The Sixteenth Day of Finding a Wife

Although the Ye family had not yet fallen, the rumors and gossip had already dealt a heavy blow to its reputation in Zhangzhou.

Ye Shengzong could not understand it. How could a mere merchant of lowly status have such power?

Did she really think he wouldn’t have her entire family executed? He had been too merciful after all.

When he ordered the magistrates of the other five counties to launch a coordinated crackdown on the Lu family, the five magistrates accepted the order in the morning and vanished by nightfall.

Only the Ye family’s merchants were still struggling on, trying to suppress the Lu family’s business.

Wherever the Lu family did business, they would rush in and bid outrageously high, trying to squeeze them out.

But they had overlooked one thing. Over the years, the Ye family had indeed taken enough profit from the Lu family to keep itself afloat.

But the Lu family had something the Ye family did not: public support.

Once the Ye family began seizing business, fewer and fewer people were willing to patronize their shops.

Merchants dragged into Ye family affairs quietly formed cliques and started treating them halfheartedly.

The families of minor officials had lost quite a bit of money because of the official ship incident.

The petty clerks and runners also became increasingly careless in their work.

Anything the Ye family ordered, they would delay if they could; they had once fawned over the family, but now they treated them coldly.

Some members of the Ye family had already begun to panic.

Especially the women in the inner courtyards. They had already invested heavily in Lu Ling, and after Ye Prefect stirred everything up, even marriage proposals for their daughters were rejected the moment people heard there might be a connection to the prefect.

They were furious and resentful.

On top of that, they had not come from humble backgrounds in the first place. Their fathers and mothers were all prominent figures in the area.

So they simply abandoned their husbands and returned to their natal families.

The Ye family’s inner courtyards were emptied out.

The young masters of the Ye family, who had once thought themselves so exceptional, were now finding that when they walked down the street, the same mud-legged commoners who used to bow and scrape now spat at them.

The taverns they frequented would not serve them.

The brothels they often visited no longer welcomed them either; they wouldn’t even take their money.

If not for the prefect, they would probably already have been dragged out and beaten.

Now the Ye family’s young masters had tasted what it meant to be street rats, hated and beaten by everyone.

They had risen because of the prefect; they fell because of the prefect.

Yet just after Ye Shengzong sent people to kill Lu Ling and encircle the Lu family, news came that the assassins had been caught by the yamen.

Then came word that a large number of familiar officials in the Maritime Bureau had been replaced.

The man sent down to fill the post was the son of the censor who had once impeached Ye Shengzong.

As soon as this censor’s son took office as commander, he immediately launched a thorough investigation into old cases from recent years in the Maritime Bureau, uncovering a slew of ugly deeds involving the Ye family’s private collusion with overseas traders to traffic salt and copper.

These were all capital offenses.

In an instant, the entire Zhangzhou region was thrown into panic.

The prime minister directly ordered a full investigation into Prefect Ye, and then sent people from the Ministry of Justice to bring him back to Kyoto to stand trial.

As the saying went, when the tree falls, the monkeys scatter.

The Ye family collapsed overnight.

Those who had divorced did so; those who had collaborated canceled their cooperation; everyone with any connection hurried to cut ties.

Even the Ye family’s hired workers no longer wanted to stay and labor there, afraid they would be implicated.

Besides, the Ye family had never paid wages on time anyway, so there was no one left to support them.

So the Ye family ended up with mountains of goods piled up, payments unpaid, and a flood of merchant complaints; some merchants were willing to risk utter ruin just to take the case all the way to Kyoto.

At the same time, word reached Lu Ling that Ye Meishen had left Haicheng for Siam.

Lu Ling admired the young woman’s courage.

She knew the business in Haicheng was tangled beyond untangling; there was no room left for her to get involved. Better to expand overseas instead.

After all, several countries along the coast had large numbers of Da Chong people who had relocated there.

It was easier to do business where there were plenty of your own people.

