Qian Renxue's decisiveness was on full display at this moment.
After speaking with Chen Ming, she spent noon arranging various matters with her advisors before heading straight to the imperial palace to meet Emperor Xue Ye. That very afternoon, she went directly to the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect to seek Ning Fengzhi's assistance.
By midnight, she had already dragged Chen Ming onto a carriage and, under military escort, set off directly toward the northeast.
Among those accompanying them, aside from Dugu Bo, the imperial guest elder, there was also a Level 89 Spirit Douluo from the Heaven Dou Empire.
This Spirit Douluo possessed one-eighth of the Heaven Dou imperial bloodline, and his Martial Soul was inherited from his father—the top-tier Thunder Fire Sword. He had once been regarded as a likely candidate to break through to the Titled Douluo rank, but fate had not been on his side, and he ultimately failed to achieve that breakthrough in his lifetime. Even so, he remained one of the strongest experts the Heaven Dou Empire could currently deploy.
During the journey, to demonstrate both her respect for Chen Ming and the importance she placed on his safety, Qian Renxue traveled in the same carriage as him.
As the crown prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, Qian Renxue's carriage was built according to ceremonial standards second only to those of the emperor. It was a massive carriage drawn by five fine steeds comparable to hundred-year Spirit Beasts.
However, given the technological limitations of the era, even a carriage drawn by Spirit Beasts had an interior space of no more than twenty square meters. Once the various furnishings, decorations, and other necessities were taken into account, the space became rather cramped, to the point that Chen Ming and Qian Renxue could practically sense each other's every movement.
Chen Ming behaved perfectly naturally. Pretending not to know that Xue Qinghe was actually Qian Renxue, he treated her as nothing more than an ordinary noble young man of the same sex, displaying the appropriate level of familiarity and understanding.
However, aside from acting somewhat normally at the very beginning, Qian Renxue spent the rest of the journey staring at Chen Ming with an intensely burning gaze. Her eyes remained fixed on him the entire time, as though she wanted to swallow him whole.
Whenever Chen Ming noticed and asked about it, Qian Renxue would immediately pretend she had done nothing, saying she had merely been thinking about something just now. But every time Chen Ming turned his head away, or entered a resting state, Qian Renxue would immediately stare at him again with that special look in her eyes.
Along the way, Qian Renxue could be said to have entangled herself deeply with Chen Ming. Almost every day, she dragged Chen Ming into asking this and asking that, asking Chen Ming what he thought about one matter, then asking what he thought about another.
Whether it was insights regarding Spirit Master cultivation, consultation on various policies for governing a country, or even trivial household matters, she chatted about all of them with Chen Ming, an outsider.
Was this really just cherishing talent?
Forget Chen Ming—even anyone with a normal brain could tell that the fervor Qian Renxue was displaying had already reached an abnormal level.
To outsiders, it looked as though Xue Qinghe, the crown prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, harbored feelings for Chen Ming, the continent's rising star, that went far beyond the ordinary.
In Chen Ming's eyes, Qian Renxue's feelings toward him were practically morbid. Although she concealed it well, there was always a faint hint of madness lurking beneath her detached exterior.
Whenever his behavior matched what Qian Renxue imagined, or performed even better than Qian Renxue had expected, she would look at him with a gaze as though she wanted to devour him.
Whenever his views differed from what Qian Renxue displayed, she would reveal an expression that seemed extremely complicated, then look at Chen Ming with an exceedingly complex gaze. And in seventy to eighty percent of such cases, after a period of thought, that complex gaze would transform into another kind of feeling—as though she wanted to devour him.
It was not the kind of gaze that came from hatred, the sort that wanted to eat someone alive. But it was absolutely not a normal look of approval, importance, or even ordinary affection either. Rather, it was an extremely morbid, incomprehensible, special kind of gaze.
One point had to be made clear: Chen Ming had never truly been in love in his previous life. After all, when he was in school, early romance was forbidden; after he started working, he had no mood to date; and after growing older, he became even less willing to get married. So from beginning to end, he had never had a real romance.
But Chen Ming always felt that Qian Renxue's feelings toward him were definitely not the kind called affection. Or rather, at the very least, they were not purely affection.
There was no killing intent, but there were plenty of problems in every possible sense.
For the first time in a long while, Chen Ming once again felt as though he were sitting on pins and needles, along with an incomprehensible sense of powerlessness.
