The Empress was reviewing Dugu Yihe's memorial, her brow frosty and cold, like ancient ice that would never thaw.
It detailed how the Minister of Revenue had repeatedly embezzled from the national treasury ever since she ascended the throne, and had gone so far as to steal disaster relief funds during this year's great calamity in Yunzhou, causing hundreds of thousands of common folk to starve to death.
And that was merely one charge. There were others: seizing people by force, forcibly occupying fertile land, swallowing up the silver allocated for the urban redevelopment of the West District, and so on and so on.
Chapter 42