Wealthy families?
Shen Tang's eyes lit up.
In the eyes of the officials, she looked just like a beast that had been starving for ages and had finally spotted its prey. Her eyes went biu! and brightened several shades. Shen Tang smiled and asked them to tell her more about the families. For a moment, they couldn't tell what the new prefect meant.
Was she planning to curry favor with the local power brokers so she could settle in comfortably?
It wasn't impossible.
In a poor, remote place like Heyin, even a dragon had to coil up meekly. Even if you were the prefect, you couldn't hope to live comfortably without ingratiating yourself with these few local power brokers. These officials had often been sneered at by the wealthy families. Their former colleagues had been unable to endure the humiliation: some had been bribed into colluding with them, some had resigned and left, and some had pretended to be deaf and dumb, acting as if they knew nothing. Otherwise—
Life would truly have been miserable.
The few of them had managed to hold on only because they were in such dire straits. They hadn't received their monthly pay for thirteen months, and their families were so poor they could barely afford to eat. They were practically down to eating dirt. There was scarcely anything left to bully them over, they posed no threat, and they weren't even worth bribing. Making trouble for them would be no harder than crushing an ant.
Though they didn't know why someone so young had been appointed prefect, at least she understood how the world worked and knew how to handle people. Perhaps she could survive a little longer. In a flash, similar thoughts passed through the minds of several officials. Gu Chi could barely