In the main hall of the Wang family's grand mansion.
Although the sun was shining brightly outside, its warmth could not be felt inside the room.
The teacups on the table had long lost their heat, and the wilted tea leaves sank to the bottom, mirroring the complexions of the prominent figures of Jiangning sitting in the hall at this moment.
A sharp crack broke the atmosphere.
Zhao Chongli, the head of the Zhao family, slammed his golden abacus heavily onto the table, making the yellow rosewood table tremble.
"Stop calculating, what's the point of calculating anymore!"
Zhao Chongli's plump face was covered in greasy sweat. He usually looked like a shrewd businessman, but right now, his face was filled with despair.
"If we keep calculating, my Zhao family will lose our very underpants!"
Sitting in the seat of honor, Wang Ruhai's face was terrifyingly dark.
He was rapidly rolling two iron Baoding balls in his hand, the friction creating an annoying, grating sound.
"What are you panicking for!"
Wang Ruhai gritted his teeth, the flesh on his cheeks trembling.
"Our four great families have been operating in Jiangnan for over a hundred years. Are we going to be forced to our deaths by a little girl?"
Zhao Chongli sneered, picked up the stone-cold tea, and took a huge gulp, not even minding the bitterness.
"A little girl?"
"Old Wang, haven't you realized the reality yet?"
"Is Xu Qinghuan an ordinary girl? She's a living Yama!"
"One hundred coins for a bolt of cloth, and buy five get one free—is that something a human would do?"
"Yesterday, I sent someone to check out that Lemin Hall, and the line was so long it almost reached the Qinhuai River!"
"And our fabric stores? You can catch sparrows at the door! The shop assistants are too tired even to swat flies on the counters!"
At this time, Wang Mang, a young man from a branch of the Wang family, could no longer hold it in.
This kid had always been reckless. Relying on his family's power, he was used to running amok in Jiangning and had never suffered such frustration.
"Uncle, why are we wasting words on her!"
Wang Mang stood up and viciously rolled up his sleeves.
"Isn't that girl just relying on that broken factory?"
"If we can't do it openly, we'll do it in the dark!"
"Tonight, I'll take a few hundred brothers, pour kerosene, and burn that Jiangning Number One Cotton Mill to the ground!"
"Let's see how she fights us when she has no machines!"
As soon as these words came out, the eyes of the younger stewards in the hall lit up.
After all, being from powerful families, they hadn't used such underhanded methods any less in the past.
Simple, brutal, and very effective.
There was another sharp crack.
But this time it wasn't a table being slapped. Instead, Wang Ruhai backhanded Wang Mang with a solid slap across the face.
Wang Mang was spun around by the blow, half of his face instantly swelling up high.
He covered his face, looking at his uncle in disbelief.
"Uncle, you..."
"Idiot!"
Wang Ruhai was trembling with anger, pointing at Wang Mang's nose and cursing.
"Do you think that's an ordinary factory?"
"That is a place where the First Prince, Xiao Jingxing, personally hung the plaque! And there's an imperially bestowed sign hanging at the door that says 'Sharing the Nation's Burdens'!"
"You want to burn the factory? How many heads do you have to chop off?"
"Besides, are you blind?"
Wang Ruhai took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the surging blood in his chest.
"Didn't you see the three thousand Black Armored Soldiers around the factory?"
"Those are the Emperor's personal guards, the Black Armor Guards who crawled out of piles of corpses!"
"Let alone bringing a few hundred servants, even if you brought a few thousand, it would be suicide!"
"They are just worrying about not having an excuse to draw their swords, and you're offering your neck to them on a silver platter?"
Wang Mang shrank his neck after being scolded, not daring to utter a sound.
Zhao Chongli sighed from the side, picked up the golden abacus again, and weakly flicked the beads a couple of times.
"If hard tactics won't work, we'll just have to outlast her."
"I don't believe her price of one hundred coins can last long."
"Even a mountain of gold and silver wouldn't survive such squandering, right?"
