Vol 8 Chapter 3 (1/2)

VOLUME 8 CHAPTER 3: DON’T TELL ME THIS IS THE PROLOGUE OF VOLUME 8 (3)

Meng De POV

I walked down the terrace of the inner city walls and went straight before turning left after pa.s.sing through the gates. Just ahead after that were a row of beautiful houses. Li Ru had carefully selected them and was planning to offer them to Dong Zhuo but Dong Zhuo died and his factions was defeated so this area was abandoned. When construction works were in progress to make this the new capital, I decided to make this area a temporary residential district for myself and other Court officials. Feng Xiao didn’t let me stay here as it was bad luck to do so but I had decided to use this area as such.

At this time, the inner city was closed off and there was no carriage to bring me out so I could only stay here for the night. Of course, I wasn’t the only one staying here. Chen Yu can’t get out as well, and Ben Chu and her little sister are probably staying here as well. There might be others as well.

These houses weren’t very luxurious but they were decent by most standards, and they were built near to the center of Xuchang. Back then when I first decided to move the capital here, I found that a lot of foundation works were already done here. Which meant that Li Ru had already made preparations to move the capital here as well. Bu who knew that Dong Zhuo would meet an untimely end.

It’s all down to fate, I guess.

Alright, enough of that, I need to sleep now. I have a lot of things to do later.

“My lord.”

“My lord, we finally found you.”

Up ahead, I spotted 2 people who wore hats. I know who they are and wanted to sneak away quickly before they noticed me but was ultimately detected.

I turned towards them as they ran over to me.

“I was thinking of giving you our report before the inner city was closed but you disappeared.” Li Dian said angrily with her arms folded across her chest.

“But it’s good that our lord is still in the inner city. It’s better than our lord being in the outer city while we’re here.” Yue Jin smiled as she patted Li Dian’s shoulders.

“You both have come already huh. How was the rebellion in the east?”

“I would give full marks for our mission this time as we’ve completely quelled the rebellion in the east.”

“I would only give 90 marks. Some of them managed to get away, and if we chased them down, we would have gotten them all.”

When they finished, they gave me several pieces of cloth that were the corners of flags. These were the symbol that the leaders of the rebellion had been killed.

“The leader has been executed and the subordinates are now far away so there is no need to chase them down. The reason why they rebelled to begin with was because they didn’t have enough basic necessities. Now that things are improving from our reforms, there shouldn’t be a repeat of this.”

“Whatever you say.”

Clearly there were differences between how they viewed the outcome. I feel that I don’t need to pa.s.s too much judgement as these were their personal opinions after all.

In any case, it’s good that it’s all settled. With this, the area that includes Chenliu and Xu state is now fully under our control.

“Ah, right, how is it with the military ‘tuntian’ system? Has it worked?”

(TL: Tuntian is basically a system of a.s.signing plots of land to soldiers and providing equipment and cows to plow the land in return for a portion of the harvest. This is something like Napoleon’s policy of having his troops grow food.)

“General Xiahou has begun the preparations. The results should be good.”

“Miao Cai?”