Chapter 338: Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Taels per Word (Please Give Double Monthly Tickets)
The accountant picked up the brocade box and before opening it, he analyzed it rationally: "Chang, the governor, was kind today, and he seemed quite satisfied... I think there is no way that there are daggers, sharp weapons, or human body parts or other threatening objects in this box..."
I tried to use the most rational tone to cover up the uneasiness in my heart and the many terrible fantasies.
After all, the other party was born in war, and after all, the heads of the salt merchants that were cut off yesterday dripped a lot of blood in front of their door...
What if the other party feels that their attitude is not humble enough and wants to intimidate them further?
Jiang Hai sighed heavily and waved to the accountant, signaling him to open it quickly and take a look. Whether it was good or bad luck, he would know at a glance.
The accountant carefully unfastened the lock of the box, unconsciously leaning his upper body back slightly and slowly opening the box a tiny crack. He squinted one eye to take a look, and when he saw nothing unusual, he opened the box completely.
The accountant let out a light "Eh!" and took out something from the box, which turned out to be a rolled-up piece of rice paper.
Jiang Hai looked over, then stretched out his hand, and the two of them each held one end and spread the paper out in the carriage.
This piece of rice paper is five feet long and has four large characters written on it.
Jiang Hai fixed his eyes and read out the words one by one: "Generous man...?"
As it unfolded, the accountant was still wondering whether there were some murderous words written on it. Now that he saw the four words in full, he finally dared to breathe a sigh of relief.
Not only did he dare to breathe, he even choked up with excitement: "Boss, this is praise and recognition..."
"Do I need you to tell me this? I, your boss, am not an illiterate layman!" Jiang Hai's tense shoulders finally relaxed and he forced out a complicated smile.
It is somewhat funny to say that he, the great Jiangdu Jiang Hai, would one day feel like he had survived a calamity because of the four words "praise and recognition" from a seventeen-year-old girl.
There's nothing we can do. Times have changed and things in this world are hard to predict.
"When my father was alive, he always said that I was a prodigal son, that I was extravagant and that the Jiang family's assets would be squandered by me sooner or later... That year, I only spent a few thousand taels of silver to buy eighteen stunning dancers, and he slapped me in public."
Jiang Hai sighed, "I really should bring my father back to life to see what true 'extravagance' is... These four words cost me a full one million taels of silver."
At the end, he couldn't help but show a look of pain.
Out of professional habit, the accountant also calculated with a painful heart: "Four characters cost one million taels of silver, so each character costs two hundred and fifty thousand taels..."
This is truly a word worth a thousand gold.
Jiang Hai stared at the four big characters again and again, and said in a self-consoling tone: "At least the characters are good..."
Then he looked at the governor's seal at the bottom corner and said, "It's true that Governor Chang is a man of both civil and military talents."
However, no matter how much I think about it, I still feel the pain: "It's a good calligraphy, but it's really expensive."
"Yes, except for the price, there is nothing wrong with it." The accountant consoled him, "The boss should think that no matter how expensive it is, it is not as valuable as life. Just think of it as spending money to ward off disaster..."
This one million taels are not for buying words, but for buying lives.
Jiang Hai nodded bitterly: "Yes, at least she didn't take our lives. She could have robbed us of the one million taels, but she was so kind as to give us a piece of calligraphy."
When you think about it this way, people are pretty nice.
Jiang Hai sighed, "It's not like Xu Zhengye before, who killed dozens of salt merchants and salt households and uprooted them all."
The reason why he was able to survive under Xu Zhengye was that he gritted his teeth, cut his flesh and bleed, and used his connections everywhere to make arrangements, which saved the Jiang family.
In fact, his family has been salt merchants for generations and often dealt with the government. This donation was not the first time. On normal days, whenever there was a disaster, the Jiangdu salt merchants would always contribute the most. There was nothing they could do, because they were the richest.
After all, a tall tree attracts the wind. All this money spent like water is just to buy "characters", to buy a "good" character that cannot be seen from the court.
The reason why he felt particularly painful this time was, firstly, because he had just been exploited by Xu Zhengye and had not yet recovered; secondly, he was still unsure of the temper of this Governor Chang and was worried that the one million taels would not be enough to get rid of the disaster in one go. If he came to ask for money from time to time in the future, who could bear it?
"I have to go and pray to the Buddha tomorrow..." Jiang Hai rolled up the rice paper in his hand and sighed, "Please pray to the Buddha that this Governor Chang will not be a King of Hell who can never be fed or cooked."
He put the paper back into the box with both hands, and said with mixed feelings: "Tomorrow morning I will ask the best mounting master in the city to come..."
Then he changed his words: "No, I'll ask someone to frame it overnight when I get back!"
He wanted to hang it up somewhere conspicuous! One million taels!
