Chapter 58: Hybrid Rice and the Death of Dong Li

An hour passed in the blink of an eye.

Zhu Gaoxu finally completed his check-in at Wanhua Pavilion.

【Ding, congratulations to the host for completing the three-day check-in at Baihua Lou.】

【Reward obtained: a bag of Hybrid Rice Seeds!】

Seeing the system's words, Zhu Gaoxu was completely stunned.

Hybrid rice!

In this ancient era of low productivity, its power was no different from an atomic bomb!

One must know that with the current productivity of rice in Great Ming, the yield in the South is only about five or six hundred catties per mu.

And that is under perfectly normal conditions, with favorable weather and no disasters or pests.

But what about hybrid rice?

Two thousand catties per mu!

It's a four or five-fold increase!

What kind of concept is that?

The military strength of the Great Ming Dynasty depends partly on its population and partly on its food supply.

One could even say that food is more important than population.

Since ancient times, there has been the saying that it takes ten civilians to support one soldier.

This means that ten commoners are required to afford a single soldier.

The root cause is insufficient productivity and an inability to keep up with food supply.

If this problem were solved, given the national strength of Great Ming and the number of its people.

At the very least, it could support another hundred thousand or more soldiers.

At that point, what would there be to fear from foreign invasions?

It wouldn't be necessary; it would only be a matter of us invading others.

At the peak, one could simply lead troops to sweep across, attacking cities and seizing territory.

Even if a future emperor were incompetent, at the very least, small units could constantly harass the enemy and protect the borders without issue.

I have to say, Zhu Gaoxu was truly impressed; the rewards given by this system are just too good.

Thinking this, Zhu Gaoxu checked the next check-in task.

【For the next check-in, please check in alone at midnight inside a dilapidated palace deep within the Imperial Palace until the following morning.】

Seeing this task, Zhu Gaoxu was taken aback.

Why does he feel like the system's style has gone a bit off-track now?

The first Imperial Palace check-in was fine, the second was Wanhua Pavilion, and now it actually wants him to stay in a dilapidated palace at midnight, and the key is that he has to stay there alone for the whole night.

This is getting a bit eerie, isn't it?

However, Zhu Gaoxu didn't really care about that.

Let it be weird if it wants; as long as the rewards are generous, he would even dare to go assassinate Lao Zhu.

After collecting the reward, Zhu Gaoxu did not leave immediately; after chatting briefly with Linger, Zhu Gaoxu walked toward Dong Li's Private Room.

The two Private Rooms were adjacent; just as he arrived at the door of Dong Li's Private Room, Zhu Gaoxu smelled a faint scent of blood.

Frowning slightly, a bad premonition rose in the bottom of Zhu Gaoxu's heart.

Without hesitation, Zhu Gaoxu pushed open the door of the Private Room, and the scene before him made Zhu Gaoxu's eyes shrink.

He saw Dong Li lying in a pool of blood, with a girl from Wanhua Pavilion lying beside him; it looked as if she had been dead for a long time.

Seeing this, Zhu Gaoxu took a step back and then hurriedly shouted, "Where are the Embroidered Uniform Guards?"

Hearing Zhu Gaoxu's voice, several Embroidered Uniform Guards in plain clothes on the first floor leaped up and arrived at Zhu Gaoxu's side in a few strides.

The men then saw Dong Li's corpse, hurriedly shielded Zhu Gaoxu behind them, and then vigilantly scanned their surroundings.

Zhu Gaoxu, who was being tightly shielded by the Embroidered Uniform Guards, reached out a small hand to push the guard in front to the side, then slowly walked into the Private Room.

He had truly been a bit frightened just now.

Even with mental preparation, anyone would feel a jolt of panic upon opening a door and seeing two corpses on the ground.

With the Embroidered Uniform Guards by his side, Zhu Gaoxu felt much steadier.

Composing himself, Zhu Gaoxu said to the group of Embroidered Uniform Guards, "Hand this case over to the Ministry of Justice to open an investigation. Tell them to investigate it thoroughly for this Prince. Also, have a few brothers seal off this Wanhua Pavilion for this Prince and wait until the Ministry of Justice arrives to take over."

Hearing Zhu Gaoxu's instructions, one of the Embroidered Uniform Guards accepted the order and left.

Looking at Dong Li's corpse, Zhu Gaoxu fell into deep thought.

In fact, the Embroidered Uniform Guards also have judicial authority, but Zhu Gaoxu still decided not to investigate this case personally.

For one thing, he cannot mobilize the Embroidered Uniform Guards; although he has three hundred Embroidered Uniform Guards arranged by Zhu Yuanzhang to protect him, to investigate a case, one needs the complete Embroidered Uniform Guard system.

Within the Embroidered Uniform Guard system, there are people responsible for intelligence, interrogation, and so on; if Zhu Gaoxu wants the Embroidered Uniform Guards to help, he can only go to Zhu Yuanzhang to issue an order.

Although it is just a matter of a single sentence, Lao Zhu has repeatedly warned him not to have too much contact with people from the jianghu, and Zhu Yuanzhang would certainly not let him participate in Dong Li's matter.

Furthermore, the most important point is that Zhu Gaoxu feels this matter is not normal, and it even makes him feel a sense of terror upon closer reflection.

Why was Dong Li at Wanhua Pavilion?

Why did he see Dong Li the very first time he came to Wanhua Pavilion, and just happened to see the saber at his waist?

There is too much coincidence in this.

Before, when nothing had happened to Dong Li, he didn't feel anything, but now that Dong Li is dead, Zhu Gaoxu finds that something is wrong.

Could it be that someone wanted to use his hand to kill Dong Li, but seeing that he didn't take action, they found someone else?

What did Dong Li know?

Or perhaps, what had Dong Li done to offend someone?

This time, Zhu Gaoxu truly did not know.

According to what he knew, there were three or four people who knew Dong Li's whereabouts and had both the ability and the motive.

As a person of the pugilistic world, Dong Li's social connections must be very complex, and there were certainly many enemies among them.

But for the person behind this to be able to calculate even him into the scheme, it must be someone he knew.

There was definitely something going on here; Zhu Gaoxu had an intuition that if he directly participated in this matter, he would be swallowed by the abyss.