Prince Li You of the Great Tang Dynasty begs the noble families to their deaths!

Including the soldiers sent earlier and the reinforcements that followed, Huang Chao's army in Xiangzhou City now numbered over six hundred.

Although the monk Yuanjue had a large business and employed many thugs, they were still no match for Huang Chao's army.

Jing Song has been closely following Yuan Jue recently and knows his whereabouts very well.

"My lord, the monk Yuanjue has three private residences, each with concubines and servants. I've roughly counted them, and there are over four hundred of them in total. There are also over a hundred ruffians in the city who are directly under Yuanjue's command."

"The temple is quite complicated. There are monks directly under Yuanjue's lineage, as well as monks managed by other senior monks. As for those poor nuns... they have probably all become tools for Yuanjue to make money."

Li You nodded: "Very good. Gao Shun will be in charge of the investigation in the city. Chu Ji, you will do as Yuan Jue instructed and make sure he doesn't suspect anything. Jing Song, you will infiltrate the temple, bribe the monks with money, and gather as much information as possible."

"promise!"

"There's one more thing. You told me before that Yuanjue owns many businesses in the city. Besides the shady businesses of all sorts of people, among his legitimate businesses, the most numerous are money shops?"

"That's right. Almost all the wealthy families in Xiangzhou City are involved in the business of selling goods. Among them, Yuanjue's business is the largest and most extensive. The wealthy families are willing to give him money, and they can basically make a lot of profit through Yuanjue's shops."

"In this way, Yuanjue can indirectly control many wealthy people, and basically the entire Xiangzhou will give him face."

"What you say is true, my lord. Yunju Temple has always been a popular place of worship, and this is largely due to Yuanjue Temple."

Li You closed his eyes and thought for a moment.

Monk Yuanjue is the most interesting person Li You has encountered since his time travel.

This person is extremely wicked, extremely greedy, extremely intelligent, and extremely talented.

Li You is no longer so concerned about the amount of Yuanjue's wealth.

The total amount of wealth, when calculated, is nothing more than a cold statistical figure.

He developed a strong interest in Yuanjue's methods of accumulating wealth, his ability to manage his various industries, and even his extreme greed.

Humans are indeed the strangest, most valuable, and most contradictory beings in the world.

Of all the means to generate wealth, Yuanjue chose the money exchange shop as his main business, which was the prototype of the bank in later generations.

Yuanjue's banking business is simple and brutal: making money from money and controlling people with money.

The most terrifying thing is that his shop is not subject to government supervision and can basically do whatever it wants.

Li You suddenly realized that the supervision of all the profitable industries in the Tang Dynasty seemed to be virtually non-existent.

In the absence of regulation, as long as you work hard, you can make a lot of money.

Let's take a few of the business deals that Li You himself has done as examples.

The linen woven by the textile workers could be used directly as currency. In later times, this would be equivalent to having dozens of money printing presses at home, and the money printed would be real money.

Those ancient trees that have grown in the mountains for decades or even hundreds of years can be cut down and burned to make charcoal for sale without the forestry bureau coming to check.

You can hunt and kill all kinds of wild animals at will, and no animal lovers will bother to stop you.

There's also the salt industry.

In the early Tang Dynasty, the salt industry was not regulated, and both official and private salt existed, and the quality was generally poor.

When Li You was cooking meat, he didn't even want to use that kind of dark, inferior salt; it made him feel nauseous just looking at it.

As for the private slave trade in Luoyang, Chang'an and other places, it goes without saying.

There are also various mines. As long as you have the ability to mine them, the imperial court will not stop you. Just remember to pay taxes in the end.

The only businesses that are strictly regulated are those involving the military, such as weapons and horses.

In Li You's eyes, the kind-faced old monk Yuanjue in Xiangzhou City was exactly like the Yellow-Eyebrowed Elder of Xiaoleiyin Temple, except that his human bag was filled with huge amounts of wealth and the blood and tears of the people of Xiangzhou.

When Li You woke up in the middle of the night, he couldn't help but think, "Shouldn't I have transmigrated into the Zhenguan Era? Shouldn't it be a prosperous age with wise and capable rulers, diligent governance, and people living in peace and contentment? How come it's such a messy and chaotic place?"

Forget the magnificent Tang Dynasty, it's more like the Wild West.

……

Three days later, Zhou Chuji collected all the customary fees and took the initiative to seek out the monk Yuanjue.

Upon entering the Buddhist hall, Yuanjue grabbed him.

"You scoundrel, you're so ignorant! I told you to kill someone, not to kill my men too!"

Zhou Chuji chuckled: "Monk, your people are incompetent. They're dead, so what? Can a dead person be brought back to life? If you ever ask me, Huang, to do something again, don't send anyone to spy on me."

"Otherwise, if one comes, they'll die; if two come, they'll both die. In the long run, all the monks in your temple will be dead. Who will ring the bell and perform the rituals for you then?"

Yuanjue stared intently at Zhou Chuji with his large eyes, but the latter showed no sign of backing down, and the two faced off.

After a while, Yuanjue released his hand, concealed the fierce light in his eyes, and became kind and gentle again.

Zhou Chuji, still smiling, handed a few pages of paper to Yuanjue.

"Old monk, this is my record of the fees I collect. Your disciple has already taken the money."

Yuanjue flipped through the paper in his hand. He saw that it was filled with neat, chessboard-like grids, with names and Arabic numerals filling the grids. It looked very neat and eye-catching.

"Amitabha. Your method of bookkeeping is quite novel."

"They were all given to me by my father; I didn't know how to use this before."

"If your master knew about your outrageous behavior and the killings you've committed, wouldn't he punish you?"

"I will inform the head of the family of everything I do, and I will only do it if he agrees."

"Heh, this old monk is now quite curious about your master."

Zhou Chuji changed the subject: "There are more than a dozen shops on the form that have been losing money and haven't paid the 700 coins. I covered their costs, and you have to pay me back for that shortfall."

Monk Yuanjue said, "For such detailed accounts, you can simply go to Huiru to collect them. A form... is this thing you drew called a form?"

"Yes, that's the form."

Yuanjue carefully studied the table on the paper and felt that it was very ingenious, somewhat resembling the crisscrossing patterns on a chessboard.

"Monk, why not rent these dozen or so unprofitable shops to me and let me do some other profitable business?"

"Amitabha Buddha. You wish to rent these shops?"

"Of course, our head of the household is a seasoned businessman. He has many skills besides making charcoal. Opening another shop means earning more profit."

Yuanjue thought for a moment, then pointed to the list on the form and said, "You can take the shops from Yuan's, Sun's, the Qian family, the Xu family, and the Tao family, but not the other shops."

"Why is that?"

"Amitabha. Apart from these five, all the other shops owe me money."

"What? Just because they owe you money, does that mean you can't rent out the shop?"

Yuanjue laughed and said, "Have you heard of 'donkey rolling'? These people are too greedy and have borrowed too much money. If they keep rolling for a while, they will lose themselves to me, thus making two profits. Once I clear out these people, the shop will be empty, and you can rent as many rooms as you want."

Yuanjue's tone made it sound as if he were treating these people who owed money as commodities.

Zhou Chuji was slightly taken aback, then said, "Tsk tsk tsk, the business of passing the imperial examinations is indeed ruthless in making money!"

"Doesn't your master intend to take any action?"

"The head of the family said that the matter of taking the imperial examination is too insidious and must not be done."

Yuanjue raised an eyebrow slightly. "You, Huang Jin, you're actually insulting me indirectly."