Why did you and Lu Xiaohua go to Yunlai Inn? Who sent you there?
Ye Zhen asked again.
Lu Xiaocao continued to cry, "Princess, I beg you, Heaven has had mercy and allowed me to survive by chance, please spare my life."
The onlookers couldn't stand it anymore. "Princess, you opened the Charity Hall. If it weren't for your orders, how could these young girls become prostitutes? They're still children."
“If they wanted to make money through such means, why did they have to beg for a living in the first place? If the princess wants to shirk her responsibility, she should not make things difficult for this poor child.”
Someone else chimed in, "Sigh, officials protect each other, and it's always us ordinary folks who suffer."
Even if we come here today to demand an explanation from these few children, believe me, the charity can quickly find a manager to take the blame.
"That's true. I've heard that these powerful and wealthy people treat ordinary people like dirt. They are the ones who do evil, and it's always the powerless and pitiful people who get punished in the end."
"The stewards work for the princess and naturally side with her, so they don't want to be either."
Those managers who originally wanted to speak up for Ye Zhen and clear the name of the Charity Hall were caught in a dilemma: whether to speak or not.
Ye Zhen's eyes grew even colder.
She had asked before she arrived, and the charity had not asked the three children to leave. All three of them had made excuses and asked the manager for leave.
Of the five people involved, only Lu Xiaocao knows the truth, apart from the fleeing bearded man. However, she insists that it was Charity Hall that instructed her to do so.
Listen again to the angry voices outside.
Ye Zhen understood perfectly well that this was an attempt to exploit public anger to force a charge against her, leaving her speechless and unable to defend herself.
But having been slandered in her past life, how could she be manipulated by others in this one?
What angered her was that these people were targeting innocent children in order to get rid of her, and of course, Lu Xiaocao was not among those innocent children.
"Could someone please tell me how much it costs to visit Yunlai Inn like the Lu Xiaocao sisters?"
Yunlai Inn is not a high-class inn, and its prices are not high. The traveling merchants who stay here are not considered truly wealthy.
So, since they're called prostitutes, they naturally wouldn't pay high prices.
Some people began to realize that something was amiss, but knowing that such things were never something to be proud of, no one spoke up.
Some people did want to help Ye Zhen, especially those in the western part of the city who had received favors from him.
But they were all poor people who had never been to places like the Yunlai Inn or prostitutes, so they were willing but unable to do so.
Ye Zhen continued, "I have checked. The room fee for that traveling merchant at Yunlai Inn is one tael of silver per day. According to the waiter, the traveling merchant also complained that the inns in the capital were expensive."
Even if he is consumed by lust, he would at most spend ten taels to hire a prostitute.
"The establishment of the Charity Hall, the opening of workshops under my name, and the purchase of estates have already cost 500,000 taels. If I were greedy, why would I need to resort to such methods? Wouldn't it be easier to simply deposit that 500,000 taels in a money shop?"
"Perhaps you want both money and fame. You want to be the Crown Princess, right? How can you deceive His Highness the Crown Prince without seeking fame and reputation?"
The voice was loud, but the speaker was hiding their face.
Ye Zhen sneered, "Fine, assuming what you say is true, I am just trying to gain fame and reputation, then please take a look at these."
As she finished speaking, Wanxing stepped forward carrying a box. "This box contains the receipts issued by the government for my young lady's anonymous donations to the government over the years."
The first donation was when my young lady was nine years old. There was a great flood in southern Jiangsu, and she donated one hundred taels of silver, which was half of her savings.
After saying that, she showed everyone an old, worn-out document stamped with the seal of the Southern Jiangsu County Government.
"The second donation was when my young lady was ten years old. It was cold and harsh at the border, and she heard that the soldiers were short of cotton-padded clothes. My young lady donated two thousand taels of silver. Every year after that, my young lady would donate cotton-padded clothes to the border, more or less..."
Wanxing read out the donations one by one, showing them to everyone. "In total, despite the natural and man-made disasters in Dayuan, my young lady has anonymously donated more than 300,000 taels of silver."
This money was all saved by the young lady through her business studies, in addition to supporting the children she had adopted.
If my young lady were greedy, why would she donate? If she were seeking a good reputation, why would she need to remain anonymous?
"If that's the case, why keep these receipts?"
It was that voice again, spoken by someone who dared not show their face: "Isn't it all for the sake of gaining a good reputation in the future, and then using that reputation to secretly seek more benefits?"
Ye Zhen looked toward the source of the sound. "At first, I donated because I wanted to be like my aunt, someone who is useful to the people."
Keeping receipts was merely a way to gain praise from respected people, and gradually it became a habit.
Ye Zhen glanced at the box, never expecting it to come in handy today.
“I swear on my life that the prostitution was not done by the Charity Hall. Please give me three days. I will find out the truth within three days.”
Xie Tingzhou has personally gone to arrest the bearded man, and Ye Zhen has a vague idea of who was responsible for today's events. She is confident.
But Madam Xiao didn't think so. She stepped forward with a face full of pity, "What a tragedy! These children are so young. Amitabha! Forgive me, forgive me! The princess is already a person of high status. Why should she step on these poor children to rise to power..."
Before she could finish her disruptive and inflaming remarks, a figure suddenly rushed in front of her and slapped her across the face.
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