A few days later.
Outside the Jingang Dongfang Clan Main Residence.
Banners with white backgrounds and red lettering had been strung up one after another, their words written as though in blood: "Repay your debts," "The Dongfang Clan owes its tenant farmers their hard-earned money," and other such slogans.
With curious onlookers gathering around, the news quickly spread throughout Ferry Port.
Over the past years, the Jingang Dongfang Clan had declined day by day. Even though the clan had continuously cut internal expenses and lowered the allowances allotted to its members, it had still fallen into a state where its income could not cover its expenditures.
As the saying went, "When a wall collapsed, everyone gave it a shove." Once a clan fell into decline, it was like a sick animal giving off the scent of death, naturally drawing greedy vultures and all manner of predators.
If it could endure, the clan might yet rise from the dead. But if it could not, it would be like a dead animal, its flesh torn apart and devoured, until even its bones were gnawed clean by savage wolves, tigers, and leopards.
Such was the brutal law of survival among aristocratic clans.
At this moment.
Within the reception hall of the Dongfang Clan Main Residence.
Shangguan Yunde, the Second Ancestor of the Shangguan Clan—also a Seventh-Rank Aristocratic Clan of Ferry Port—sipped his spiritual tea unhurriedly and said, "Brother Yuxi, it is not that our Shangguan Clan has forgotten our fellow townsmen's bond. As the saying goes, debts must be repaid; it is the law of heaven and earth. These promissory notes were all written by your hand, were they not? Pay up. Our Shangguan Clan needs to make a living too."
Dongfang Yuxi's expression was incomparably ugly. "These notes were loans I took