Chapter 367: With Jade Before, Stones Stand No Chance
Chapter 367: Chapter 367: With Jade Before, Stones Stand No Chance
Cold.
Bone-chillingly cold.
Shen Ningning felt like she had fallen onto clumps of soft cotton.
But this cotton would melt into water, soaking her clothes and sticking to her warm little face.
Her head felt dizzy.
"Shen Ningning? Shen Ningning!" Someone gently patted her cheeks, trying to wake her up.
The voice seemed to come from a great distance before gradually becoming clear, right by her ear.
The little one slowly cracked open her eyes and saw the gloomy sky.
Then, three anxious faces appeared above her.
Mo Lingwei, Ye Shangyi, and Lu Shaoyuan...
The little one rubbed her head. "Mmm, good. I still recognize you. I don’t think I hurt my head."
She sat up as she spoke.
Ye Shangyi let out a sigh of relief, but her eyes turned red.
"You nearly scared us to death! How could you be so careless and suddenly tumble down?"
Lu Shaoyuan frowned even more. "That was too dangerous. You slid down from such a high slope. Luckily, the snow was thick, or you would have been in big trouble."
Shen Ningning lifted her bright, watery eyes and glanced up.
The top of the slope she had slid down was far away now.
They had somehow landed in the center of this depression.
The thick, bloody stench wafted over.
The little one remembered why she had fallen.
"I saw the blood-colored soil under the snow!"
But Mo Lingwei was about to pick her up. He said in a deep voice, "The most important thing right now is to take you back and have a doctor see if you’ve broken any bones."
Shen Ningning quickly pressed down on his hand.
She stood up and used her little foot to push aside the snow.
"Look!"
Underneath the snow, there was indeed dark red soil.
It looked extremely strange.
Lu Shaoyuan immediately covered his nose. "What is that smell! It’s awful."
Ye Shangyi’s face turned deathly pale with fright, and she hid behind Shen Ningning. "Is that the smell of blood?"
Mo Lingwei took a sniff, his cold brow furrowing.
"It’s not the smell of blood."
"It’s the smell of iron ore."
After he said these two sentences, the others were all stunned.
Shen Ningning blinked her big eyes, a memory suddenly surfacing.
"An ancient book in the mad scholar’s collection once said: ’Where there is ocher above, there is iron below. Ocher is a reddish iron-stone ore.’"
’Could this be it?!’ The falling snow would also have intensified the smell of the iron ore.
Ye Shangyi’s eyes widened in utter amazement. "Then according to you, underneath this layer of red stone ore is an iron mine!"
Iron was a scarce resource, especially in Cangyun Country, which had endured two natural disasters.
Xie Mingxu was currently fighting Changliu Country at the border, and their weapons had been forged by smelting all the ironware that could be gathered from across the nation.
But this was already a sign of their depleted strength.
If another war broke out, or if this one dragged on, they would surely become a weak, crippled army, unarmed and at the mercy of others.
Mo Lingwei realized the gravity of the situation.
He immediately picked up Shen Ningning. "Let’s go back up first. I’ll have the responsible officials investigate this thoroughly."
Shen Ningning was forcibly taken back to the palace by Mo Lingwei.
After an examination by the Imperial Physician, it was found that, thankfully, the little one was completely fine.
Not only did she have no scrapes or fall-related injuries, she hadn’t even caught a cold.
And on the second day, a report from the Ministry of Industry was presented before the Emperor.
"That entire mountain is an entire iron mine! An entire one!" The Emperor was so happy he paced back and forth, unable to sit still, as if the Dragon Throne was burning his rear.
He read the report back and forth three or four times in his excitement.
"A Fuxing! Shen Ningning is truly a Fuxing!"
The officials from the Ministry of Industry present in the room looked at each other, all wearing resigned smiles.
Princess Funing really had some skill.
She went out to play and ended up discovering such an important and scarce resource—an iron mine.
It was said that the mountain had originally been barren and had been sold and resold several times before finally ending up in Xie Suzhi’s hands.
He hadn’t wanted the desolate mountain either, as it was remote and had no use.
If he hadn’t thought of letting Shen Ningning take a look this time, he might have sold it to the next person.
Who would have thought that they would so easily discover that the entire mountain was full of unmined, unsmelted iron ore!
The Emperor had already arranged for it to be heavily guarded and for mining and smelting to begin immediately.
With a strong army and sharp weapons, Xie Mingxu and his men were sure to win another great victory!
Mo Lingwei sat in the hall, watching his father, the Emperor, with a cold gaze.
