Five Years After My Death, the Mad Emperor Still Summons My Spirit

Back in Taiji Palace, Li Yun couldn’t help but sneeze several times.

Since Ming Chengyu had taken full responsibility for dealing with Xie Ruijing, Ming Lingyi decided to trust her brother completely. Without hesitation, she assigned two of the Hidden Guards Li Yun had given her to aid him.

That same evening, Ming Chengyu privately told Ming Lingyi that the matter was settled.

This meant that Xie Ruijing was already in a "tender place."

What Ming Chengyu didn’t elaborate on was that this time, he and Zhang Sifan hadn’t just lured Xie Ruijing to some Qin Lou Chu Guan. They had taken him directly to a Dark Brothel Alley.

He felt that even talking about such things would dirty his dear sister’s ears. Little did Ming Chengyu know that just a few months ago, Ming Lingyi had taken Li Yun and Shi Mingyue to Xinghua Alley!

Xinghua Alley, of course, didn’t just have private brothels; there were also plenty of young men selling their bodies and soliciting customers.

In fact, a place like that was even more chaotic than the dark brothels.

It took Ming Chengyu and Zhang Sifan quite some effort to find out about such a "fine place." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

The young men selling their flesh there were remarkably "united," with no one trying to steal business from another. This wasn’t because of their high moral character, but because their motto was "earn money together." Several private residences had been internally connected. Once a customer chose someone and went inside, it was hard to say just how many separate payments of silver would be required.

However, something like silver was no problem at all for Xie Ruijing.

’Once Xie Ruijing enters that residence, he’ll probably think he’s arrived in paradise. Why would he care about such details?’

Ming Chengyu was too embarrassed to reveal even a hint of this to Ming Lingyi.

Even he and Zhang Sifan were so shocked their jaws dropped when they first found out.

’They really knew how to play.’

At the same time, Zhang Sifan had the cloth shops under the Zhang Family’s name launch a massive promotional event for summer fabrics.

Peak summer was just around the corner, and the major noble families in Shangjing City would soon be preparing new summer clothes.

Zhang Sifan’s move wasn’t just to help the Ming siblings. With Xie Ruijing out of the picture, if the Zhang Family’s cloth shops could corner the entire market in Shangjing City for the year, they were bound to make a killing.

Although he didn’t manage the family’s general affairs, if the family’s public coffers had more silver, people like him who received a monthly allowance might even get an extra dividend.

On the first day Xie Ruijing was in Xinghua Alley, an assistant from the shop came looking for him but couldn’t find him. The search continued for two more days. On the third day, the cloth shop’s Shopkeeper, seeing he was about to be crushed by his competitors, had no choice but to personally go and knock on the gates of the Xie Mansion.

The Xie family had more than just Xie Ruijing, a man with no official rank. The business of the cloth shop couldn’t be kept secret forever. Just as Xie Ruiyang of the third branch of the Xie family was about to go out to play polo with some friends, he happened to see the cloth shop’s Shopkeeper arrive.

Xie Ruiyang and Xie Ruijing naturally didn’t get along. In fact, Xie Ruiyang was the legitimate son of the third branch, yet he was overshadowed by Xie Ruijing in every respect.

Back then, he had felt that their First Uncle was biased. If First Uncle hadn’t directly handed the authority to manage the family’s general affairs over to Xie Ruijing, his third branch might have had a chance.

"Go, find out why this Manager Wang from the cloth shop has come to our door."

Xie Ruiyang ordered the attendant by his side to gather information. The polo match, of course, could wait.

A few years ago, when Xie Ruijing was still childless, Xie Ruiyang had used that fact to make trouble for him in front of the clan elders several times.

"They say there are three ways to be unfilial, and having no heir is the greatest." He had claimed that Xie Ruijing was surely so bogged down by the clan’s general affairs that he remained childless after so many years of marriage. The Xie family’s bloodline was precious; how could general affairs, no matter how important, compare to securing the family’s heirs? Therefore, he had proposed to share some of Xie Ruijing’s burdens so that he could focus more on producing the next generation.