They can't just be the ones who are hurting from the salt business! ...
The next day, Jiang Hai hung the plaque in the head office and invited a lion dance team to play gongs and drums and set off firecrackers. He held a very grand ceremony to unveil the plaque and distributed "wedding money" to the onlookers. The ceremony was as lively as if he was arranging a wedding.
Other salt merchants followed suit. Looking at the plaque hanging high up, they felt as if they were wrapped in a sense of security. Who is not a generous person? Yes, although the silver they donated was not as much as Jiang Hai, the governor treated everyone equally, and the characters they received were all [Generous People].
Although they feel at ease in their hearts, those who have nothing to worry about need to think and reflect.
The time for each party to weigh the pros and cons will obviously not be too long. In a sense, the opportunity to provide timely assistance has already been taken by the salt merchants. If they dare to turn a deaf ear and dumb again, they will really be like a lame man performing an opera - they will be embarrassed!
In a sense, Chang Suining's decision to let the salt merchants express their stance first can be regarded as a very subtle way of capturing the leader first.
Therefore, in the next few days, more and more merchants in Jiangdu City wanted to be "generous people". They sent their donation slips to the governor's mansion, and then exchanged them for a big character.
In the outer study of the Governor's Mansion, Luo Guanlin watched Chang Suining shake his sore wrist and felt that the wrist was priceless.
Although in terms of value, the most expensive items in this entire process are the brocade boxes used to hold the words.
At one side, Yao Ran and Lu Xiucai, who was recruited by the governor's mansion the day before, were using an abacus and a pen to take notes, respectively, and Luo Ze also helped.
Lu Xiucai, who was writing quickly with a pen in his hand, was very excited.
There were two reasons for his excitement. First, it was worth being excited to sit here. The scholars who came with him had to go through layers of screening, but he was exempted from the assessment and was directly picked by Governor Chang! The people who came with him at that time were so jealous that their eyes were about to bleed. If they knew that he could directly work in the Governor's study and receive the position of writing documents, they would probably be so angry that they couldn't sleep.
There was no way, who made him meet Governor Chang when he was insignificant? Well, that's not right, he was still insignificant, Governor Chang was already the chief instructor in the army at that time... At that time, Governor Chang had people looking for hundreds of people, from refugees to scholars like them, just to write down Xu Zhengye's crimes "on behalf of all the people".
Thinking back to the original proclamation to kill the bandit Xu on the 73rd day, he also provided some creative ideas, including encouraging the governor Chang to add some clever ideas of "taking the opportunity to strengthen his own reputation and consolidate people's hearts" -
At that time, he was disdained by his fellow literati because of his somewhat fawning attitude towards Governor Chang, but after a little consideration, most of them chose to join him.
It turns out that he is so far-sighted!
And he is so willing to share that just last night, he wrote letters to his companions who also participated in the writing of the manifesto at that time, inviting them to come to Jiangdu as soon as possible to work together!
The second thing that excited Lu Xiucai was the amount of silver and money he wrote down. He had never seen so much money in his life... and there was still an endless supply of silver and money being carried into the governor's mansion. There were dozens of people counting them outside alone, and it was impossible to count them all.
So, who said that Xu Zhengye has completely emptied the city of Jiangdu?
The real ones who were emptied out were only the poor people, and these wealthy businessmen were still as rich as ever! Thinking that the money would be used to rebuild Jiangdu, provide relief to the people, and other practical measures, Lu Xiucai couldn't help but feel that Chang's move was a very official way of robbing the rich to help the poor.
Moreover, the governor's practice of robbing the rich to help the poor can be described as "the thieves also have their own code of conduct". After looking through the tax amounts of merchants in Jiangdu in previous years and compiling a list, it is clear who the big merchants are.
After all, the upper class follows the lower class, and all kinds of opinions are flying around. Seeing that these big merchants "pay money to protect themselves", the small merchants "dare not disobey". Those who have no money can only borrow money or bring it to the governor's office.
But those who were not on the list of big merchants were not accepted by the governor Chang. He also asked his subordinates to explain the reasons in detail, so as to reassure the small merchants.
At this moment, in the outer study, everyone was busy with their own duties. Xier and Ache rolled up the large characters that were hung to dry and put them into brocade boxes.
Each brocade box has the same style, so there is no need to worry about getting them mixed up. The horizontal and vertical characters are also the same, and they are mass-produced, making them more worry-free.
Chang Suining was really tired from writing, and when he sat back in his chair to rest, he happened to meet Luo's mother and daughter-in-law who came to bring him some green bean soup to relieve the heat.
The soup was all mung bean soup, but in the bowl served to Chang Suining, Luo's mother put two pieces of yellow rock sugar in it. This was an obvious act of partiality, but in Luo Guanlin's eyes it was scheming - the mother could obviously divide the soup in advance and put the rock sugar in for Chang Suining, but the mother insisted on doing so in front of him... worldly-wise, really too worldly-wise.
