The people hiding in this house were the escorts who killed their clients and robbed their goods before escaping.

They were all from the main city of Wexing Province, Fucheng and they had all joined the Jinzhen Escort Agency just a half a year ago. They decided to do such a desperate thing because they went to the gambling house and lost a lot of money.

After losing money in the gambling house, someone lent them money but they ended up with a big debt without even realizing it.

The Jinzhen Escort Agency has rules: people who work as escorts cannot gamble, visit flower houses or drink any alcohol during work. If they violate any of these rules they no longer would be able to work as escorts.

In the beginning, Jiang Zhen laid down these rules in order to prevent anyone from making mistakes because of gambling or drinking.  But because of these rules, the gambling escorts felt threatened.

The person who lent them money at first wanted to tell Zhao Jinge that they gambled, so he threatened them with losing their jobs. But then he asked several escorts to reveal some information about the escort agency to him.  After that he threatened them with their betrayal to coerce them into killing people and stealing their goods.

If they didn’t want to do it, that person would make them pay back the money and also let others know that they had broken the Jinzhen Escort Agency rules. If they did what they were told… they were promised a large sum of money while also getting their families out of Fucheng.

They were so moved that they even talked two escorts who worked with them, who were not involved in gambling into helping them.

If you worked as an escort in the escort agency you would earn two silver a month but if this was done well… The goods and money of the client would be given to them, making each person earn more than 200 silver.

With so much money and help with finding another place to stay, they would be able to start their own business in the future. So why should they work for others?

They did it so smoothly, and the guests, who showed little resistance were all killed by them before they hid in this village.

Their families were already waiting for them here.

However, just when they thought they could leave with the money, something went wrong.

The people of the Jinzhen Escort Agency reacted very quickly and arranged people all over Wexing Province to keep watch.

They had nowhere to run!

In these times, it was easy to escape, but it was not easy for a group of people to hide without a trace.

Most of the villages were very closed communities so they could all remember the stranger they saw, not to mention the sudden arrival of a group of people in the village. Making the news spread quickly was just a matter of course.

For these people with families it was impossible to live in the woods – the elderly and children could not withstand the wind and sun, if it rained…. even adult men may not be able to stand it.

As a result, they inevitably revealed their whereabouts.

When the people of the Jinzhen Escort Agency broke in with the Yamen officers, they still wanted to resist, but soon they were all restrained and unable to resist.

These people and their families added up to forty or fifty people and they were all put on a ship and sent to Jiang Zhen along with the money they had robbed and the money they received from people behind the scenes.

While tracking them… Jiang Zhen unexpectedly was also able to catch steward Li,  who had previously worked in Qingfeng Building and hired Changlong fighting business to make trouble.

“All the money and goods should be sent to the houses of the  murdered clients.” Jiang Zhen said.

When the clients’ families learned that their family members were gone, they all cried or fainted. Jiang Zhen who also felt guilty about the situation would naturally make up for it.

“Yes!” He Chunsheng answered, immediately sending someone to do it. Then he asked: “Boss, what are we going to do next?”

“Have a good interrogation!” Jiang Zhen said. Then he stood up and said: “I’ll go myself.”

Jiang Zhen knew a lot of torture methods, and all these methods were pretty good.

After he went over, he put each of those people into a small dark room where not even a shred of light could penetrate.

Jiang Zhen brought these people back in order to teach them a lesson and let others know that the Jinzhen Escort Agency was not easy to bully. He did not expect that he would also be able to interrogate them.

After all, if such a thing was necessary, he would certainly let someone else do it instead of doing it himself.

However, he overestimated the means of these people this time and underestimated their intelligence.

What they did might cost them their heads, if the person behind them did not reveal himself a little, would they still have been willing to kill?

Also stewart Lu, the person behind the scenes, gave him a lot of things in order to win him over.

Jiang Zhen dug up all the information he could from the mouths of these people, while more news came from Yabian Village.

Someone had infiltrated the dock of Yabian Village and wanted to burn Jiang Zhen ships!

Initially, they wanted to buy out the people of Yabian Village before trying to burn Jiang Zhen ships but the people of Yabian Village dock were all saved by Jiang Zhen from the Hongjiang salt farm and were all very loyal to Jiang Zhen. Therefore it was impossible to buy them.

Not only were they unable to bribe people but the villagers kept an eye on them, so before they could start to burn the ships, they caught all of them!

When Jiang Zhen got this news, he was shocked.

