With the cannon fodder script in hand, it is easy for the king to change his fate

"Your Majesty, this is a letter from the State of Chu." A palace servant handed a letter to Li Gufang, trying hard to keep his body from trembling, fearing that the person above might take his life in a fit of anger.

Li Gufang glanced at the palace servants, completely unconcerned.

As long as these people don't provoke him and just do their jobs, he wouldn't casually take their lives. They're just lowly palace servants; he has no reason to vent his anger on them. However, given his current reputation, it's normal for the palace servants to be afraid of him.

At this moment, the State of Chu suddenly sent another letter, which piqued Li Gufang's interest. He casually took the letter, slowly opened it, and when he saw the contents, he was slightly taken aback, and then laughed out sarcastically.

It's been so long, and only now has the State of Chu sent a letter inquiring about Yuan Zhen's situation. Isn't that ridiculous?
The letter only showed concern for Yuan Zhen's current situation, without mentioning anything else, seemingly showing great interest in whether Yuan Zhen was doing well in Liang.

Even if the letter was full of concern and longing, Li Gufang would not believe it from the Chu Kingdom; he just wanted to know about Yuan Zhen's situation.

However, he couldn't immediately figure out the purpose of the letter from the State of Chu.

Could it be that the State of Chu has already realized that Yuan Zhen is not in the Liang Kingdom's palace? That's impossible. If the State of Chu knows, then the people of Liang should also know.

Why ask that question?
Forget it, if I can't figure it out, I'll just stop thinking about it.

Li Gufang tossed the letter aside and said to the palace servants who were hanging their heads not far away, "Send a letter back to the Chu Kingdom, saying that Princess Jiahe is doing well in the Liang Kingdom, but she is frail and rarely goes out. Tell them not to worry."

The palace maid quickly replied, "Yes."

As he turned to leave, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, thankful that he had survived.

Soon after, envoys from Liang and Chu met and reached an agreement to jointly deal with King Canglan, and began to plan a strategy against Yunzhou.

However, these reports did not stop Azhen's advance; she continued to encroach on the territory belonging to both countries.

The people who assigned tasks to various places in previous years were not there for nothing.

While Azhen is currently the popular choice, there may indeed be some people in remote cities who, because of their difficult circumstances, are willing to open their city gates to welcome her.

However, since this has happened in multiple cities in succession, it is clear that someone must be needed to guide and organize them.

In doing so, A-Zhuang also wanted to minimize casualties.

Of course, war is inevitable; there's no way to avoid it. Let's try to minimize it, given how many cards she has up her sleeve.

Seeing that the cities were falling one after another, the two countries dared not delay any longer. After discussing how to deal with Yunzhou, they quickly sent troops.

On the Liang Kingdom side, Li Gufang outwardly appeared to be obedient to his ministers and easy to talk to, but in reality, he had infuriated the entire court, who were powerless to do anything about it.

They still remembered when Li Gufang asked them in court if they would all listen to him, a question they naturally couldn't answer. They were also afraid of making a promise and then being unable to save face, so they gave ambiguous answers.

His Majesty wasn't angry, but his personality became eccentric after that, just like it is now. You might say he's not doing his job as emperor properly, but that's not true. He takes every matter very seriously and patiently discusses things with them.

Except that he sometimes seems a bit out of touch.

If I had known that Yunzhou was in such a state, and that the Prince of Canglan was coming with such a fierce momentum, I might have been able to turn things around if I had simply agreed to His Majesty's request.

Now they were astonished to discover that it seemed this emperor had no weaknesses at all.

His martial arts skills were unfathomable, and he had survived countless assassination attempts unscathed.

If they were to suggest changing the emperor, the other side would probably be more than happy to do so at this time.

They didn't know when it started, but His Majesty seemed to care less about the throne. He wasn't like this at the beginning... In the Chu Kingdom, the situation was somewhat different.

The entire court was counting on Yuan Cheng to make a decision, and naturally, the discussions were still quite heated, though on the surface they appeared united. In reality, after much deliberation, they couldn't come up with any ingenious solutions to the current situation.

At this time, people from both countries were waiting for the war to begin a month later.

Less than a month later, bad news came: their supplies had been stolen!

When Yuan Cheng learned of the situation, he was somewhat dazed. This was a serious matter; it was rare that certain people in the court hadn't tampered with the grain supplies, but this unexpected incident had occurred. They hadn't been unaware of the possibility of problems with the grain supplies, after all, the world was not at peace.

Even without Yunzhou's intervention, it's easy to provoke mountain bandits.

However, they were still unable to successfully transport the grain there.

The planned time was clearly insufficient. Although both countries were in some chaos due to war, they had no choice but to resist Yunzhou's external expansion.

In just this short period of time, King Canglan seized some more of their cities.

The closer one gets to the center of the two kingdoms, the less easy it becomes to capture a city, inevitably leading to small-scale skirmishes. However, the people of Chu and Liang simply couldn't resist.

Neither country dared to delay and could only quickly gather provisions, but then they encountered a new problem—the national treasury was empty.

Then we can only requisition grain and fodder.

Therefore, it is the common people who suffer.

In fact, Yuan Cheng had considered using the wealthiest officials and powerful families to alleviate his immediate crisis. He even sent his own people to test the waters, but the results were not very good.

He sat on the dragon throne, looking down at the noisy scene of his ministers below, and laughed sarcastically.

Just then, Dou Yuexin arrived.

She was accompanied by several people who carried things up.

After the boxes were put down and opened, they revealed her wealth accumulated over the years. Judging from the size of the boxes, she had probably taken out most of them.

"Only with a country can there be a home. Now that the State of Chu is facing a crisis, I, as the Empress Dowager, cannot just sit here and enjoy myself without doing anything."

"This is my life's savings. If the country is gone, I will not be able to enjoy these things. Emperor, you can take them."

To be fair, Dou Yuexin's statement did touch some people. Even if some people didn't want to spend the money, the platform had already been set up, so they had no choice but to do something.

Yuan Cheng finally breathed a sigh of relief.

This time, Azhen did not send anyone to rob the grain supplies of the two countries.

Regardless, they were bound to clash eventually, and now the time was almost right.

When everyone came to their senses, they were shocked to find that both countries had already lost nearly half of their territory.

The territory now under the Canglan King's jurisdiction is no smaller than that of the Liang Kingdom, which immediately makes people's scalp tingle. How could there be such a terrifying person?
Just who exactly is the Canglan King?
She's just a woman! How could she have done something like this?
Finally, war broke out between the two countries and Yunzhou. (End of Chapter)