In fact, your master is not as good as you think! Liu Baiyu murmured silently in his heart, rode a big donkey to find Zhang Tianhong, and took more than 20 guards to find an important person. What is so important about this person?

?It’s shocking to say that he is Liu Baiyu’s white glove!

There is a town more than ten miles away from the county seat, called Anle. Unlike most towns in the Little Ice Age, which were dilapidated and had more dead people than living people. It is unclear whether they are in the world of the sun or the underworld, it has abundant water resources and is surrounded by water.

Surrounded by springs, dotted lakes, ponds and rivers.

Anle is so uniquely endowed by nature. Naturally, it is different from most lifeless Shandong small towns. It is more similar to the legendary Jiangnan. Wealth and prosperity are everywhere here. Although it is not a first-class large town on the Shandong plain, there are still 500 people here.

There are many families on both sides of Shangxiatang Road paved with stone slabs, houses with black tiles and white walls, and shops one after another.

Rice shops, cloth shops, grain shops, ironware shops, boat shops, grocery stores, teahouses... Not only are there everything that an ordinary small town should have, but there are also silk and satin shops, dyeing houses and silk shops that should be there.

A "big business" that only exists in counties and even prefectures. There are even a few temples filled with cigarettes and dedicated to gods and Buddhas.

In the southwest corner of this town, there is a small but very exquisite house. This is Mr. Du's "residence".

The country people did not understand the rules of the imperial court, and society in the late Ming Dynasty was not as sensitive to overstepping the rules as it was in the early years of the Republic of China. Master Du, a wealthy man with a scholarly background, was openly called the master, and his residence was called "Du Mansion".

The afternoon breeze is just right, and the slightly warmer temperature makes people sleepy. Ordinary people want to have a comfortable sleep, let alone these people. In the water pavilion of the garden pond of "Du Mansion", the teeth are light.

Knock, and the sound of a woman singing softly can be heard faintly.

Master Du Du Guangjiu was leaning on a Xiangfei couch imported from the south of the Yangtze River, with his eyes slightly closed. Half asleep and half awake, he snored weakly and occasionally said a few words in his sleep. A maid knelt beside the couch, holding back.

Feeling sleepy in the afternoon, I gently beat my master's legs.

Although he has been asleep for more than two quarters of an hour, no singer or maid dared to stop without the master's instructions. People are worthless nowadays, and there are many people who want to be slaves, and Master Du is a so-called soldier.

A member of the legal family, even if she has the body of a maid, she will always fall out when she falls out with her. How dare she slack off!

It's just that there is no such love affair as was exaggerated all day long in later generations, because Mr. Du's appearance is really too disappointing for the young girls who are full of expectations for the image of a scholar.

Mr. Du is in his middle age. Although he is a scholar and his family can be regarded as a "poetry and calligraphy heirloom", he has no connection with the image of "white-faced scholar" or "Jiangnan romantic talent" in the storyteller's mouth. He is a dark and strong man.

. His face was full of flesh, and even when he was asleep, he showed a ferocious expression and occasionally trembled a few times, scaring even the birds away.

Du Guangjiu was a typical "Broken Boot Party", which was the "title" given to such scoundrels by the society at that time. Almost all Broken Boot Party members were scholars or supervisors, and they were also considered to be well-dressed people who could move around the government.

, and at the same time, it is the underworld that speaks. He has energy in both black and white. He usually takes charge of lawsuits, talks about right and wrong, has various tricks, has no scruples, and is very rogue. He is a kind of high-level gangster who wears the cloak of a scholar.

As for lending money to earn interest and exploiting the villagers, it is even more commonplace.

Therefore, when his father was alive, he restrained his son from doing evil, so the Du family originally opened a private school in the town to make a living. After his father died, Du Guangjiu became a gangster, relying on these black and white ideas.

His connections, overt or covert means of making money, have developed in just over ten years. In recent years, he has taken over the grain taxes of nearby villages. Every summer and autumn, he can make a lot of money by defaulting on arrears and paying less.

There is little "outside". The family business is very prosperous, and in a few years he was barely considered the number one person in the county.

Although Du Guangjiu is a bad guy and has done a lot of evil things outside, he still looks good in his hometown and town. Not only is the interest rate on borrowing money lower than ordinary people, but he is also more restrained in doing things. This is not because of him.

He is kind-hearted, but his background is really not enough. He doesn't have much land, and he doesn't have many nursing homes and villagers. As a foreigner, the family is naturally very small. However, the world is not good recently, and there are many idiots who kill officials and commit rebellion.