Still, she had not expected that by merely exposing the official ship incident and preparing to go all in against Ye Shengzong, she had instead brought the whole Ye family crashing down.

She had known from the start that her strategy of winning people’s hearts was meant to give the Lu family a way out.

She had not expected that this way out would unleash power far beyond what she had imagined.

"Why are the Maritime Bureau people suddenly so cooperative?" Lu Ling asked in confusion. "They’ve always been in the same camp as Ye Shengzong."

Even if the personnel changed, the mindset of government supremacy had not.

Why would they side with another merchant family?

Could it be that Ye Shengzong had offended someone?

What she did not know was that the person Ye Shengzong had offended was her.

And the one standing behind her was the girl she had brought home.

By this point, Shen Wanxin had already returned to the Lu residence and was quietly staying at Lu Ling’s side.

Lu Ling was settling accounts in the garden, her mind wandering as she tried and failed to guess which high official Ye Shengzong might have offended somewhere else to end up in such a miserable state.

Otherwise, with her methods, at most she would have made Ye Shengzong back off for a while and stopped him from exploiting her so brazenly.

Besides, she had already planned to move out of Haicheng by the end of the year and persuade her father to resign from office so they could go overseas together.

The noble families of the Kingdom of Gaoluo beside Siam had long maintained business ties with her. They also depended heavily on her family’s salt and rice, so they were willing to provide her with land to operate on.

It was obvious they were trying to recruit her.

What’s more, a great many Da Chong people lived in Gaoluo, and it was said they often caused trouble, making the locals reluctant to deal with them.

The Gaoluo nobles likely wanted her there to keep her fellow countrymen in line.

"But now the relocation plan may not keep up with the changes," Lu Ling said, putting down the abacus.

She spread out the accounts and sorted them out in just a few strokes.

Tao Hong, who had been waiting nearby, skillfully organized the account books. In the process, she accidentally dropped a sheet of paper, and it happened to drift to Shen Wanxin’s feet.

Shen Wanxin bent down to pick it up; on it were a series of strange numbers, though there were also simplified characters.

It was labeled: Haicheng Economic Trend Analysis.

There were also several wave-like diagrams, clearly visible. Even though she did not understand formal calculation, she could still tell at a glance what was at stake.

Shen Wanxin was utterly shocked, but she quickly composed herself and returned the diagram to Tao Hong.

Grateful, Tao Hong turned to sort the books again, only to drop another sheet.

Shen Wanxin hurried to pick that one up as well, and found that it contained a summary of Da Chong’s fiscal situation across the entire southeastern coast for the previous year.

Just a single line and a few calculations were enough to match the accounts the Ministry of Personnel and Ministry of Revenue clerks checked every day for months on end.

It was extremely complicated.

Even when the numbers were reconciled, it would still take an entire ledger to report them.

Yet today, all of that was contained in a single sheet of paper.

Shen Wanxin stood frozen, staring blankly at Lu Ling. "What are these strange characters?"

"Arabic numerals. They’re very useful," Lu Ling said, not noticing her reaction.

Tao Hong could not help explaining either. "Last year, when Miss was bored, she helped tally Zhangzhou Prefecture’s financial situation. Though there weren’t any specific details, the estimates were basically spot on."

She was just short of saying: Our young lady is amazing!

Come praise her already!

Shen Wanxin suppressed the shock in her heart.

She had not expected Lu Ling’s talent to be so earth-shaking.

If this method could be learned, then the court’s accounts would become increasingly transparent in the future; by then, the people who wanted to stir things up and the people who wanted to embezzle would both grow fewer.

This was a systemic blow.

Much better than simply chopping heads off.

No wonder she always talked about Yu the Great taming the floods.

How could Da Chong not need a revolutionary flood-control effort of its own?

"Miss Lu, perhaps you could try doing business in Kyoto," Shen Wanxin said before she realized it.

To her surprise, Lu Ling’s face instantly darkened. "Kyoto isn’t free. Once merchants go there, they’re just lambs waiting to be slaughtered. I’m not going."

