Cao Zhen thought for a moment but decided to start from the beginning.
"Let me put it this way, the founding emperor of the Great Ming King Dynasty used to be a beggar. Then, he led a rebellion, unified the land, and then..."
Cao Zhen gave a brief account of what Zhu Yuanzhang had done, including ordering farmers back to their land, rewarding land reclamation and military farming system; organizing repair of water conservancies across regions; vigorously promoting the cultivation of economically beneficial crops like mulberry and hemp to enrich the people, and suppressing the powerful clans; and issuing orders to emancipate slaves and so on.
Finally, he commented with a sneer, "And then you see, at the beginning when bestowing rewards on the heroes, he cast thirty-four Death Exemption Tokens and granted them to thirty-four of the most distinguished founding heroes or their descendants.
