With the successive completion of "New Tokyo" and "Second New Tokyo," the matter of settling the accounts was finally brought to the table.
Granted, the cost of these two legendary undertakings was not exorbitant—"New Tokyo," suspended in the sky, had been constructed using leftover materials from Nobita Nobi's earlier project, the "Cloud Kingdom," and came in at a mere thirty thousand yen. As for the underground "Second New Tokyo," it had been achieved by burying an "explosive basement," triggering a single detonator, and then spraying a layer of luminescent moss onto the dome with a mist sprayer. The entire endeavor took less than half an hour from inception to completion. Nevertheless, this didn't stop the now-penniless Doraemon from issuing an astronomical invoice for three billion yen—an amount that Emperor Zhao Huan, the Song sovereign, surprisingly endorsed without hesitation.
Ah, such is the chasm between a millennium's worth of technological advancement and productive capability!
The pressing issue now, however, was how to convert that staggering sum of three billion yen into tangible payment.
Clearly, after more than a year of fierce conflict between Song and Jin, with the Song court suffering one defeat after another and bleeding resources at an unprecedented rate, the imperial treasury had long been emptied. Corruption flourished, and the war effort had drained every available coin. As such, Emperor Zhao Huan was utterly incapable of producing any meaningful amount of copper cash, silver bullion, or brocade to settle the debt.
Yet the emperor, despite his impoverished state, had no intention of letting the celestial envoy labor without compensation. After all, had not Immortal Guo himself once declared that anything of value would be accepted—be it rare jewels, fine timber, or other precious curiosities? He showed far less enthusiasm for vulgar items such as coinage and silver, primarily because they lacked the allure of antiquity and fetched poor prices on the collector's market. Though the imperial court was devoid of wealth, the palace itself was rife with odds and ends of questionable utility but possible value. It seemed only fitting to turn them over as payment.
For more than 160 years since the founding of the Great Song, a constant stream of tributes had flowed into the palace—sent by foreign envoys, local prefectures, and tributary tribes alike. Most of these so-called offerings were of little practical use and, constrained by ceremonial propriety, could not be discarded without imperial sanction. Thus, they had accumulated unchecked, filling warehouse after warehouse until the very eaves sagged beneath the weight of irrelevance. Now was the perfect time to clear it all out in one sweeping purge.
Once the moldy preserved fruits, insect-ridden dried flowers, mouse-dropping-laced mushrooms, yellowed and mildewed rice paper, and rock-hard, desiccated Jinhua hams—so aged they might well be carved into lotus-seated bodhisattvas—had all been discarded, there still remained among the tributes a fair amount of genuinely valuable relics.
Over successive reigns, emperors of varying tastes—some devout Buddhists, others avid Daoists—had amassed curious collections: statues of the Laughing Buddha, ancient clepsydras, coins from the Western Regions, famed swords, hydraulic instruments for astronomical observation. Their whims shifted like the wind, and once they tired of such toys, the treasures were unceremoniously cast into corners to gather dust. Out of concern for royal dignity, these items could not be casually disposed of and so were relegated to storage—where, over the years, they formed a veritable mountain of curiosities.
At last, Emperor Zhao Huan issued a sweeping decree: all storerooms were to be thrown open, and Doraemon, along with Wang Qiu and their companions, was free to haul away anything they wished.
Gazing upon the neglected storerooms—overrun with weeds, infested with vermin, and filled with row upon row of dust-covered chests and baskets—Wang Qiu had the surreal sensation of having become a common junkman, wheeling a tricycle through the alleyways in search of scrap.
Of course, "imperial junk" was still a far cry above anything a peasant household could muster.
"A box of genuine dragon incense, appraised at six million yen; two Damascus blades, one million; a Malaysian kris, four hundred thousand; eight ivory tusks, six million; a chest of Burmese gemstones, one hundred million; ten bundles of fur from Liaodong, four million; ten sets of imperial Jian kiln oil-spot tea bowls, eighty thousand yen... One sack of saffron from the Western Regions, two hundred thousand yen; eighty bushels of aged peppercorns—what, only thirty thousand yen? What a daylight robbery this 'automated pawn machine' is! Twenty hollow bronze alchemical furnaces, five million; three crates of yak horns and hides from Tibet, ravaged by insects and mice, faded and shedding, one hundred thousand; ten boxes of dragon-phoenix tribute tea, three hundred thousand yen; six water buffalo horns passed off as rhino horn, three thousand... Tsk tsk, counterfeit goods already existed in the Song Dynasty? And look at this 'Harmony Chair' made of huanghuali wood—it's practically a torture rack! Yet the craftsmanship is exquisite, the shackles are gold-plated, and it even comes with a row of wooden spikes and leather whips... Could it be the Song had its own SM enthusiasts?"
Muttering thus, Wang Qiu stood amidst the chaos of what resembled a glorified junkyard, hurling item after item into the automated pawning machine alongside the others.
Yet despite the massive volume of tribute collected over the years, the overall quality varied wildly. While there were indeed priceless treasures among the heap, just as many items were worthless detritus. The total value failed to meet their optimistic expectations—many of the finest pieces had long since been appropriated by favored concubines and powerful eunuchs, leaving behind a sea of mediocrity.
And so, once they had emptied the warehouses of tribute, Wang Qiu and his team turned to gathering old clothes from princes and concubines, discarded dragon robes of the emperor, retired palace curtains, and rare ingredients from the imperial kitchen. Even with such desperate scavenging, they still fell short of the thirty-billion target. They had no choice but to dismantle unused cold palaces—vanity tables, curio shelves, screens of fragrant wood, even carved window frames and door panels were all torn out. At last, when the very beams and pillars of abandoned palace halls were pried loose and carted away, the team began to feel more like a demolition squad—or worse, Japanese raiders ransacking the countryside.
Not until they laid waste to Longde Palace—once used to imprison the retired Emperor Huizong, now sent to "cultivate immortality" in the underground "Second New Tokyo"—and fed its rosewood beams and gilded glazed tiles into the automated pawn machine, was the immense debt of thirty billion yen finally paid in full.
As for that shoddy underground "Second New Tokyo" cobbled together by Doraemon using explosive basements? That was essentially a freebie, hardly worth invoicing.
Meanwhile, as Wang Qiu and his companions ravaged the imperial palaces and collapsed, exhausted, in the hollowed-out remnants of ancient halls, the officials of the Song court were locked in heated debate over a matter of grave consequence: whether to launch a northern campaign and reclaim lost territories.
Since Guo the Immortal had unleashed a divine weapon that scorched dozens of miles in a single blast, reducing more than a hundred thousand invading Jin troops to ash, the peace faction within the court had been utterly silenced. The war faction, on the other hand, was jubilant, having gained overwhelming momentum.
Regardless of their personal views on the so-called "Protector Immortal," all civil and military officials now agreed on one point: with the Jin army's main force annihilated and their ability to suppress uprisings crippled, the time was ripe. Once the Song's royal army marched northward, they believed, the land would be reclaimed like dry grass before wildfire.
But as they began laying plans for the counteroffensive, they were confronted by a cruel and humiliating truth:
This vast Song Empire had—unbelievably—run out of soldiers.