But that bastard Xie Ruijing was just too cunning.

He didn’t know which of the clan elders was Xie Ruijing’s informant. The day after he made his proposal, Xie Ruijing pulled a pity ploy. Weeping and wailing, he declared that he also wanted a child, but alas, the Buddha did not favor him. He had therefore decided to take his wife to the mountains for three months of vegetarian fasting and prayer. If, after three months, his wife’s belly still showed no signs of life, he would voluntarily resign from his duties. With his tears and tantrums, a feigned retreat to advance, Xie Ruijing managed to buy himself three months.

Xie Ruiyang had previously dismissed these "womanly theatrics." In his view, Xie Ruijing and his wife had been married for nearly ten years, and the wife of Second Brother Xie had never shown any sign of pregnancy. How could three months of fasting and praying on a mountain possibly change that?

But somehow, Xie Ruijing managed to do it. A full three months later, he brought in the mansion’s doctor to take her pulse, and his wife was indeed pregnant.

Xie Ruiyang immediately suspected something was amiss. He suspected the mansion’s doctor was already one of Xie Ruijing’s men, colluding with him in a deception. But when a physician he hired from outside diagnosed his second sister-in-law, the woman who hadn’t conceived in ten years was truly with child.

Because of this incident, Xie Ruiyang and Xie Ruijing became bitter enemies.

He always suspected there was something wrong with the child in his second sister-in-law’s womb, but after ten months, the baby was actually born.

At that point, even though Xie Ruiyang felt there was something fishy about the whole affair, he had no choice but to accept the facts before him.

"Mr. Jiu, I have news!"

The man Xie Ruiyang had sent out finally returned with information.

"The Brocade Cloth Shop has started a promotion for summer clothes. I hear that if you buy fabric from the Brocade Cloth Shop and have the clothes made in their store, every finished garment is one hundred wen cheaper these days."

The Brocade Cloth Shop and the cloth shop under the Xie family both catered to the powerful and noble official families of Shangjing City. A single outfit cost several taels of silver at the very least. If it involved rare or fashionable fabric, an outfit could very well cost over a hundred taels of silver.

However, summer clothes used much less fabric, so they were quite a bit cheaper than autumn and winter garments.

One hundred wen might not seem like a large sum. But everyone knew that the ladies, masters, and young masters of a single mansion could order dozens of outfits combined. If the household was particularly large, a hundred sets or so would be perfectly normal. On top of that, wealthy families with money to spare would also have new clothes made for their servants.

The new clothes worn by servants of great noble families were far superior to those of the common folk on the street, and this represented another huge amount of business.

Calculated this way, the Brocade Cloth Shop’s discount wasn’t just a hundred wen. It was a tangible saving of several taels of silver, or even tens of taels.

The stewards of each family were the most shrewd of people. Who wouldn’t want to pocket those saved tens of taels of silver? They would naturally choose the cheaper shop, the one where they could skim more off the top for themselves.

The Shopkeeper of the Xie family’s cloth shop was well aware of these dynamics. But a discount of this scale wasn’t a trivial matter; it required the boss’s approval before they could implement it. If he made the decision on his own and the boss was later dissatisfied, the Shopkeeper would have to cover the deficit of tens or even hundreds of taels of silver out of his own pocket.

No Store Manager would be willing to suffer such a loss in silence.

But now, they had been unable to contact Xie Ruijing for three whole days. The Shopkeeper was at his wit’s end, so worried that he had developed several sores on his mouth.

If the profits for the first half of the year looked bad, he would still get a dressing-down from the boss, even if the boss himself was the main one responsible for the situation.

After all, a servant would never dare to defy or blame their master.

Hearing this, Xie Ruiyang clapped his hands and laughed out loud.

’Isn’t this a godsent opportunity?!’