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The Suhuai Salt Gang is a large gang with nearly a thousand formal disciples and more than 8,000 peripheral disciples. Its headquarters is in Yangzhou, and it has ten branches. The largest branch is located in Sanheng Road, Jinling, with nearly 400 formal disciples and more than 3,000 peripheral disciples. The incense master is Su Da.

Su Da is known as one of the four great masters of the Suhuai Salt Gang. He is also the most trusted person of Fang Ruoyu, the gang leader of the Suhuai Salt Gang. Otherwise, he would not be able to control the largest gang in the Suhuai Salt Gang. This gang is not only the most powerful but also the richest. Su Da's personal property alone is worth nearly 100,000 taels of silver.

Tang Qi had already obtained this intelligence information while on the road. What made Tang Qi a little bit difficult was that one of the backers of the Suhuai Salt Gang was General Qin, the general of Jinling.

In fact, the General Qin that Tang Qi was worried about was not the real backer of the Suhuai Salt Gang. Tang Qi did not know much about the officialdom of this era. The political system of the Ming Dynasty was also a society that valued soldiers over military service. If a few years had passed in the era in which Tang Qi lived, a General would have been very powerful, but now the world was still ruled by the middlemen. Even people like Su Da who were just hanging around in the underworld only cared about the officials. Therefore, since the beginning of its establishment, the Suhuai Salt Gang had been trying to curry favor with the officials, such as the prefects and governors of various places. They only paid tribute to General Qin in the form of silver according to the usual practice.

Su Da had been living a very happy life in the past few months and had long forgotten about the evil man Tang Qi. Some time ago, Su Da fell in love with Yu Chuntang, the main star of Lan Yi Tang. Lan Yi Tang was not a gang in the underworld, nor was it a brothel. It was a place for performances, also known as the Lan Yi Tang Theater, a place specially used for performances. It was all because of Tang Qi.

The theater that Tang Qi set up in his own town of Weiwei offered free performances in the beginning. Later, as its reputation grew and the local people had money, Tang Qi started to charge fees for the theater. Since the actors' income was closely related to the theater's income, the actors performed very hard, and the theater's influence became more and more widespread. Among the merchants who came to Changzhou to do business, some saw the popularity of this theater and wanted to open one in their own area.

The Lanyitang Theater was created under such circumstances. It provided a good place for those who had nowhere to go at night but had a little money on hand. Jinling was a wealthy place, and there were many people with money on hand. Therefore, the Lanyitang was very popular since its opening. Among them, Yu Chuntang, the pillar of the Lanyitang, also became famous in the city of Jinling. Many dignitaries were interested in him, and Su Da was just one of them.

The play performed in Lanyi Hall today is "Romeo and Juliet", which was pirated from Tang Yi's Tang Family Grand Theater. This story was originally told by Tang Yi to the women in his family, but it was recorded by Liu Rushi and later circulated in Tang Family Grand Theater and adapted by the people of Tang Family Grand Theater.

After this Western story was adapted into Chinese by the people of Tang Family Grand Theater, many parts that the Han people could not accept were changed. The general ideological content is somewhat similar to "The Peacock Flies Southeast" and "Butterfly Lovers", and it is easy for the people of Ming Dynasty to accept it. After it was performed in Jinling by Lan Yitang, many young men and women came to support it and shed tears for it.

People like Su Da naturally don't believe in love, but he would come to support Yu Chuntang every day. After the performance, Su Da would bring his younger brother to visit Yu Chuntang backstage at Lan Yitang with a bowl of wontons.

Sending flowers was not popular in that era, so Su Da could only send Yu Chuntang a Ye Xiao to express his feelings. Originally, based on Su Da's status in the underworld, he would not have needed to spend so much effort to pursue an actor, but Yu Chuntang was lucky. Ning Jiechu, the eunuch guarding Jinling, loved watching operas in addition to loving money. He would come to Lan Yitang to watch performances seven or eight days out of ten. In the end, he was so happy that he adopted Yu Chuntang as his godson.

Although Yu Chuntang is a man, he has a stunning appearance when he plays a female role, so Su Da, who likes to have sex with young husbands, is so fascinated by him. In this era, there are many people with bisexual orientation in wealthy families. Many wealthy families not only keep concubines, but also keep young husbands. This kind of atmosphere is also considered to be elegant, so that even people like Su Da are influenced by it and try to imitate it.

Although Yu Chuntang was just an actor, he had climbed up the big tree of Ning Jiechu, the eunuch guarding the town, so he did not take Su Da, a gangster, seriously. He just treated him coldly for a few seconds, took off his makeup, and left Su Da behind.

