Chapter 236 My biased mother wants me to adopt my younger brother’s son!
Ning Yucheng had the bill thrown directly at his face by Si Yuan. He didn't even have time to get angry at being humiliated by Si Yuan. But when he looked at the specific amount on the bill that was thrown at his face and landed in his hands, his face turned green.
Dignity or something like that, how could it be more important than such a huge amount of money at this moment?
Hundreds of thousands of taels of silver! He can't even afford to pay it back even if he is sold!
Ning Yucheng was spoiled by Zhang since he was a child. He never lacked money, so he had a kind of arrogance that regarded money as dirt. He knew that his wife Li was secretly using public resources for personal gain, but he felt that the Chengguo Mansion would be inherited by his eldest brother in the future. Li's behavior was to secretly steal his eldest brother's women, which made him, who was jealous of his eldest brother being able to inherit the Chengguo Mansion, feel a strange pleasure in his heart.
Therefore, he had always condoned and tolerated Li's embezzlement of public property.
But he really didn't know that Li could have embezzled so much!
If Ning Yucheng didn't need to pay back the money, when he learned that Li had embezzled so much money, he would secretly admire Li's ability to embezzle money and make a lot of money for his family.
But the current situation is that he is being forced by his elder brother to pay back the money. Asking him to pay back such a large sum of money is more painful than having his tendons and bones pulled out.
Ning Yucheng didn't dare to confront Si Yuan, so he could only vent his anger on Li: "Bitch! Look at what you have done! How did you get so much money? Return it all!"
Ning Yucheng also took the bill that Si Yuan had thrown at his face and threw it back at Li's face.
Li looked at the bill in her hands. It was really written down clearly, every penny. She was not wronged and was not let off a penny.
Li was terrified. Although she relied on the protection of her mother-in-law Zhang and didn't care much about cooking the books, she still didn't expect to be exposed so easily by Si Yuan.
Li was very frightened because she had indeed embezzled the money, but how could she pay it back?
Ning Yucheng has been lavishly treating his colleagues to meals and music over the past decade. Doesn't it cost money to keep a bunch of useless hangers-on who only know how to flatter him?
The eldest son Ning Chi asked a great scholar for guidance in his studies. Doesn’t it require a valuable gift as a thank-you gift to the teacher? When he goes out to socialize with his classmates and attend various literary gatherings, doesn't it cost money to buy the four treasures of the study?
The second son, Ning Ji, was also of school age. It was not good to pick up most of the school supplies that the eldest son had not used up, so he had to prepare new ones and hire a teacher, all of which cost money.
The eldest daughter Ning Rong maintains skin as white as jade and long black hair. She grinds pearls into powder and applies it on her skin, grinds Polygonum multiflorum into powder and uses it to wash her hair. She also prepares more than a dozen sets of various precious and gorgeous clothes and jewelry every year. Don't these cost money?
And then there is herself, the New Year and holiday gifts she sends to her parents' home, her own clothes and jewelry, the rewards she gives to her servants...all of these cost money!
Their second branch still lives in the Chengguo Mansion. Because Zhang is still alive, the Ning family has not yet split up. The food, clothing and other expenses of the second branch are all borne by the Chengguo Mansion. In theory, they do not need to pay for it.
But the quotas given by the public are limited and only enough for the basic needs. If you want to exceed the quota, you have to pay for it yourself.
Except for the concubines and illegitimate sons and daughters, the family of the second house lived honestly according to the allocated expenses. But Li, Ning Yucheng and their three children, which one of them didn't spend dozens or hundreds of times more than the allocated expenses?
Where does this money come from? Isn't it because Li has a 'good way of making money' and took money from the public treasury while he was the housekeeper?
It can be said that Li had spent most of the hundreds of thousands of taels he had earned, and there was almost nothing left.
The reason why so much silver could be taken out of the second wife's private vault was that it included Li's own dowry and the dowry she had saved for her daughter.
Si Yuan didn't care about the internal fighting between Ning Yucheng and the Li couple. He was only responsible for getting back the money that the second wife had embezzled.
No matter whether it was done by Li or Ning Yucheng, the embezzled money was embezzled by the second wife. He just asked for it from the second wife. Ning Yucheng and Li were husband and wife, so he didn't care who of them paid the money.
Ning Yucheng is a completely selfish person. He would not listen to Li's explanation about what most of the hundreds of thousands of taels were spent on. He only knows that his elder brother is not easy to mess with now, and the money must be repaid. The money was not embezzled by him, so why should he pay it back? Whoever embezzled the money must pay it back. As for whether most of the money was spent on him by Li, he would just pretend not to know.
No matter how Li struggled and cried, Ning Yucheng still took away almost all of her dowry and returned it to Si Yuan.
Si Yuan had not touched Li's dowry before. After all, as the eldest brother, it would be difficult for him to use his brother's wife's dowry, even if he had the reason to ask for embezzled money.
He never confronted Li directly, but instead went straight to cause trouble for Ning Yucheng.