, as a small landowner, he naturally did not dare to provoke public anger.

The most important thing is that Zhang Tianhong, the richest man in the county, is a pedantic person. He doesn't release the usury money, and he doesn't allow others to release it. In addition, he has a brother-in-law relationship with Magistrate Guan, so Li Tianhong is also a pedantic master.

, even if he gave money or gifts, he would still be kicked out. He was just a scholar, but if he really annoyed Zhang Tianhong, he could be deported as a scholar with just one piece of film. In this way, without the talisman of the White Dao, he would be almost like an ordinary gangster.

So he basically had the mentality of "I would rather offend a gentleman than a villain", thinking that he and Zhang Tianhong were on the same page.

Du Guangjiu has also been very troubled recently. Although he received a lot of property with the help of natural disasters this time, it's just that he had so much money. Most of it was collected by other squires. With the continuous disasters these years, the squires all want to have cash in hand.

I urged him to sell it as soon as possible. However, due to successive years of disasters, the property was half-dead. If he had to sell it too early, he would have to pay back the money!

What kind of world is this? Anyone who makes loan sharks will lose money! Du Guangjiu feels that this is the reverse of the world, but the world is like this, and it is useless for him to scold him. He can only try to survive, demolish the east wall to make up for the west wall, and appease the squires.

, Fortunately, the squires screamed fiercely, but in fact there are not many channels to make money. There are many who take interest and few who take capital, so Du Guangjiu can still fool around for the time being and has not fallen into the most terrible cash flow depletion in the financial industry.

destiny.

Continue to lend according to this market price? Or should we raise the interest rate? Du Guangjiu's head hurts terribly. The former means taking in a large amount of non-performing assets, while the latter may cause a rapid decrease in business. His own tricks of demolishing one wall to make up for the other have been completely exposed.

, although it is stated that loan sharking is one of his "exclusive business contents", in fact, he has never formed a monopoly nearby. Lending money to earn interest is the main means of making money for the squires. He, a shabby shoemaker, would never dare to dream of one.

People eat alone, and the apparent monopoly is actually just a trick of the country gentry, using it as a cover.

But Zhigui knew how he, a small landowner, could be the opponent of the squires. He could only curse a few words behind his back, but still had to laugh in front of them.

But at this stage of money lending, Du Guangjiu has no other ideas. Let's just mess around. If it doesn't work, just run away. Besides, most of the money lending gentry here are bumpkin. If he really escapes to other provinces, he won't be able to catch him.

Yes, it's just that he has too little cash recently, and he can't even afford a thousand taels. If he runs away, he is afraid that this amount will not be enough to start a business in other provinces again, so he thinks it is better to wait a little longer.

Du Guangjiu just withdrew and acted like a turtle. Anyway, these days were the busy farming season, and no one had time to file a lawsuit even before it was time to pay taxes. He didn't have much "business" except the usual morning routine.

In addition to going to teahouses to get some information, chatting with "friends" from all walks of life to see if there are any opportunities for success, I just spend my days leisurely at home.

His snoring gradually became louder, and at this moment the housekeeper hurriedly walked up from the garden path, holding a business card in his hand.

When Du Guangjiu was sleeping, no one dared to disturb him, otherwise he would have to be hung up and beaten to death. But today this guest was no small matter, so the housekeeper walked into the waterside pavilion and called out a few times.

"What's the matter?" Du Guangjiu was woken up by someone. He was originally full of evil fire, but when he saw that the person he was calling was a calm housekeeper, he knew something big was going to happen, so he asked quickly.

"We have guests to pay our respects."

"who is it!?"

"Zhang Tianhong, Mr. Zhang and his adopted brother!"

"Zhang Tianhong, Mr. Zhang!" Du Guangjiu was most afraid of this person. He suddenly trembled and said as a conditioned reflex:

"No friendship, no see, no see!" Although Du Guangjiu boasted in front of his servants that he and Zhang Tianhong were inseparable and that he would "rather offend a gentleman than a villain", the strength of both parties was very clear.

He is the richest man in the county, and he is the fifth and sixth squire in the county. He cannot afford to offend him!

"Oh, Du Guangjiu! You are so arrogant, how dare I disappear?" Zhang Tianhong and Liu Baiyu walked in side by side, and several guards dragged Du Guangjiu away like a dead dog.
Chapter completed!