I have the best bloodline

Su Yan looked at the litigation officer, who immediately began to take out silver to quell public grievances and prevent the county magistrate from being pushed out as a shield.

"Sentenced!"

After the county magistrates returned to the inner hall to discuss the matter, Feng Shiqi took out a piece of paper and loudly announced the verdict:

"Dai Changji and his wives and concubines lured young people into working for free through fraud. Because of his sincere confession and willingness to use his family property to repair public facilities, the following judgment is made: Dai Changji must pay the victims three times the wages in addition to the compensation. Because his despicable behavior aroused public resentment, he is punished by being paraded naked through the city and imprisoned."

"Although the woman was an accomplice, she also had a history of immoral conduct and fraud. She shall be given twenty strokes of the cane and imprisoned."

"The young men are sentenced as follows: According to the laws of Xia Yu, both the deceased husband and wife must keep vigil for a year. The young men are suspected of spying on other men's wives and young girls who have not yet reached marriageable age. According to the laws of Xia Yu, they should fence off the land for three days before the market."

Feng Shiqi announced the county magistrates' verdict in a loud voice, then looked at the more than twenty people below the stage and asked, "Any objections?"

The young men received nine times the market price in compensation from Old Dai and the magistrate. After thinking about it, they realized that this was almost a year and a half's worth of wages. Although they were unwilling to accept that they hadn't brought the flirtatious woman home, they knew that if they raised any objections, they might not even get the compensation and would have to donate it all to the government. So they accepted the magistrates' ruling.

Old Dai and the litigant, though looking distressed, had no objections.

………………

After the verdict was announced, the young men were hung with signs that read "I lust after other men's wives, I am despicable." They were then led by the bailiffs to the market entrance, where a circle was drawn in a shady spot and they were placed inside. They were ordered not to leave for three days, and the government would provide their meals. If they crossed the line, they would be paraded through the streets and confined to their territory for fifteen days.

Old Dai and the lawyer also arrived at the back hall. Their clothes had been stripped off by the yamen runners, leaving them only in their shoes and trousers. They were shackled, with fraud and indictment papers hanging on their chests and behind their backs, ready to parade around the city in a disheveled state for a day.

"Hey Lao Dai"

Su Yan walked into the back hall and looked at Old Dai and the lawyer who had just been put in shackles, saying, "Next week, our flower office is preparing to sell the rental rights of prime shops. Do you have any interest in bidding?"

The Flower City used to belong to clans, but now that the clans have fallen, the ownership of the Flower City belongs to the government.

In the past, clans would rent land and let merchants pay a price to lease shops for business.

But times have changed. Su Yan has just acquired more than 30 prime commercial properties. Before renting them out, Su Yan added a bidding fee and changed the lease term from three years to ten years.

Anyone who wants the right to rent those prime shops can come and bid.

As for who rents the property or whether it is leased out, the government has no interest in managing it; as long as taxes are paid on time, that's all that matters.

"Bidding?"

Old Dai was taken aback upon hearing this, and frowned, saying, "Magistrate Su, this is not fair of you! There was no such thing as bidding before."

“In the past? In the past, for something like this, the Hua family should have dragged you to the ancestral hall and beaten to death. Your wives, concubines, and daughters should have been sent to be drowned in a pig cage. Now, let’s be open and fair, starting with a bid of one or two spirit stones to obtain a ten-year lease right.” Su Yan waved his hand and said, “Now, it’s open and fair. We’ll start bidding from one or two spirit stones to obtain a ten-year lease right.”

The right to lease the property was obtained through bidding, and the lease fees had to be paid to the government on time.

Old Dai felt that Su Yan was robbing people. The so-called bidding fee was just a pretext. It was obvious that Magistrate Su was using a pretext to rob landlords and wealthy merchants, and then putting the bidding fee into his own pocket.

"Just tell me whether you want to rent it or not! Once you rent it back, as long as you don't do anything illegal, you can divide it into a few rooms, rent the first floor to a fruit and vegetable vendor, the second floor to a cosmetics vendor, and the third floor to a brothel madam. This will increase your turnover rate, and you can rent each floor for a higher price."

"The rent is lower for merchants, doesn't that make sense?" Su Yan said. "Then you can make a fortune while lying at home, while our government office doesn't get a penny. Isn't that a huge loss?"

Old Dai: "Do you mean I can continue to build on the existing structure?"

So it seems like paying an extra bidding fee isn't a bad deal.

Well, you can add to the building or not, but you'll need to apply for approval from the government and pay taxes and processing fees when you do.

Of course, that was Su Yan's plan, but he didn't tell Lao Dai yet. He planned to lure them into the trap first, earn them a bidding fee, and then slowly trick these nouveau riche into giving back some money by making empty promises.

