Chapter 19: The Ultimate Face-Slap
Ye Chen descended from the Jade Dragon, landing gracefully by my side. He looked at the withered, groveling Emperor and the terrified courtiers. These were the men who had ordered his family slaughtered and his legs broken.
Now, they were worms beneath our feet.
"Princess," Ye Chen said, his voice ringing out clearly over the silent, awestruck capital. "What are your orders?"
"Bring forth Madam Ye," I said lazily, seating myself on the Emperor’s vacated golden throne, which was now beautifully entangled with blooming vines.
A golem carried Madam Ye up to the battlements, dropping her beside the withered Emperor. When she saw the majestic, god-like entity I had become, and the absolute destruction of the Emperor she worshipped, the last shred of her sanity permanently snapped.
She began to laugh hysterically, drooling and clapping her hands together. "The fool is the Emperor! The Emperor is a fool! Gold is dirt! Meat buns! Meat buns from the sky!"
She had literally become the drooling idiot she had so viciously accused me of being. Karma was poetry.
"Prime Minister Zhao," I called out, reading the name tag off a violently shaking, fat courtier near the front. "You were the one who signed the decree to exile the Ye family, citing them as traitors who hoarded grain, correct?"
"Mercy! Dragon Empress, mercy!" the Prime Minister wailed, kowtowing so hard he cracked his forehead on the stone, leaving a bloody smear. "I was coerced! The false Emperor made me do it!"
"I don't care," I said, leaning my cheek against my fist. "Since you like grain so much, you and Emperor Xiao Zheng are going to eat it. All of it."
I opened the System Shop.
System. Manifest ten thousand tons of unboiled, dry millet. Bury the imperial court.
[DING! Initiating 'Grain Burial' Protocol.]
The sky above the battlements darkened as a literal avalanche of dry, raw grain poured from a spatial rift. It crashed down upon the Emperor and his courtiers, burying them up to their necks in a mountain of rough, suffocating millet.
"Eat," I whispered, my voice carrying an undeniable, magical compulsion.
The withered Emperor and his corrupt officials were forced to open their mouths, desperately chewing and swallowing the dry, scratchy, raw grain until their throats bled. The people of the Capital, watching from below, erupted into deafening cheers. The oppressors who had starved them were now choking on the very food they had hoarded.
I stood up, turning my back on the pathetic display. I looked at Ye Chen. He was watching me with an expression of absolute, unyielding reverence.
"The throne is yours, Empress," Ye Chen said softly, offering me a perfectly carved jade crown he had taken from the Usurper's chambers. "You have saved the world."
I took the crown, the cool jade grounding me. I placed it on my own head.
"No, Ye Chen," I said, offering him my hand. "We saved the world. From now on, you are the Prime Minister of this empire. No one will ever look down on you again."
Ye Chen took my hand, his thumb gently brushing my knuckles. For the first time since I transmigrated, a genuine, warm smile broke across his incredibly handsome face. "I am yours to command, Lin Xi. In this life, and the next."
The millions of citizens below roared my name. The Jade Dragon roared in the sky above. The famine was over. The villains were utterly humiliated and destroyed. I had successfully conquered this world with unlimited food and absolute power.
It was a perfectly satisfying, happy ending.
Or so I thought.
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