After Heshen's Fall, I Became Guangzhou's Richest Man

My name is Zhou Yan, the most inconspicuous servant in Heshen's household accounts office. On the third day after transmigrating, I knew two things: first, Heshen would fall in ten days; second, beneath the large purple sandalwood desk in the southeast corner of the accounts office was hidden a secret ledger that even Heshen himself dared not make public. While others busied themselves swearing loyalty to Heshen, I busied myself memorizing every name, sum, and destination in that ledger, one by one. On the tenth day, soldiers sealed the mansion. As I climbed over the back wall, I carried three things: three gold leaves, a forged travel permit, and the location of a hidden silver stash that only I knew. All the way south—Tianjin, Yangzhou, Foshan—I walked over two thousand li on the edge of a blade, and finally reached the Thirteen Factories of Guangzhou. Only upon arriving did I discover that this place was ten times darker than Heshen's mansion. The hong merchants wanted to swallow my goods, so I brought out futures hedging methods and set them fighting among themselves; the Guangdong customs superintendent wanted to block my ships, so I wrote out before him the year, route, and charges by which his whole family would be exiled ten years later, not a single detail missing—and he let me through on the spot. The tea route, the porcelain route, the silk route—I opened them one by one. The East India Company, the Thirteen Factories guild, the salt administration, the Grand Council—I fought my way up layer by layer. While Jiaqing was still tearing into his ministers over Heshen's confiscated fortune, I had already bought the first mansion on the banks of the Pearl River. And I used the very money Heshen had once hidden outside. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: After Heshen's Fall, I Became Guangzhou's Richest Man — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