Chapter 68

There was no way to stay in the teahouse any longer. Yun Yaoyao stepped out onto the street once they left the building.

"Your Majesty, there is definitely more to this matter. There is no way Consort Miao would ever betray you," Lin Qingti said with a sincere look on his face.

Di Shunzhi nodded in agreement. "Someone must be pulling strings behind the scenes. Their intentions are utterly detestable!"

Zhou Siren thought for a moment. "Could it be Prince Ze? This way, he can drive a wedge between Your Majesty and Consort Miao, and at the same time weaken Minister Lin's influence in the Rites Ministry through the Consort Miao incident..."

Yun Yaoyao pondered for a short while, then gestured to Lin Qingti to put his mind at ease. "I have full faith in Consort Miao. The most important thing right now is to figure out a way to fight back."

The group was just about to head back to the Princess Manor to discuss their strategy when a commotion broke out not far down the street.

"Dammit, that kid runs faster than a rabbit!"

In the middle of the street, a dozen big, burly men were chasing a young man, panting heavily. Their faces were twisted with rage, as if they were about to tear him apart the second they caught up.

The lead big man stopped and roared, "Fifty taels of silver to whoever catches him!"

The moment those words left his mouth, the onlookers lining both sides of the street, who had just been watching the scene, tensed up and swarmed toward the young man sprinting desperately ahead.

The chaos grew more and more out of hand.

Yun Yaoyao and the rest were about to steer clear of the ruckus, but the cornered young man suddenly spotted them. His eyes lit up, and he wailed as he ran straight toward them.

"Sir! Second Uncle! Third Uncle! Fourth Brother! I finally found you! Some people are picking on me, you have to help me get revenge, waaaaa!"

In an instant, Yun Yaoyao and his companions were completely surrounded by the crowd. ......

The Dragon Shadow Guards who had been waiting in the shadows noticed that something was wrong, drew their blades immediately, and charged out to block the crowd.

The common folks and the big men, seeing these fierce-looking guards who clearly seemed to have killed many people without batting an eye, were all scared out of their wits and stepped back several paces.

Right ​​‌‌​‌‌​​‌‌​​​​‌​‌‌​​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​‌‌​​​‌​​​‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌‌​​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌‌​​‌​‌​​‌‌‌​​​​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌‌​​​​‌‌​​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​​​‌​‌‌​​‌​‌​​‌‌​​​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌‍then, the young man's voice lost all its previous timidity and grievance. He laughed wildly and arrogantly, "Do you have any idea who my master is? He is... I'm afraid the name will scare you all to death!"

"Is your life more important than that silver? You can figure that out yourselves! Now scram!"

The big men were taken aback. They swallowed hard, threw out a few harsh threats, then fled the scene in a sorry state.

The common people also hurried to leave the area.

The young man heaved a sigh of relief once they were gone, and bowed politely to Yun Yaoyao, who was at the head of the group. "Thank you so much for your help, sir. I won't even bother to say that a great kindness deserves no less than a mountain in return, so I'll just skip the formalities."

"I wish you smooth sailing, two dragons playing with a pearl, having a kid within three years, four..."

The man was turning to run away as he spoke, but the second he turned his head, a dozen gleaming sharp blades were pressed right against his neck.

A bead of cold sweat trickled down his face.

Yun Yaoyao walked over to the man, fanning himself with a folding fan, and smiled. "You are quite an interesting character."

"You used me the second you were in trouble, and now you want to run away? There's no such a good deal in the world."

The man's mouth dropped, and he immediately wailed and begged for mercy. "This sir, I truly had no other choice. I have a seventy-year-old mother at home, a three-year-old child, and a disabled, blind wife. I can't get into any trouble..."

"Oh?" Yun Yaoyao smiled faintly, half amused. "You don't look a day over twenty. Then your old mother is really full of vigor, to have a son at such an advanced age. I wonder if she would weep bitter tears when she sees the mess you're in right now?"

The Dragon Shadow Guards almost burst out laughing. His Majesty sure knows how to put those idioms to good use!

The Dragon Shadow Guard pressed his blade a little harder against the man's neck and snapped sharply, "How dare you lie to our master! You deserve to die!"

The man trembled all over, his face draining of color.

"Tell me," Yun Yaoyao's smile faded a little, "Who are those people chasing you? And who are you? Spare no details."

The man closed his eyes, and a bitter laugh echoed in his heart. He'd just escaped the tiger's den only to fall into the dragon's lair. This man looked noble and kind on the surface, but he was hiding a knife behind every smile.

There was no way he could fool this group of people, so he had to spill the whole story.

"I'm originally a peddler from Songxiang County. I made a little bit of money by transporting goods, and then I realized reselling goods made me even more, so I got into that line of work. Once I'd saved up a fair amount of silver, I came to Huangcheng City to rent a shop and run my own business."

