554: Chapter 553 A Painful Choice!

Upon seeing this information clearly, Chen Feng's heart sank completely.

Being intelligent, he finally understood what this test was ultimately about.

...

Time flew by.

To the outside world, perhaps it was only an instant.

But for Chen Feng, who was immersed in the "Hundred Generations of Reincarnation", he had already spent eighteen years in this strange world.

Over these eighteen years, he had grown from a wailing infant into a sturdy young man.

He personally experienced the hardships of an ancient farming family.

Working from sunrise to sunset, facing the yellow earth with his back to the sky, his toil throughout the year was barely enough to guarantee basic sustenance.

He also witnessed the suffering of this era.

The layers of exploitation by officials, the cruel oppression of landlords, and the distant frontier, where it was said the iron hooves of the Jin had already trampled over the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, left the entire country shrouded in precarious instability.

Relying on wisdom and knowledge far surpassing this era, he led his family to reclaim wasteland and improve farming tools, making their lives slightly better than those of the surrounding villagers.

But he also understood clearly that in the backdrop of such a grand era, individual effort was so insignificant.

A single natural disaster or man-made calamity was enough to destroy everything he possessed.

He wanted to change all of this.

Thus, Chen Feng began to study diligently, hoping to enter officialdom through the imperial examinations and realize his ambition of "establishing a mandate for the people."

Relying on a photographic memory and understanding far beyond that of ordinary people, he passed every test along the way—the provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations—eventually winning the title of top scholar and being appointed as a compiler in the Hanlin Academy.

However, when he truly stepped into the power center of this vast empire, he realized that reality was far darker and more complex than he had imagined.

In the imperial court, factions fought each other, and treacherous officials held sway.

The emperor was addicted to sensual pleasures and turned a deaf ear to the suffering of the people.

His suggestions for the benefit of the country and the people were like a pebble thrown into the ocean; they could not even stir up a ripple.

He was ostracized, isolated, and eventually sent to a remote area to serve as an imperial envoy for disaster relief.

When he arrived at the disaster area, what he saw was a scene like a living hell.

Corpses of the starved littered the fields, and people were trading children to eat.

Yet the disaster relief funds allocated by the imperial court, enough to save hundreds of thousands of disaster victims, had been embezzled by local nobles and officials at every level.

At that moment, the cold system prompt, which had appeared dozens of times over the past eighteen years, sounded in his mind once again.

[Key Decision Point]

[Choice One: Collude with them, keep a portion of the relief funds for yourself, and preserve your own wealth and status.]

[Choice Two: Turn a blind eye, play along with the local officials, complete the imperial court's mission, and return to the capital safely.]

[Choice Three: Risk your life to submit a memorial to the imperial court, expose the crimes of the nobles, and plead for the disaster victims. The success rate of this action is extremely low, and it is highly likely to bring fatal disaster upon yourself.]

Looking at the three bloody options before him, Chen Feng stood before the shacks built by the disaster victims, silent for a long time.

He raised his head.

Watching the disaster victims, whose eyes were numb from hunger and who looked like skeletons, and watching the children shivering in the cold wind without even a complete set of clothes.

He remembered his own background in this life, equally impoverished; he remembered his parents, who had raised him through every hardship only to die from a minor cold.

He clenched his fists.

"I choose..."

"Three."