She actually disliked Kyoto that much.

Shen Wanxin felt a little hurt.

But she did not say anything.

Lu Ling went on, "What’s bothering me right now is that the Ye family looks about ready to fall."

"There’s still a mess left behind in Haicheng, and one million two hundred thirty thousand in compensation."

That amount of money honestly was not much to her, but she simply did not want to clean up Ye Shengzong’s mess.

Before they had completely fallen out, she had even thought about taking it on herself.

But now that she thought about it, forget it.

Let the Ye family fill the hole they had dug themselves.

"At this point, the whole of Haicheng, maybe even Zhangzhou, probably hates the Ye family to death," Lu Ling said, though not in a gloating way. She simply felt that the Ye family was too clumsy in the way they handled things; their arrogance as a Haicheng elite family was too great.

Now that the wall had toppled, everyone pushed it down. Once Ye Shengzong was convicted, the Ye family in Haicheng would basically be finished.

By then, the people they had oppressed would certainly seize the chance to strike back and take revenge.

Ye Meishen’s departure for Siam was actually a wise move.

Just as Lu Ling was preparing to write a letter and ask Ye Meishen to keep an eye on the durians over there, she was planning to send a ship later to buy some back.

She wanted to turn them into Zhangzhou Prefecture’s king of fruit and sell them to the other prefectures.

Siam probably did not yet take durians seriously. After all, they had no real economic use yet.

She might as well make a profit while she could.

Just as she made up her mind, Tao Hong returned with an unexpected visitor.

It was Miss Ning.

Seeing her dressed in plain clothes, with none of the bearing of a young lady left, Lu Ling was a little taken aback. "Miss Ning, this is..."

Before she could finish, Miss Ning suddenly knelt with a thud. "Miss Lu, please spare our Ning family!"

At this point, she no longer wanted to keep fighting Lu Ling.

She could see it clearly now. Her elder brother’s arrogance had brought trouble on himself, and at the same time it had revealed something.

That was that the current court was not like it had been under the late emperor. Its moods were fickle, its policies unstable, and it had clearly decided to put the business world in order.

Especially in the southeastern provinces.

The finances of the Jiangnan region had already bottomed out; now that the economy in the southeast was improving day by day, the court had noticed and was paying attention.

Miss Ning said, "As long as you spare the Ning family, the more than one million in compensation will be paid by our Ning family."

Lu Ling could not stand being bowed to. She went over and helped Miss Ning up. Although the two of them had had business conflicts, most of them had been open competition; unlike Ye Shengzong, who stabbed people in the back.

So she could tolerate Miss Ning challenging her more than once. After all, that was healthy competition.

Ye Shengzong, on the other hand, was trying to drive out the good with the bad and had kicked a steel plate.

"The one million-plus in compensation is the Ye family’s matter; it has nothing to do with your Ning family," Lu Ling reminded her.

Miss Ning shook her head. "My cousin is the matriarch of that household after all. As long as she’s still in the Ye family for even a day, the Ning family can’t just ignore her."

"Besides, our Ning and Ye families have long been tied too deeply together."

"Miss Ning, I’m not trying to lecture you, but you should learn from the others and think about how to avoid risk," Lu Ling said. "The sooner you cut ties with the Ye family, the better."

"As for the compensation, I’ve already decided to find another way."

Miss Ning looked surprised. "You don’t need our family to pay?"

More than one million; if they paid it out, they would either be left barely clinging to life or stripped to the bone.

It was nowhere near as simple as she had imagined.

Lu Ling naturally would not use the Lu family’s money to fill the gap. She planned to use the reputation she had spent all this time building to stabilize the market.

If the trouble continued, not only would ordinary people suffer, the entire Haicheng market would also be thrown into huge upheaval.

She still wanted a good environment in which to keep doing business.

"I’ve already decided to turn over the water transport tickets for the Lu family pier to the Maritime Bureau. From now on, the government will back them and protect the shipping routes."

In the end, she still could not escape an arrangement within the system.