Li was a female member of the family. As the male owner of the Chengguo Mansion, Si Yuan was directly confronting Li, his brother's wife, which could easily make people accuse him of bullying a weak woman.
But it was different when it came to his younger brother Ning Yucheng. When their father was not around, the eldest brother was like a father to him. As the eldest brother, he taught his useless younger brother a lesson, and everyone would agree with him.
After Ning Yucheng was taught a lesson by Si Yuan, he became a good boy and went to cause trouble for the Li family.
In this era where the husband is the head of the wife, Li was naturally at a disadvantage facing her husband Ning Yucheng. Even though Li was in the wrong, she could not justifiably stop Ning Yucheng from using her dowry to make up for the shortfall.
Si Yuan pretended not to know that Ning Yucheng was using Li's dowry. He didn't care where the money Ning Yucheng used to pay back the debt came from. He only cared whether Ning Yucheng could pay back the money.
Si Yuan sent someone to count the silver and land deeds that Ning Yucheng had moved over, and calculated the discount for those that needed to be discounted according to the market price, without deliberately cheating him.
Even so, the gap of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver that Li embezzled was still not completely made up.
Si Yuan said calmly, "Second brother, you don't have to pay back the rest. We will officially separate tomorrow, so this debt will be considered as an advance distribution of the family property to Second Brother."
When the Chengguo Mansion was divided, ancestral properties such as sacrificial fields were not included in the distribution of property and belonged only to the family heirs.
As for the remaining property, the eldest son as the heir will get 70%, and the other sons will get the remaining 30%. If there is a legitimate son among the other sons, he will get 20%, and the remaining illegitimate sons will get 10%.
However, there were only two brothers in the Chengguo Mansion, and both were legitimate sons, so Si Yuan, as the eldest son and heir to the family, got 70%. As the second legitimate son, Ning Yucheng can get the remaining 30%.
This way of dividing property is to ensure that most of the family's wealth can be retained in the hands of the direct branches and the wealth will not be too dispersed.
A second legitimate son like Ning Yucheng would gradually become a side branch after the family splits up.
It was no wonder that Ning Yucheng was jealous of his elder brother. Just because he was born later and was not the eldest son, not only could he not inherit the title, but even the family property he inherited was several times less than that of his biological elder brother.
The properties divided between Si Yuan and Ning Yucheng are not the most important wealth of the Chengguo Mansion. The most important wealth of the Chengguo Mansion is the ancestral property, ancestral residence, title and connections that are not distributed and will only be inherited by the heirs. These are what Ning Yucheng is most jealous of.
However, Ning Yucheng could only envy these things and had no chance of getting them.
Even the 30% of the family property that he should have received was not fully repaid due to the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver that Li had embezzled. Si Yuan simply used the remaining debt to offset the property that should have been given to Ning Yucheng.
Fortunately, the Chengguo Mansion is too wealthy. The 30% of the property that Ning Yucheng should get is more than enough to make up for the gap caused by Li's corruption, and the second house will still have some property left.
But under Si Yuan's operation, there are not many left, and they are all some real estate and land properties outside the capital or in his ancestral hometown.
Among the properties that Ning Yucheng obtained, only a small house near the outskirts of Beijing belonged to the capital.
After the separation of the family, the second branch had to move out of Duke Cheng's Mansion. Ning Yucheng sat in his study with a sad face, looking at his spacious study reluctantly and didn't want to leave at all.
He only has a small house in the capital, and in the future the whole family of the second branch will have to move into that small house near the outskirts of Beijing, which is very cramped.
But the second wife, who had been held hostage by Si Yuan, had no way of staying away.
Ning Yucheng finally couldn't help it anymore, and went to find his mother Zhang, and said to her in a sad and reluctant tone: "Mother, I am here to say goodbye to you. I will be moving away with my wife and children soon. Our house is near the outskirts of Beijing, so I may not be able to visit you often in the future. Please take care of yourself and forgive your son's unfilial behavior!"
Ning Yucheng never said a word about not wanting to move out, nor did he ask Zhang for subsidies, but every word he said was hinting to Zhang that his life would be very difficult after the separation of the family. If my mother didn't help me, I wouldn't be able to visit her often and fulfill my filial duties.
With Zhang's experience in domestic fighting, it should be easy for her to hear such suggestive words.
But she was like a person whose heart was blinded by greed. She only heard the difficult situation of her beloved second son and was only concerned about her baby son's pity. She didn't think that Ning Yucheng was hinting at her to subsidize him at all.
Zhang felt that it was her love for her son that made her take the initiative to subsidize her second son: "Yucheng, your elder brother is so cruel. He didn't even give you the property that belonged to you when the family was divided, and let you leave the Chengguo Mansion so poorly. Mother has some property deeds here, you can take them, and these banknotes. You must need money everywhere when you just moved out. If you need anything, just tell mother..."
Ning Yucheng accepted the subsidy from his mother with satisfaction.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com