Chapter 383 - 279: Everyone Is a Talent

Chapter 383: Chapter 279: Everyone Is a Talent

The scene was beyond description.

Tang Wen couldn’t help but watch with a critical eye for a quarter of an hour.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to watch longer. The main issue was that the master of the house only "performed" for a quarter of an hour before his expression soured, practically screaming, ’This is boring,’ and ’You women, get off me.’

The courtyard to the right was pitch-black. Black Death Grass forced its way through the cracks between the flagstones, and only a single, flickering lamp remained lit at the gatehouse.

It looked like it had been abandoned for a long time.

Tang Wen landed in the middle courtyard.

The man shooed away the attending women, his aged face etched with deep exhaustion.

He downed a cup of Tiger Bone Wine, wrapped his robe tightly around himself, and went into the inner room to sleep.

This was an old and frail Veteran Extraordinary.

Worn down by years of wine and women, it was hard to say how much of his combat strength remained.

He was the perfect target.

A moment later, a darkness deeper than the night itself enveloped his bedroom.

Tang Wen wasted no words, immediately unleashing a Spiritual Five-Chain Whip.

Five lashes of Spiritual Power.

It whipped the man straight from his bed to the floor!

The Elder Extraordinary, like a fish gasping for air out of water, arched his body rigidly, struggling on the ground.

The corner of Tang Wen’s mouth twitched. ’I overestimated this guy. Don’t you dare die on me!’

But the old man couldn’t recover. It seemed his eyes were about to roll back into his head.

Tang Wen reluctantly took out an Elixir and stuffed it into his mouth.

After a good while, the man finally came to, his life hanging by a thread.

"I ask, you answer."

"Understood." The voice was weak and hopeless, but there was no nonsense.

Faced with a ruthless man who had nearly killed him and then saved him, he couldn’t muster the will to resist.

That experience was the closest he had ever been to death in his entire life.

"How much grain have you stolen over the years?"

"Too much. Over two million jin."

Tang Wen was taken aback. "Where are the ledgers?"

People who skimmed money off the books always kept records.

They were especially meticulous about who their partners were, how much each got, who their superiors were, and how much they paid in "respects"—all recorded with crystal clarity.

After some searching, Tang Wen found a dozen or so ledgers in a hidden compartment of the rice vat in the man’s kitchen.

They were called ledgers, but they were really just sheets of Kraft Paper.

Scrawled across them in tiny, crooked characters were dense records of every transaction they had made over the years, stealing grain from the granary.

He gave them a quick look.

Tang Wen now understood that the upper echelons of this battalion were rotten to the core.

SPLASH!

A cup of cold tea was poured over the Elder Extraordinary’s head.

It jolted him awake.

He was dazed for a moment, but then he felt the killing intent in the darkness and his heart trembled. ’It’s over!’

’Someone must have been taken down, and I’ve been implicated!’

To this moment, he still believed Tang Wen was a high-ranking official from the Huang Family sent to audit the accounts.

It was a natural assumption. If he wasn’t sent by the Huang Family, who would be interested in their secret ledgers?

Never mind that no one had dared to provoke the Huang Family for years.

Even if an outside enemy came looking for trouble with the family, they would seek out the responsible parties. Why would they target a mere granary guard?

His game was one of social maneuvering, not of fighting and killing.

’No matter who was seeking revenge, it shouldn’t land on my head!’

"My lord, for the sake of my many years of service to the family, please spare my grandson! He’s a promising talent of our Huang Family!"

"That depends on your performance." Tang Wen knew the man had misunderstood, and a smile touched his lips.

Hmm?

The Elder Extraordinary’s heart eased slightly. He couldn’t afford to overthink it and asked cautiously,

"My lord, what are your orders?"

"The ones managing the granary on the next mountain over, how much do you know about them?"

"That bunch is just as corrupt!" the Elder Extraordinary blurted out.

Snitching on one’s accomplices has been considered a way to earn merit since ancient times.

The Elder Extraordinary’s spirits lifted. Sensing a glimmer of hope, he began to speak effusively.

It turned out the battalion with the granary on the mountain was called Shishui Battalion.

And this place was called Pingtian Battalion.

Shishui Battalion’s advantage in Farming was its lake and poultry farming, which provided manure to fertilize the fields.

Their Maize yields were very good.

As the saying goes, if you live by a mountain, you live off the mountain. If you live by a granary, you live off the granary.

Storing large quantities of Maize had always been a problem.

Let alone managing the rotation of new and old grain, just preventing rodent infestations and stopping Exotic Beasts from stealing grain was a huge headache.

The daily storing, sunning, and moving of grain resulted in significant losses.

These losses were where the profits lay.