But this was also the best outcome.

A few merchants making trouble on a small scale could never sustain the hundreds of thousands in profit from water transport.

The court probably had its eye on it long ago.

Ye Shengzong had monopolized Zhangzhou’s water transport for years and made a fortune off it; it would be strange if no one were jealous.

Once Ye Shengzong made a mistake, someone would jump out and stab him in the back.

"But cooperating with the government..." Miss Ning hesitated. "You know what kind of man my brother is, and the other lords..."

Setting aside her identity as a prefect’s relative, as a merchant, Miss Ning herself was not very fond of dealing with the government either.

Merchants were simply too passive.

One misstep and they could lose their heads. Never mind making money; there were risks of losing everything. So it was better to stay conservative.

Lu Ling said, "That’s not something you or I can decide. From here on, we can only use the water transport tickets to steady confidence in the Haicheng and Zhangzhou markets and trust that merchants will still be willing to stay in Haicheng."

"If Miss Lu ever needs anything, I’ll be at your service from start to finish," Miss Ning promised.

Lu Ling nodded. "I certainly won’t be stingy about using you."

Only then did Miss Ning leave in peace.

She probably had to cut ties with the Ye family once she got out.

Shen Wanxin could tell that she did not like the court, but she still asked, "If things are done according to Miss Lu’s idea, how do you think the government should regulate the business environment in Zhangzhou Prefecture so that it achieves the greatest benefit and remains mutually profitable?"

Lu Ling did not hide anything at all and told her directly, "Shares."

"You can go with a shareholding system. The government provides the backing, takes the larger share of the profits, and the merchants just focus on business. If there’s risk, the government helps offset it. That way merchants can become proper businesses under market regulation."

"With this channel in place, no one will risk taking crooked paths anymore."

"On the contrary, with the government involved, even if merchants suffer losses, they won’t suddenly plunge below the bottom line or end up with their families ruined."

She had seen too many merchants whose families were ruined by a shipment delay, sometimes to the point where everyone in the household committed suicide.

That was why she always settled the final payment on time.

If someone was truly in difficulty, she could even offer loans, and the interest was lower than the official rate.

Quite a few merchants borrowed from the Lu Family Bank. As soon as they made money, they paid it back immediately, afraid of damaging their reputation and of not being lent to again next time.

Thanks to loans, many merchants had extended the life of their businesses.

They had also created a great many jobs.

Shen Wanxin’s eyes lit up as she listened. "Then in your view, how much profit should the government take, and how much should the merchants keep?"

Lu Ling said, "The government takes seventy percent; the merchants take thirty. That thirty percent can include commercial taxes, land taxes, purchase taxes, and so on."

It was clearly still tilted toward the government.

A flicker of delight passed through Shen Wanxin’s eyes.

It seemed Lu Ling did not hate the imperial court that much; she only hated bad governance.

Over the years, I’ve already thought about it. If Haicheng’s GDP is used as the basis for calculation, it can radiate out to sixty percent of Zhangzhou Prefecture," Lu Ling said again, picking up the abacus and starting to move the beads. "The six counties of Haicheng can generate six hundred thousand in annual tax revenue."

"Sometimes the lower-level clerks still shave off two more layers when collecting taxes, so at minimum, seventy thousand more in taxes is needed."

"The court’s rule is that as long as each county pays ten thousand taels, it counts as passing."

One could say they were almost overperforming the quota.

Shen Wanxin looked somewhat approving of the magistrates’ ability.

Lu Ling said, "The actual tax amount is this much, but the circulating commercial capital is at least a hundred times that."

As soon as she said that, Shen Wanxin’s pupils widened. "Six million?"

That was almost one-tenth of the imperial treasury’s annual income.

TL Note:

tree falls, the monkeys scatter (树倒猢狲散) = when a powerful patron collapses, everyone connected to them rushes to flee or cut ties.

The Great Yu taming the floods (大禹治水) = a classic legend about large-scale, systematic flood control; used here to mean major structural reform.