"Sir, wait a minute!" Manager Xu called out, "Please listen to what I have to say first."
Pei Che turned his head and looked at him with cold eyes without a trace of warmth: "What do you want to say?" His expression was very impatient.
Manager Xu immediately organized his words in his mind, and then said quickly: "I heard that you just came to Cangzhou and are currently living in the small courtyard of the back court with other officials. After hearing about this, I felt really bad. How could you treat such a respected official like you so badly? So this time I came here, I prepared a small gift, please accept it."
As he said this, he asked the servant behind him to pass the box to him, then he raised it with both hands, lowered his head and placed it respectfully in front of Pei Che.
Pei Che looked at the box in front of him, raised his eyebrows with interest, and said in a long voice: "Manager Xu, you are quite interesting now."
Manager Xu said, "This is what you deserve. I am just offering you something as a token of my gratitude. Please do not despise me, sir."
"Hahaha," Pei Che laughed. He took the box, turned around and sat down in the same place. He only said, "If you were so easy to talk to just now, I wouldn't have said I was leaving."
Pei Che handed the box to Jiang Miao. Jiang Miao let them talk and smiled as he held the box and opened it. Then he found some ink sticks spread out inside, which looked like an elegant gift for a scholar.
Jiang Miao looked at Manager Xu strangely, then took out the ink stick and continued to look down. There was some white paper under the ink stick. After the white paper was taken out, a dazzling golden color appeared in front of Jiang Miao. Jiang Miao's heart skipped a beat, and he looked carefully, and there were twelve gold bars neatly placed inside.
He said that the box was heavier than it looked. Jiang Miao was about to put the things back to their original places when he suddenly found that there seemed to be something under the gold bars. He took out a few gold bars and found that underneath was a silver note - a silver note of Huitong Bank with a face value of one thousand taels.
This move was indeed generous. Jiang Miao secretly sighed in his heart. If Pei Che was really a prefect who only relied on that meager salary to support his family, he would probably find it hard to resist seeing such a box of things. A few casual words could offset several years or even more than ten years of hard work. It was simply too tempting.
At this moment, Jiang Miao admired those incorruptible adults even more. How strong a belief does it take to resist the endless temptations
Jiang Miao was glad that he was not an official and did not need such strong self-control. He was also glad that Pei Che had a rich family background and these things were not worth mentioning to them. He put the things back as they were and thought about all these things in his mind.
While Manager Xu and Pei Che were chatting, he noticed Jiang Miao's behavior. He snorted in his heart. This Master Pei looked cold, but he didn't expect that his husband and wife were so superficial. He had never seen such a person who couldn't wait to open a gift in front of others!
However, although he looked down on them in his heart, he remained calm on the surface and even spoke to them more attentively. After three rounds of drinking, Pei Che and Jiang Miao stood up to say goodbye. After Manager Xu sent them downstairs, he returned to the private room.
The private room was full of people at this time. While they were drinking here just now, they were listening to the noise in the adjacent room.
"Alas, Brother Xu, you were indeed a little inconsiderate this time. It's rare to meet such an honest person, and you didn't make preparations early, causing your business to be delayed for a few days." One person said, shaking his head.
Manager Xu smiled and said, "It's not too late now. If we don't go through this, how can we hold them responsible? You know, the scariest people in this world are those who have no desires or requests."
Everyone laughed, but in the corner, there was a man with a puzzled look on his face. When he was seeing someone off, he happened to go out to the toilet. When he looked up, he felt that he seemed to see a familiar person. That person left a deep impression on him. He was the only one who sold mountain products in the past two years and refused to sell because the price was too low. He still remembered that the boy was wearing gray clothes and looked very poor, but the man today was dressed in gorgeous clothes, and his eyebrows and eyes showed that he was unattainable.
"Old Li, what's wrong with you?" The shopkeeper next to him touched him.
"Oh, nothing. I just feel that drinking has ruined things." Old Li came to his senses and attributed it all to the effect of alcohol.
In the government office, Jiang Miao took Chan Yi and Wen Jing to deliver the things sent by Manager Xu to the government office warehouse, and took the treasurer and several assistants to count and make a list. They would not use this money, but they would not return it either. Since it was extorted from the people of Cangzhou, let it return to the people.
The next day, everyone went to the two streets to do business. The yamen runners who had come to beat the gong to handle cases as soon as the business opened were nowhere to be seen, which showed that the wine they drank yesterday was indeed effective.
But before they could be happy for two days, the yamen runners came again, beating drums and gongs to scare away the people, claiming that they were going to investigate a case.
Manager Xu's face immediately turned so dark that ink could drip from it. He cursed Pei Che in his heart for being "greedy and insatiable". Moreover, he was not only greedy, but also went back on his word. He was really a villain!
Each delivery can last for two or three days, and after two or three days, everything will start again. After repeating two or three times, everyone can no longer sit still. The money sent out in these few times alone amounted to more than five thousand taels. The appetite of a governor in a state capital is so big that he is not afraid of being stuffed to death!
"We can't go on like this!" one person shouted, "It doesn't make sense for us to bring goods to do business and then go back with a loss!"
Another person echoed, "That's right. I think we should leave first and never come to Cangzhou again!"
Someone retorted: "Cangzhou is a place where we have been doing business for many years. If we withdraw, I am afraid that all these years of business will be ruined. I think it is better to strike first and send that man out of Cangzhou, so that Cangzhou can be a pure land!" When he said the word "pure land", he looked so serious that it made people laugh.
Some people agree with his opinion, while others think that the people should not fight against officials, and should not confront him, and should temporarily avoid his edge.
"Okay!" Manager Xu listened for a long time and finally couldn't help but speak.
"We can't lose this land of Cangzhou. Since he is so uncivilized, we don't need to be polite to him." When he spoke, his face was hidden in the shadows where the candlelight could not reach, and his expression looked obscure and difficult to read. But the people around him were all silent, obviously very afraid of his appearance. Everyone knew that Manager Xu was serious.
"Sir, no one is open for business on those two streets today. Do we still need to go there to investigate the case?" The runner in charge of beating the gongs and drums went out for a walk and felt a little confused.
Pei Che said: "If it's not open, then don't worry about it. Just keep an eye on the movements of those two streets."
"Yes!" the yamen runner responded happily.
After he left, another person suddenly appeared in the room.
"Master, the two shops in the east of the city are closed." He was referring to the mountain products shop and grain shop of Datong Trading Company, which were the only two shops in Cangzhou at present.
"Keep watching, and report immediately if there is any movement."
"yes!"
After he left, Pei Che took out the official documents. A few days ago, he sent all the missing cases back to the original county for retrial. After he overturned the theory of wild beasts injuring people, these cases became confusing.
These county magistrates did not dare to take it lightly, because Pei Che gave them a ten-day deadline and asked them to make progress within these ten days, otherwise...
This kind of unfinished threat is actually more useful than a direct threat. People's imaginations are always much more terrifying than reality.
Before the ten-day deadline was up, Pei Che had already received official documents from below, which recorded some of their findings after reinvestigating these cases.
Among them, there was a discovery in one county that made Pei Che feel a little strange. It said that one day when the people in their village stepped into the deep mountains, they heard a loud "boom" and the earth seemed to shake. The noise sounded like a giant beast running in the mountains. It was so terrifying that the villagers fell ill after returning home.
This loud noise was indeed bizarre, and besides this villager, others also heard it. And it was for this reason that rumors spread that there were man-eating beasts hiding in the mountains, and people did not think it was strange that many big men disappeared in the mountains.
(End of this chapter)