Late that night, the lamps were still burning in a guest room at the Commandery Academy. Wang Yang sat with brush in hand, calculating his fortune, surrounded by baskets and chests of cash.
Chen Qing Shan sat back on her heels with her legs together, carefully wiping her throwing knives. The candlelight lent not a trace of warmth or softness to her cool features; instead, it brought out a different kind of icy allure.
Icy allure-the colder she was, the more alluring she became.
Wang Yang noticed none of this, however. He was wholly absorbed in preparing "the Wang Group's first financial statement since transmigration."
He had long since decided to give the Commandery Academy fifty thousand of the hundred thousand cash he had won in the scholarly debate.
Quite apart from the sixteen thousand two hundred cash he already owed Liu Zhao, there was tonight's banquet, not to mention the staff and carriages he had used at the academy over the past few days, along with his meals and lodging. He had not paid a penny for any of it.
Liu Zhao was a sincere gentleman who did not care about such expenses, but Wang Yang could not simply take advantage of him. To keep Liu Zhao from refusing, Wang Yang had prepared three different arguments, and only after considerable effort had he barely managed to persuade him to accept.
All thirty fans had been snapped up: the ten black-handled fans had brought in a hundred thousand cash, and the twenty natural-wood-handled fans another hundred and sixty thousand. After deducting the shopkeeper's ten-percent share, he should have had two hundred and thirty-four thousand left. What Wang Yang had failed to anticipate, however, was that he also had to pay market tax!
Members of the gentry were ordinarily exempt from