The trade exhibition went exceptionally smoothly.
In less than a year, virtually every project the Twenty-Four Directorates offered had been taken up by a major merchant.
There were two reasons for this.
For one, after nearly a year, these seasoned, sharp-eyed merchants could all discern the immense business opportunities in the industries the Twenty-Four Directorates offered.
As competent merchants, they naturally had no desire to pass up such projects.
More importantly, however, they were afraid.
After all, these were the Twenty-Four Directorates' businesses. If they refused to show even this little courtesy, they genuinely feared those crazed eunuchs would send in the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot, pin some arbitrary charge on them, and wipe them out altogether.
The Twenty-Four Directorates had truly become notorious.
Even the Great Aristocratic Families could think of no way to deal with these hateful eunuchs for the time being.
They could never kill them all!
Even if they killed one eunuch today, another would take his place tomorrow-and he might be even more ruthless than his predecessor.
There were far too many impoverished people in this world. The Imperial Palace might run short of anything else, but never eunuchs.
Unless the Great Aristocratic Families could ensure that everyone throughout the Tang Dynasty lived and worked in peace and contentment, there would always be people willing to become eunuchs.
But that was impossible.
Even the Great Aristocratic Families understood that, as they swallowed up land at an ever-increasing pace...
Once some future point arrived when they could absorb no more land, and the ranks of the impoverished reached a certain threshold, the time would naturally come for another dynasty to fall and a new one to rise.
Thus, there was simply no eliminating eunuchs.
Of course, they had tried bribing them, and it