"We'll lower our prices too and fight her to the end!"
Wang Ruhai looked at Zhao Chongli like he was an idiot.
"Lower prices?"
"Old Zhao, is your head full of mush?"
"What is our cost? It's one whole tael of real silver per bolt!"
"And what about Xu Qinghuan?"
"I had people ask around. That monster called the Spinning Jenny allows one person to do the work of dozens of weavers!"
"Her cost is fifty coins at most!"
"If we drop to ninety coins, that's cutting our own flesh; that's suicide!"
"She's making a huge profit selling at one hundred coins!"
"If we fight a price war with her, our funerals will be over before she even finishes spending her money!"
The hall once again fell into a deathly silence.
Everyone felt a deep sense of powerlessness.
Holding broadswords and spears, they simply couldn't fight against a machine gun.
The faster they charged, the worse they would die.
"Then... then what do we do?"
In the corner, the patriarch of a small family who hadn't spoken raised his hand tremblingly.
"It seems we won't get a bite of the cloth trade meat."
"How about we change industries?"
"We won't do cloth; we'll do salt!"
"Jiangnan is prosperous. Although the government takes the lion's share of the salt and iron profits, the private channels..."
As soon as these words were spoken, Wang Ruhai's face looked even worse.
He picked up the cold teacup to take a sip and calm his nerves, but found his hands shaking so badly that the tea spilled all over him.
"Salt?"
Wang Ruhai gave a bitter laugh, his voice filled with desolation.
"Do you think I haven't thought of that?"
"But don't forget, there's still a big Buddha sitting here in Jiangning City."
"Master Xie."
"Although that old fox doesn't manage things on the surface, his eyes are always watching us."
"If it were in the past, he might have turned a blind eye to us dealing in illicit salt."
"But now..."
Wang Ruhai pointed in the direction of the imperial palace.
"The one up there is currently worrying about not having money for the war."
"That crazy girl Xu Qinghuan is now a cornucopia in the Emperor's eyes, the imperial court's Goddess of Wealth."
"If we dare to touch illicit salt at this critical juncture, we'd be touching the Emperor's money bag."
"When that happens, without Xu Qinghuan even lifting a finger, others will wipe out our entire families, young and old."
"This won't work, and that won't work either!"
Zhao Chongli finally broke down, throwing his beloved golden abacus to the ground, scattering golden beads everywhere.
"Are our four great families just going to wait here to die?"
"A hundred years of foundation, destroyed by a prodigal woman?"
Wang Ruhai closed his eyes and leaned back in his armchair, as if he had instantly aged ten years.
"Endure."
After a long time, he spat out a single word.
"Endure?" Zhao Chongli's eyes widened.
"Yes, endure."
Wang Ruhai's voice was deep and hoarse.
"No matter how formidable Xu Qinghuan is, she's only enjoying temporary fame."
"A tree that stands out in the forest will surely be destroyed by the wind."
"By causing such a huge commotion, it's not just us who hate her. Will those true power players in the capital just sit back and watch her dominate?"
"What we need to do now is pull our heads in and act like turtles."
"Sell whatever family assets we can, and downsize wherever possible."
"As long as the green hills remain, we won't have to worry about a lack of firewood."
"I don't believe Xu Qinghuan can keep sailing so smoothly forever!"
For a moment, only the sighs of the crowd remained in the hall.
A group of big shots who usually summoned the wind and rain in Jiangnan, making the ground tremble with a stamp of their feet.
Were now huddled together, shivering.
The scene held an unspeakable irony and dark humor.
...
The Capital, the Imperial Palace, the Imperial Study.
The golden floor tiles were polished so brightly that they reflected people's shadows.
Emperor Tiansheng paced in circles around the room with his hands behind his back, the hem of his dragon robe swishing with his steps.
He paced so fast that it made the Minister of Revenue, who was standing to the side, dizzy.
"Money! Money! Money!"
Emperor Tiansheng suddenly stopped and turned to glare at the Minister of Revenue.
