Chapter 235 My biased mother wants me to adopt my younger brother’s son!
Zhang wanted to warn her eldest daughter-in-law Cheng, but since Cheng was unwilling to continue respecting her as her mother-in-law and had Si Yuan's support behind her, Zhang really couldn't do anything about Cheng who mocked her.
Even though Zhang had always been able to control her eldest son with filial piety, the world was still unfair to women, requiring them to obey their husbands after marriage and obey their sons after their husbands died.
If her eldest son is willing to be filial to her and respect her as a mother, she can use filial piety to control him. But when the eldest son was no longer willing to be that foolishly filial son, even though she was his biological mother, she couldn't do anything about it.
Zhang couldn't just go and sue her eldest son for being unfilial, right? Even if she sued her eldest son for being unfilial, there could only be two possible outcomes.
First, the eldest son did not want to expose the family scandal and did not reveal the truth that she favored the second son and that the second daughter-in-law Li murdered the heir of the eldest son. In order to punish the eldest son's unfilial behavior, the court deprived him of his title or official position.
Would it be of any benefit to her if her eldest son lost his title or official position? Even though her husband has passed away, she can still enjoy her current glory all thanks to her eldest son who now holds great power. The mother and son share the same fate.
The second result is that her eldest son will be disheartened by her accusation and will not want to cover up the family scandal, so he will make the truth public. Not only will her reputation as a biased mother be ruined, but her beloved second son and his family will also suffer a bad end. The Chengguo Mansion will become a laughing stock in the entire capital, and she is even more unwilling to see this outcome.
So no matter which result it is, it is not what Zhang wants. Not to mention that the eldest son is not really unfilial to her, even if the eldest son really becomes an unfilial son, she can't ignore the entire Ning family and sue the eldest son for being unfilial.
This resulted in Zhang's words becoming completely useless after she was unable to control her eldest son with affection and filial piety. Even her eldest daughter-in-law Cheng, who had once been suppressed by her, now dared to mock her.
The key point was that Yuan Ge'er's death had happened in between, and Cheng had been sarcastic and mocking to her. Zhang herself felt guilty, so she didn't even dare to let her eldest son know that she had called Cheng to give her a beating, let alone complain to him.
The entire Chengguo Mansion was now caught in a strange atmosphere. On the surface, everything seemed calm, but undercurrents were surging secretly. Even the servants in the mansion could sense the atmosphere of estrangement between the first and second wives.
For a while, the servants of the second house were a little uneasy. Although with the support of Zhang, the housekeeping power of Duke Chengguo's Mansion was nominally managed by Zhang, and actually it was Li who held the power alone, the real owner of the entire Duke Chengguo's Mansion was still Duke Chengguo himself.
When Duke Cheng himself came to the fore, there was no way the second house would be able to defeat the first house. In the past, the second house had the upper hand in terms of housekeeping power because the old lady Zhang stood on the side of the second house to deal with the first house's wife Cheng. Duke Cheng, the male owner, chose to compromise out of filial piety and did not side with his wife, which led to Cheng's defeat in the struggle for housekeeping power in the backyard.
The servants in the Chengguo Mansion were all aware of this, so after realizing that something seemed to be wrong between the first and second houses, many servants of the second house tried to use their connections to get transferred.
As the wife of the second house, Li was naturally aware of this situation, but she did not dare to get angry.
These servants are all servants of the Duke Cheng's Mansion. In the past, if she wanted to get angry, she would just get angry, and Zhang would always cover for her. But now, if she gets angry at the servants, not everyone may stand on her side. Maybe even her husband Ning Yucheng would blame her for making a fuss.
Moreover, Li, who was still immersed in the grief of losing her son and the fratricide between her two sons, didn't really want to get involved in these matters.
The servants wanted to get out of the second house, but they also didn't want to join the first house. After all, it seemed that the only young master left in the next generation of Chengguo Mansion was Ning Chi from the second house. Maybe the future prince of Chengguo would be Young Master Ning Chi.
They just seek good fortune and avoid misfortune, but the eldest wife may not necessarily be the lucky one.
However, when Si Yuan directly spread the word that he would never adopt the second wife's son as his heir, more and more servants came to join the first wife.
When Ning Chi, the only son of the second house, no longer had the chance to become the Crown Prince of Chengguo, the second house had nothing to fear at all.
Of course, they wanted to rely on the eldest wife, the legitimate owner of the Chengguo Mansion.
Si Yuan took the opportunity to gather all the servants who had come to him for help. After a brief interrogation, he was able to extract a lot of information about the second house from them.
For example, how did Li make money from the public funds when she was the housekeeper, and what was the conspiracy behind the death of Zhen Ge'er, the illegitimate son of the second wife... There are many secrets in the entire Duke's Mansion that may not be hidden from these servants who seem to have a low sense of presence.