They wanted to burn his ships using a lot of kerosene. Once those people did that, he would lose the ships and be unable to be sea merchant any longer!

The people of the Changlong Fighting Business poisoned the chickens that Zhao Jinge raised, which was nothing to him, since he did not rely on those chickens for a living.

When the Jinzhen Escort Agency was being criticized, it was also nothing to him. At most, it meant less business.

But if his ships were burned…

A barrel of kerosene was brought in front of Jiang Zhen, Jiang Zhen looked at it, then found that this so-called kerosene was in fact oil.

A dark light flashed in his eye; this time Jiang Zhen was really angry.

The people of the Jinzhen Escort Agency wandered around the various places in the city and found all the people who had come into contact with those escort and troublemakers who betrayed them. A few days later, they found out everything that Jiang Zhen wanted to know!

Not only that, after such an incident, the mens’ sense of belonging to the Jinzhen Escort Agency was greatly enhanced.

In modern times, sometimes employees would stay with the company through a difficult time, so their feelings toward that company would also deepen unconsciously. The feelings of the escorts of the agency also deepend.

It was for this reason that Jiang Zhen told the escorts everything when the escort agency was in trouble.

He wanted to make these men realize that they are all members of the Jinzhen Escort Agency.

Next to Qingfeng Building, in Zheng Yi’s house, Jiang Zhen meet Zheng Yi again.

“You’re right in thinking that it was those salt merchants who had fallen out of favor and these sea merchants of Wexing Province. They did it together.” Jiang Zhen said.

This time, the sea merchants and salt merchants of Wexing Province acted together, involving many people. They actually came up with some other means previously but since Jiang Zhen has been so tightly guarded they didn’t succeed.

For example, they once tried to kidnap Jiang Zhen family members.

In order to divert Jiang Zhen’s attention, those people first commissioned men from the Changlong Fighting Bussiness to find trouble for Jiang Zhen. They made a lot of  arrangements, but they did not expect that Jiang Zhen would not play his card according to common sense. He directly went to the Changlong Fighting Business headquarters, squashing the problem early.

“What are you going to do?” Zheng Yi asked: “Since it has already happened, the most important thing is to think about how to solve it.”

“In the past when something like this happened, how was it resolved?” Jiang Zhen asked.

Zheng Yi raised his eyebrows, then said, “Admitting his own bad luck and then finding somewhere else to make up for it.”

Although they already knew who was looking for trouble with them, there was no way to get justice in a situation like this. Even if they face these people, at most they would hand over a few subordinates after putting all the blame on them, which was meaningless.

Zheng Yi, who was used to encountering such things, would usually write down his plan for revenge before slowly acting on it as time went on.

Even after ten years, it was not too late for a gentleman to take revenge.

“These people are not easy to deal with, but since we already know who they are we can always teach them some lessons and make their lives unbearable.” Zheng Yi added.

“That is too time-consuming.” Jiang Zhen suddenly said: “If I have a grudge, I generally prefer to retaliate on the spot!”

Zheng Yi was stunned. He felt that Jiang Zhen was going to do something amazing again.

There was a sea merchant in Fucheng named Liu Baitong.

Originally he sold ships to Jiang Zhen, but when Jiang Zhen started developing better and better, his view of Jiang Zhen changed again and again.

This Jiang Zhen was backed by the Zheng Family so the momentum of his development was also very ferocious. If he didn’t take precautions now, maybe even his own family’s sea business will not be able to continue in the future!

What’s more, his wife came from the Cheng Family which was originally a salt merchant.

His wife’s mother’s family was able to provide him with a lot of help, but now he was asked to help them. It would be strange if he still showed Jiang Zhen any consideration.

Unfortunately, when he tried to deal with Jiang Zhen he failed in the end. Jiang Zhen ships were not burned.

Since their plan failed it would not be easy to deal with Jiang Zhen. Liu Baitong was wondering what to do next when his family housekeeper suddenly ran in from the outside: “Master, it’s not good!”

“Your master is here!” Liu Baitong glared at the housekeeper and then asked: “What’s the matter?”

“Master, someone threw chicken blood on our doorstep!” The housekeeper of the Liu Mansion said.

“What do you think it is about? They are probably just venting their anger.” Liu Baitong just finished talking when someone ran from outside and said: “Master! When the Young Master was coming back from school today he was blindfolded and then beaten by someone!”

“What?” Liu Baitong was shocked. The Jinzhen escort agency…what does this mean?

 

Edited by: Antiope1

 

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