Seeing Yu Chuntang walk away, Su Da was naturally very unhappy. The lights in the decoration room at the back hall flickered on his face, making it look gloomy, but he had no place to vent his anger, because now Yu Chuntang had a big tree to lean on, and he, Su Da, could not use force. After cursing in his heart for a few times, Su Da left Lan Yitang with his men in a sullen manner.

After leaving the gate of Lanyi Hall, Su Da was frightened by the scene in front of him. A team of hundreds of people was neatly lined up outside the gate of Lanyi Hall. Hundreds of people were silent. Each of them carried a musket on his back. Su Da recognized this kind of musket. It was the musket used by the subordinates of the evil Tang in Changzhou.

It's not that Su Da is timid. In his heart, this evil man Tang is really a scary person. Not only is Tang Da evil very powerful in martial arts, but the muskets of his men are also very powerful. In the past, thousands of poor and vicious Japanese pirates died at the gunpoint of this evil man Tang. Su Da knew this very well through inquiries, and he couldn't help but be afraid.

Standing in front of the team was none other than the evil Tang. Seeing the smile on Tang's face, Su Da almost cried. After he suffered that loss, he had been behaving himself. He was always afraid that Tang would appear in front of him again. What was so scary? That evil guy finally came.

"Tang, Mr. Tang..." Su Da almost shouted out the evil word in Tang Da, the evil man. Standing at the door of Lan Yitang, he didn't know whether he should go out or run inside.

"Haha, Su Da, long time no see. It seems that you are living a good life now. Why do you have such a sad face? Aren't you happy to meet old friends?" Tang Qi didn't have any good feelings towards Su Da, but he was still very welcome to Su Da's money.

"Sir Tang, I wonder what brings you here?" Su Da thought about it and knew that he could not escape from the evil Tang Da's clutches, so he had to accept his fate and asked Tang Lu.

"It's nothing serious. I'm just a little short of money lately, so I had to ask you, Mr. Su, for a debt. It's time for you to pay me back the money you owe me." Tang Yu's smile seemed amiable to the soldiers under his command, but in Mr. Su's eyes, it was definitely a devil's smile.

Su Da knew that what Tang Chen was talking about was the IOU for 10,000 taels of silver, and he felt a little bitter in his heart. He didn't expect that this evil Tang Da would really come to ask for it one day. However, Su Da also knew that if he didn't give in, judging by his current attitude, this evil Tang Da would probably turn the Su Huai Salt Gang upside down in Nanjing.

"Master Tang, I accept the 10,000 taels of silver and will give it to you without a penny less." Su Da calculated in his mind and finally had to bite the teeth and accept it. It was just bad luck for him. Su Da thought so and sent this evil guy Tang away as soon as possible. He would never provoke him again in the future.

"No, no, no, Su Da, the amount I'm talking about is not ten thousand taels. You have to include interest in it. You see, you've owed me for more than a year. According to the current interest, you have to pay me more than one hundred thousand taels of silver, including principal and interest. I'm a kind-hearted person, so I don't want those small changes. Just pay me one hundred thousand taels of silver." Tang Qi shook his head and spoke very gently and politely, but to Su Da's ears, it sounded eerie, making Su Da feel that the night had also become a little eerie, as if the ox-headed and horse-like people would come to take his soul away at any time.

Hearing the figure of one hundred thousand taels, Su Da felt that his heart was about to jump out, and he felt as if he was about to suffocate. He wanted to resist, but he knew in his heart that even if all the people in the Suhuai Salt Gang were gathered together, they could not resist this evil man Tang. With the hundreds of well-trained soldiers in front of him, Su Da believed that it would be easy to destroy his Suhuai Salt Gang.

"Sir Tang, please be magnanimous and spare me this time. I don't have that much silver. Even if you boil me down to oil, I still can't afford it." Su Da suddenly knelt on the ground and howled at Tang Qi.

Su Da was originally a well-known figure in the underworld, but in front of Tang Da, he really couldn't be tough, because no matter from which point of view, Su Da knew in his heart that his small arms could not twist the legs of this evil Tang Da.

Tang Qi smiled, took a few steps forward, and amiably helped Su Da up. He then said to his soldiers, "Come here, take this Su Xiangzhu and his men back to their home. We'll all be their guests. Su Da, crying is useless. It won't solve the problem. Don't you think so? In the era when the debtor was the boss, I would have cried, but in this era, the creditor is the boss."

A dozen soldiers rushed forward and arrested Su Da and his subordinates.

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