Seeing her young lady so angry after returning was truly the first time. It was frightening.
“Besides this shop, how many more of Mother’s shops are there?”
“There are seven more. This servant’s mother told me about them and even took me to see them before.”
Qingli didn’t dare say it out loud, but when her mother saw the condition of those shops back then, she had walked out with a grave expression, shaking her head repeatedly and sighing, “What will Madam do when she comes back…”
“Then let’s go see all of them. No need to enter—just look from the outside.” That day, Lin Youyou sat in the carriage and inspected all eight of Madam Xu’s dowry shops.
Seven were losing money. Only one was making a profit.
This did not improve her expression at all. The account books she had seen in Madam Xu’s possession all showed losses, but reality was even worse than she had imagined.
What was even more infuriating was that the one profitable shop was also recorded as a loss in Madam Xu’s accounts—meaning something had clearly been manipulated in between.
Qingli shrank her neck and asked carefully, “Miss… shall we go back now?”
“No. Go straight out of the city. Let’s check Mother’s estate as well. Since we’re already at it, we’ll see everything at once.”
She leaned back against the carriage wall and closed her eyes to rest.
The coachman, a guard of Lin Chaowen, immediately followed the order and set off. He naturally obeyed Lin Youyou without question.
That night, Lin Chaowen and Lin Jingbo both returned home early and waited in the main courtyard for her. But as time passed, there was still no sign of her.
At first they were calm, but gradually they became restless. In the end, Lin Jingbo could no longer sit still. The handsome young man paced anxiously around the room, making Madam Xu dizzy just watching him.
“Mother, should we send people out to look for her?” he asked. “A young girl still hasn’t returned home after dark—how can I stay calm?”
If anyone with ill intentions heard of it, who knew what rumors would spread by tomorrow?
“Don’t worry. She should be back soon,” Lin Chaowen said, sipping his tea.
He wasn’t unconcerned about his daughter, but he had already assigned many guards to her. If anything truly happened, they would have sent word back by now.
“Mother, you’re not worried either?” Lin Jingbo asked in confusion.
Madam Xu also took a sip of tea. “Your sister is not a weak woman. Ordinary people can’t harm her. She has even killed five people before.”
Lin Jingbo’s pacing stopped abruptly. He turned and sat down beside her with a serious expression.
“Mother, what exactly happened? Please explain in detail.”
So Madam Xu once again recounted everything from that day without missing a single detail. She had already told Lin Chaowen, but not her son who had been away from home.
After hearing it, Lin Jingbo’s expression turned cold.
“Three days ago, our Dali Temple received a corpse sent from the Ministry of Justice,” he said. “The injuries matched what you described about the one who was let go.”
“Both arms severed, one leg hamstrung, but death was caused by poison—arsenic, the most common kind.”
“All clues were cut off. The case is still under investigation.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why would someone target Mother and Sister?”
“Everything that happens has a reason. Whoever did this must have gained something from it.”
At that moment, Lin Youyou’s voice came from outside.
“I’m back.”
Lin Jingbo immediately suppressed his cold expression and cut off the topic. He stood up with a smile.
“Where did you go? Why are you back so late?”
Behind him, Lin Chaowen glanced faintly at his son, clearly displeased.
Shouldn’t that be the father’s line?
Indeed, sons were difficult to like.
“Brother, Father,” Lin Youyou greeted with a smile.
Lin Chaowen narrowed his eyes slightly. Am I placed behind my son now?
Unacceptable.
“Are you thirsty? Come sit and have some tea,” he said.
Lin Jingbo, seeing through him, narrowed his eyes in return but said nothing. He simply sat beside his sister and pushed his cup forward, implying the old man should pour for him too.
Lin Chaowen acted as if he didn’t understand and only poured tea for Lin Youyou before setting the pot down.
The silent sparks between father and son went completely unnoticed by Lin Youyou.
She waved at Qingli. “Bring the food out.”
“Yes.”
Qingli placed the food box on the table and arranged the dishes one by one.
Even though Lin Jingbo knew she had her reasons, he still said, “The dishes are cold, and the flavor is ordinary. If you wanted to eat, you could have asked the kitchen at home to make something better.”
“Try it first,” Lin Youyou said calmly.
The three of them exchanged glances and picked up their chopsticks.
After one bite, they all paused.
Madam Xu put down her chopsticks first. “This is worse than our household cooks. Where did you buy this?”
Clearly, this was not made by their daughter—her cooking was far superior.
“I brought it back from Mother’s shop,” Lin Youyou said. Then she turned to Qingli. “You explain.”
“Yes.” Qingli nodded and began recounting everything from their visit to the shop.
As they listened, the three of them gradually grew more serious—until their expressions turned completely dark.
Qingli continued, “The reason we returned so late is because we also went to inspect the estate. The tenants there are struggling badly.”
“After paying the required rent, they barely have enough left to survive. The children are all thin and pale, and they rarely eat meat even once a year.”
“But their harvests are actually quite good. It’s just that they are required to pay eighty percent of the crops.”
This time, all three faces turned pitch-black.
“This is outright exploitation!” Lin Chaowen said angrily. “I originally set the rent at thirty percent, with the rest belonging to the tenants. How did it become eighty percent?”
No need to guess—it was clearly the work of the second madam, Madam Zhang.
After all, during the eight years Madam Xu had been away, and with no other concubines in the household, the entire inner estate had been managed by her.
There was no doubt who was responsible.
Madam Xu said coldly, “Tomorrow, I will take back all my shops and estates. They can no longer remain in her hands. If this reaches the censors, both your careers will be ruined.”
Unpaid wages, exploitation of tenants—either of these alone would be enough to leave a mark in the emperor’s eyes, possibly even result in demotion.