```
It was like a leisurely horse grazing by the lush riverside, suddenly jabbed in the behind by a red-hot steel blade.
Wei’s imperial court, understaffed by more than half, erupted with an administrative efficiency never seen even at full capacity, swiftly clearing obstacles to stabilize grain prices with the speed of lightning that doesn’t allow one to cover their ears.
Large numbers of lower-level officials poured out of the capital, racing along the unobstructed official roads toward the fourteen provinces. Wherever they went, the stubbornly high grain prices cooled down quickly amidst puffs of smoke, as if doused with water...
Those landlords who had been claiming a lack of grain suddenly found their supplies.
The previously congested grain routes also suddenly became clear and unobstructed.
Even the Canal Transportation officials and soldiers, who had previously cited wind and rain as reasons not to transport grain, now braved the weather with the urgency of a model of hard work at the forefront!
The commoners, too, were left bewildered by this sudden and dramatic change.
Poor families, already en route to flee the famine, found that grain prices had suddenly fallen back to the original levels?
Families with modest assets, having prepared to tighten their belts and endure the lean year, suddenly saw grain prices plummeting back to normal?
Weeping tears of joy, they sobbed uncontrollably, holding their loved ones, shouting out in surprise...
In despair, they found salvation!
Crying out that the heavens have eyes!
Countless refugees, already on their way fleeing the famine, turned their carts around, filled with hope and renewed vigor to return home.
Countless people who had been subsisting on "coarse grains" for months had tears in their eyes as they tasted their first bite of pure grain in the era of Zhaode...
In the hearts of all the commoners thrummed the bittersweet words "we are saved," filled with a sense of surviving a calamity.
Some believe that since the lower-class commoners mostly live off the land and eat the grains they produce, a simple rise in grain prices wouldn’t hurt them in a non-disaster year...
But they do not realize that in an era of backward production capacity and extremely low yield per mu, most commoners toil for an entire year, facedown in the yellow soil and back toward the sky, paying taxes and rent, only to find that the surplus is not enough to feed a family until the next year!
What? Not enough grain for food, how do they survive?
In good years, they mix wild vegetables with their grain.
In bad years, they mix grain with their wild vegetables.
In years of disaster, they mix wild vegetables with bark and grass roots.
When there’s no more bark or roots, they eat dirt and die of fullness...
This is the real life of the commoners under China’s feudal imperial system.
Capacity to resist risks?
You can’t even say it’s weak; it’s nonexistent!
Any minor unexpected event or disaster can, in a very short time, destroy countless seemingly normal families.
This is not because they don’t work hard or because they are shortsighted, but because countless scheming individuals have, from the moment they are born, already planned their entire lives, not allowing them to eat their fill or live good lives... They must work tirelessly just to survive like cattle and horses, without giving the shrewd ones any cause for worry that they’ll develop any surplus thoughts, so they can continue to indulge in their present pleasures without concern for the morrow.
And grain prices, in any era, are the cornerstone of all prices.
A rise in grain prices means everything else will follow suit.
Even if someone could buy nothing at all, not spending a single copper coin... taxes still have to be paid, right? Rent has to be paid too, right?
Make no mistake, taxes and rent in the years of great disaster are not only less than in normal years but much more... Even if the court has policies for disaster relief, by the time they reach the lowest layers, they often become an opportunity for low-level officials and landlords to make a fortune and have a feast for themselves.
Where do you think corrupt officials get their money?
It’s all scraped off the backs of the poor!
Where do you think those landlords get their land?
It’s all craftily seized from commoners during years of disaster!
Grain prices are the lifeblood of the commoners!
To save grain prices is to save the lives of the commoners!
It was only much later...
That the commoners learned there was someone who, to save their lives, forfeited his own peaceful days and went to the capital to stand against thirty thousand imperial guards, leaving the imperial court half-empty with just a single stroke!
...
Ever since that day he walked out of Ziwei Palace, Yang Ge hadn’t stepped out of the Western Factory office again.
He knew that outside the office, countless eyes were watching him.
He also knew that many people in the city did not welcome him.
He hoped these people would focus all their energy on their work.
Therefore, he stayed indoors and did not go out to add to their troubles...
Fang Ke and Nangong Feiying stood guard over him daily, continuously dispatching his handwritten letters through the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s and Western Factory’s channels of information.
This chapter is updat𝓮d by freēwebnovel.com.
Zhao Hong also came every day, chatting with him while covertly reporting on the court’s progress in stabilizing grain prices and on the reorganization of the imperial guards.
The so-called reorganization of the imperial guards was, more accurately, reorganizing the Twenty-Six Guards responsible for the defense of the capital, transferring the heavy responsibility to the three major camps established by Emperor Xiping for guarding the capital.
This was a massive project that, even should it be undertaken, ought to proceed gradually like warming a frog in water, given how easily it might provoke a mutiny.
But this time, Zhao Hong was determined, brazenly leveraging Yang Ge’s authority to take rapid action by detaining the command tokens of all officials at the rank of thousand households or above from the Twenty-Six Guards, then forcibly breaking down the over one hundred thousand soldiers into hundreds of small hundred-household units that were dispatched in batches to various provinces and prefectures as garrisons.
Once broken down into hundred-household units and beyond the boundaries of the capital region, there was no longer any hope of them causing unrest...
Ironically, even Zhao Hong himself felt much more at ease once most of the Twenty-Six Guards’ forces were dispatched out of the capital.
```