The neighboring Shishui Battalion stored several million jin of Maize.

Their daily reported losses were enough to feed a family of ten for a year.

According to the Elder Extraordinary,

the family’s upper management didn’t care about these things. Whatever was reported as a loss was accepted as such, with few questions asked.

So, Shishui Battalion secretly sold off rice every day, focusing on a slow but steady stream of income.

But they, Pingtian Battalion, were even more ruthless!

There were no mountains around Pingtian Battalion.

Unable to hollow out a mountainside for storage, they built their granaries on flat land, making them incredibly sturdy.

The ground was even paved with a technology similar to cement.

The granaries were built to be absolutely watertight.

The losses were astonishingly small!

On top of that, there were family members in the battalion skilled at taming Fine Waist Dian Dogs. Although these hounds were only Low-level Exotic Beasts, they were experts at early warnings and catching rats.

As a result, even incidents of Exotic Beasts stealing grain were rare.

So where were the profits for Pingtian Battalion to skim?

They managed a grain-producing battalion just like the others. Were they supposed to eat chaff and wild greens while others feasted on delicacies?

Was that even possible?

Fortunately, as long as one’s thinking doesn’t falter, there are always more solutions than problems.

After some investigation, they discovered that while the plains were good for growing grain, the dry weather in winter made them prone to fire.

Plus, they were surrounded by open farmland with no cover.

If a fire broke out at night and wasn’t discovered in time, it would often grow into a massive, spreading blaze.

So, every two or three years, a fire would "break out" near the battalion’s granaries.

And then, what a coincidence, a few granaries would burn down.

Losses of anywhere from a hundred thousand to two or three hundred thousand jin of Maize were thus created.

On top of that, the granaries were high-spec buildings.

Rebuilding them required another sum of money and grain!

And just like that, the higher-ups of Pingtian Battalion began to live the good life.

Tang Wen listened, nodding to himself. The killing intent in his heart dissipated.

He looked at the old man with great satisfaction.

’The more cadres like this the Huang Family has, the better!’

He even wished this Elder Extraordinary could run a training course for the Huang Family’s key members and teach them a thing or two.

’How could I possibly kill such a talent?’

After he finished speaking, his mouth was dry. He waited anxiously for Tang Wen’s judgment.

The reason he had confessed so clearly was twofold.

First, Tang Wen had come in like a killer and terrified him.

Second, he knew that when the family’s experts came to investigate, they would surely bring a Heart Stone.

He had witnessed the mental torture inflicted before the Heart Stone was used; even a man of iron couldn’t withstand it.

He was old and knew his own limits.

Knowing he definitely wouldn’t be able to hold out, he figured it was better to be honest from the start.

That way, even if the expert before him didn’t believe him,

once they used the Heart Stone and heard his answers remained consistent, they would know he wasn’t lying.

He might also suffer a little less.

As the man waited uneasily, Tang Wen carefully considered his tone and asked, "If I wanted to secretly take a million jin of grain from the neighboring battalion, is there a way to ensure the family doesn’t launch a massive investigation?"

"What?!"

The Elder Extraordinary exclaimed, his eyes wide with shock.

He was shocked by Tang Wen’s question.

And he was shocked by the sheer quantity he mentioned.

But he was, after all, an old hand at stealing grain from the battalions and quickly pieced things together. ’What?’

’Could it be this late-night visitor isn’t one of our own higher-ups?’

’Then who is he?’

A moment’s thought made his heart tremble as panic set in.

Stealing grain and betraying the family were two completely different things.

Stealing grain might mean his own death, but his descendants could still live on.

But betraying the family?

The Huang Family’s rules had absolutely no room for negotiation when it came to traitors.

Tang Wen saw his struggle clearly.

He took out the Token he had taken from Huang the Seventeenth Lang’s mother and pressed it firmly against the Elder Extraordinary’s face.

The character for "Huang," written in reverse, was imprinted on the old man’s face.

The man reached up, touched his face, and relaxed.

’It really is one of our own higher-ups.’

’I get it!’

He understood now: it was a family higher-up looking to make some extra money on the side.

’Now *this* makes sense!’

’As expected of someone from the family. He might not understand the grain business, but he came straight to me.’

’Having an old hand like me figure it out for him... truly brilliant.’

Tang Wen, seeing the change in his expression, spoke at the right moment. "You’d better think carefully. If something goes wrong, you’ll be the scapegoat."

The Elder Extraordinary wasn’t alarmed by this; instead, he looked pleased. "And if... nothing goes wrong?"

"Heh, if it’s done cleanly, then you can pretend I was never here tonight."

"My lord, the matter is simple. We just need to make a few people disappear."

Tang Wen smiled faintly. ’And there’s the solution!’

"Explain."