He tried to attribute it to some kind of psychological issue on Qian Renxue's part, but to be honest, Chen Ming had never studied psychology in his previous life and knew very little about it. At most, he had heard of Freud.
Following that line of reasoning, could it be that she had spent so long pretending to be someone else that she had become sexually repressed or something?
Just like that, more than ten days passed. Traveling day and night, the army finally arrived at the northeastern border of the Heaven Dou Empire.
Separating the plains of the Heaven Dou Empire's heartland from its northeastern territories was a vast, continuous mountain range. This range served as a defensive line where the empire stationed troops to guard against Spirit Beasts, but it also became a major obstacle to the development of the northeastern region.
There had once been a broad road running through these mountains, but years of turmoil had long since reduced it to ruins. Countless refugees fled toward the heartland of the Heaven Dou Empire along the broken mountain paths, while Spirit Beasts lurked throughout the range, watching them with covetous eyes.
As things stood, there was no way for an army to pass through the mountains on a large scale. As for the various pieces of equipment and supplies, they stood even less chance of making their way along the winding mountain paths, all while surrounded by Spirit Beasts.
"Most of the supplies are at the rear of the army. If we are to enter the mountains now, a large amount of supplies will need to be guarded, and most of the soldiers do not possess the ability to carry their own equipment and march on foot for a long period."
"Although they are all excellent soldiers, they are not Spirit Masters after all. Individual strength is ultimately limited. If we forcefully act with only a small number of people, not only would it be meaningless, but in times of danger, they would also become a burden."
After speaking with the exhausted local defenders and commanders, whose condition was extremely poor, to understand the intelligence, and after seeing the disaster victims who had fled to the temporary settlement, Qian Renxue's expression turned somewhat unpleasant.
Clearly, from the very beginning, the development of the situation had already left her somewhat unable to cope.
When she had seen the information in Heaven Dou City, things had clearly not been this bad. Yet now that she had arrived at the scene and taken a look, she discovered that this problem was even greater than she had previously imagined.
It was obvious that someone had tried to cover things up at the very start in order to conceal their own incompetence, and as a result, the situation had deteriorated further.
"Then first have most of the army garrison the pass, begin constructing a checkpoint, and start reorganizing the displaced people. Leave behind the portion of supplies that cannot be taken away, and let the refugees use them as rations."
"Then gradually guide the refugees away. Or rather, have the refugees, under the army's protection, carry out work-for-relief and reopen the roads."
"Although I don't know exactly what the internal situation is like, at present, large amounts of farmland must already have been abandoned—or rather, completely destroyed and impossible to use again. In the short term, food here will definitely be in shortage. We must prepare to face famine and plague."
"Guide the refugees, open up the roads, establish checkpoints, identify disease, and prevent the spread of plague."
"Start reorganizing household registrations again. Separate out practitioners of various occupations. Sort out the losses to all kinds of basic infrastructure, as well as the situation of the infrastructure that can still be used. Observe the movement routes of spirit beasts and prevent them from migrating farther south to launch additional attacks…"
"There are many things that need to be done. Aside from the army, we also need to transform a large number of fleeing refugees back into laborers. Under these circumstances, work-for-relief is the best method. But at the same time, we also have to start cultivating the land again. Otherwise, relying solely on rear-line supplies will still consume too much."
This time, aside from ordinary supplies, the Heaven Dou Empire's Imperial Guard had also brought storage soul tools with a capacity of several hundred cubic meters, all filled with grain and reserve materials. In reality, in terms of food, they were far from being as short as usual.
"That sounds very reasonable, but what does work-for-relief mean?" Qian Renxue nodded in confusion, then asked.
For the Douluo world, a method like work-for-relief was still far too advanced and difficult to understand.
In reality, in the eyes of most rulers in ancient times, the common people were like weeds—resources that could grow again even after being cut down.
In a normal world, when the lower classes could no longer survive, they could still rise up in rebellion and shout, "Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers truly born of noble seed?"
But in the Douluo Continent, those kings, nobles, generals, and ministers really were born of noble seed. When the upper echelons possessed overwhelming personal power, the importance of the common people was further diminished, and the threat that rebellions could pose to a regime was correspondingly reduced.
Under such circumstances, where ordinary civilians had virtually no hope of overthrowing those in power, the empires of the Douluo world rarely needed to concern themselves with what would happen if the common people could no longer survive. The political system—and every aspect of it—carried an indescribable sense of absurdity and inefficiency.
And despite all that inefficiency, one could not help but wonder how humanity in the Douluo world had managed to survive and reproduce for so long.