Chapter 458: A Kind-hearted Girl
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
However, to Duke Jingguo’s chagrin, the Emperor caught a cold and fell ill that very night!
When Duke Jingguo received the news, he was about to eat with his family. His bowl dropped down and he was in no mood to eat anymore.
The juniors of the family shrunk back and tried their best to minimize their presence, afraid that they would become cannon fodder.
The news that the Empress was in Luo City quickly spread throughout the capital city. The aristocratic families and nobles were all shocked when they heard this. One by one, they sent their own people to Luo City to investigate.
This also made the drought in Luo City more prominent. Many quick-thinking officials began to plot how to make use of this incident to show their faces in front of the Emperor.
After a few days of getting familiar with the city, Su Ying realized that the situation at Luo City was even more serious than she had known previously.
Perhaps it was because people heard the news that Luo City had started to provide relief to the disaster victims. A large number of disaster victims rushed to the outside of Luo city, almost crowding out the entire city gate.
There were simply too many people. If one of them had an infectious disease, the other people would be goners.
Su Ying examined the surrounding environment of Luo City and circled out a few empty areas to segregate the disaster victims. This way, there wouldn’t be that many people concentrated together, and things would be easier to manage.
However, there were simply too many disaster victims, and there were not enough government officials. Su Ying could only ask the Red Demon Sect to transfer their members here and assign them to these clusters of disaster victims to temporarily maintain order.
The more people there were, the faster the food was consumed. The food that was hauled here was about to run out, and Wei Zhongming had not sent over any refills.
“My Lord, do you think we should send this grain? If we don’t send and we end up offending the Empress…”
“That’s right, my Lord. Why don’t we just send the grains to the Empress?”
The merchants in Luo City felt increasingly more uncertain when they saw Su Ying’s presence growing more dominant.
Wei Zhongming told them secretly that this Empress was definitely a fake. However, how could the fake Empress create such a big spectacle and make Wei Zhongming so submissive?
Could it be that Wei Zhongming wanted to screw them?
Wei Zhongming had already sent a reply to the capital city, but there had been no reply from the capital city. He did not know what was going on in the capital city right now, but in order to preempt people from the capital city conducting a surprise inspection, he still planned to provide food to the disaster victims.
“Send them. You guys join hands and combine your supplies. Give me 5,000 piculs. I’ll make do with this amount first.”
Everyone was speechless.
“Gosh! It’s really tough on Your Lordship to have to make do!” they thought sarcastically.
At that moment, an inconspicuous green carriage drove slowly towards them outside Luo City.
The city gate of Luo City was closed, but if the disaster victims had relatives in the city to take them in, they could still enter the city.
The horse carriage did not go to the city gate. Instead, it went to the place where the disaster victims were settled.
After the carriage came to a stop, a hand with fair fingertips drew the curtain aside, and a slender figure walked out of the horse carriage.
Her long black hair was casually braided up at the back of her head and tied up with a colorful hair band. She appeared simple, elegant, and detached from worldly desires. In particular, coupled with her exquisite oval face, she looked even more attractive.
“Coachman, unload everything from the carriage.”
The coachman acknowledged her order and carried sacks of dry food out of the carriage.
The woman’s presence attracted the curious eyes of the disaster victims. They were even more curious when they saw the coachman unloading the numerous cloth sacks.
The person managing the disaster victims saw the woman coming forward and stopped her. “Who are you?”
The woman looked at him and said with a gentle smile, “I came to the city to visit relatives. I heard that there was a disaster in Luo City, so I came prepared with some dry food for everyone. I want to distribute them to everyone.”
The woman opened one cloth sack. Everyone could see that it was filled with white steamed buns. The eyes of the disaster victims almost popped out.
The authorities were helping them now, but a bowl of porridge a day was only enough to keep them from starving to death. It was impossible to say that they were full.
Now that there were so many white steamed buns in front of them, how could they not crave them?
Over the past few days, there were indeed some kind-hearted people who sent dry food here. The manager did not think too much about it. After thanking the woman, he accepted all the steamed buns.
The woman didn’t stay any longer. After her steamed buns were accepted, she got back into the horse carriage and left.
The manager counted the number of disaster victims and the number of steamed buns. After making a reasonable distribution, he distributed the steamed buns to the disaster victims.
There was a shortage of manpower in Luo City, so Su Ying had to do many things herself.
This morning, she brought her men out of the city to look for a water source.
Although she was looking for a water source, Su Ying had been using her binoculars to observe the sky conditions ever since she left the city.
Zhou Qing came to Su Ying’s side and handed her the water bag. “What are you looking at, Your Imperial Highness?” She looked up at the sky too. There was nothing but the glaring sun.
“I’m looking at the clouds.” Su Ying took the water bag and took a sip. There were too many disaster victims of the drought this time. If it still didn’t rain, the Imperial Court’s food supply would have to keep filling a bottomless pit. If they wanted to solve the root problem, they had to find a way to make rain fall.
The night before, she had already found the raw chemical materials and equipment to make artificial rainfall in her interspatial store. During the apocalypse, the ecological environment was harsh, but technology was advanced. In order to ensure a constant water supply, they would have a wide array of complete rainfall-inducing equipment in the base.
If Su Ying could find a suitable cloud layer, it was still possible for her to make rain fall over a small area.
Only with rainfall would the disaster slowly pass.
However, after leaving the city, she surveyed the area and did not see any cloud layer that met the requirements. She could only continue to search.
“Get them to go up the mountain to take a look.” The forest on this mountain looked rather lush. Perhaps she could find some spring water source.
“Yes, Your Imperial Highness.”
Su Ying walked to a large tree and picked up a shovel to dig up a shovel of soil under the tree. The surface of the soil was already dry, but the parts near the roots were slightly moist. It could be seen that there was also very little water in the mountain.
Sure enough, everyone searched around but couldn’t locate a water source. Su Ying had no choice but to lead her men down the mountain first. When they approached the city gate, they discovered that the disaster victims in the tents were actually eating white steamed buns.
Su Ying was a little surprised. The five thousand piculs of grain sent by the merchants was not a small amount. However, there were many disaster victims, so Su Ying only asked them to provide one meal of porridge a day. In order to make the porridge thicker, they were only allowed to mix in a large amount of coarse grain.
There was no way that they could eat steamed buns at this juncture.
Puzzled, Su Ying walked forward and summoned the manager. “Where did these white steamed buns come from?”
“Your Imperial Highness, it was sent by a kind girl. I did a headcount and distributed the buns to the disaster victims.”
Su Ying knew that there were people from the city who would occasionally send some dry food here, so she wasn’t surprised.
“Mm-hmm. It’s fine as long as they are distributed.”
“Yes. Allow me to send Your Imperial Highness off.”
Su Ying returned to the city. Perhaps the disaster relief efforts over the past few days had had some effect, but the streets were livelier than before. At least they were not completely empty.
“My Lord, the Empress has returned.”
Wei Zhongming frantically threw the chicken drumstick down on the table and wiped his mouth and hands clean before walking out hurriedly.
As soon as he stepped out, he saw Su Ying in the courtyard. “Your Imperial Highness, you’re back.”
As soon as he uttered these words, Wei Zhongming felt that something was not quite right..