After being reborn, the aloof prime minister was once again forced by a tyrant.

Three days after the crabapple blossoms, the last snow of the spring fell in Beishuo.

Xie Qinglan stood under the eaves, wearing an outer robe, watching the fine snow fall gently onto the crabapple branches.

The pink and white petals, unable to bear the weight of the wet snow, fell one by one onto the blue brick ground, like someone had accidentally spilled a box of rouge.

Gao An, carrying a bowl of medicine, walked from the other end of the corridor. Seeing him standing in the wind, he hurriedly ran a few steps: "Lord Xie, you've just recovered from your illness, why are you standing in the wind again—"

"It's alright."

Xie Qinglan took the medicine bowl, tilted her head back and drank it all, then placed the empty bowl back on the tray.

He paused for a moment, his gaze falling on the courtyard gate—empty, with only two eunuchs sweeping the ground in the distance with their heads down.

He lowered his eyes, turned around, and went back into the hall.

"Gao An."

"Your servant is here."

Xie Qinglan sat down by the window and asked casually, "Has Your Majesty been very busy these past few days?"

Gao An's eyelids twitched. This ancestor never inquired about His Majesty's whereabouts, but today he suddenly asked such a question, and Gao An was momentarily at a loss for words.

"This..." Gao An carefully chose his words, "His Majesty has indeed been very busy with state affairs lately. Many areas have recently experienced snow disasters, and the Ministry of Revenue has submitted several memorials. His Majesty was reviewing them until the third watch of the night yesterday before finally resting."

Xie Qinglan hummed in agreement, opened the book "Map of the Nine Provinces" on the table, her gaze lingering on the pages, but she didn't turn the pages for a long time.

Seeing this, Gao An cautiously added, "Although His Majesty is busy, he still sends servants to inquire about your well-being every morning and evening. Yesterday, I heard that your appetite has improved, and His Majesty was so pleased that he ate half a bowl more at dinner."

Xie Qinglan turned a page of the book without saying a word.

He inquired about my well-being every day, delivered medicine every day, and slipped things into Tingxuexuan every day—a few days ago it was a Duan inkstone, said to be produced in the western border of Beishuo, with a stone texture as warm and smooth as a baby's skin; yesterday it was a box of pine soot ink, said to be specially made by the best ink maker in Beishuo, with a rich but not dull ink color.

But no one came.

Xie Qinglan closed the book and placed it on the corner of the desk.

"Eunuch Gao, please pass on a message to His Majesty."

Gao An immediately perked up his ears.

"I told you—" Xie Qinglan turned her head and looked at the few crabapple trees outside the window whose branches were bent by the weight of snow. Her voice was very calm. "The crabapple trees are in bloom. If Your Majesty has a little free time from official duties, you can come and take a look."

Gao An was taken aback for a moment, then his face lit up with joy, and he replied repeatedly, "Yes, yes, this servant will go and deliver the message right away!"

He turned and ran outside, tripped as he stepped over the threshold, got up, dusted himself off and kept running, not even caring about the injury on his buttocks.

Xie Qinglan looked at his burning desire, her lips curved slightly, and then she disappeared into the rising steam from the teacup.

The Imperial Study.

Xiao Jingyuan was staring blankly at the Ministry of Revenue's memorial. The snow disaster in the western border had frozen tens of thousands of livestock to death, cutting off the livelihoods of herders. If relief was not provided in time, it might lead to a popular uprising.

He remembers the snow disaster.

Around the same time in his previous life, he had just imprisoned Xie Qinglan in Lanyue Pavilion for less than two months. That day, he was squatting on the roof of Lanyue Pavilion, listening to the sound of someone turning pages of a book through the tiles, when Ling Feng suddenly came to report an urgent message from the western border—a snow disaster that had killed more than 30,000 livestock and cut off the food supply to seventeen tribes.

His mind was completely occupied with Xie Qinglan; he had no time to care about the snow disaster. He tossed the memorial to the Ministry of Revenue, telling them to handle it, and continued to squat on the rooftop, watching over the person.

As was customary, the officials of the Ministry of Revenue allocated silver and grain, which were distributed layer by layer. By the time they reached the herdsmen, less than 40,000 shi of grain out of the original 100,000 shi.

The grain was intercepted by the state government, inflated by grain merchants, and embezzled by the escorting officials. Each layer of the grain was exploited, and the accounts were kept meticulously.

He remembered that more than two thousand people starved to death in the western border that year, so hungry that they ate grass roots, tree bark, and soil.

People driven to extreme hunger are capable of anything—three tribes joined forces to rob the government granary.

He sent General Shen Hanzhou to suppress the rebellion, killing over a hundred people and executing all the corrupt officials on the spot. In order to quickly quell the uprising, he arrested the dozen or so herdsmen who led the riot and hung them up at the city gate as a warning.

It was his order.

His comment on the report was, "The troublemakers are causing trouble. The city will be suspended for three days as a warning to others." He wrote this in red ink without even blinking.

Later, among those dozen or so herders, three who were not in good physical condition froze to death before those three days were over.

At that time, he didn't think those lives mattered much. He had quelled the rebellion without bloodshed using only three lives, and he was even somewhat pleased with himself.

So that day when he went to Lanyue Pavilion, he casually mentioned the matter at the dinner table and asked the person what he thought.

Xie Qinglan was drinking soup when she heard this, so she put down her bowl and glanced at him. There was no hatred or anger in that glance, only a deep and profound weariness that he couldn't understand at the time.