Now that the flowers are suffering from the disaster, everyone is sad. If we don't try to get the landlords and rich people to give us money, do we expect the villagers to give money to the government as tribute?

Being a county magistrate is really difficult. You have to protect people's livelihoods, manage the cleanliness of the city, and maintain public order.

All of this is silver! Do you think the landlords and rich folks will donate and expect the Red King to allocate funds?

After returning to the government office, Su Yan ignored everything else and focused on attracting investment, going to the landlords and painting a rosy picture of the future for them.

They even described a stinking ditch and a dilapidated thatched hut as a riverside manor.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 330 Black Dragon Father (Third Update)

"These kids are really working hard these days!"

More than half a month has passed. Sitting in Luohe Residence, Grand Tutor Jin looked at the homework of the students from various academies collected by the Red King's army with great interest, while the Red King's complaints could be heard in his ears.

All the academy's outing areas are located in the Crimson King's territory, but some academy students disgust the Crimson King.

In just about two months, the order in the county towns of various places was thrown into chaos. The county magistrate should have collected some extra fees from the wealthy merchants in various places, part of which was used for the year-end tribute, part of which was invested in the county town, and the remainder was put into his own pocket.

Anyway, whenever a wealthy merchant came to the government office to do business, he had to pay a tea fee and a processing fee. The amount might not be large for a single transaction, but there were so many traveling merchants!

As a result, those hotheads stubbornly refused the money, putting on a righteous and indignant air as if they were some kind of upright and just magistrate. But when they later discovered that the government treasury was short of funds, they shamelessly wrote to the Red King's mansion to apply for funding.

King Chi was so angry that he was trembling all over. He really didn't know what those guys had read. It was one thing that they couldn't even make a profit and loss on their own with the resources of an entire city, but now they had the nerve to ask him for funds to build up the city.

"Hahaha"

Grand Tutor Jin listened with a smile as the Red King complained that the students of the academy were incompetent, not learning what they were supposed to learn, but instead studying things that were supposed to be glorious and righteous, which led to the city's financial losses and also offended the local natives who were originally willing to contribute money.

They had a lot of fun fighting landlords and local bullies, but now the government isn't paying them any money.

Every year, people spend a lot of spirit stones to buy privileges that don't cause public resentment and even boost the local economy. But when those students came up, they deleted all the privileges that people had bought with money.

Damn it, they're even more unruly than troublemakers!

"We don't need to worry about them or allocate funds to them. Let them solve it themselves. If they can't, let the angry people drag them out and beat them up. They should be able to understand the truth that things in this world are not simply black and white."

Grand Tutor Jin spoke to comfort the Crimson King, directly pointing out what the Crimson King had been trying to say through roundabout means.

In summary, the Red King firmly disagreed with allocating funds to those students. Not only did they not make any money, but they also had the audacity to come and ask him for financial assistance.

Grand Tutor Jin agreed without much thought. The academy's spring outing was originally a platform provided by Yongle Academy, where students competed based on their own abilities. Since it was all about individual merit, how could Grand Tutor Jin and the Red King possibly allocate funds to clean up the messes caused by those students?

"This report is interesting."

Grand Tutor Jin raised his hand and threw the homework in front of the Red King, letting him browse its contents.

This assignment comes from the Flower City and is a record of Su Yan and her partners' daily work over the past two weeks.

Red King picked up Su Yan and the others' homework and began to casually flip through it. However, the more Red King looked, the slower he turned the pages, his brows furrowed, and he said, "This guy is really shameless."

The report written by Su Yan reveals between the lines that he fabricated pretexts, extorted money, and deceived people without guilt.

First, under the guise of cooperation, they won over the original Hua family and General Bai of the demon race. Then, they jointly invested with the Hua family to build workshops for further processing. Finally, they outsourced the flower fields and city security work to the demon race.

After winning over the two major local powers, Su Yan focused his efforts on the wealthy flower merchants and landlords, trying to persuade them to invest in the city's construction, promising high returns and talking at length about the future of the flower city.

Then, Su Yan intercepted the funding allocated for the construction of Chiwang City and put it into his own pocket, starting to directly operate and build brothels, taverns, and casinos under the name of the government.

This wasn't a proper brothel; the official documents clearly stated that its purpose was to cater to landlords and wealthy merchants.

If you want to discuss something with the government, you must come here. The food and drinks inside are five times more expensive than outside. Whether you reach an agreement or not, you can still earn a sum of money into the government's accounts.

Su Yan's strategy can be described as squeezing a little here, extorting a little there, and deceiving a little here, using the name of the government to amass wealth and invest it in the construction of the city.

Then the Red King intercepted the funds allocated by the Red King. Su Yan did not write down the purpose of this huge sum of money in his homework, which made the Red King frown.