Especially since these servants were family children, they intermarried with each other, weaving a dense spider web that was hidden and dense, and they, as the masters, were kept in the dark.
Si Yuan did not touch these servants for the time being, but instead used them to attack the second house.
He wanted Li to return all the money she had made from the public treasury during her years as the housekeeper.
Si Yuan took several servants who volunteered to testify and went straight to Zhang. He told Zhang straight away that he wanted to thoroughly check the housekeeper's account books for the past ten years to investigate whether Li had embezzled any money.
Zhang's face changed immediately. It was normal to take advantage of others when she was a housekeeper. She, the old lady of the Chengguo Mansion, had done this kind of thing many times when she was a housekeeper. After all, if the water is too clear, there will be no fish.
So Zhang was very sure that Li must have done this and made a lot of money.
After all, when Zhang first cleaned up the mess for Li, she was not cleaning up the matter of Li's murder of the eldest son of the family, but cleaning up the matter of Li's embezzlement.
Zhang was thinking that the first wife had already obtained the title of Duke of Chengguo, and when the two wives split up in the future, 70% of the property would belong to the first wife, and the second wife would only get a pitiful 30%, not including the ancestral sacrificial fields and personal connections that were only given to the eldest son who inherited the family business.
She felt sorry for her second son and wanted to subsidize him more, so she not only decided to leave all her private property to the second wife after she died, but also indulged the second wife's wife, Li, in embezzling public funds for her own benefit and making money while serving as the housekeeper.
Zhang no longer cared how Li would be punished if the matter was discovered, but she was afraid that Si Yuan would vent his anger on Ning Yucheng. The second house was already very pitiful, and if the money that Li had made was taken back by the first house, wouldn't the second house have to live on coarse food?
Zhang wanted to plead for the second wife.
Unfortunately, Si Yuan didn't give her a chance to speak. He stood there coldly, looking at Zhang who was sitting on the couch, and said, "I'm just letting you know. I'm not here to discuss anything with you. Mother, please remember that I'm the Duke of Chengguo!"
He is the real owner of Chengguo Mansion!
Zhang hesitated for a few times, but finally did not dare to speak.
When she realized that her eldest son was no longer filial and respectful to her, she also knew what it meant to bully the weak and fear the strong.
Si Yuan took people to check the account books, and they found everything correct. Because Li had relied on Zhang's support before, she didn't really cook the books seriously. After all, her elder sister-in-law Cheng had no access to the account books at all. With the protection of her mother-in-law Zhang, no one could do anything to her even if she was greedy in a legitimate way.
These account books clearly show how much money Butler Li has embezzled over the past decade.
Si Yuan did not give the second branch any face at all. He directly grabbed Ning Yucheng and told him: "You, the second branch, have embezzled public funds. Now you must return all of them intact. Don't force me to do it myself."
Ning Yucheng wanted to resist, but was beaten by Si Yuan with his bare hands. He was like a quail and dared not make a sound. He could only use his eyes to signal Li frantically to hand over everything he could, otherwise his eldest brother would beat him to death.
Li didn't expect that her eldest uncle could be so ruthless. He directly grabbed Ning Yucheng and asked him to search the warehouse of the second house.
Li wanted to argue a few more words and to plead with Zhang, but under Si Yuan's cold and ruthless gaze as if he was looking at a dead person, she felt a chill down her spine and dared not say a word. She just stood there in a daze, watching the servants brought by Si Yuan break open the lock of the warehouse and go in to search.
Many precious items that were reported damaged in the public house were found to be the real ones in the storehouse of the second house. It was obvious that Li had embezzled these valuables by reporting them as damaged.
Si Yuan watched with a cold face as the servants carried out piles of stolen goods. Even Ning Yucheng was stunned.
Ning Yucheng was the typical man who only asked his wife for money and never cared about his own warehouse and revenue. He was vaguely aware of what Li had done, but he never expected that Li could embezzle so much.
Each of these stolen goods was more valuable than the other. There were even rare treasures left by the old Duke, which Li boldly embezzled from the public treasury and transferred to his own treasury.
As for silver, it was moved out of the warehouse in boxes. Li's private treasury was even richer than Duke Cheng's public treasury.
This wealth can be said to be the result of Li moving the property from the public treasury into her private treasury like a rat.
However, not all of this was embezzled by Li. After all, more than ten years had passed, and much of the money that Li had embezzled had been spent lavishly on Ning Yucheng and her three children. The good things that they had used in the past that were beyond their allotment all required a lot of silver, and all of this money was paid by Li. Naturally, a lot of the money that Li had embezzled was spent on them.
Therefore, when Si Yuan was counting and calculating, he found that it was not enough, so he threw the bill in Ning Yucheng's face and issued an ultimatum: "No matter what you sell or borrow money, you must pay me back all the money that your second branch embezzled, not a penny less!"
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