Then Xie Qinglan said that sentence.

"Is Your Majesty only capable of establishing your authority through swift executions?"

Xiao Jingyuan didn't take it seriously at the time, and was even a little annoyed.

He thought, "I'm trying to share state affairs with you out of kindness, and you give me this cold shoulder." He put down his chopsticks, his tone hardening: "I've killed corrupt officials and quelled the peasant uprising. What's wrong with that?"

Xie Qinglan did not answer.

He glanced at him, then put down the soup bowl, got up, and went to the study.

Xiao Jingyuan sat at the dining table, staring at the half-eaten bowl of soup opposite him, a nameless anger rising within him. He wanted to chase after the man and confront him, but he was afraid of pushing him further, so in the end he just silently finished off the rest of the food.

As he passed the study door, he paused. The door was ajar, and Xie Qinglan sat by the window reading, her profile silhouetted against the candlelight, a slender figure. The man didn't look up or speak, as if he hadn't noticed anyone at the door at all.

Xiao Jingyuan stood there for a moment, but ultimately did not go in.

The next evening, when he went to Lan Yue Pavilion again, Xie Qinglan was already having dinner. As usual, he sat opposite him, and Gao An added chopsticks and a bowl for him. The two ate in silence. Xie Qinglan didn't mention what happened the night before, and he didn't ask again.

Just before leaving, he noticed an extra book on the table.

The book sat on the corner of the table; it wasn't his, nor was it one of the military books and historical records Xie Qinglan usually read. The cover was made of coarse indigo cloth, the edges worn and frayed, clearly an old book that had been read many times. The title was printed neatly—"A Record of Water Conservancy and Land Reclamation in Western Xinjiang."

The northern region values ​​martial arts, so books on water conservancy and agriculture are extremely rare in the capital, and even if they were available, no one would read them.

But Xiao Jingyuan recognized the book title—he had seen a copy of it at the Grand Tutor's place when he was a child. The Grand Tutor said it was written by Shen Yi, the Grand Minister of Agriculture of the previous dynasty, and it specifically discussed the policies of military farming and disaster relief in the western border. Unfortunately, the only copy was lost and could not be found now.

He picked up the book and flipped through it casually. The pages were yellowed, and the ink was old, but there were many annotations at the bottom of the pages. The handwriting was slender and strong, and it was written in the small, stiff-bristled script commonly found in Nanyue. It was clearly Xie Qinglan's handwriting.

"Work relief was implemented by employing starving people to build canals and roads, which not only provided them with food but also stabilized the soil. Once the work was completed, the canals were ready for irrigation after years of famine, achieving two goals at once."

"If granaries are set up in prefectures and counties, the journey is long and the cost is high. It is better to set them up in border towns. Herdsmen can collect their grain directly from the granaries, saving on transportation costs and also preventing exploitation along the way."

"After the snow disaster, there will inevitably be spring floods. If the dikes are not repaired, there will be floods in March. If the disaster victims are not yet well-fed and are then hit by floods, then the unrest cannot be stopped by killing."

Next to the last sentence, "Popular uprisings cannot be stopped by killing," there was a faint horizontal line, as if Xie Qinglan had unintentionally scratched it with her fingernail when she read this.

Xiao Jingyuan stood there holding the book, and suddenly felt his face getting hot.

He recalled his words from the previous night: "I killed the corrupt officials and quelled the popular uprising. What's wrong with that?" He also remembered the weary look in Xie Qinglan's eyes when she looked at him.

Only now did he understand the meaning in that gaze—it wasn't contempt, it wasn't indifference, it was disappointment. It was deep disappointment in an emperor who only knew how to kill to settle disputes.

He turned to the last page of the book, where a note was tucked away. The ink on the note was newer than the annotations in the book, as if it had been written just last night. There was only one line on the paper:

"Killing people won't stop starvation. If Your Majesty only knows how to kill, why bother asking me?"

The handwriting is slender and the strokes are sharp and austere, without any superfluous words.

Xiao Jingyuan examined the note several times, turning it over and over. Then, he carefully folded the note and tucked it into his pocket, taking the old book with it as well.

What he thought at the time was: Xie Qinglan is such a wonderful person.

Even if he imprisoned him in the Moonlit Pavilion, even if he hated him to the bone, he would still put down his soup bowl when he heard about people starving to death in the snow disaster, look at him with that tired gaze, and then point out the way to him with a cold sentence.

How could he not be captivated by him?

Later, he implemented Xie Qinglan's annotations one by one—work relief, setting up warehouses and towns, and building canals and dikes.

The following spring, when the snowmelt in the western region melted, the dikes withstood the spring floods, and the newly built irrigation canals brought the snowmelt into the farmland. That year, the harvest in the western region was 20% higher than in previous years.

Xie Qinglan never asked about the whereabouts of that book. Nor did he ever bring it up on his own initiative.

Only when the autumn harvest report of the following year was delivered to the Emperor did he go to Lan Yue Pavilion for dinner, eating in silence as usual. Xie Qinglan suddenly put down his chopsticks, glanced at him, and said, "The military settlements in the western border are doing a good job."

That was the first time Xie Qinglan had ever praised him on her own initiative.

Xiao Jingyuan almost knocked the bowl over.

He forced a calm "hmm," then lowered his head and shoveled down a couple of mouthfuls of rice, his ears turning as red as if they were about to bleed.

Xie Qinglan had already continued eating, expressionless, as if her earlier remark was merely a casual remark.