The Emperor paced back and forth happily, sometimes raising his arms and shouting, other times shaking his head and sighing with emotion.
"Have you not thought about what to reward Shen Ningning with?" Mo Lingwei spoke, his voice indifferent.
Only then did the Emperor snap back to his senses. "Right, right, I must reward her with something."
"But last time, when We wanted to promote her to Princess, didn’t you say she didn’t want to be too conspicuous?" The Emperor was in a bind.
Shen Ningning had everything she could ever want.
Should he reward her with another pile of silver?
Mo Lingwei raised an eyebrow and asked coolly, "Are you out of ideas? Then I shall offer you a few."
"Good, good, good," the Emperor agreed at once, walking over to the imperial desk and picking up a brush. "You speak, We shall write."
Mo Lingwei nodded. "First, reward her with ten thousand taels of silver."
He knew that Shen Ningning mostly possessed material goods.
She could never have too much silver.
The Emperor wrote with a flourish of his brush. "No problem."
"Second," Mo Lingwei pursed his lips, "grant Mrs. Qin Sr. the title of a First-Rank Madame."
The Emperor nodded along thoughtfully. "Mm, not bad. She should have been granted a title long ago. It wasn’t easy for her to raise Ningning."
Mo Lingwei looked at the Emperor.
"One last thing. In the future, unless someone’s abilities surpass Shen Ningning’s, you are not permitted to appoint her as my female official."
The Emperor hadn’t processed it yet and said with a chuckle, "Alright, We... huh?!"
The meaning dawned on him. He snapped his head up and stared at Mo Lingwei.
"What did you say?"
"I don’t wish to repeat myself. I believe you understood me just now."
Mo Lingwei’s posture was noble, his fair, slender hands resting on his knees, his expression proud.
"I do not need any female official, nor do I want you to shove people from the Li Family or the Zhang Family on me. My temper is good right now, not because I’ve changed, but because I want to get rid of my bad temper to be friends with Shen Ningning and not scare her."
"If you randomly shove someone on me, you can be prepared to collect their corpse."
The Emperor flew into a rage and slammed the table. "Ling Wei! You’ve gone too far!"
"The Li Family’s young lady is such a good child! She donated fifty warhorses!"
Mo Lingwei stood up, raising an eyebrow with a scornful laugh. "And Shen Ningning discovered a mine."
"If it weren’t for the fact that she dislikes being tied down, the position of female official wouldn’t be for anyone else to take. You should worry less about my affairs and manage your own government."
With that, Mo Lingwei strode away.
"You, you, you, you unfilial son! Truly an unfilial son!" The Emperor beat his chest and stomped his feet, knocking over a teacup in his fury.
Finally, the Emperor sighed.
"But he does have a point."
’By setting Shen Ningning as the standard, everyone else will have to work harder if they want to surpass her.’
The Emperor thought this method was actually quite good.
So, he picked up the Imperial Brush again and issued separate edicts for each of Mo Lingwei’s requests.
As for the earlier decision to make Li Yuyi the Princess’s Lady-in-waiting, it was not mentioned at all.
「By the time the news reached Nanzhou, half a month had passed.」
In Nanzhou City, where the skies had long since cleared, a beautiful scene of winter plums blooming in competition unfolded.
An eight-year-old girl in brightly colored clothes stood before a window, having just learned of the urgent report from the Capital City.
In a fit of anger, she tore up the calligraphy practice sheets on the table and threw them directly into the charcoal brazier behind her.
With a muffled WHOOSH, the flames licked at the paper.
Xie Yuanjiu happened to walk to the door. She glanced into the room, then entered and picked up a practice sheet from the fire that hadn’t yet turned to ash, patting out the flames.
"Yuyi, what are you doing? You’ve practiced for so long, isn’t it a shame to burn it?" she sighed.
She added, "Is it just because Shen Ningning caused trouble for you? I told you long ago, she’s not simple."
The little girl at the window turned around. She had a round face and slanted, phoenix-like eyes, and was dressed in the finest silks. A fire-fox fur scarf was wrapped around her neck, making her flushed, angry face stand out even more.
"I just donated warhorses the other day, and then she goes and discovers an iron mine! The Emperor thinks she’s better and no longer mentions making me the Princess’s Lady-in-waiting."
"Shen Ningning won’t be the Princess’s Lady-in-waiting herself, but she’s gatekeeping the position so no one else can have it. They say she’s only five years old—who would believe that!"
’She’s actually turned me into the disgusting "rooftile" from the saying, "With jade and pearls before you, a mere rooftile is hard to appreciate"!’
Such a calculating child was now considered a grave threat by Li Yuyi.