After descending the mountain, Yu Yue first took Lin Lan to the high-speed rail station, reminding her to take care of her health and call if anything came up.
“Okay,” Lin Lan said, patting Yu Yue’s belly. “Sweetie, your godmother is leaving now. I’ll come back to see you once I’m done with my work.”
“Hurry up and go,” Yu Yue urged her.
“Mm, I’m off.”
After Lin Lan entered the station, the warmth in Yu Yue’s eyes vanished completely.
She turned and hailed a taxi, returning to Zhongsheng Hall.
At that moment, Li Kui was dealing with two uninvited guests who had shown up unexpectedly, just as Yu Yue arrived.
When Yu Yue saw Yu Jialiang and Li Fengying, her brows involuntarily furrowed.
What were these two doing here?
Could it be they wanted to take some of her precious medicinal herbs for free again to curry favor with someone?
This time, Yu Yue was mistaken.
Over the past two days, Li Fengying had been whispering in Yu Jialiang’s ear, convinced that Yu Yue had used money from the pharmacy to pay for the meal the other day—after all, that restaurant wasn’t cheap.
The thought gnawed at Li Fengying, and she insisted on urging Yu Jialiang to come check the pharmacy’s accounts.
“What are you doing here?” Yu Yue asked, not bothering to address them as “Dad” or “Auntie.” She was far from welcoming toward these two.
They were shameless to the extreme, often taking advantage of her absence to intimidate and threaten the younger staff at the pharmacy.
He had never fulfilled a single day of his fatherly duties, yet he frequently came to the pharmacy under the pretense of being her father, essentially begging for handouts.
It was only because he had donated a kidney to her grandmother that she hadn’t made a bigger fuss about it.
But they really were pushing their luck.
“They’re here to check the accounts,” Li Kui answered Yu Yue’s question.
“Huh? Check the accounts?” Yu Yue’s frown deepened. “Has Zhongsheng Hall changed its surname to Yu?”
Li Fengying laughed in anger. “Yu Yue, listen to yourself. You’re the real owner of Zhongsheng Hall. Even if the surname doesn’t change, it’s still ‘Yu,’ not ‘Li.'”
“It is ‘Yu,’ but not that ‘Yu,'” Yu Yue said, plopping down into the grand master chair Li Kui had brought over for her.
Meanwhile, Li Kui was busy with shipments, checking the list and confirming the quantities before handing it to the stocktaker beside him. “Ship according to this list,” he instructed.
“Understood, Manager Li,” the person replied before hurrying off.
“Manager Yu, what’s the matter? Is your old company not doing well lately, or is your luck running low, making you set your sights on my place again? You do receive a monthly dividend from Zhongsheng Hall, but that’s all you get. Understand?”
“Yu Yue, I’m your father. How can you be so disrespectful?” Yu Jialiang was displeased with Yu Yue’s tone.
“Father? Ha. Tell me, have you ever changed a single diaper for me? Or even wiped me once? If not, do you really think you’re qualified to call yourself my father?”
Yu Yue couldn’t even be bothered to argue with him.
Who asked him to be so shameless?
Who asked him to stand before her so self-righteously, claiming to be her father?
“You—” Yu Jialiang’s face darkened with anger.
This little brat! He had said they shouldn’t come, but Li Fengying insisted on checking the accounts.
When this brat was underage, things were still manageable. But once she turned eighteen and took full control of Zhongsheng Hall, he couldn’t even get a glimpse of the account books.
“Yu Yue, your father may only have the right to dividends, but we have every reason to suspect the dividend amounts are incorrect, don’t we? If the numbers are off, what’s wrong with us checking the accounts?”
“The numbers don’t match? What doesn’t match?” Yu Yue crossed her legs, though her large belly made the pose unflattering and uncomfortable. Still, she insisted on doing it right in front of the two of them.
“After all these years, the dividends have remained unchanged. Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that?” Yu Jialiang asked loudly.
“So you think the monthly dividends of over a million are too little, is that it? Does that renovation company of yours even earn ten million a year?”
“You can’t compare it like that,” Li Fengying said.
“Then how should I compare it?”
“Your goods are shipped out truckload by truckload, and those homemade medicines of yours are sold at such high prices. How could the profits possibly stay the same?” Li Fengying was quicker to react than Yu Jialiang.
“Did you two only see the dividends my mother left for you in her will? Did you even bother to look at the profit distribution ratios?”
Yu Yue stood up. With too much fat on her belly, crossing her legs had been uncomfortable for her.
She simply stopped doing it.
“You only see the high price of my homemade medicines, don’t you? Do you have any idea how much time I spent, what kind of herbs I used, or how many batches of herbs were discarded? Aren’t those costs too?”
“Do you think medicine-making succeeds on the first try? Even a sharpshooting genius doesn’t hit the target every time, you know?”
After saying this, Yu Yue laughed at herself.
“Why am I wasting my breath on you two idiots?”
“You want to audit the accounts, is that it? Fine, I’ll call the finance department over right now. If you want to check, go ahead. But let’s be clear: while you’re auditing, your own income and expenses will also be recalculated. If you’ve taken more than your share, you’ll have to return it.”
“If you agree to that, I’ll let you audit the accounts immediately.”
“How about it?”
“…”
After a ten-second standoff, Li Fengying suddenly lost her nerve.
It was fine if they had taken less, but what if, after deducting costs, they had actually taken more? Would they have to give back what they’d already swallowed?
Li Fengying certainly wasn’t willing.
Neither was Yu Jialiang.
Seeing their hesitation, Yu Yue knew they didn’t dare.
She chuckled lightly. “Mr. Yu, if it weren’t for the fact that you donated a kidney to my grandmother, do you think I would have been subsidizing your dividends out of my own pocket all these years?”
“Are you saying Zhongsheng Hall has been operating at a loss all these years?” Yu Jialiang didn’t quite believe it.
“Not exactly a loss, but after deducting costs and allocating dividends to you according to the ratio, it definitely wouldn’t amount to over a million.”
So, in the end, it was the two of them who had been profiting.
If they kept taking advantage endlessly, she had plenty of ways to make them spit out every bit of it.
They could try her if they didn’t believe it.
“Then… what about this month?”
“Don’t worry, I’m almost twenty-five. As long as you don’t come here to disgust me, I can still guarantee you a monthly dividend of a million. But let me make this clear: if something like today happens again, I’ll have the finance department recalculate everything from the past and present.”
“I’ll make up what I owe, and Mr. Yu, you’d better be quick about returning what you owe.”
“That won’t be necessary. We won’t bother you anymore in the future,” Yu Jialiang quickly said.
Li Fengying finally fell silent.
With the “business” talk finished, Yu Jialiang began to play the role of “father,” trying to discuss “personal matters” with Yu Yue.
“Still not leaving?” Yu Yue was annoyed just looking at them.
“Yu Yue, I am your father, after all. On your aunt’s birthday the other day, you didn’t even come to wish her a happy birthday.”
“I don’t even celebrate my own birthday, so I have nothing to say to her about that,” Yu Yue chided lightly.
“Alright, then how are things between you and Jingyan? The other day, we saw him walking very close with a woman who had a child, looking quite intimate. You are Mrs. Fu, after all—aren’t you going to do something about it?”
“We’ve already signed the papers and are preparing for divorce. If you consider that ‘doing alright,’ then I suppose we’re doing alright,” Yu Yue replied indifferently.
“…”