"That big swindler should come to your residence to discuss this matter with you in a while."

Grand Tutor Jin looked at the Red King with his brows furrowed, as if he were thinking about something, and said with a smile, "That kid came to bring me pastries a couple of days ago, which means he misappropriated all the funds that were diverted from the homework book."

"That initial investment also became the capital that the kid used to swindle the flower landlord!"

"He! He raised funds from the middle management of the Flower City, saying that our focus shouldn't be limited to flowers, but should extend to southern Xinjiang and the southern prefectures."

"Does he have any shame? I conquered southern Xinjiang, and now he's using the guise of a joint venture to raise funds!"

After a moment's thought, the Red King understood Su Yan's plan. He was probably using the pretext of developing the Southern Xinjiang region to lure the flower landowners into a partnership, hoping they would become his accomplices and jointly develop the commercial sector of the Southern Xinjiang region.

The so-called "pledge of allegiance" likely refers to the construction of the city and some more detailed exchanges of benefits.

With a huge amount of money at his disposal and having won over the Hua family and the Flower Demon Clan, Su Yan's next step should be to come and discuss the development of the Southern Xinjiang region.

Whether the Crimson King agrees or not is irrelevant. If the Crimson King does not agree, Su Yan will use funds to pave the way, whether by bribing or by assassinating him, to seize actual control of the cities in the Southern Xinjiang region and dump goods there.

The Red King could not be touched by the laws of Xia Yu, and he could not use any means because Grand Tutor Jin was watching from the side.

Su Yan didn't compete with the Red King for anything. Instead, he used his massive cash and military force to buy valuable assets at low prices and sell them at high prices like a whirlwind, then forced the locals to buy his things.

The strength of the Southern Frontier is different from before. The Red King has basically taken care of those tough nuts, and the strength of the Southern Frontier is no match for the current strength of the Flower Region.

City after city was swept away, and by the time the Crimson King expelled the cultivators corrupted by Su Yan with spirit stones, that shameless fellow had already run away home with all the cash he had sold.

"That white fox actually dared to scheme against me!"

After figuring all this out, the Red King couldn't help but curse Su Yan for making the most of his position, using his name to amass wealth and seize what he deserved, and then using the laws of Xia Yu and Grand Tutor Jin to control him.

"Such a despicable academy student should be placed under my command!"

The Red King said to Grand Tutor Jin, "Such a despicable and shameless fellow should be placed in the Red King's Palace. This will eliminate an unstable factor and also allow our Xia Yu Dynasty to expand its territory."

"hehe."

Grand Tutor Jin shook his head and said with a smile, "He can't take those things with him. They're just showing me the data on paper now. They should return to Xia Yu City after the spring outing."

Su Yan imitated Princess Wuxi's strategy, revealing the wild and unrestrained style of a bandit in both his inner and outer appearance.

The Crimson King liked ambitious people like this. These guys were perfect for expanding territory and maintaining stability. Therefore, the Crimson King thought Su Yan was very useful and wanted to give up some of the interests in the Southern Frontier to exchange for Su Yan to join his ranks.

However, Grand Tutor Jin rejected the Red King's proposal because Su Yan's greatest value did not lie in himself, but in the Empress Dowager of the You Su clan, whose soul was being nurtured within Su Yan's body.

Leaving Su Yan with the Crimson King, who knows how much time it will take to find that old woman.

Now that she no longer has legs, it will be troublesome for Grand Tutor Jin to find them one by one once that old woman's nine ghosts can break free from Su Yan's actions.

"After the spring outing, what belongs to you will still belong to you. He can't take those things with him. At most, he can take some spirit stones from the government warehouse."

........................

While Grand Tutor Jin was still laughing and talking with the Red King about Su Yan's shameless behavior...

In Flower City, Su Yan was fast asleep on her bed, while the Lord of the Night sat beside her, watching her compile a book. Every now and then, the Lord would put his arm on Su Yan's head and enter her dream to ask her about the troubles of growing up.

"Ok?"

What should have been a peaceful night was suddenly disrupted by a gust of wind outside the dormitory.

Sensing someone approaching the dormitory, the Lord of Night raised his hand and waved the charcoal pencil in his hand. The black charcoal pencil shot into the gap in space and hit the person outside the door on the head. When the Lord of Night came out of Su Yan's dream and used his divine sense to detect the person outside the door, he was stunned on the bed.

Afterwards, the Lord of the Night tidied up the books on the bed and then slipped into a spatial gap to leave Su Yan's bedroom.

"boom"

A humanoid black dragon, about five meters tall with a charcoal stick stuck in its head and white eyes, fell heavily backward in the backyard of the government office with a loud bang.