The taste of roasted sweet potato and boiled corn was on every courtier's tongue, a strange, sweet, and earthy novelty that was also, undeniably, filling. The spectacle of the harvest had been one thing; the tangible proof of its caloric value was another. The court buzzed not with scandalized whispers, but with a low, excited hum of possibility.
Zhu Haolang observed it all from his divan, which had been moved to the pavilion for optimal lounging and observation. He saw the calculating glint in Minister Wang's eyes as the man mentally recalculated provincial tax revenues based on this new agricultural output. He saw the awe on Old Feng's face, a man who had just witnessed a miracle he had helped create. And he saw the sour, pinched looks on the faces of Minister Liu's remaining allies, their leader still languishing in the dry north, his rituals proving useless against the drought.
The Lazy Emperor had won. The path was clear. All that was left was the tedious work of implementation.
Which was, of course, entirely unacceptable.
He languidly raised a hand. The hum of conversation died instantly.
"Minister Wang," he began, his voice carrying the familiar tone of a man who found speaking to be a mild inconvenience. "The harvest is satisfactory. You will take charge of the next phase. Establish the Imperial Seed Multiplication Bureau. Old Feng will be your chief agricultural advisor. Your task is simple: take every single kernel and slip from this harvest and plant them. Then do it again. And again. Until we have enough to blanket the northern provinces."
Minister Wang, whose career had been a long exercise in saying 'there are not enough funds,' now found himself being told there was an abundance of the most valuable resource: food itself. He swelled with purpose. "It will be done, Your Majesty! We shall requisition the finest lands—"
"Don't be tedious," the emperor interrupted, waving a dismissive hand. "Don't requisition anything. Use the refugee lands. The land they've already cleared and worked for their shelters. Pay them a fair wage to become the empire's first official sweet potato and corn farmers. It keeps them employed, fed, and invested in the success of the project. Two… no, three birds with one stone. Efficient."
The court stared. He had just solved the problem of land, labor, and social welfare in three sentences. Minister Wang could only bow deeply, his mind reeling at the elegant simplicity of it.
"As for the rest of you," Zhu Haolang continued, his gaze sweeping over the court, lingering for a moment on Liu's faction. "You will assist Minister Wang. Any minister or official whose province successfully establishes these crops and reports a reduction in famine alerts next year will be… rewarded." He let the word hang in the air, a delicious, ambiguous promise of promotion or imperial favor. "Any official who obstructs this project, or whose province mysteriously fails to adopt these heaven-sent plants, will be invited to go and assist Minister Liu with his prayers. Permanently."
It was not a threat delivered with anger, but with the flat finality of a weather report. It was far more terrifying. The obstructive faction visibly shrunk.
Satisfied that he had provided both carrot and stick—mostly so I don't have to deal with this again—Zhu Haolang sighed as if the effort had drained him completely.
"The details are beneath me. See to it. I am retiring to the Jade Dew Pavilion. The noise of productivity gives me a headache."
And with that, the Lazy Emperor left them, his courtiers scrambling to organize an agricultural revolution he had started almost by accident.
Weeks later, Minister Liu returned to the capital. He was thinner, dustier, and his eyes held a deep, simmering fury. His three-day ritual had stretched into a month-long exile of humiliation. He had been presenting his final, pointless report on the failed rain-summoning ceremonies when a courier had arrived, not with a response from the emperor, but with a basket.
A basket of oddly shaped, pink-orange tubers.
The accompanying note, written in the emperor's own lazy scrawl, had been a masterpiece of insulting benevolence: 'Minister Liu, your dedication to the spiritual welfare of the people is noted. Perhaps their physical welfare could also use attention. Try these. They are quite sustaining. -Z.H.'
He had been mocked. His ancient, revered traditions had been brushed aside for… dirt vegetables. The fact that the refugees in the north were now singing the praises of the "Lazy Dragon" and his miracle plants was salt in a very open wound.
He did not go to the palace immediately. Instead, he convened with his core allies in the sealed privacy of his own home.
"The emperor plays with dirt and calls it governance!" Liu seethed, his voice a low, dangerous whisper. "He undermines the rites that are the very foundation of the Mandate of Heaven! He fills the people's bellies but starves their spirits!"
"But the people are fed, Minister," one of his younger, more pragmatic allies ventured cautiously. "The discontent, the banditry… it has largely vanished. It is hard to argue with full stomachs."
"Full stomachs today mean nothing if the cosmos falls out of balance tomorrow!" Liu snapped. "He is introducing foreign, barbarian plants without conducting the proper ceremonies to ensure they do not carry malevolent spirits! He acts without consulting the ancestors! This will bring calamity upon us all!"
He paced like a caged tiger. "We cannot attack the food itself. The people love it. We cannot attack his direct orders; he has cowed the court with threats and promises."
He stopped, a cold, calculating light entering his eyes. "We attack the method. We attack the periphery. This 'Food-for-Work' program—it is vast. It moves vast sums of money, employs thousands. There must be corruption. There must be inefficiency. A project that large, implemented that quickly, must have cracks."
A slow smile spread across his face. "We find those cracks. We find a corrupt official skimming grain, or a lazy foreman who took bribes to put names on the work roster. We find the one weak link in the emperor's lazy chain of command. And we pull."
His allies leaned in, their own ambitions ignited. "We expose the corruption inherent in his new system. We show that his 'modern' ideas lead to moral decay. We prove that only by returning to the proven, traditional ways—our ways—can the empire be truly secure."
Minister Liu nodded. "Exactly. The emperor may have won the harvest, but the war for the soul of the Ming Dynasty has just begun. Let him nap. It will make his awakening all the more rude."
Back in the Jade Dew Pavilion, Zhu Haolang was indeed napping. But as he slept, a faint frown crossed his face. In his dream, he wasn't an emperor. He was a data analyst again, staring at a complex spreadsheet. One number, in a long column of figures, was flashing red.
It was a tiny error. A single decimal point in the wrong place. But it was enough to throw the entire calculation into chaos.