On the day of Mangzhong, the cicadas hummed as if boiling in a pot. Lu Jingyuan, dressed in a dark blue satin robe, sat by the window on the second floor of the Juxian Trading House, his fingertips tapping lightly against the sandalwood table. Jiang Wan wore a bamboo-woven veil, and through the semi-translucent silk gauze, her gaze fell upon Boss Chen’s trembling fingertips. He was pushing a stack of yellowed ledgers across the table, the corners stained with faint tea spots.
"Heir Lu, the ledger of the Marquis Mansion's commercial dealings that you asked me to investigate has all been marked in red by this humble one," Boss Chen said, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat, his voice dropping to a whisper. "In the past three months, there are a full seventeen merchants who have cut off supply ties with the Marquis Mansion. Among them, the Xinglong Drapery is the most suspicious."
Jiang Wan lifted the edge of her veil, her gaze sweeping over the red circles in the ledger. The annotation beside "Xinglong Drapery" was particularly striking: on the seventh day of the fourth month, they terminated their cooperation with the Marquis Mansion Silk Shop and switched to sourcing goods from the collateral third branch at a unit price twenty percent lower. Her fingertips paused. "Twenty percent? Where would the collateral branch get the capital to run a losing business?"
Chapter 124