Chapter 242 Ledger
Sometimes, you can't hide the urge to hurt someone, even if she's a very cute person who seems to be lacking maternal love like you!
Su Gui's face turned ashen with rage. He glared at his father, the culprit, with a burning hatred: "Su Junyao!"
"What's wrong?" Su Junyao casually lifted his eyelids and handed the prepared water to the bedside. "Wash your face?"
Enraged, Su Gui grabbed a handful of water and slapped it on his face, washing it thoroughly several times before stopping. His hair was covered in water droplets, and his delicate, pale profile was flushed with a faint blush, whether from anger or from rubbing his face, it was hard to tell.
"Why didn't you tell me she drools in her sleep!"
He was half asleep when he felt a heaviness in his chest, a suffocating feeling that made it hard to breathe. He didn't fully wake up until something heavy hit his face and he felt suspicious water dripping down.
Then he discovered that his new niece was straddling him, her head resting on his left cheek. But that wasn't the most infuriating part; the most infuriating thing was that she was drooling!
"How rude!"
"Dirty pig!"
“It’s so infuriating!”
Su Junyao didn't dare to utter a word in rebuttal, giving Qiuqiu a look that said, "Good luck to you." He thought, "Haven't you heard this little brat drools in his sleep?"
Chiu Chiu's hair was a mess from sleeping, with two little chiu chiu drooping one behind the other. She sat on the bed, looking sleepy, completely unaware of her uncle's anger.
She pouted; she was so hungry.
The baby eats small, frequent meals and often wakes up in the middle of the night for milk. Yuanmu has been taking care of her the whole time, so the two grown men had no idea that Qiuqiu was hungry at night. She's so upset!
"Hungry."
Su Gui glared at her, "You've been eating people and you're still hungry?"
Qiuqiu glanced at him, slowly moved over, and directly wrapped her arms around Su Gui's waist, softly and sweetly saying, "Su, Diudiu, chee oh."
Su Gui stared at Qiu Qiu, whose round face was harmless and adorable. Having rarely interacted with outsiders, Su Gui felt a sudden chill run down her spine. She suddenly realized how dangerous her thoughts were.
He raised his hand and slapped himself across the face. Wake up!
Su Junyao suddenly felt a sense of awe towards Su Gui, who was a rare person who could resist Qiu Qiu's charm.
Chiu Chiu looked at her uncle, who had suddenly gone crazy and was slapping himself in the face, with a puzzled expression. She climbed up by his shoulder, reached out and rubbed Su Gui's face, puffing out her cheeks and blowing on his face, "It...doesn't hurt, huff huff~ huff~"
Unconsciously, a little saliva sprayed out. Knowing her uncle disliked having saliva on his face, Qiuqiu quietly snuggled up and wiped it clean with her hand. Su Gui remained stiff and motionless the entire time, so Qiuqiu assumed no one had noticed her actions. She let out a long sigh of relief, looked at Su Gui's clean face, and, overjoyed, planted a quick kiss on his cheek.
After I kissed her, she was stunned. Was it because I smeared her saliva on her again?
Su Gui touched her face, pulled Qiu Qiu down, and placed her hand on Qiu Qiu's forehead. "Don't move around anymore."
Chirp: [Yay, I didn't get scolded.]
Su Junyao: It's over, this one has fallen too.
Originally, Su Gui was a person who was both righteous and evil in Su Junyao's mind, but now he thinks he is a good person.
"Can you push me out? Houlan Street is part of my mother's dowry, and there's a tailor shop there. Let's take Qiuqiu to buy some clothes. Let's also buy two maids, it's inconvenient for us to take care of her. Let's also get two servants, Yuncheng isn't safe."
Su Gui rambled on and on, all revolving around Qiu Qiu, a stark contrast to her scheming and manipulative demeanor from yesterday, which seemed designed to destroy the Shao family.
"Hey, Su Junyao, are you even listening to me?"
Su Junyao rubbed his temples, gradually becoming tired: "First of all, you have to call me cousin. Secondly, we can't go out right now."
