The rain pattered down all night.

When Ning Chen got up the next morning, a light drizzle was still falling.

The sky was still heavy with dark clouds, but the dark clouds in Ning Chen's heart had cleared away completely.

With this rain, the crops would live.

Ning Chen rode out of the city. The duck army was already hard at work.

Yuan Long had let the duck army loose at first light.

After a hungry night, the duck army swarmed forward and dug in.

A duck could eat about two hundred locusts a day. With twenty thousand ducks, the locusts would be wiped out in a few days.

Nobody knew who had spread the word that locusts were edible.

For the next few days, the common people went out of the city in groups to catch locusts.

Those who could afford it deep-fried them. Those who couldn't dry-roasted them in a pan.

One bite and you're too busy chewing to say a word!

No wonder even the prince said they were good. They really were delicious.

Ning Chen didn't stop the people from catching locusts, but he posted men at the city gates to make sure every locust brought in was green.

If someone ate a poisonous one, there'd be trouble.

The locusts themselves probably never imagined that after all the harm they'd done, they would be this popular. Not only did the ducks love them, people loved them too.

In just a few days, the locust plague was well under control.

Ning Chen could finally stop worrying.

Xuanwu City was running smoothly now.

One day, Ning Chen was practicing his sword in the courtyard.

As the saying goes, a hundred days to learn the saber, a thousand days for the spear, ten thousand days for the sword.

Ning Chen was no longer abstaining, but practicing the sword every day during his abstinence had become a habit.

Abstinence really had done him good. The breath inside him had grown much deeper.

Gu Yichun came and stood to one side, watching Ning Chen practice.

He waited until Ning Chen sheathed…