Ministers Begging Me to Ascend the Throne-Chapter 177 - 150: The Former Emperor was Cruel, The Current Emperor is Even More So

The auspicious date selected by the Chief Historian is five days later. At that time, the Emperor will lead the entire court of civil and military officials and his sons to the fields outside the capital to plant rice seedlings.

Every year during spring ploughing, the Emperor takes his ministers and sons to the fields to plant rice seedlings. This is an activity devised by the Emperor himself to show the people that the court takes spring ploughing very seriously.

Although this act might seem somewhat pretentious, the people are naturally very moved to see the Emperor care so much about spring ploughing.

Spring ploughing concerns the harvest of food for the entire year. Every year, farmers pay a great deal of attention to spring ploughing. Now that they see the Emperor putting such emphasis on it, the people naturally treat spring ploughing with even more seriousness.

Besides this, the court also demonstrates its focus on spring ploughing in other areas. For example, if the seeds sown by the common people fail to sprout well, they can ’borrow’ good seedlings from the local government. If their grain seeds are gone or spoiled, they can also ’borrow’ from the local government. Once the harvest is in, they can repay the debt.

This ’borrowing’ system was established by the previous Emperor. When the Great Zhou was first founded, many places were nearly out of not just grain, but even grain seeds. Many grain seeds were even destroyed.

In the decade or two before the Great Zhou was established, there were constant natural disasters and man-made calamities, coupled with yearly wars, leading to extreme shortages of food. At that time, people were so hungry they were about to die, and could only eat the grain meant for planting.

In the first year of the Great Zhou, the previous Emperor ordered all local governments to report how much surplus grain was in their granaries and how many grain seeds they had. The reported numbers were shockingly low.

To ensure that the people had seeds to plant, the previous Emperor strongly demanded that the Noble Families donate grain seeds. These people, of course, were unwilling to donate; whether the common people had seeds to plant, food to eat, or whether they starved to death had nothing to do with them.

The Xie family was the first to voluntarily donate grain seeds. As reason would dictate, with the Xie family donating, the other noble families should have followed suit, but these families delayed, hoping to exchange grain seed donations for benefits from the court.

Naturally, the court did not entertain these families’ hopes of gaining benefits. Without benefits, the families were, of course, unwilling to donate. The previous Emperor directly ordered them to be arrested and imprisoned, demanding their families bring grain seeds to ransom them. Without grain seeds, they would remain locked up.

While they were detained, they were not given food, making them deeply feel the pains of hunger. If, within the stipulated time, their families still did not bring grain seeds to ransom them, they would face only one outcome—death.

At first, these people thought the previous Emperor was merely trying to scare them, thinking he wouldn’t dare to kill them. However, the previous Emperor indeed executed them, and it was done publicly at the market square for all the people to witness.

At that time, quite a few were killed, and they were all Family Heads of noble families.

The previous Emperor first extended courtesy, inviting these families to donate seeds. If they refused, then he would resort to force.

Before the establishment of the Great Zhou, the previous Emperor had led countless battles, emerging from the mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Moreover, on the battlefield, he had encountered all kinds of people. These noble families trying to play tricks before him had to consider whether he would bother with them.

The previous Emperor was decisive in killing, executing without mercy. When the Great Zhou was newly established, those noble families saw the previous Emperor’s humble origins and thought he could be easily manipulated and controlled, but in the end, it was they who were manipulated and punished.

Because of the grain seed donation issue, the previous Emperor killed many people from the noble families, naturally angering them. Just as they were contemplating revenge against the previous Emperor, he dispatched troops to suppress them directly.

Although these noble families had significant power and their own private troops, how could their troops compare to the battle-hardened soldiers of the court?

Half of the private troops of those families unwilling to donate grain seeds were killed by the previous Emperor’s men, and the remaining were terrified. They believed that if they did not obediently donate the grain seeds, their families would be completely wiped out by the previous Emperor.

To avoid the disaster of family extermination, they no longer dared to hesitate and obediently donated the grain seeds. From then on, whenever the court required donations or asked them to perform other tasks, they no longer dared to put on airs.

Even now, every year the noble families voluntarily donate some good grain seeds. In fact, after the Emperor ascended the throne, both the court and local governments have obtained quite a number of grain seeds. The Emperor, unlike the previous Emperor, did not force the noble families to donate grain seeds, yet these noble families very obediently and proactively do so.

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