He paused, seizing the key point in Su Gui's words: "You said Houlan Street was your mother's dowry?"
Su Gui was still lost in regret at not being able to take Qiuqiu out, and he spoke listlessly to Su Junyao, not even bothering to look up at him. Instead, he focused intently on braiding Qiuqiu's hair. He said casually, "Well, the Su family's businesses in Yuncheng were all abandoned due to internal strife within the Su family. Later, before my mother got married, my maternal grandfather secretly gave her all of these businesses as part of her dowry."
However, judging from Su Junyao's reaction, it's likely that even his uncle's family was unaware of this matter.
He picked up Qiuqiu by the armpits and placed her on his lap. Qiuqiu obediently sat down, holding onto his clothes. He then turned his wheelchair and found an account book, handing it to Su Junyao. "Here, the dowry shop."
The Shao family's motives for proposing marriage were impure, a fact briefly mentioned in his mother's notes, but the difficulty of consolidating their assets in the area is unimaginable. Perhaps the Shao family never intended for her to live, or perhaps her actions threatened their interests, leading them to ultimately plot her murder.
Ever since he learned to read, he had been wondering if his mother would have been spared if she hadn't chosen to keep him.
These things that the Shao family had longed for were a death sentence for him, but now that he had given them to Su Junyao, he felt much lighter.
Su Junyao found it strange. The Hou family's fortune had been accumulated over generations, with countless branches. Therefore, all the family's properties were registered, and the dowries and betrothal gifts for their children's marriages, paid from the public accounts, were all recorded. It was impossible for so many shops and properties in Yuncheng to go unnoticed, unless his aunt's notes were falsified!
In the spring of the seventeenth year of the Wenhe era, the twelve shops along the back blue street of Yuncheng had an annual income of 34,000 taels of silver.
In the autumn of the nineteenth year of the Wenhe era, the Hundred Flowers Garden in Yuncheng yielded an annual income of ten thousand taels of gold.
In the winter of the twentieth year of the Wenhe era, the annual revenue of Nanyu Prefecture in Chunzhou was 100,000 taels of silver.
...
In the autumn of the twenty-second year of the Wenhe era, the Sifangcheng Pass Annual Trading Company earned 30,000 taels of gold.
Su Gui was born in the summer of the twenty-third year of Wenhe, and the records ended six months before his birth.
Su Junyao's finger remained fixed on the words "Autumn of the 22nd year of Wenhe," his face extremely grim. Su Gui, noticing something was wrong, approached with Qiuqiu, asking, "What's wrong?"
Su Junyao's voice faltered: "You're saying this is the profit ledger of the dowry shop?"
"Is there a problem?" Su Gui felt uncomfortable under Su Junyao's gaze. "I've never seen what the ledgers look like."
Su Gui couldn't understand the ledgers, nor did he know what the income of a normally profitable shop should look like. Su Junyao had previously worked in the Ministry of Revenue, and the accounts collected over the years were clearly fake! They seemed more like ledgers recording the Shao family's shady income.
My aunt had been married into the Shao family for many years without conceiving, so why did she suddenly have a child at that time?
He unconsciously tapped his fingers, and Su Gui's gaze fell on the last line. He asked in confusion, "What happened this year?"
Su Junyao chuckled: "The late emperor reigned for twenty-one years, so where did the twenty-two autumns come from! Your mother was probably placed under house arrest as soon as she married into the family, so she knew nothing about what was happening outside."
Su Gui instantly understood the mystery: "Besides the late emperor's death, something else must have happened this year that changed the Shao family's attitude towards my mother. This matter must be the key!"
Chiu Chiu, still half asleep, tugged at the little chiu on her head, feeling her scalp protesting. Her round eyes were being pulled upwards, and her scalp felt tight and uncomfortable.
The upturned eyes of the girl were undeniably funny, but she still dared to raise her own questions: "How could someone as powerful as my great-aunt be under house arrest?"
【Shao, Shao... Shao, what do you want to eat butts with!】
(End of this chapter)
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