"Wei You, separate them!" Jing Yan glanced at the chaotic scene of smoke and dust billowing around the stall and shouted sharply.
In the blink of an eye, Wei You led his men, wielding unsheathed swords, and charged into the crowd.
They were soldiers of the Jing Kingdom, so there was no need to consider the consequences; their methods were even more ruthless than those of Shan Yi, the general of the Yue Kingdom.
Anyone who dares to resist or disobey will be struck with the hilt of a knife. The person who suffers the pain will soon feel soreness and weakness in their arms and legs, and will no longer be able to cause trouble.
Seeing their companions suffer, those who hadn't been hit immediately stopped fighting.
Apart from those who were seriously injured and unable to get up and needed help, the only sound that quickly subsided in front of the stall was crying.
Jing Yan rode his horse and brought Yue Jiang to him. He then helped her down from the horse. Looking at the mess on the ground, he said solemnly.
Who started this?
Li Dagen crawled out on his knees, trembling, but after glancing at Yue Jiang a few times, he burst into tears, complaining and aggrieved: "Your Highness, Princess Yue Jiang has mistreated us!"
Immediately, he recounted in detail what Yue Jiang had done that day, how she had given what belonged to them to a group of farmers who had done nothing of note.
Although Yue Jiang's eyes were red, her voice did not tremble at all: "If you don't want it, I will say I will give it to you next time. These things cannot be wasted. I asked Shan Yi to invite the farmers in the fields."
"You say they have done nothing and don't deserve porridge, but I regard them as meritorious officials of the Jing Kingdom. Have you exempted them from taxes all these years?"
"Your Highness achieved a great victory in this attack on the Feng clan. Didn't they lose any relatives or suffer any injuries during this time? Weren't the provisions used by Your Highness's entire army grown by their own hands?"
“The porridge and rice you receive every month are not made by them, while they not only have to pay taxes to the Jing Kingdom, but also have to support their families.”
"Do you know if they are willing to eat the food they have worked so hard to grow? Are they willing to feed it to their own children?"
“With an extra bag of rice, they can exchange it for more copper coins, accumulate more wealth for their families, and withstand sudden illnesses and injuries. You have the Jing Kingdom's imperial physicians who treat you for free, but do they have that?”
“They have none, and their children have none either. They can only drink bland, tasteless wild vegetable soup and eat herbs they dig themselves.”
"I invited them to drink, but they felt embarrassed and didn't drink themselves. What's wrong with leaving it for their children?"
"And you, have you ever cherished it? Jing Kingdom owes you, but do they owe you anything?"
Yue Jiang's questioning voice was thrown at the orphans one by one, making him lower his head and droop his ears.
When the farmers heard what Yue Jiang said on their behalf, they were all moved to tears. The youngest farmer among them was only six years old, and the oldest was almost sixty.
The old man, nearly sixty, had a back so bent he could no longer straighten, and his feet were still wearing straw shoes, covered in calluses from the dark dust.
Besides the calluses on his hands, the old man was also thin, and his finger joints were very large, with no excess flesh on his body.
He choked back tears as he stroked his grandson's head, wiping the spilled porridge off his clothes. Trembling, he picked up a few grains and put them in his own mouth, smacked his lips a few times, and laughed through his tears, "So delicious!"
“Princess Yuejiang is a good person. She not only sent people to help us with spring planting, but also sent us medicinal herbs and treated my back injury that I couldn’t afford to see a doctor for.”
"The children in the family grew up drinking wild vegetable soup. They could only eat millet they grew themselves during the New Year. Princess Yuejiang took pity on the children and offered them porridge. She didn't know what the children had done wrong and wanted to throw away their bowls."
“Princess Yuejiang, I’m sorry to trouble you. I’m taking my grandson back home to farm. The child didn’t finish his porridge, but he tasted several big mouthfuls today and said that the rice was even more fragrant than the porridge we had during the New Year. Thank you.”
The old man, walking unsteadily, led his grandson home, while the other farmers knelt down, tears streaming down their faces, to thank Princess Yuejiang: "Thank you so much, Princess Yuejiang!"
