The Empress's Daily Power Struggle: Weren't We Supposed to Lay Low Until the End?

This is an age of encroaching great powers and rival nations vying for supremacy. As the sole heir to the Wu Kingdom, Wu Zhao's dying father repeatedly urged her to do nothing more than preserve the realm he had built. Wu Zhao knew he said this because of the secret she was hiding. She was a woman. In this age, not a single country had a female ruler. Still, Wu Zhao thought that simply maintaining the realm and making sure her people had enough to eat and wear was meaningful in its own right. Besides, she had transmigrated from Huaguo on Blue Star. People from the Flower Kingdom were born with a love of farming. Starting when she governed as crown princess, Wu Zhao spent ten years filling even the kingdom's most barren soil with all kinds of crops. Then one day, she could no longer put up with the increasingly outrageous harassment and bullying from the Qi Kingdom, and decided to strike back. She expected this bold and difficult proposal to meet with opposition from her ministers. But instead: Wu Zhao worried about money and grain, but the normally tightfisted Minister of Revenue insisted that the treasury's previous inventory had been wrong, and that they had more than enough?! Wu Zhao worried about weapons, but the usually invisible Minister of Works stepped forward to report that farm tools had been designed for both civilian and military use all along?! Wu Zhao worried about finding soldiers, but the Ministers of Rites and War reminded her that the rhymes and accompanying drills distributed with the new farm tools were practically identical to new-recruit training??? Seeing her ministers wear expressions that said, “At last, Your Majesty has revealed what she was thinking. Good thing we figured it out in advance,” Wu Zhao had to wonder: if she said she had genuinely only wanted to farm, would anyone believe her? Later, she began helping allied nations develop “agriculture” and distributing “farm tools.” After that, even fewer people would believe her... One day, Wu Zhao suddenly realized: How had she, a ruler who only meant to preserve the realm, ended up on the path to becoming its overlord?!