Contentment with modest wealth

Chapter 315 Cliff of No Way Out
As a eunuch in the Directorate of Ceremonial, no one understood the current situation around the emperor better than Gao Hong.

Yan Liang agreed, then hesitated for a moment before adding, "That day, Uncle Lu was also with Shen Bo before the Emperor. But Uncle Lu hasn't given us any information these past few days. Father, would you like to go to the Lu residence to check?"

After listening, Yan Shu paused for a moment and said, "No need. Lu Jia is his biological daughter after all. Jiang Shi has disgraced him so much. Jin Shi's attack on Lu Jia is also a slap in his face. It's one thing for him not to come and demand an explanation, but do you expect him to come and inform us? He wouldn't stoop to that level."

"Right now, the most important thing is to join forces with him to curb Shen Bo's arrogance!"

Yan Liang nodded: "In that case, I will prepare a generous gift and send it to the Lu residence later. After all, this matter was caused by our eldest branch, so it is only right that I apologize."

Yan Shu nodded: "Go ahead."

Yan Liang walked out of the study, let out a long sigh of relief, and then strode towards the eldest son's house.

As he passed by the third house, he heard laughter and merriment coming from the courtyard. He frowned, stopped to listen, and then stepped inside: "What are you doing in broad daylight?!"

On the swing under the wisteria trellis in the courtyard, Yan Qu was embracing a maid and touching and pinching her.

Upon hearing his angry rebuke, the two immediately separated and stood up.

The maidservant knelt down with a thud. Yan Qu, feeling guilty, took a half-step back and bowed, asking, "What brings you here, elder brother?"

"You good-for-nothing! Don't you know what's going on at home? My father and I are so busy we barely have time to breathe, and you, on the other hand, have the leisure to sneak a bite here! If your wife sees you like this, how will she face her husband?!"

Yan Qu's face showed some impatience upon hearing this: "If you want to scold me, then scold me. Why bring her up? She'd rather be lost at home!"

"Is this something you should be saying?" Yan Liang gritted his teeth. "If you had treated her any better, would she have treated you like this?"

"She was a pampered and precious daughter of a high-ranking official in her family, but she's treated like trash in our home! You don't care at all about your father-in-law's attitude!"

"Alright, alright!" Yan Qu waved his hand. "I know you're busy. What errands do you need me to do? I'll go!"

Yan Liang turned to leave. After a moment's thought, he glared at him and said, "Father needs to send a message to Eunuch Gao in the palace. Go ahead!"

"understood!"

Yan Qu quickly made his escape.

Yan Liang was still furious, and his face was still etched with anger when he walked out the door.

Lu Ying was walking towards them with her maid.

She looked at Yan Liang, who had already walked away, and then at Yan Qu, who was slinking away in disgrace, and stopped in her tracks: "What happened?"

Upon hearing the noise, the maid in the courtyard hurriedly rushed out, clutching her chest.

Lu Ying paused, then looked coldly at Yan Qu who had slipped away, sneered, and continued to step out the door.

She took a deep breath at the threshold, then pursed her lips and turned back to look in the direction Yan Liang had left. ...

Mr. Chong's letter clearly explained the matter of Jin Huai, and with the details of the prison provided by Grand Marshal Shen, the whole cause and effect of the case can be pieced together.

Jin Huaiming knew that it would be inconvenient to travel in the rain, but he ignored the advice that Grand Commandant Shen had specially delivered and insisted on going forward in the rain, which resulted in 300,000 taels of silver falling off a cliff and becoming untraceable.

If we think about it the other way around, what if that 300,000 taels of silver had never fallen off the cliff?
Of course, with so many people, it would be extremely difficult to ensure that dozens or even hundreds of carriages and horses didn't fall off the cliff and that they could secretly cross the sea. So, let's assume that the convoy they set off with wasn't carrying 300,000 taels of silver at all, but something else entirely?
So, the 300,000 taels had somehow been transferred away long before they even reached the cliff?

In short, the timing of Jin's marriage to the eldest son of the Yan family, Jin Huai's suicide by poison while imprisoned, the fact that the coroner from the Dali Temple reported him to the emperor as having died from his injuries, and his mysterious death a year later—all of this could only have been accomplished by a powerful and influential figure.

The Yan family possesses this power.

The Liu family case has just been concluded. Liu Zheng and Su Chen were sentenced to prison, while Zhou Sheng's crime of destroying the dike and flooding the fields was even more serious. However, because the Ministry of Revenue is still settling the tax accounts of the docks over the years, the case is still under investigation.

In short, this has freed up some time for Shen Qingzhou.

The day after Mr. Yi's visit, he immediately instructed Song En to send people to find relevant witnesses in the Jin Huai case.

Although the Yan family would certainly not leave these loose ends, considering the large number of soldiers escorting the wagons, it's possible that some might have slipped through the net.

However, that afternoon, as Lu Jia was seeing off the Third Princess, who had grown up under the care of Consort Yi in the palace and later married into the capital, Song En brought news that there were no witnesses.

"Really not a single one?"

Lu Jia blurted out the question Shen Qingzhou wanted to ask. "There are at least two or three hundred people, it's impossible to kill them all."

“It wasn’t that two or three hundred people were silenced, but rather that there weren’t that many people who knew about it back then,” Song Enxi explained. “The vehicle overturned and fell off the cliff that night without any clues. I asked Mr. Yi, and he also said that the generals who went to investigate at the time unanimously agreed that the scratches on the ground were indeed left by a vehicle carrying heavy loads that lost control and slid down the cliff.”

"So far, almost no one has found any flaws in it."

“Then the problem couldn’t have occurred during the escort that night.” Lu Jia looked at Shen Qingzhou. “If all the vehicles really did overturn into the cliff, then the only explanation would be that the money was transferred before arrival, which would fit the hypothesis.”

Shen Qingzhou paced back and forth: "The place where you fell off the cliff is only two or three hundred miles away from here. Have you gone to check it?"

“A group of people have already been sent to check it out. The cliff is a hundred feet high. According to the hunters at the foot of the mountain, there is a deep pool at the bottom. People used to go in there a hundred years ago, but wild animals started to appear frequently, and landslides blocked the road. No one has been able to go in since.”

It means there's no way to go in, meaning there's no way to explore further.

“This trick was indeed brilliant,” Lu Jia said. “In this way, hundreds of thousands of taels of silver were obtained out of thin air, while at the same time the war in the Northwest was dragged down. If we were lucky, we might have even caused the commander-in-chief to suffer a defeat, or even killed him on the spot!”
"In any case, it will satisfy the Yan family's desire to avoid war and even more so, their desire for their father to lead the army."

Shen Qingzhou raised his head: "After leaving the city gate, it is more than a hundred miles to the northwest before leaving the capital region. That is not three thousand taels of silver, nor three hundred taels. If it is difficult to move the silver without the eyes of the soldiers on the cliff, it will be equally difficult to succeed without leaving a trace elsewhere."

"Instead, it would be easier to let the silver fall to the bottom of the cliff, and then transport it away when everyone thought it was impossible to find it."

"We still need to go and investigate again!"