(2) The Truth Comes to Light

The moment Han Jian, Wang Qiugui, and Hong Tai entered the room, Shen Wan, who only a moment ago had still been carrying himself with such bluster, immediately wilted.

Han Jian had been the steward appointed by the Splendid Silk Shop's original proprietor—Chu Mingxi's father, Chu Yi—back when he was still alive, while Wang Qiugui had served as the shop's seamstress. Both were highly capable and utterly devoted to the Chu family, having followed them faithfully through the years. Because the two of them worked together so seamlessly, and their temperaments suited each other so well, over their long years working side by side a bond had grown between them, and Chu Mingxi, delighted at the prospect of joining their two households into one, had personally arranged their marriage. Later, when the Four Seas Inn opened, Han Jian was transferred to serve as its manager, and Wang Qiugui was promoted to head the Splendid Silk Shop—until, following Chu Mingxi and her son when they settled permanently at Yueyue Manor in Weibo, the position was passed to Hong Tai, who had previously handled bookkeeping and inventory tracking for the shop's fabric stock. To ensure Hong Tai's family could settle comfortably, Chu Mingxi had likewise arranged a fine residence for him, so that he could serve her in Chang'an without any worries weighing on his mind.

Wang Qiugui had had nothing to do with the Splendid Silk Shop's affairs for years now, so for her to rush all this way from Yueyue Manor, over a thousand li, surely meant that Hong Tai's practice of underreporting the accounts had already come to light, urgent enough to summon Wang Qiugui personally, no matter the distance.

Seeing the group enter, Tian Xu took his seat in the position of honor and gestured for Han Jian and Wang Qiugui to sit below him. Hong Tai, the moment he was dragged into the hall, immediately dropped to his knees and began kowtowing, begging for mercy.

"For a moment I lost my senses—I raised the prices in secret without authorization. Please, Manor Lord, spare my life."

"Daring to use falsified double ledgers to deceive me—such shameless audacity." Tian Xu slammed his right hand hard against the tea table, the sound making Hong Tai shudder and bow his head even lower, and even Shen Wan standing nearby felt a chill run through him.

It had, in fact, been Shen Wan who had encouraged Hong Tai to keep the falsified double ledgers in the first place—Shen Wan did the very same thing himself. For those goods sold through competitive bidding, he still recorded them at the original listed price in the books, while Hong Tai secretly inflated the price of the Shu brocade he sold, pocketing the difference as his own private "profit."

In truth, this sort of scheme was hardly clever—anyone with real intelligence generally wouldn't attempt it. It required someone either not quite bright enough, or clever but lacking the resolve to properly execute a scheme, to even consider such a thing. The reason was that Chu Mingxi had established a layered system of oversight across every one of her shops in every region. In Chang'an, for instance, every shop was required to submit its account books to Han Jian, the overall manager for Chang'an, every ten days without fail. Once Han Jian confirmed everything checked out, he would report to the head of the enterprise every three months, presenting the account books for all the Chang'an shops, including the Four Seas Inn, for review. Even when Chu Mingxi happened to be away traveling with the trading caravan rather than at Yueyue Manor, a full review would still take place at least once every six months at most, and occasionally there would be surprise inspections at random shops as well. And this same pattern held true across every major city where Yueyue Manor maintained shops nationwide—Chang'an, Luoyang, Weizhou, Yangzhou, Jinguan City, and even outposts along the Silk Road. Given this rigorous auditing system, anyone harboring dishonest intentions had virtually no chance of slipping past Chu Mingxi's watchful eye undetected. The wisest course, then, was always to keep still rather than stir, to hold firmly to one's duties.

Shen Wan and Hong Tai, these two fellows, were neither particularly clever nor especially bold in their actions, but their fatal flaw lay in their own arrogance—they had assumed that, with Tian Xu inexperienced in the ways of the world and freshly bereaved of his mother, he surely wouldn't have the mental bandwidth to keep tabs on them. What's more, Tian Xu had grown up at his mother's side since childhood, always quiet and well-behaved; it was only when he traveled south and north with the trading caravan, where sudden crises arose more frequently, that his mother would sometimes need his help, entrusting him with various responsibilities—partly as training for him, in preparation for eventually taking over the business smoothly. As a result, he appeared far more capable and composed within the caravan than he typically did elsewhere. But the two managers stationed long-term at Zhenbao Tower and the Splendid Silk Shop in Chang'an had almost never witnessed that sharper, more capable side of Tian Xu, and so they had fallen into the grave misjudgment that "if not now, then when?"

What Shen Wan did not know was that Wang Qiugui, having received Tian Xu's secret orders, had, in order to avoid tipping anyone off, already quietly slipped into the capital the day before without drawing any attention. After meeting up with Han Jian at the Four Seas Inn, they had waited until Hong Tai closed the silk shop that evening before inviting him over. The moment Hong Tai saw Wang Qiugui, alarm bells went off in his mind; even as he made a show of exchanging pleasantries with a false smile, he was already scrambling to figure out how to handle the situation. But the couple before him—Han Jian and his wife—had both once served as managers of the Splendid Silk Shop themselves. How could any of the shop's affairs, large or small, possibly be hidden from the two of them?

At this point, Hong Tai was overwhelmed with regret—he should never have let his resolve waver, never let his head grow hot, never listened to Shen Wan's persuasion. He had, in fact, been a fairly honest man at heart, but human selfishness and greed simply couldn't withstand persistent temptation, especially when the young Manor Lord was still so young and had never shown any particularly impressive display of authority before them—and so Shen Wan and Hong Tai's nerve had inexplicably grown bolder and bolder.

While his thoughts were still churning wildly, Wang Qiugui's voice reached his ears.

"If you truly recognize your wrongdoing, there's no need for so much talk—simply confess honestly before the Manor Lord tomorrow, and lay out everything about your conspiracy with Shen Wan, holding nothing back. The Manor Lord will let you keep the residence you currently live in; sell it, move your whole family out of Chang'an, and you'll have more than enough to purchase a new residence elsewhere, with money left over to start some small business and support yourselves without any trouble."

"Manor Lord..." Hong Tai stammered.

"Naturally, that means the young Manor Lord, who is inheriting the position," Wang Qiugui said.

"Send your carriage driver back to tell your family that you're catching up with old friend Han tonight, having a meal and some drinks, and that you drank a bit too much, so you'll be staying the night at the Four Seas Inn. Tomorrow, old Han will personally send someone to escort you back to the shop, so your family won't have any cause for worry."

"Are you forcibly detaining me?" Though Hong Tai wasn't especially sharp, he understood well enough what these words implied.

"Whether you'd call it forcible or not, you'll agree to this whether you want to or not," Han Jian added immediately. "Your residence and the Shen household are both entirely surrounded by hidden guards right now—not even a bird could fly out. What exactly do you think you're going to do about it? What choice do you even have? If you don't cooperate properly, don't blame the Manor Lord if your family ends up paying the price."

And so, that night, Hong Tai had no choice but to remain quietly at the Four Seas Inn under Yuesheng's watch, and the following day, Yuesheng personally drove the carriage to "escort" him, accompanying Tian Xu on the way to Shen Wan's residence.