Chapter 12: That Is My Money
His strides were enormous, his wide sleeves billowing as he charged forward with the unstoppable force of a tiger descending the mountain.
In reality, however, his murky old eyes were peering through the slits of his eyelids, carefully measuring the distance between himself and the coiled-dragon pillar.
Even the rhythm of his steps concealed a trick. There was plenty of thunder, but hardly any rain—the speed of his charge was nowhere near enough to prove fatal.
“Your Excellency, you mustn’t!”
“Lord Left Censor-in-Chief, think this through! The Great Abyss Kingdom cannot afford to lose you!”
The upright scholar-officials behind him, completely unaware of what was really going on, shed tears of emotion one after another. Their wails rang through the entire hall.
Several young officials had rehearsed this scene with him countless times, and their coordination was flawless.
They rushed forward like hungry tigers pouncing on prey, wrapped their arms around the Left Censor-in-Chief’s waist, and clung tightly to his legs.
“My lord! Please stop!”
“If you throw your life away, how can Heaven’s justice endure?!”
The Left Censor-in-Chief struggled violently, shouting in grief and outrage, “Let go of this old man! Let me die!”
His movements were enormous, but he did not move forward even a single inch.
The Golden Chime Palace had become the perfect stage for these upright scholar-officials to show off their acting skills.
They wailed and cried to the heavens, putting on a magnificent performance of a loyal minister suffering for his principles.
From the Dragon Throne, the tyrant Su Zhen watched the hypocritical farce below with icy indifference.
His eyes churned with bone-chilling killing intent.
These old bastards who prided themselves on their moral purity relied on the opinions of scholars across the realm to play this game of moral coercion in court every single day.
Did they really think the Longquan Sword in his hand was dull?
Since you want to die so badly, then I’ll grant your wish today!
Su Zhen’s hand moved toward the hilt at his waist, his knuckles tightening.
He was just about to give the order for the Imperial Guards to chop off the old bastard’s head and hang it outside the Meridian Gate for public display.
At that critical moment...
A remarkably crisp sound came from the little chair beside him, a chair made of pure gold and studded with diamonds.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk...”
The sound was not loud, but amid the wailing of the assembled officials, it was particularly jarring.
Su Zhen’s hand froze on the sword hilt.
He turned his head and looked at his precious daughter, who was sitting beside him and enthusiastically devouring a roasted leg of lamb.
Su Yaoyao’s eyes were shining as she held up half a roasted leg, golden-brown and glistening with oil.
She chewed the meat while watching the officials below, who were crying themselves into a heap, with great interest.
Her clear eyes glittered with the mocking amusement of someone who had seen through the ways of the world—as though she were watching a traveling troupe perform acrobatics.
[This old geezer’s acting is incredible! The Oscars owe him a little golden statuette!]
[Those fake moves, that positioning, those exaggerated microexpressions—what a loss to the Great Abyss Kingdom’s opera houses that he never took the stage!]
Su Yaoyao unleashed her complaints in her head, and her thoughts exploded through Su Zhen’s mind like a rapid-fire cannon.
[And he’s always shouting about living on plain porridge and simple vegetables? Claiming he’s spent his whole life poor and devoted to the people?]
[I’m embarrassed for that orange-peel face of his!]
[Every night, after everyone in his household has fallen asleep, the old man sneaks into the secret passage in the rear courtyard like a thief.]
[The cellar is lit by roaring charcoal fires, and a master chef hired at great expense from Lingnan has long since prepared a suckling pig that was barely a month old, its skin crisp and its meat tender.]
[He bites into it with a loud crunch, grease running down the corners of his mouth. The way he eats is more savage than a starving wolf.]
[That charcoal-roasted suckling pig, crisp on the outside, tender within, and sizzling with fat—he can polish off more than half of one by himself in a single meal!]
From the Dragon Throne, the corner of Su Zhen’s mouth twitched violently.
Charcoal-roasted suckling pig? Sneaking food at midnight?
So this was the Left Censor-in-Chief, supposedly so pure and incorruptible that he lived on nothing but plain porridge and vegetables!
Su Yaoyao’s thoughts were filled with scorn.
[After stuffing himself full, he even uses the finest scented mouthwash to rinse his mouth, terrified that someone will smell the meat on his breath when he attends court the next day.]
[He eats rich, greasy food like this every day and has managed to give himself high blood pressure, high blood lipids, and high blood sugar!]
[It’s only because this ancient era doesn’t have medical testing equipment. Otherwise, his three-high numbers would scare the Imperial Medical Academy’s chief physician to death on the spot!]
Although Su Zhen had no idea what “the three highs” or “the Oscars” meant, he understood perfectly well that the old bastard gorged himself on delicacies every night in a cellar.
And yet just now, he had put on an emaciated look, as though he were about to collapse from hunger at any moment!