"My grand army is still starving in the northern frontiers!"
"The war has only just begun, and the national treasury is already bottoming out?"
"What exactly does your Ministry of Revenue do?"
"I need money! Without money, what am I supposed to use to fill that bottomless pit in the north?"
The Minister of Revenue, Lord Shang, held a teacup in his hands, not daring to move an inch, let alone take a sip.
He had never drunk tea so slowly in his entire life; he wished he could chew on a single tea leaf for the time it takes an incense stick to burn.
The sweat from his palms had long since soaked the cuffs of his official uniform.
"Your Majesty..."
The Minister wore a bitter expression, his voice sounding worse than crying.
"I truly have no other way."
"With all the natural disasters and man-made calamities these past few years, we haven't been able to collect taxes from the various regions."
"And the noble families in Jiangnan are monopolizing..."
"Do not mention the Jiangnan noble families to me!"
Emperor Tiansheng flew into a rage at the mere mention of those words, his beard bristling.
"A bunch of parasites! The giant rats of the state!"
"Normally, they are all full of benevolence, righteousness, and morality, but when it comes time to ask for money, every single one of them cries poor more miserably than the last!"
"I really want to confiscate their estates!"
Just then, a flurry of hurried footsteps suddenly echoed outside the imperial study.
Immediately after, a young eunuch rushed in, practically stumbling and crawling, his hat knocked askew from running.
"Report—"
"Urgent report! An urgent report from Jiangning!"
"Your Majesty, great news!"
Emperor Tiansheng froze, his brow furrowing even tighter.
"Great news? Where would great news come from?"
"The war in the north isn't even over yet."
"This isn't right."
The young eunuch was completely out of breath, holding a memorial high in his hands.
"It... it's not about the war..."
"It's silver, Your Majesty! It's silver!"
Emperor Tiansheng's eyes lit up. He dashed over in a few quick strides and snatched the memorial.
With a swish, he unfurled it.
He only took one look.
Emperor Tiansheng's hands began to tremble.
Then his arms shook, and finally, his entire body was trembling.
The Minister of Revenue was terrified, thinking to himself that the Emperor must have been angered into a fit.
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, please take care of your dragon body! If a rebellion has broken out in Jiangning, we..."
"Hahahahaha!"
A burst of wild laughter suddenly erupted, nearly blowing the roof off the imperial study.
Emperor Tiansheng laughed until tears came to his eyes, then slapped the memorial right onto the Minister of Revenue's face.
"Rebellion? What rebellion!"
"Look at it yourself! Look at it yourself!"
The Minister of Revenue fumbled to catch the memorial and focused his eyes on it.
Instantly, he also felt as if his heart had been ruthlessly squeezed by someone, nearly passing out on the spot.
"This... this, this, this..."
"Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands..."
"Fifty thousand taels?!"
"And that's just the profit from half a month?!"
The Minister of Revenue's eyes practically bulged out of his head, his mouth gaping wide enough to fit an egg.
"That old fellow Xu Youde says in the memorial that after implementing the policy of merging the poll tax into the land tax, textiles have been incorporated into the tax silver, plus the tax revenue from that cotton mill..."
"My heavens!"
"How is this a cotton mill? This is clearly a magical cornucopia come to life!"
Emperor Tiansheng was grinning from ear to ear, his steps noticeably lighter as he paced back and forth in the imperial study.
"Excellent! What an excellent Xu Qinghuan, what an excellent Xu Youde!"
"How did I not see earlier that this father and daughter duo were such incredible prodigies?"
"What spendthrift daughter? What ignorant and incompetent fool?"
"She is clearly my God of Wealth!"
Emperor Tiansheng waved his hand vigorously, his dragon robe snapping in the air.
"Pass down my decree!"
"Reward them! Reward them heavily!"
"Tell Xu Youde to go all out and do as he sees fit!"
"If he causes any massive trouble, I will cover for him!"
"And as for that Xu Qinghuan, I shall confer upon her... I shall confer upon her the title of..."
