"ah?"
Upon hearing this, Long Wangcai looked at the void with a surprised expression. "No, are all you immortals so unconventional?"
Xu Jinhuan said impatiently, "What are you standing there for? Hurry up and start!"
Seeing that the Earth God was about to get angry, Long Wangcai immediately smiled obsequiously, "Earth God, please don't be angry, I'll write it down right away."
After saying that, he said to Xiao Liu, who was standing there in a daze, "Xiao Liu, help me take off my outer robe first, and then take off my inner robe as well."
Xiao Liu immediately obeyed and helped Long Wangcai take off his undergarment. Worried that the undergarment would be directly soaked with blood, he found something to put on the ground and then placed the snow-white undergarment on it.
Meanwhile, Long Wangcai, shirtless and exposing his round belly, sat on the ground, painstakingly dipping his hands into the blood nearby, and slowly wrote his confession.
The laborers present were incredibly happy after witnessing the land god's series of actions.
It turns out that there really are gods who help ordinary people, and that they are not abandoned people. They decided to start worshipping the Earth God from today onwards to ensure the well-being of their entire family.
As they thought this, everyone respectfully knelt on the ground, silently praying.
After about fifteen minutes, Long Wangcai finally finished writing his confession.
"Lord Earth God, I have finished writing this confession. Please take a look."
Xu Jinhuan took the confession and looked at it carefully for a while, then discovered that Long Wangcai had been polishing moldy rice for seven years.
Moreover, he not only sold it himself, but also lied to other merchants, claiming that it was his special source of goods, and sold it to other shops at a lower price than ordinary rice.
In other words, many people in the capital have been eating moldy rice for seven years...
"Lord Earth God, I have already written this confession. Can you please let me go?" Long Wangcai asked with a fawning smile after being slightly stunned by the confession that suddenly rose into the air.
Xu Jinhuan sneered. This Long Wangcai is quite ugly, but he has a lot of wild ideas.
She didn't answer Long Wangcai's question. Instead, she tossed the confession aside and pointed to the slum dwellers who had been captured by Long Wangcai for forced labor.
"Tell me first how you plan to compensate these people."
The laborers present were all stunned. What? There's compensation too?
Long Wangcai immediately put on a mournful face and said, "Lord Earth God, please be aware that although I ran a shady workshop, I did not mistreat these people."
"If you don't believe me, just ask them; do they get enough to eat every day?"
After Long Wangcai finished speaking, he glared fiercely at the laborers, as if he would settle scores with them after the local earth god left if they said anything he didn't like.
The laborers hesitated for a moment, unsure whether they should tell the land god the truth, or if the god would just teach Long Wangcai a lesson and then leave.
Wouldn't they be walking into the lion's den again...?
Just as everyone was struggling with their decision, Sister Zhao, who had initially discovered the place was haunted, stepped forward.
"You shameless bastard, you still have the nerve to say you're good to us? If it weren't for you, my Tiger Head wouldn't have died. It's all because of your tainted grain!"
After Zhao's sister-in-law finished speaking, she turned around and knelt down in the void: "Respected Earth God, Long Wangcai is a big liar. Please do not believe his words."
When he said we should have enough to eat, he meant we should be fed moldy rice, the kind that they couldn't even afford to grind.
In his words, the lives of us lowly people are a waste of food, and we are not worthy of his good rice.
My tiger head split open because I was starving and ate moldy rice. I beg the Earth God to bring justice to my child!
As Zhao's sister-in-law spoke of her deceased child, tears welled in her eyes, but she still stood tall, looking defiantly at Long Wangcai not far away.
This was her only chance as a mother to avenge her child, and she absolutely could not give it up!
Long Wangcai glared fiercely at Zhao Saozi, thinking to himself with resentment, "The common people are indeed the common people. They are all ungrateful wretches. All that grain I fed them has gone to waste."
Perhaps because Sister Zhao took the lead, others followed suit and began to talk about the unfair treatment they had received over the years.
“Lord Earth God, we have worked for Long Wangcai day and night for so many years, but we have never received a single penny.”
Just as Sister Zhao had described, the food was moldy rice served with extremely salty pickled vegetables, and you had to drink several scoops of water afterward.
Another person chimed in, "Lord Earth God, it's just as they say. We didn't come here to work voluntarily; we were forced here by Long Wangcai's men."
Although life was poor before, at least we had something to look forward to. But since we fell into this wolf's den, we really have nothing left.
Sister Zhao sighed and said, "Alas, it's not that we didn't think about fighting back, but not long after one family escaped, their house suddenly caught fire in the middle of the night."
The entire family, ten people in total, young and old, perished in the fire.
After listening silently to what these people were saying, Xu Jinhuan glanced at the kneeling Long Wangcai and sneered, "Long Wangcai, you really won't shed tears until you see the coffin."
Long Wangcai looked at the crowd glaring at him, utterly speechless.
Without him needing to argue, Xu Jinhuan had already come up with a solution for him: "Quickly summon your accountant and send someone to the grain shop to get enough silver."
"I now demand that you return the monthly wages owed to the laborers over the years, as well as compensation for the emotional distress caused by consuming substandard food."
This is just an appetizer prepared by Xu Jinhuan; there's more to come, like Long Wangcai crying.
Long Wangcai wiped the cold sweat from his face and quickly calculated the amount of silver needed in his mind.
An ordinary laborer would earn at most four qian of silver a month, less than five taels a year, and even after seven years, less than thirty-five taels.
This is just one of his hideouts, with only twenty people inside. Even if you count all of them as his for seven years, it wouldn't amount to more than seven hundred taels.
Trading one's life for less than seven hundred taels of silver is a worthwhile deal no matter how you look at it.
But why go to the grain shop to get the silver? There's silver in his own storeroom. It's probably the habitual thinking of a deity—to return money earned from somewhere else.
Long Wangcai didn't have time to think it over carefully. The most important thing right now was to save his life.
Thinking of this, Long Wangcai respectfully said, "Yes, I will follow the arrangements of the Earth God."
After saying that, he turned to Xiao Liu and said, "Didn't you hear what the local earth god said? Hurry up and get ready."
Xiao Liu immediately left in a hurry.
Long Wangcai seemed to think that he would be safe once this matter was resolved, so he smiled slightly and said to Xu Jinhuan in a somewhat obsequious manner.
"Lord Earth God, where is your temple?"
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