Chapter 456 Scapegoat

"The Emperor's blessing, the Phoenix's body protecting me."

Lord Wei forced a smile and said, "Your Majesty really loves to joke."

"Do you doubt my identity?"

"I dare not, but I have some doubts." He said he dared not, but his eyes were full of doubt.

Su Ying didn't want to waste time talking to him, so she said directly: "Immediately send people to set up tents outside the city, and then set up pots to distribute porridge, to ensure that the victims can have a mouthful of hot porridge."

When Lord Wei heard this, he sneered in his heart. How dare an impostor come up to him and give orders.

He sneered and said, "That's enough. I wanted to play along with you to see what tricks you were up to, but you were so aggressive that you actually pointed fingers at me. What queen? As far as I know, the queen turned into a pile of bones in the flood. Who are you? How dare you pretend to be the queen? You're really brave! Come on, catch this liar for me!"

The officers rushed in and surrounded Su Ying. Seeing this, the guards also squeezed in and stood in front of Su Ying.

Su Ying did not move. She looked at Lord Wei as if she was looking at a dead person. "Lord Wei, I have given you a chance to mend your ways. If you start providing disaster relief from now on, perhaps I can leave you an intact body."

Lord Wei felt a chill down his spine when he met Su Ying's eyes, but he was sure that Su Ying was fake, and he really didn't believe that she could do anything to him.

"What are you still standing there for? Hurry up and capture that person for me!"

The policemen started fighting with the guards, but they were no match for these killers who were risking their lives on the edge of a knife. They were quickly caught and thrown into the yard.

Lord Wei didn't expect Su Ying's men to be so powerful. He was so scared that he turned around and ran away. There was no way Su Ying would give him a chance to leave.

The guard grabbed the man and forced him to kneel in front of Su Ying.

"You, who are you? Let me go. I am an official appointed by the imperial court. If you dare to hurt me, you will be beheaded!"

Su Ying stood up and walked forward, her eyes passing over his neck, "If you don't do a good job in disaster relief, I guarantee that your head will fall off even faster."

"You, who are you?"

Su Ying took out the Phoenix card from her body and said, "Phoenix card, do you recognize it?"

Lord Wei's eyes widened in shock, but the golden phoenix plaque in front of him made him doubtful.

Logically speaking, if the queen had really fallen into the flood, she would not have survived. So if the person in front of him was really the queen, then there was only one possibility, that the person who fell into the water was not her at all!

Lord Wei's mind was in a state of confusion, and he finally made up his mind and said, "Please forgive me, Queen. It's not that I don't want to provide disaster relief. It's that the granary in the city was burned down, and the grain and grass stored in the granary were almost burned up. The government really can't provide grain and grass to help the victims."

Su Ying raised her eyebrows, "Oh? There is such a thing."

"Yes, Madam, I don't want to cause trouble for the court, so I have been thinking of a solution in the mansion, but I just haven't figured out how to do it."

Su Ying nodded, "I see. I was wrong to blame Lord Wei. But we can't just ignore these disaster victims. We can't just watch them starve to death. How about this? Lord Wei, as the local official of Luo City, should set an example. Zhou Qing, you will follow the housekeeper to the granary in the mansion to count how much grain is left. Keep the part that will not kill people, and send the rest to the disaster victims."

Lord Wei was dissatisfied, but when he thought about it, it was just a little food, so he would just take it. He also felt that even if Su Ying was the real queen, she only had this ability, so what could she do to him?

"Yes, do everything according to what the queen says."

"Yes, but this amount of food is definitely not enough. The people who are staying in the city need to solve the problem of hunger as soon as possible. Lord Wei should know some merchants in Luocheng during his two years as an official in Luocheng. You go and tell them that I want to borrow some of their stored food. If they are willing, I will reward them generously afterwards."

Lord Wei rolled his eyes and thought to himself that Su Ying had a very good plan. Those merchants must know clearly whether they could get the grain back if they took it out.

But he was not sure of Su Ying's identity at the moment, so he could only respond that he would try his best to communicate with the merchants, but whether he could get food was another matter.

Su Ying didn't ask him to make a guarantee, but just asked him to send people out of the city to build tents to accommodate the victims.

Lord Wei responded and then withdrew.

Zhou Qing also followed the housekeeper to count the food in the mansion.

Zhou Qing knew that the government had stored grain, but he didn't expect there was so much. He was furious. This Lord Wei was enjoying a good life and didn't care about the lives of the people at all.

Zhou Qing left a small amount of food as supplies, and had the rest moved out. The victims had been hungry for so long, and they had to be given porridge as soon as possible, otherwise something big would definitely happen if things continued like this.

After Lord Wei left, Su Ying asked the guards to spread the word to let all the merchants in the city know that as long as they made contributions to the country and when the people needed them, the country would definitely commend and reward them afterwards, such as benefits for future generations in imperial examinations, allowing family members to study in famous academies and so on.

In this era, the status of merchants was not high. In the early days of the Chu State, merchants, including their descendants, were not eligible to take the imperial examinations, which also led to the fact that the status of merchants could not be improved.

Later, an emperor proposed that anyone with both moral integrity and talent could take the exam, which gave merchants some hope. But even so, merchants still had a very low status in the eyes of aristocratic families.

Now that Su Ying has offered conditions that are beneficial to the development of their younger generations, she believes that there will be many people willing to contribute at this time. She still needs people with the surname Wei to work for her, so she will not touch the food hidden in the cave for the time being and leave it for that beast to be punished.

After leaving the main hall, Lord Wei did not rush to build any tents to treat the victims. Instead, he immediately sent a message to the capital, saying that someone was pretending to be the Queen and preventing him from treating the disaster in Luo City.

Originally, he wanted to conceal the disaster, but Su Ying, the scapegoat, came to him, and he just happened to pin the blame of the granary fire on her. The emperor would definitely be furious and execute someone who dared to impersonate the queen. Then he could escape and all the grain would be his!

Thinking of this, Lord Wei felt very happy.

However, in order to reassure Su Ying, he still had to do something. After writing a letter to the capital, he sent people to set up tents outside the city to accommodate the victims, so that people from the court could see them when they arrived.

"Sir, do you want to tell those people about donating grain?" The merchants in the city are all waiting to make a fortune when there is a real food shortage. Will they be happy to donate grain now?

(End of this chapter)