After thanking the old man, everyone followed him home.
Jing Yan felt a pang of sorrow in his heart. As the crown prince of Jing Kingdom, he knew that the people of Jing Kingdom had suffered the most in recent years.
However, his mission was not to pity them, but to use their contributions to restore the former dignity of the Jing Kingdom and ensure its strength and peace.
Even knowing this, hearing it with my own ears still makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Jing Yan suppressed the tears welling up in his eyes, his face remaining somber as he spoke coldly to the orphan.
“The Jing Kingdom owes you a debt. As orphans, you should have shown compassion for others. How can you presume to be special and bully others?”
"Today you turn a blind eye to the hard work of the farmers, how will you be able to despise the court in the future? Yue Jiang is my Crown Princess, and she represents me. Do you have any objections to what you are doing today?"
The orphans, who had been treated with courtesy by the royal family for forty years, were being utterly humiliated for the first time, but because it was the first time, some of them remained defiant.
"How dare we underestimate Your Highness? Usually it is Princess Cheng who comes, but today Princess Yuejiang was replaced without any warning. We were also surprised. We just want to know what happened to Princess Cheng."
"Princess Cheng was trying to calm things down when she got caught in the chaos and was trampled. She was taken to the clinic along with the injured."
When one of the orphans said this, another orphan added to the statement.
Jing Yan didn't care what happened to Cheng Suyun; he took Yue Jiang's hand and explained to them.
“Princess Cheng is not a member of the royal family. She is only showing compassion on behalf of Empress Dowager Cheng. Yue Jiang is my Crown Princess. In the future, Princess Cheng will not interfere with the orphan’s charity.”
“What happened today cannot be forgiven lightly, Wei You. Find out who instigated this trouble and give them thirty strokes of the cane.”
"On the day of the memorial festival, Yue Jiang and I will be on the same stage. If anyone says no, they don't have to come. I will just pray to the souls of the dead."
To prevent the orphans from continuing to attack Yue Jiang and to give them no time, Jing Yan pulled Yue Jiang aside and left first.
Upon reaching the horse, Yue Jiang was still upset about Jing Yan's lateness and deliberately resisted, saying, "Your Highness, I don't know how to ride a horse and I don't want to."
A moment later, the carriage that Yue Jiang had taken from the palace was brought to her side. Yue Jiang gave Jing Yan a meaningful look before turning around and getting into her own carriage.
Jing Yan could tell from her eyes that she wanted him to come along.
After thinking for a moment, he realized he had something to tell Yue Jiang, so he gave up riding a horse and got into the carriage with the others.
Inside the carriage, Yue Jiang sat silently to one side, arranging her hair, not glancing at Jing Yan at all.
Jing Yan rubbed his tired brows and explained why he was late: "The envoy from Jiang'er's mother country has arrived. An Chenghuan is still not giving up on you and wants to forcibly invite the Yue Kingdom envoy who came to Jing to go to An Kingdom."
"I just received the news yesterday and arranged for someone to pick me up, so I didn't have time to come back. I rushed back this morning."
"Ah," Yue Jiang thought Jing Yan simply didn't care, but who knew it was trouble from Anguo again.
"Why is Anguo intercepting people from his concubine's homeland? Could it be that he's going to send troops to Yue Kingdom because of her?"
Surely not. The Moon Kingdom is a money bag for the other five kingdoms. Would the An Kingdom dare to take it all for itself?
“No,” Jing Yan denied immediately. “An Chenghuan was still upset when he failed last time. He probably wanted to detain people from your motherland to prevent our wedding from happening as scheduled.”
Since An Chenghuan knows that Yue Jiang has lost her memory, he must be very unwilling to accept it and wants to start with the envoy to win back Yue Jiang before the wedding.
Fortunately, Jing Yan had once kidnapped someone himself, so he was worried that someone might use this method to frame him, and thus took precautions in advance.
Yue Jiang didn't care what An Chenghuan meant; she only cared about when people from her motherland would arrive. Once her own people came, the matter of the orphan would be easily resolved.
"Your Highness, when will I be able to see my relatives from my motherland?"
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