Chapter 45: Stakeout
The blazing sun scorched the earth, but the tea stall under the big locust tree offered a rare patch of shade.
“Did you send gifts?” Lu Yun set down his teacup and asked again.
“How could we not have sent them!” The manager fumed at the mention, saying: “We gave gifts to all the managers, but it was no use at all—they still dragged their feet on the payments!”
“Did they only delay ours and a few others, or…” Lu Yun asked again.
“It’s not just our few families, and not just the settling allowance,” the manager opened up: “Every time we go, we run into several groups demanding money, all from our side south of the Luo River!” He said angrily: “There’s hardly any arrears from north of the Luo River—they’re just bullying us!”
Lu Yun nodded; he had finished asking. But he couldn’t leave right away, so he sat patiently for a while longer.
“Young Master,” seeing he asked no more, the manager asked worriedly: “After that day, they haven’t caused trouble for your family, have they?”
“No.” Lu Yun shook his head.
“That’s good, that’s good,” the manager truly breathed a sigh of relief. After that day, he had been worried about revenge from north of the Luo River. But since Lu Yun was fine, his own family was surely even safer.
“By the way, one more thing—do you know about it?” Finally, Lu Yun asked softly: “Who is in charge of the Lu Clan’s congee kitchens?”
“I hear it’s also Yuqing Room.” The manager went to the finance department every day; he wasn’t good at getting money, but he knew plenty. “But it’s not managed by someone surnamed Zhou—it’s Manager Chai, the one who wasn’t there that day.”
Lu Yun nodded in satisfaction. After sitting a while longer, he stood to take his leave. The manager thanked him again and watched Lu Yun leave.
After walking far away, Lu Yun suddenly realized he had forgotten to ask the man’s name and sighed apologetically.
Leaving Lide Ward, he went to Zhongxiao Ward, which was also one of the Lu Clan’s eight wards south of the Luo River. This time, Lu Yun did much better; he went straight to a household doorway and specifically asked to see their manager. That manager was naturally one of the men from that day. After meeting, Lu Yun posed the same question, and the answer was essentially identical.
Leaving Zhongxiao Ward, Lu Yun fell into deep thought. The Lu Clan prided itself on its scholarly family tradition and was always known for its generosity toward those below. The settling allowance they gave their clan members was the most generous among the Eight Great Clans. By rights, for a public-facing matter like disaster relief, there was no reason for them to lag behind…
Thinking of the disaster victims’ conversation when entering the city, Lu Yun couldn’t help but sigh inwardly: ‘That’s not lagging behind—that’s an embarrassing spectacle!’
‘Even if it’s corruption, they wouldn’t be so impatiently blatant; that would easily stir up trouble.’ Lu Yun rested his chin on his hand, pondering: ‘It seems some accident forced them to do this…’
Recalling Manager He’s reluctance to let the matter leak, and the Big Guy saying Lu Feng had a big hole to fill, Lu Yun was almost certain that for these two months, Yuqing Room had been massively withholding and delaying payments, hiding it from above—and it was related to Lu Feng!
At that moment, several disaster victims approached with broken bowls to beg. Officials guarded several bridges over the Luo River, not allowing disaster victims to go north of the Luo River, so they could only beg south of the Luo River.
Lu Yun pulled out his money pouch and put several copper coins into one bowl; the disaster victims naturally thanked him profusely.
“No need to thank me,” Lu Yun looked at them and asked casually: “Hasn’t the capital opened many congee kitchens? Why still beg on the streets?”
“Alas, Young Master. There are thirty-six congee kitchens inside and outside the capital in total. For refugees like us fleeing to the capital, there must be two hundred thousand. Everywhere it’s five or six thousand in line; getting one bowl a day is lucky—how could it be enough to eat…”
“Yeah, some congee kitchens serve nothing but thin gruel that doesn’t fill you up at all!” The disaster victims said indignantly: “It’s like…” Seeing Lu Yun’s demeanor of a clan young master, they feared saying the wrong thing and abruptly stopped.
“Like the Lu Clan’s congee kitchens?” Lu Yun finished for them.
“Young Master must be from the Lu Clan…” The disaster victims roamed the streets all day and naturally knew that the big clans in these wards were mostly surnamed Lu.
“Speak freely,” Lu Yun said, taking out another handful of copper coins and putting them in their bowls.
