Ying Ziye looked at Li Si kneeling on the ground with his head deeply lowered.
A brilliantly radiant smile spread across the little boy’s delicate face.
“Chancellor, you finally understand what I mean.”
Li Si’s body trembled slightly.
He did not rise.
Instead, remaining on his knees, he slowly turned around to face the officials kneeling below.
His bloodshot eyes swept across one stunned, terrified, and bewildered face after another.
Then his hoarse voice, rough like sandpaper scraping stone, echoed through the entire Qilin Hall.
“Pass down the order!”
“Immediately requisition three hundred mu of the finest farmland outside Xianyang City and establish divine-object experimental fields!”
“Open the government granaries, distribute the divine seeds, invite experienced old farmers from across the nation, and summon the people of Xianyang to witness the descent of a miracle with their own eyes!”
His voice was not loud, yet it carried a kind of madness reborn from utter despair.
The officials erupted in uproar.
An elderly censor with white hair and beard could not help stepping forward.
“Chancellor! You must not!”
“Agriculture is the foundation of the nation! How can this be treated like a child’s game? If the claims about this divine object are false, Great Qin will become the laughingstock of the world!”
Another official quickly echoed him.
“Yes, Chancellor! The laws of our ancestors have never known such absurdity! Please reconsider!”
Li Si slowly raised his head.
Looking at the two colleagues still struggling to resist, a strange smile spread across his lips.
“The laws of our ancestors?”
He repeated hoarsely.
“When the people starve to death, do they still care about the laws of their ancestors?”
“When rebels incited by the remnants of the Six States charge toward the imperial palace, do they still keep the ancestral laws in their hearts?”
The two officials instantly turned deathly pale.
Li Si rose to his feet.
He staggered once, yet stood upright like a sword reforged in fire.
“The Young Master carries the people in his heart! Heaven itself has bestowed this divine object to save Great Qin!”
“And yet you, who feed upon the ruler’s salary, refuse to share your sovereign’s burdens and instead use outdated customs to obstruct Heaven’s grace!”
“Do you truly wish to watch Great Qin perish to famine and civil unrest?!”
With every sentence, he stepped forward once.
The pressure radiating from this man—reborn after being utterly shattered—made every civil official struggle to breathe.
They stared at this Chancellor who had turned white-haired overnight, as though he had become an entirely different person.
Only one thought remained in their minds.
Li Si had gone mad.
He had become the sharpest and most unreasonable blade in the Ninth Young Master’s hand.
From that moment onward, no one in Qilin Hall dared voice opposition again.
That very day—an official proclamation personally written by Chancellor Li Si and sealed with the Regent’s jade seal was posted throughout every corner of Xianyang.
Outside the southern outskirts of the city, three hundred mu of the finest farmland were directly cordoned off by the Jinyiwei.
Cart after cart of those black “clumps of dirt” were transported to the fields.
The news swept through the city like a storm.
Xianyang exploded into chaos.
Countless citizens poured out from markets and homes alike, surging toward the southern outskirts like a tidal wave.
Crowding outside the guarded experimental fields, they stretched their necks and discussed the matter noisily.
A woman whose son had just died had swollen red eyes and a shrill voice.
“It’s fake! It must be fake!”
“That little… that Young Master killed so many people, and now he’s bringing out these things. He must be trying to trick us all into getting ourselves killed!”
Beside her, an old veteran missing one arm stared coldly at the fields.
“Trick us into dying? For worthless lives like ours, would he even need deception?”
“But this talk of five thousand jin per mu… it’s too terrifying.”
Within the crowd stood an old farmer with dark skin and calloused hands. With his hands behind his back, he spat heavily onto the ground.
“Bah!”
His name was Old Sun. He had farmed the southern outskirts his entire life and was regarded as the most experienced farmer in the area.
“Five thousand jin?”
Old Sun sneered. Though his voice was not loud, everyone nearby heard him clearly.
“Old woman, how much millet can your family harvest from one mu?”
The woman who had been addressed froze briefly before instinctively replying:
“In a good year… maybe two and a half shi… around three hundred jin.”
Old Sun jabbed a finger at himself.
“Me! Old Sun! I’ve worked the land for fifty years! Even with the best soil and perfect weather, producing three hundred and twenty jin from one mu would already mean our ancestors’ graves were smoking with blessing!”
He swept his gaze across the crowd, his voice suddenly rising.
“And now he says five thousand jin! That’s not grain—that’s blades growing from the earth to take people’s lives!”
“I’m telling you all, this is a trap! Anyone who believes it is a fool! Anyone who plants it will die!”
Old Sun’s words were like a bucket of cold water dumped over the crowd.
The tiny spark of hope that had just appeared was instantly extinguished.
Fear and suspicion once again took over.
The crowd became restless, the atmosphere heavy with oppression and despair.
