When Fate Arrives

Being late had indeed turned into skipping work.

Sun Shaozong and Cheng Rixing chatted while they ate, taking more than half an hour. Then he still had to hear Liu Quan's report. By the time all that was over, it was nearly noon.

His idle chat with Cheng Rixing was one thing.

But Liu Quan's report left Sun Shaozong rather disappointed.

It had to be said that this official reselling venture he had devised back then was enormously profitable, nearly quadrupling its returns in two years.

Unfortunately, the amount that ultimately made its way into the Sun family's coffers was somewhat disappointing.

The main reason was an unexpected figure—Wang Ziteng's eldest son, Wang Ren.

The Timber Business, begun with one hundred thousand taels of silver, had ultimately earned a gross profit of over four hundred and sixty thousand taels.

After deducting all sorts of expenses, there remained a net profit of three hundred and fifty-nine thousand, six hundred and eighty-three taels.

Yet Brother Wang Ren had "borrowed" more than eighty-nine thousand, seven hundred taels over the course of a single year!

And before that, he had already received thirty thousand taels of silver in tribute—an amount originally included among the operating expenses.

In other words, if those thirty thousand taels were counted as well, the earnings over these past two-plus years had been divided roughly equally among the three families.

When they had sailed north in the past, Sun Shaozong had already found Young Master Wang's lavish spending and extravagant displays rather excessively high-profile.

Only now, looking back, did he realize that the silver Wang Ren had been throwing around in fistfuls had actually been "borrowed" from his own family.

Of course, taking in over a hundred thousand taels of silver in two-plus years was still an exceptionally profitable business.