Yun Ya stretched lazily, making his joints crack loudly: “The Yan King still needs him to fight battles, so he can’t touch him yet. Even toward the Gao family, he’s showing leniency; otherwise, they would have been executed to the ninth degree of kinship by now.”

Xiao Yan clapped his hands once: “Indeed. The Yan Kingdom has eliminated two small countries to the west, and their army has not withdrawn. Guess where they plan to attack next?”

Yun Ya pointed to the sand table on the large desk: “The Xi Kingdom.”

He spoke with certainty, and Xiao Yan stroked his chin: “Hmm? Why not the Pu Kingdom?”

“If they wanted to destroy the Pu Kingdom, why did they withdraw their troops after occupying the secondary capital earlier? Attacking again now would be redundant,” Yun Ya lightly tapped the sand table a few times. “The southwestern part of the Pu Kingdom borders the Frost Wolf Great Plains, where tribes come and go like the wind, fierce by nature and in alliance with the wolf clan—very difficult to fight. Why wouldn’t the Yan Kingdom leave the Pu Kingdom to deal with them? As for the Xi Kingdom…”

Xiao Yan snorted softly: “The Xi King ascended to the throne a year ago. He’s brutal internally, massacring old ministers, and arrogant externally. On this desk is also a proclamation he sent me, stating that he will impose an additional thirty percent tax on Wei Kingdom merchant caravans passing through Tianyu Gorge.”

The northern and southern continents were separated by the Forbidden Sea, but the Wei and Xi Kingdoms were connected by a land bridge, which was also the westernmost end of the Forbidden Sea. Tianyu Gorge was the thinnest part of the land bridge and the border between Wei and Xi, where the border tax office was located.

Yun Ya couldn’t help but shake his head: “Wei and Xi have maintained good relations for a hundred years. Why would he sabotage that?”

Xiao Yan was still displeased: “The Xi Kingdom has long been weak, appearing strong but internally hollow! Two years of severe drought have made things worse, even emptying the national treasury. The Xi King can’t come up with solutions himself, so he’s turning to tariffs. When picking persimmons, one chooses the soft ones. Who else would the Yan Kingdom beat if not them?” At this point, he was exasperated because if the Yan Kingdom could annex the Xi Kingdom, they would share a border with the Wei Kingdom across the land bridge.

Without the natural barrier of the Forbidden Sea, anyone directly facing the Yan Kingdom would feel uneasy.

“We should make some preparations.”

As soon as Feng Miaojun and Fu Lingchuan entered the An Xia territory, they traveled hundreds of li by land. The reason was simple: having become the sovereign of a nation, she needed to personally inspect the living conditions of the people.

Documents and reports could be falsified; only what one saw with one’s own eyes and heard with one’s ears was most reliable.

If her previous agreement to serve as the Queen of New Xia had been out of necessity, forced by threats to her life, then the sights and sounds along this journey truly left her sighing in astonishment and filled with mixed emotions.

An Xia was originally prosperous, but after its destruction nine years ago due to fierce resistance, the Wei Kingdom implemented high-pressure control over the region, seizing wealth on one hand and imposing cultural assimilation on the other. But this was a gradual process that had shown little effect over time. Moreover, resistance forces moved freely across this vast land, and there were multiple uprisings. Later, even Wei Crown Prince Xiao Jing abandoned his efforts to win over the An Xia people and merely exploited the region.

Xiao Jing, who had once oppressed the An Xia people, was now dead. Due to internal turmoil, the Wei Kingdom’s control over An Xia had greatly diminished, allowing New Xia to seize the opportunity to establish itself. But when Feng Miaojun saw the mess Xiao Jing had left her, she truly wished he could die a second time.

Eight years of layered exploitation and neglect had pushed the entire An Xia region to the brink of disaster. On the Qikan Plains, she passed through several abandoned cities that had once been Xiao Jing’s military garrison. Here, he had intercepted Jin troops who were taking a detour to support the He Kingdom, as well as the An Xia people who resisted him. In early spring, there wasn’t enough grain stored in the city to supply Xiao Jing’s tens of thousands of troops, but the mission to block the Jin army had to be completed. So after the soldiers consumed all the grain belonging to the city residents, they began to capture and cook people, to which Xiao Jing turned a blind eye.

Therefore, after the army left, all that remained were devastated cities. The surviving city dwellers had no grain to eat. Those who still had some strength went into the mountains to try their luck, while the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled could only dig for tree bark and eat roots.

Feng Miaojun’s arrival came more than half a year after the Wei War. Although New Xia had reclaimed its territory and people after its establishment, the local economy had been destroyed. Like a chronic illness difficult to cure, it remained half-dead. Without strong stimulation, it would be difficult to see any improvement.

Walking on the streets with Fu Lingchuan, she discovered that all merchants conducted business from inside their doors, with no one daring to display goods outside, including street vendors. Otherwise, their goods would be stolen. With their keen six senses, they could feel numerous pairs of ill-intentioned eyes watching them from street corners and under eaves, eyeing these “fat sheep from outside.”

Those gazes, full of hunger, vigilance, and hatred, made Feng Miaojun feel deeply disturbed.

Here, a bowl of rice soup cost one hundred copper coins. This price was thirty times higher than in the Wei capital, where prices were already extremely high!

After finishing the rice soup, they continued forward, only to be blocked by two ragged children on the outskirts of the city.

They approached Feng Miaojun with gap-toothed smiles: “Brother, sister, please be kind. We haven’t eaten for a long time…”

Feng Miaojun glanced at Fu Lingchuan, who shrugged with his arms folded, adopting a stance of detached observation. She then took out two strings of copper coins and handed them over: “Take this and buy something to eat.”

Before she could finish speaking, the two children snatched the copper coins, moving so quickly they hardly seemed like starving children.

Immediately after, with a “whoosh,” more than a dozen children appeared from nowhere, similarly with large heads and small bodies, all in tattered clothes, each extending their hands and screaming at them: “I want some too! I want some too!”

Fu Lingchuan noticed Feng Miaojun pressing her lips tightly, her eyes showing reluctance. He couldn’t help but shake his head slightly and smile coldly. Her heart was too soft, but reality would teach her to recognize cruel facts.

Indeed, just as she lowered her head, the child closest to her suddenly threw a handful of quicklime at her. If this substance entered the eyes, it could burn through the eyeballs. Simultaneously, two children who had been pushing from behind suddenly pulled out small knives from under their tattered clothes, stabbing directly at her back, moving with speed, precision, and ruthlessness, giving her no time to react.

Fu Lingchuan ultimately needed to protect her safety and was about to reach out to block the attack when he heard Feng Miaojun sigh almost inaudibly.

Then, the children who tried to ambush her were all repelled in an instant, landing several zhang away, falling with bruised faces.

She had deployed her protective energy shield at some point, making these petty tricks ineffective against her.

She said in a deep voice: “How many people have you killed this way?”

The children did not answer. The light in their eyes changed from hatred to fear, and then they scattered, disappearing in an instant.

These two were too difficult to handle, so they wouldn’t waste more effort on them.

Fu Lingchuan finally spoke languidly: “Children from abandoned cities cannot be helped; they are accustomed to eating human flesh.”