“Thank you, Young Master! Young Master is such a good man!” The disaster victims happily thanked him repeatedly, then continued: “Actually, the Lu Clan’s congee kitchens were excellent at first, but in just a few days, the congee in their pots visibly got thinner and thinner. Later, it became nothing but clear broth…”
“Someone compared it: the Xiahou Clan uses enough rice for one pot that the Lu Clan could make ten pots from…” The disaster victims said, but then grew discouraged: “But what of it? It’s charity from them anyway; we have no qualification to pick and choose…”
.
‘Two months again…’ Lu Yun walked far away, but the words of the managers and disaster victims still swirled in his mind. Yuqing Room started withholding and delaying payments two months ago. The congee kitchens opened two months ago too, and per the disaster victims, the Lu Clan’s congee kitchens began skimping just days after opening.
So, the Lu Clan congee kitchens started skimping about two months ago too.
‘Two months, two months…’ Lu Yun furrowed his brows tightly: “What exactly happened two months ago?”
Two months ago, the biggest event was naturally the Yellow River bursting its banks, but what did that have to do with the Lu Clan?
Lu Yun couldn’t figure it out for the moment, but these two matters definitely were connected! To uncover the link, the best way was to make the parties involved speak!
The first person Lu Yun thought of was Manager He, but on second thought, after that incident, the man surnamed He probably wouldn’t dare leave Lu Ward lately. That place had a Heavenly Rank Grandmaster stationed; even if he desperately used full power, he still wouldn’t dare act rashly.
So, he turned his attention to Manager Chai…
Although Lu Feng had instructed those below not to go south of the Luo River easily lately, Manager Chai oversaw grain distribution to the Lu Clan’s various congee kitchens—how could they stay in north of the Luo River forever?
With Lu Yun’s skills, catching Manager Chai south of the Luo River would be easy as pie, but the problem was that would alert the enemy. Lu Yun had it all planned: to quietly take down Lu Feng, no action before striking could alert anyone. Otherwise, the other side could easily destroy evidence and foil his scheme.
After all, with Lu Yun and his father’s current status, they couldn’t force the Lu Clan to audit Yuqing Room’s accounts. Even if Lu Xin risked going straight to the sect master, the other side could calmly destroy evidence and cover it up.
Lu Feng’s father Lu Jian was a steward in the finance department; if he intervened, he could at least ensure Lu Feng wasn’t implicated. But Lu Yun was basically certain Lu Jian was unaware; otherwise, with his savvy as a Lu Clan steward, even if pocketing some for himself, he wouldn’t do something as stupid as snatching food from disaster victims’ mouths—an embarrassing spectacle that would bring fire upon himself.
What Lu Yun worried most about was that after the kidnapping failed, Lu Feng might crack under pressure and confess everything to Lu Jian. But from the Lu Clan’s various congee kitchens still serving ever-thinner gruel, Lu Jian was probably still kept in the dark…
So, Lu Jian had to remain kept in the dark; Lu Feng and Manager Chai had to remain completely unaware, to achieve the goal at the smallest cost!
To avoid mishaps, Lu Yun personally tailed Manager Chai. Relying on his years of diligent study of disguise technique, Lu Yun appeared in different guises each time. Sometimes a peddler roaming the streets, sometimes a scholar lightly fanning himself with a folding fan, sometimes a servant boy running errands for his master…
Manager Chai was indeed oblivious, going about his routine every day: as soon as the city gates opened in the morning, taking a boat out of the city to the Tongluo Granary twenty li away to collect disaster relief grain.
The Tongluo Granary was on Mount Mang not far outside Luoyang City, by the Luo River—a major granary city among the nine in the outskirts of the capital of Great Xuan. Grain shipped from the south via the canal to Luoyang was unloaded outside the city and stored in the various granary cities as reserve. Each clan had its own granary city; Tongluo Granary belonged to the Lu Clan.
The granary city of Tongluo Granary was square-shaped, each side a li long, with high thick walls, battlements and arrow towers complete, and a water gate leading straight into the city. Inside the city were over eight hundred grain silos, storing a total of six hundred thousand shi of grain—enough to sustain all Lu Clan members in the capital for three years. Every month, several boats loaded with grain here were shipped into Luoyang City and distributed to Lu Clan disciples.
Because disaster relief wasn’t routine, it wasn’t issued monthly but by the clan’s regulations: two hundred shi of rice extracted daily, handed to Manager Chai to transport back to the city and distribute to the various congee kitchens south of the Luo River.
For the first few days, Lu Clan disciples went along by boat to supervise, but seeing everything proceeding orderly with no trouble, they let Manager Chai handle it alone.
