Tianliangyuan

Chapter 353 Xu Zhaozhao Continues Precise Strike

Cheng Yuan is a descendant of the previous dynasty's royal family, a fact that Grand Tutor Jiang deliberately had Jiang Yanhui reveal at this time.

To redeem his son from his sins, he needs to achieve a great feat.

Unexpectedly, the great achievement was presented, but then the Cui family suddenly interfered.

In the end, it's all the Jiang family's fault for not disciplining their son properly, which offended the Cui family.

The witnesses and evidence regarding Cheng Yuan's background have all been presented to the palace.

Emperor Yong'an only glanced at it briefly before handing it over to his subordinates to verify.

We don't even know where Cheng Yuan is right now, so what if we knew her background?

Emperor Yong'an was simply annoyed and frustrated that he had only discovered Cheng Yuan's disappearance at this crucial moment.

In fact, once they knew Cheng Yuan's background, the Dali Temple had far too many clues to investigate.

For example, anyone who had previously had contact with Cheng Yuan was required to undergo questioning.

For example, they would try to summon and question some high-ranking nobles who had been close to the Cheng family in the past, even if they had only served as servants in the Cheng family for a day.

This is a huge amount of work.

But no matter how difficult it was, the Dali Temple had to grit its teeth and continue the investigation.

Now that remnants of the previous dynasty's royal family have been exposed, how can we dare to be careless?

Who would dare complain about having too much work?

At this time, the safest thing to do is to keep your head down and work. Don't even think about hanging around His Majesty, or you might get yourself into trouble.

The Cui family and the Jiang family have clashed, which is exactly the result Xu Zhaozhao wanted.

She refused to believe that even with the protagonist's halo, the Jiang family could become an indestructible force.

In Jiang Ning's first life, weren't all members of the Jiang family wiped out?

Besides, she was able to take away the position of the female lead's legal wife, so why would she be afraid of the so-called protagonist's halo?

It was common knowledge throughout the capital that Xu Zhaozhao and Jiang Ning were at odds.

Therefore, it was only natural that Xu Zhaozhao began to gather strength to attack Jiang Ning's businesses.

Nowadays, Jiang Ning's businesses are basically based on her dowry.

Now that Jiang Ning is married, she has a legal wife above her, so she can't leave the mansion often. Moreover, she doesn't have many capable people under her command, which gives Xu Zhaozhao an opportunity.

The reason they didn't kill him immediately was because they were wary of a loyal king.

This time, of course, we can't squeeze every last drop out of people's livelihoods. After all, it's more profitable to fatten up cattle and sheep before slaughtering them.

Moreover, in her eyes now, Jiang Ning doesn't even qualify as a cow or sheep; she's more like a chicken.

Xu Zhaozhao is now just waiting for Jiang Ning's business to improve so that she can easily reap a large harvest of profits.

Wow, just thinking about it is wonderful!

While targeting Jiang Ning's businesses, Xu Zhaozhao didn't forget about the Jiang family either.

But this time, Xu Zhaozhao was much more careful.

After all, the Jiang family has a tutor named Jiang Taifu, and neither Jiang Yanping nor Jiang Yanhui are easy to deal with, so she is extremely careful in everything she does.

The repeated problems with some of the Jiang family's businesses naturally attracted the attention of Grand Tutor Jiang.

For example, the gambling den in which the Jiang family had a stake was raided and confiscated twice by the county government within five days. Can this be attributed entirely to bad luck?

During the two raids, all the silver and money on site were confiscated by the yamen (government office). Moreover, there happened to be several big gamblers present on both occasions, so the amount of silver and money was naturally considerable.

The two raids resulted in a direct loss of 100,000 strings of cash for the gambling den.

In addition, because the gambling den was raided by the government twice within five days, the gamblers all believed that the gambling den had offended the government and would never have peace in the future, so they no longer had any intention of gambling there.

If there are no gamblers in the gambling den, how will they make money?

Furthermore, during the two raids, some things inevitably got damaged, and the manager of the gambling den had to spend money to smooth things over and pay fines, which was another expense.

In short, the gambling den incident caused the biggest uproar, yet they couldn't find out a single problem.

Jiang Yanping is not someone who can be easily fooled.

"The more problems we can't find, the more problematic they are. Just who is secretly opposing the Jiang family?"

Jiang Yanhui didn't think the other party was targeting the Jiang family.

"Brother, is it possible that it's due to jealousy from our competitors?"

Jiang Yanping, however, was quite certain: "Impossible! The owner behind the gambling den is us. Many people in the industry know this. Even if they don't know it, they can guess that the backer behind us is someone they can't afford to offend. How could they possibly deliberately go against us?"

Jiang Yanhui was taken aback, then nodded.

That makes sense.

Since ancient times, merchants have never been enemies with officials.

No matter how rich you are, you can't withstand the suppression from the power of officials.

Even a minor official is not someone a wealthy businessman can afford to offend.

If they're not in the same industry, then they can only be enemies of the Jiang family.

However, the Jiang family has many enemies in the court, and they are known for their arrogance when traveling outside the court. Who knows if they have offended someone unintentionally?

For a time, both Jiang brothers were also very troubled.

Such a trivial matter could not possibly be discussed with Grand Tutor Jiang.

Jiang Yanhui's official position is still uncertain, so he must prioritize important matters.

Xu Zhaozhao sent people to report to the authorities twice, and both times she accurately targeted the gambling den, along with its big clients. Naturally, the capital city became even more lively.

Both times it was the same big client, which made not only the Jiang family suspicious, but also the gambler.

As luck would have it, this gambler was a wealthy young man from Jiangnan. Because he had no hope of passing the imperial examinations, he thought of bringing some money to the capital to see if he could ask someone to write a letter of recommendation for him, hoping to obtain an official position in the future and protect his family business.

But he didn't expect that while there were indeed many powerful and influential people in the capital, they were not people he could reach.

After several setbacks, he naturally began to give up on himself. Not satisfied with just frequenting brothels, he started going to gambling dens again.

As a result, his money was confiscated by the government twice. How could he not be suspicious?

His outburst made it seem like the gambling den was doing it on purpose. Who knows if they were colluding with the government to divide the spoils later?

This has really stirred up a hornet's nest.

For a time, all sorts of rumors about gambling dens spread throughout the capital. As more people talked about it, it naturally reached the ears of the emperor.

Zhao Changqing, dressed in official robes, looked worried: "Your Majesty, rumors are flying in the capital about the gambling dens. Some even believe they are colluding with the government. This is detrimental to our Great Xing Dynasty. I beg Your Majesty to make a decision."

Emperor Yong'an looked displeased: "Why do you need to report such a trivial matter to me?"

Helpless, Zhao Changqing could only vaguely reply, "Your Majesty, about 80% of the gambling dens in the capital are connected to powerful and influential people, and I have no way to stop them. I could directly quell public anger, but the problem is that there are indeed shadows of our court officials behind these gambling dens, and I really don't know how to stop the rumors."