And just then—
Boom… boom… boom…
Deep drumbeats echoed from the direction of the city gates.
The crowd instantly fell silent.
Everyone turned their heads at once.
The gates of Xianyang slowly opened.
A squad of Jinyiwei dressed in flying-fish uniforms stepped out first, their hands resting on embroidered spring sabers as they marched in perfect formation.
A murderous aura rushed toward them.
The common people turned pale with fright and hurriedly stepped back, opening a wide path.
Then, a magnificent carriage drawn by four fine horses slowly rolled out.
The bright yellow curtains swayed gently in the wind.
“It’s… it’s the Regent Young Master’s carriage!”
Someone in the crowd shouted.
Thud!
Thud!
Hundreds upon hundreds of citizens dropped to their knees like wheat being cut down in a field.
Everyone buried their heads deeply into their arms, their bodies trembling violently.
The blood from yesterday’s execution grounds had not even dried yet.
No one dared raise their head to look at the legendary eight-year-old tyrant who killed without blinking.
The carriage stopped before the experimental fields.
A small foot wearing a black riding boot stepped out.
Ying Ziye jumped down from the carriage.
Looking at the vast crowd kneeling before him, he tilted his little head curiously.
Then he happily waved his tiny hand.
“Hello, everyone! You can all get up now—the ground is cold!”
His childish voice carried clearly into everyone’s ears.
The people stiffened but did not dare move.
Li Si stepped down from the carriage behind him, walked before the crowd, and shouted in his hoarse voice:
“By order of the Young Master, everyone may rise!”
Only then did the people shakily stand up, though they still kept their heads lowered, not daring to look directly at him.
Ying Ziye did not mind.
Skipping toward the edge of the fields, he swept his gaze through the crowd until it landed on Old Sun, whose face still carried stubborn defiance.
Pointing at him, Ying Ziye smiled brightly.
“Grandpa, come over here.”
Old Sun’s body instantly stiffened.
The surrounding people immediately scattered three meters away from him.
His face turned deathly pale, his legs weak enough to collapse.
Two Jinyiwei stepped forward and “helped” him over from both sides until he stood before Ying Ziye.
Thud!
Old Sun dropped to his knees and kowtowed frantically.
“Spare me, Young Master! This old fool was talking nonsense! I deserve death!”
Ying Ziye crouched down and picked up a potato from a nearby chest, proudly offering it to Old Sun like a treasured toy.
“Grandpa, don’t be scared.”
“This Young Master thinks you look like someone who knows how to farm, so I want to ask you to plant this.”
Old Sun stared at the potato, then at Ying Ziye’s innocent little face, his mind completely blank.
At that moment, Li Si stepped forward.
Unrolling a bamboo scroll, he used all his strength to loudly proclaim:
“By order of the Regent Young Master!”
“All who participate in planting the divine crop shall receive seeds and farming tools free of charge from the government!”
“When autumn harvest arrives, the government will take only one-tenth of the divine grain produced!”
“The remaining ninety percent shall belong entirely to you!”
Li Si’s voice echoed endlessly across the open fields.
O-only one-tenth?!
After a brief silence—
the crowd erupted like a lake struck by a massive boulder.
“What? Did I hear wrong? They’ll only take one-tenth?”
“Normally, after all the taxes and levies, at least sixty percent of the harvest gets taken away!”
“Ninety percent kept for ourselves? Then… then if it really yields five thousand jin per mu… heavens!”
One man counted on his fingers, his face flushed red with excitement.
“From one mu of land, we could keep four thousand five hundred jin ourselves! That’s enough to feed an entire family for ten years!”
Greed.
Hope.
Fanatic excitement.
All kinds of emotions instantly overwhelmed fear.
Countless eyes turned bloodshot as they stared fixedly at the dozen chests of potatoes by the fields.
Those were no longer clumps of dirt.
They were hope.
Hope to survive.
Hope to become prosperous.
“I’ll plant them! Young Master, I’m willing!”
“Me too! Young Master, choose me!”
The crowd surged forward, the situation nearly spiraling out of control.
Yet amid this frenzy—
Old Sun, still kneeling on the ground, tremblingly raised his head and asked the most critical question.
“Young Master… what… what if they don’t grow?”
His voice was quiet, yet it swept over the crowd like a blast of cold wind, instantly silencing everyone.
That’s right.
What if they failed?
Not only would they waste three months of labor, but their own farmland would lie abandoned.
What would they eat then?
Wouldn’t they die even faster?
The once-frenzied people again showed hesitation and struggle on their faces.
The entire scene fell into a strange deadlock.
Ying Ziye looked at their constantly shifting expressions and seemed to find it amusing.
Slowly, he stood up and turned around.
His clear eyes swept across faces filled with greed, fear, and suspicion.
Wearing that innocent and radiant smile, he slowly spoke.
“Do you all think this Young Master is deceiving you?”
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