In the past few days, my mother has been sending food to me frequently. Yesterday, she made a homemade roll from her hometown. Everyone shared the roll, but Chang Suining's roll was particularly fat. The vegetables and meat inside were about to burst the roll skin... My mother almost lay on the roll skin and wrapped herself in it! Chang Suining naturally saw this. In fact, this old lady of the Luo family is not only proficient in the ways of the world, but also eloquent and clear-headed. She is really a rare person. It's a pity that she is busy with kitchen chores.
After Luo's mother divided the soup, she left without disturbing Chang Suining and the others from continuing their work.
When Chang Suining put down the spoon, he looked at the pile of brocade boxes beside him and said with emotion: "When I was in the capital, I thought that if I was too poor to survive one day, I could still sell calligraphy and paintings to make a living and support my family... I didn't expect it to come true now, but I didn't expect the calligraphy and painting business to be so big."
Luo Guanlin: “…”
This business is quite big. After all, it is a matter of forcing people to buy and sell with a knife at their neck. How can it be big?
"This business of the Governor seems to be very profitable, but it benefits the people of Jiangdu, not the Governor himself. It is really well-intentioned and touching." Lu Xiucai sighed, "However, Governor Chang's words about 'supporting the family' are also applicable at the moment... The Governor clearly treats the people of Jiangdu as his own people. If Jiangdu is a home and the people are children, then the Governor is truly worthy of the position of the head of this family."
Luo Guanlin frowned frequently as he listened, and got goosebumps all over his body.
Is this the person that Chang Suining specifically recruited? What is his reason? Isn't it his ability to flatter others? Luo Ze nodded slightly. After all, his grandmother told him yesterday to learn from this Lu Xiucai instead of his father.
In the past, when he was in the court, Luo Guanlin hated flatterers. Now, seeing his son following suit, he became more and more displeased with Lu Xiucai, and thus began to doubt Chang Suining's vision in employing people.
Thinking about the fact that she had looked through the recruitment list yesterday and found that there was still a "ventriloquist" left, Luo Guanlin was speechless - one dared to come, and the other dared to keep someone!
From this we can see that her style of recruiting talents is no longer eclectic, but rather bizarre!
Luo Guanlin didn't want to get involved in this, and yesterday he had sneered in his heart, "Let her go", but now he couldn't help but ask: "...Yesterday the governor left a ventriloquist behind, what was he going to do with him?"
"Mr. Qian, you're right..." Chang Suining said solemnly, with a look of "you hit the nail on the head", "This ventriloquist's surname is Liu, and he is the only descendant of the Liu family. If his hometown had not been hit by war and he had not happened to pass by Jiangdu, he would not have come to me for help."
She said with a tone of having found a treasure, smiling, "Such a talent would be convenient for watching ventriloquism performances on weekdays. Besides, sir, you should know the origin of the term 'chicken-stealing and dog-stealing'?"
Luo Guanlin was stunned for a moment before he reacted. Seeing her smiling face, he had a bad feeling. So she was going to...
"I will ask Mr. Liu to teach us some simple ventriloquism techniques, such as the crowing of a rooster and the barking of a dog, to be used as secret codes." Chang Suining looked at everyone in the study room equally and said, "We will learn together then."
Luo Guanlin fell silent. These street skills were considered low-class in the eyes of literati. He could not imagine what it would be like when he was surrounded by a group of people listening to the barking of dogs and the crowing of chickens, or even stranger noises.
How could one learn so much to be her scholar? But the scholar Lu enthusiastically agreed and almost wrote down "One Hundred Wonderful Uses of Ventriloquism" on the spot.
"This is just one of the uses of Mr. Liu." Chang Suining picked up the pen again and said to Luo Guanlin, "There is another reason why I kept Mr. Liu... After some time, you will naturally know it."
At this time, Azhi came in and reported that Chu Xing had returned.
Chang Suining, who was behind the desk, immediately raised his eyes and said, "Please come in."
Chu Xing quickly entered the study and raised his hand to greet her: "Girl."
"Uncle Chu has returned at this time, but are there any unusual movements by the Japanese army?" Chang Suining asked seriously.
Thank you very much for the 100,000 coins rewarded by Hanhan! Thank you for the reward from Shigandangdangdang and Qibupupucha! Thank you for your monthly votes! September is over, thank you for your company for another month, thank you, thank you~ October is coming soon, and the monthly votes will be doubled during the National Day, so if you have guaranteed monthly votes, don't save them until the end of October, vote at the beginning of the month, one vote counts as two votes! Love you all!
I wish you all a happy National Day, eat well, drink well and have fun~ (End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
