Over the past few months, Zhuang Yutang had been riding high on the crest of success.
More than half a year ago, the bastard half-brother he had always despised—the father of Zhuang Jin's former self—had died amid the chaos. Zhuang Yutang had reclaimed the man's house and two shops.
Yes, in Zhuang Yutang's eyes, he had merely taken back what was his. To him and Zhuang Yuyong, their father had been bewitched by the pillow-talk of that bastard brother's mother, that lowly maidservant, and muddleheadedly split off a portion of the family property. He and Zhuang Yuyong were the legitimate sons of the principal wife. Once that bastard brother died, reclaiming it was only natural.
It was precisely because they had reclaimed the house and two shops, selling them for over three hundred taels of silver and splitting it with his younger brother Zhuang Yuyong, that Zhuang Yutang had been able to grease the right palms when vacancies opened up after the chaos. He had risen from Third-Class Clerk to Second-Class Clerk and entered the official ranks.
And throughout the process of reclaiming the property, under the suppression of both the legal and underworld connections of himself and his younger brother in the Medicine King Gang, there had not been a ripple.
That bastard brother's relatives? On their father's side, the brother had merely been a bastard, born to another woman their father had taken outside the family. They were the legitimate line, so naturally the clan elders stood with them.
And that bastard's wife's family... what respectable family could a bastard possibly marry into? Though she was not like that bastard brother's mother, a former singing girl bought out of servitude, she was still only an orphan girl.
As for other friends, there was even less need to mention