Su Zhen forcibly suppressed the urge to laugh. Without revealing anything, he shifted a little closer to Su Yaoyao.
[And that ragged court robe he’s wearing is a miracle of ancient haute couture!]
Su Yaoyao took a huge bite of lamb and continued ruthlessly exposing the old man’s secrets in her mind.
[He wears patched clothes to court every day, claiming he’s so poor he can’t even afford to have a new outfit made.]
[And this bunch of ignorant bookworms actually believes him!]
[That robe cost him a thousand taels of silver. He went all the way to Jiangnan and hired the finest embroiderer to make that “ragged” outfit to his exact measurements!]
A thousand taels?!
Su Zhen sucked in a sharp breath.
The official salary openly paid to a first-rank official of the Great Abyss Kingdom amounted to little more than two hundred taels of silver a year.
Yet a single “ragged” court robe of his had cost a thousand taels?!
[The fabric looks coarse, but it’s actually rare old homespun from Jiangnan—warm in winter, cool in summer, and exceptionally breathable.]
[To make the robe look worn, the embroiderer soaked it in a special herbal solution for forty-nine days.]
[Even the positions of the patches were calculated by a feng shui master. It was all about the beauty of imperfection.]
Su Yaoyao swallowed the meat in her mouth and took a sip of tea to cut through the grease, thoroughly delighted.
[And inside the lining beneath those patches, there are countless threads woven and sewn from pure gold!]
[When the wind blows, the gold threads glimmer faintly in the sunlight. He tells everyone that the shine is just the result of washing the clothes until they’ve faded.]
[The gold thread hidden inside that robe alone would be enough to feed an ordinary family for an entire lifetime!]
[A thousand taels of silver for a single ragged robe, and he still has the nerve to cry poverty and perform a deathbed remonstration here? He’s so hypocritical it makes me sick!]
On the Dragon Throne, Su Zhen’s eyes glowed green, like a starving wolf in the dead of night.
Excellent!
Simply excellent!
So this was the “upright scholar” of the Great Abyss Kingdom who cursed him every day in court for extravagance and accused him of caring nothing for the people’s lives?
So this was the moral paragon whom scholars across the realm worshipped?
Su Zhen was so furious that he nearly burst out laughing right there.
He stared coldly at the Left Censor-in-Chief, who was still performing his deathbed remonstrance below, his eyes filled with mockery.
He wanted to see just how long the old bastard could keep up the act.
Su Yaoyao raised the leg of lamb and viciously tore off the last succulent piece of meat.
She chewed loudly before dropping the final bombshell.
[Still, considering how desperately the old geezer is performing today, he was probably driven into a corner.]
[He must be panicking like crazy right now, desperate to regain some sense of relevance in court.]
[After all, something major happened to the huge sum of money he hid in his ancestral grave last night.]
As soon as these thoughts emerged, Su Zhen’s ears pricked up.
His imperial eyes shone a hundred times brighter than lightbulbs.
His ancestral grave? A huge sum of money?!
The thirty thousand taels hidden in the dry well outside Zhaoyang Hall, which he had learned about while eavesdropping outside the window the previous night, had already left him too excited to sleep.
And now there was an even greater surprise hidden in the old man’s ancestral grave?!
Su Yaoyao wiped the grease from the corner of her mouth.
[The old geezer went to great lengths to hide five hundred thousand taels of embezzled money in his family’s ancestral grave.]
[He thought no one would ever find out. He even used his own ancestor’s coffin as a shield.]
【You can guard against outsiders day and night, but you can never guard against a thief in your own house!】
Five hundred thousand taels?!
Su Zhen felt as though the enormous figure had nearly blown the top off his skull.
【Last night, his wastrel son—equally skilled at eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling—owed a huge gambling debt to an underground casino.】
【The scoundrel had actually brought a group of men in the middle of the night to dig up his own family’s ancestral tomb!】
【A full five hundred thousand taels of silver—his son had hauled it all to the casino overnight and lost more than half of it in a single night!】
【If the old man found out, he probably wouldn’t even need to pretend to bang his head against a pillar. He’d be so furious he’d suffer a cerebral hemorrhage and drop dead on the spot!】
Five hundred thousand taels! An ancestral tomb! A wastrel son! Half lost at an underground casino!
This explosive stream of information struck Su Zhen’s forehead like nine bolts of heavenly thunder.
Three hundred thousand taels plus five hundred thousand taels—that made a full eight hundred thousand taels of silver!
That old bastard alone was worth half the treasury of the Great Abyss Kingdom!
And now, half of it had actually been lost at a casino by some worthless wastrel?!
That was His Majesty’s money!!!
Uncontrollable fury and elation shattered Su Zhen’s reason.
“Bang!”
A deafening crash rang out.
Su Zhen slammed his palm onto the imperial desk. His tall, imposing body rose abruptly, like a frenzied dragon awakening!