Chapter 477
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Chapter 477: Punishing the Schemers
The staff at the porridge stall left decisively.
At this moment, the disheveled woman, her stomach growling, was utterly dumbfounded as she lay sprawled on the table.
A few other refugees who had also played tricks and collected two food vouchers, having just arrived, exchanged bewildered glances.
They clearly hadn’t expected that the price for acquiring an extra food voucher would be to spend the night hungry.
After evening, darkness fell quickly.
In this season, the temperature would drop by at least another dozen degrees after nightfall, making it impossible for them to stay outside.
This included the disheveled woman.
One by one, they could only clutch their rumbling stomachs and return home.
Just as the staff member had said, if they wanted hot porridge, they’d have to come early tomorrow.
The porridge stall didn’t start distributing porridge first thing in the morning.
Both the porridge stall and the voucher collection point would only begin operations after 9:00 or 10:00.
And the porridge stall usually started about half an hour to an hour later than the voucher collection point.
After all, what was the use of setting up the porridge stall early if the refugees hadn’t even received their food vouchers yet?
Of course, beyond that, there were two other considerations.
One reason was that by this time, the temperature would have warmed up a bit. Standing out in this icy and snowy weather all day distributing hot porridge wasn’t an easy job.
As for the other reason, it was, of course, the time calculated precisely by Luo Ji and Lu Yang together.
This was undoubtedly targeting those insatiably greedy schemers.
An empty stomach clearly made for a restless night for the disheveled woman.
The porridge stall staff hadn’t even shown up yet, and she was already waiting there, clutching her two food vouchers.
And she was definitely not the only one…
It wasn’t just the disheveled woman who had harbored ill intentions yesterday and secretly collected two food vouchers.
There were many such individuals. Some even moved quickly and were lucky enough to genuinely get two bowls of hot porridge.
But Luo Ji wasn’t particularly bothered.
No one’s actions could always be that fast. Nor could their luck always be that good.
If they dared to try such a trick, they would eventually suffer for their greed.
Time passed by the minute. The first batch of refugees to collect food vouchers that day had already arrived.
However, they never expected that a long queue had already formed outside the porridge stall.
This wasn’t right; at the voucher collection point, they had been among the very first in line.
They had just arrived, so how could these people be faster than them?
As they pondered this, the porridge stall staff had already arrived, pushing a cart with a large pot of freshly cooked hot porridge.
The aroma of food wafting from the gaps in the pot lid made the newly arrived refugees abandon their thoughts of questioning the situation.
All they wanted was to quickly get their hot porridge.
Upon seeing the staff move the large pot onto the table, the disheveled woman, who was first in line, eagerly handed her food voucher and empty bowl to the staff member.
The staff member took the food voucher and lifted the pot lid.
Holding his large ladle, he made a scoop of porridge.
Watching the inviting white porridge being scooped up, the queuing refugees instinctively swallowed.
Just as the large scoop of white porridge was about to fall into the disheveled woman’s bowl, the staff member’s movement suddenly paused.
“Hmm?”
Then, with a light sound of surprise, he put the scoop of white porridge back into the pot.
“Your food voucher isn’t right.”
“Not right? What’s not right?!”
The disheveled woman, who had been hungry all day, looked exceptionally pale now.
Just the scent of the food made her stomach acid churn wildly.
“This food voucher of yours is from yesterday.”
“What’s ‘today’s’ or ‘yesterday’s?’ His Majesty said that if you have a food voucher, you can exchange it for hot porridge. Are you trying to defy His Majesty’s decree?!”
Starving, the disheveled woman immediately mentioned Luo Ji’s name.
However, she only received two cold sneers from the staff.
“His Majesty’s decree indeed stated that food vouchers are needed to exchange for porridge. But His Majesty also said that food vouchers for the current day can only be exchanged for hot porridge on that day, and they expire afterwards!”
As he spoke, the staff member pointed to a small string of numbers at the bottom of the disheveled woman’s food voucher.
“This food voucher is for the 13th of this month, and today is the 14th. In other words, this food voucher is just a piece of waste paper!”
“Impossible, this is impossible! His Majesty’s decree had no such clause!”
The disheveled woman was completely incredulous.
“Impossible?”
The staff member looked at the disheveled woman without a hint of pity.
One of them slowly pointed to the notice board beside the porridge stall.
“It’s clearly written in black and white on this notice board, with His Majesty’s imperial seal at the very bottom. And the same notice is posted at the voucher collection point too. If you don’t believe it, go see for yourself!”
Seeing the staff members’ confident demeanor, the disheveled woman’s belief wavered.
She plopped down onto the ground with a thud.
Her already pale face completely lost all color.
As for checking the notice, she was illiterate; how could she check?
After all, with Myriad World Civilization’s current situation, if she were truly literate, she wouldn’t be so destitute as to be here begging for porridge.
Undoubtedly, Luo Ji’s previous move was to deliberately conceal the rule that food vouchers were only valid for the day, specifically to teach these small number of schemers a lesson.
The cleverest part of this tactic was that it would have absolutely no impact on the honest citizens who faithfully collected only one food voucher and one bowl of hot porridge each day.
It would only trap these insatiably greedy schemers!
For a moment, the honest citizens standing at the back of the queue, who had also realized what happened, began to look at the schemers with ill intent.
Why were these people faster than them, the ones who were at the very front of the voucher collection point?
At first, they hadn’t paid much attention. Now, upon careful reflection, how could they not understand?
These people had secretly taken two food vouchers yesterday!
There was no need for the soldiers maintaining order at the porridge stall to intervene.
These schemers instantly became like rats scurrying across the street.
Before the angry refugees could lose their tempers and resort to violence, they all scuttled away in shame.
Later, upon receiving the report from the Mirror Division and learning of the incident, Luo Ji couldn’t help but laugh for a while.
Since the establishment of Myriad World Civilization, he had always been diligent in governance and loved his people.
He never exploited his citizens, and taxes were not severe.
By all accounts, he could be considered a benevolent and wise emperor.
Regarding this blizzard incident, although the grain production from the agricultural department had practically halted, the city’s granaries provided supplies, and goods at major grain stores were delivered promptly.
Furthermore, apart from limiting the total amount of grain each person could buy daily, the grain price hadn’t even increased by a single copper coin.
In such circumstances, to be so poor as to not even have money to buy rice, and to rely solely on distributed porridge for survival, the vast majority of the problems must certainly lie with these individuals themselves.
