Chapter 1685: Chapter 1514: Female Rule 18

The Emperor was extremely annoyed by this; she felt she’d had her face slapped by these few old ministers.

The Emperor wanted to ignore the demands of the old ministers, but unfortunately these elders were not like the others; their standing in the court was immense, their influence huge, so the Emperor couldn’t truly just indulge her temper and give them no face at all.

But to make the Emperor yield and bow her head to her ministers—that she absolutely refused to do. Neither side was willing to back down, and for a while the Emperor and her few old ministers were locked in a stalemate.

Only staying locked in stalemate like this was no solution either; the old ministers forcing the Emperor for a long time was a great disrespect.

And the Emperor leaving the old ministers hanging for a long time meant she was failing to care for her subordinates and not valuing talent; she would lose hearts and minds—though in truth this Emperor didn’t have many hearts left to lose.

Just as this deadlocked situation had the Emperor so anxious her head hurt, Lin Guijun came again to offer advice.

And then the Emperor actually followed the method suggested by her favored Lin Guijun, sending people to the region where drought was about to occur with an edict, saying the Astronomical Bureau had calculated that this place would soon suffer a great drought, and telling the common people to take precautions on their own.

Such a way of handling things was utterly irresponsible; the two old ministers were so furious on the spot that they resigned and retired from office.

And when the common people heard such a nonsensical Holy Decree, apart from being thoroughly confused, they had no other reaction.

The Astronomical Bureau was an obscure office, far removed from the common people; many of them didn’t even know what this so-called Astronomical Bureau was. As for drought, likewise very few believed it.

In their hearts the common people all seek profit and avoid harm. Although they feared Imperial Power, if the Emperor were talking about anything else, the common people would never dare voice any opposition.

But whether there will be drought or not is decided by Heaven; no matter how powerful the Emperor is, she can’t control that. All the more when the Emperor is acting on something said by the Astronomical Bureau—this only made the common people instinctively resist even more.

All the common people thought: last year was already dry, so this year it ought not be dry again; and the few who did believe had no way out either—if Heaven wants drought, what can mere mortals do? All they could do was burn incense and pray to the gods, beg Heaven to grant them food and stop the drought.

So, the matter of this region facing a great drought became known to all, but not a single person truly took it seriously.

Now that Qi Guanshuangshuang had started hoarding grain, everyone immediately thought of that Holy Decree about the Astronomical Bureau calculating that there would be a great drought here.

As for this decree, hardly anyone believed the talk of a great drought, because the Emperor disliked the Astronomical Bureau, and under this dynasty the Bureau was extremely low‑key; whether their calculations were accurate, nobody knew.

And the human instinct to seek profit and avoid harm led them to accept only good news and reject bad news, so the great drought had long been treated as a joke—especially with the rain being so good these last few days.

Seeing Qi Guanshuangshuang constantly buying grain and carting it back, quite a few people already thought she was being foolish.

They simply felt that Qi Guanshuangshuang, after all, was still young; no matter how ruthless her methods once were in business, she was still a bit green.

She actually believed the Astronomical Bureau’s claim that there would be a great drought here; was she planning to make a killing off the disaster? Was she not afraid the grain would end up stuck in her own hands?

Many people watched Qi Guanshuangshuang busy hoarding grain and made snide remarks, mocking her for wanting to get rich so badly she’d gone crazy, saying she was bound to take a loss. Qi Gongshuangshuang treated all this as so much noise in her ears, never taking it to heart.

She knew very well that after this great drought, although the officials in the disaster areas all reported the situation to the court at once, the court’s decision was slow to come down.

In theory, disaster relief was an urgent matter of life and death, where not a moment should be delayed. Yet once it reached the Emperor’s favorites and Lin Guijun, it turned into a kicked‑around ball, pushed off today, kicked to tomorrow, never really resolved.

After much difficulty, once they finally finished "discussing," by the time the Emperor issued the order, more than a month had already passed. And that’s not even counting how, once the work began, officials at every level had to skim off their share of benefits.

In the end, a simple requisition of relief grain was dragged out until the common people were trading children for food before it was finally done.

This dynasty’s Emperor was so fatuous and incompetent, yet lived on like a curse for a thousand years; by the time she died, the whole country had been tossed about by her until it was tottering in the wind and rain.

If the next Emperor hadn’t been a rare wise ruler who turned the tide and patched up the thousand wounds of the realm, this dynasty would already have become just another previous dynasty.

Unfortunately, because she exhausted herself too much governing the realm, this successor wise Emperor lasted a mere fourteen years on the throne before her body was completely spent and she died of overwork at her imperial desk.

And this wise Emperor, busy dealing with a country riddled with problems, had no time to properly train her heirs, leaving no capable successor.

The Emperor who followed after her was an even more foolish ruler, given over to food, drink, pleasure, and lavish extravagance; in just ten years she squandered the hard‑won order of the realm her mother had rebuilt with painstaking effort.

In her past life, Qi Guanshuangshuang’s later years were spent amid the upheaval of dynastic change; by then, the Qi Guan Family had become a colossal entity, a piece of fat meat in the eyes of every rebel prince, all wanting to win them over—and all wanting a bite.

To keep the Qi Guan Family standing firm in such storms, Qi Gongshuangshuang in her old age not only couldn’t rest, she had to wrack her brains and run herself ragged scheming on the family’s behalf.

Although she ultimately succeeded in protecting the Qi Guan Family, backing the new Emperor and securing a solid position in the New Dynasty, even becoming an Imperial Merchant, Qi Guanshuangshuang truly did not wish to revisit that entire grueling process.

Already old and still unable to enjoy a peaceful retirement, having to fight for the Qi Guan Family—that kind of exhaustion could kill a person. In this life, Qi Guanshuangshuang was determined that, if possible, she would avoid that kind of torment.

Of course, Qi Guanshuangshuang had no intention of backing some new Emperor again—that was too tiring. She had only one idea: find some immortal island overseas, occupy a mountain and rule it, and be the Island Master herself.

At this time, there were plenty of overseas islands that could sustain life but had no master; as long as one was willing to put in the effort, it was quite easy to find one.

Ideally, the island would be large enough to be self‑sufficient, and not too far from the mainland—but not too close either.

In peaceful years, she would trade with the mainland; when turmoil came, she’d shut the gates and bar the doors, letting no storm touch her, so she could live out her old age quietly and safely. Just thinking about it was delightful.

Day by day, while others watched the spectacle and Qi Guanshuangshuang busied herself storing grain, time went by, and soon signs of drought appeared: first, in the season when there should have been plenty of Yu, there wasn’t a single drop for seven days straight.

Some experienced farmers sensed something was wrong and started searching for water sources everywhere, irrigating the land by hand. From morning till night they toiled to keep watering, just barely preventing the soil from cracking open.

And after half a month with no Yu, people discovered that the water level in wells and rivers was starting to fall; some villages near the mountains found the streams on the slopes had already begun to dry up.

By that point, the crops in the ground were basically dying of thirst; the farmers, out of sheer unwillingness to give up, kept working hard to fetch water for irrigation.

And when thirty days passed without rainfall, the earth had split open into countless fissures; no matter how much water they poured on it, it seemed to be swallowed up in an instant, completely useless.

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