"My business grew bigger and bigger, and I met more and more noble people."

"These rich fools spend money like water, and they're all obsessed with saving face and keeping up with the Joneses. A lot of them keep exotic pets to show off their status, like parrots, golden eagles, fine horses, all that stuff. I saw an opportunity with that, and thought up a way to make a fortune."

As he talked about the business he was most passionate about, the man's eyes were shining bright.

"I bought a whole litter of little piglets, and advertised that they were a rare breed from the Western Regions. I even gave them a fancy name: the Star-Marked Pink Silk Pig."

"But that wasn't enough. I made up a whole grand backstory for them. The Star-Marked Pink Silk Pig was said to be an ancient divine beast, born alongside the sun, moon and stars in the primordial era, full of spiritual energy, and in charge of the fortune of the world—wealth luck, official luck, romance luck, you name it. They could absorb the spiritual energy of the sun and moon above, and change a person's fate below..."

"After all that hype, I priced each pig at a thousand taels of silver, said they were a rare limited stock, and promised that the Star-Marked Pink Silk Pig, which carried the divine beast bloodline, would stop growing once it was as tall as a man's waist. If that didn't happen, I'd let them exchange their big pig for a new little one for free."

"Once I launched them, they took Huangcheng City by storm. Soon, even a lot of nobles from the capital came to my shop and paid huge sums to buy my Star-Marked Pink Silk Pigs. I made more silver than I ever dared to dream of in my life!"

The man got a little overexcited, then sighed, a look of regret on his face. "Until someone found out that I was also running a pork butcher shop..."

His tone took a sharp turn, and everyone else was stunned for a second, not catching on right away.

Yun Yaoyao figured it out immediately.

After those rich fools bought his little pigs, the pigs kept growing bigger and bigger. They thought it was just that the bloodline was impure, so they secretly exchanged their full-grown pigs for new little piglets to raise again.

And he not only made money selling the little piglets, but also slaughtered all those big pigs and sold the meat, so he didn't even have to spend a penny raising the pigs himself.

Double profit from a single pig. Those rich fools unknowingly covered all his costs and didn't even dare to say a word.

That's so shady. Even shadier than the most crooked modern real estate agent!

Yun Yaoyao understood the whole picture. "Once your scam was exposed, those rich fools became the laughingstock of the entire city. That's why they were so furious they started hunting you down, and that's how you ended up in this mess."

The man nodded. "Exactly."

Zhou Siren, who was standing aside, shook his head in disapproval at his actions. "These crooked schemes that go against morality and justice—don't you feel guilty at all for taking money you earned that way?"

The man sized Zhou Siren up, then smiled nonchalantly. "When they hand out ten thousand bushels of grain without asking if it's justified? I say that ten thousand bushels tastes pretty damn good."

Seeing that Zhou Siren was about to fly into a rage, the man's expression turned serious. He stared straight at Zhou Siren and asked word by word:

"Do you really think those nobles actually care about the Star-Marked Pink Silk Pig itself, or whether the story is true? No. The only thing they're mad about is that the status symbol they tried so hard to flaunt has been exposed for the fraud it is."

"I would feel guilty if I took the few coppers that poor folks scraped together with blood, sweat and tears from their meager meals. But taking money from those nobles who have no idea what the word 'hungry' even means? I sleep like a baby."

"I've lived twenty-two years, and I've learned one truth. In this world where class divides everyone, money always flows to people who already have more than enough of it."

"The poorest people can end up freezing to death by the roadside. In the depths of winter, they sell charcoal just to get a handful of grain, and even sell their own children just to scrape by. Meanwhile, the pets the wealthy keep live such extravagant lives you could never even imagine."

"I earn silver from the rich, and use it to help the poor trapped in suffering. I'm the ultimate match, the perfect match, the divinely ordained match — I deserve a place in the imperial ancestral temple!"

This rapid-fire string of words left Zhou Siren completely stunned. His lips moved as if he wanted to argue back, but he realized that while the other person's words seemed totally unreasonable at first glance, a closer think made them strangely make sense.

Zhou Siren choked on his retort, turned his head aside, and huffed, "That's just twisted sophistry!"

The man paid no more attention to Zhou Siren, and looked over at Yun Yaoyao nervously. He knew that the one in charge here was this extraordinary, noble-looking young master.

"I've told you everything I should and shouldn't have, young master. Could you please find it in your heart to be merciful and let me off the hook, just pretend I never existed?"

Yun Yaoyao closed her folding fan, and looked at the man with a bright, smiling face. "You really are a fascinating person."

He had a sharp business mind, the shrewd tactics of a clever merchant, was smooth and worldly yet clear-sighted, could bend and stretch with the situation, and from what he had said earlier, he seemed to be a man of heart and integrity too.

This was exactly the business talent she had been daydreaming about finding just last night.