Chapter 88: Mining Coal
The boy and girl cultivating alongside Chu Qiguang were Wu Bing and Wu Qingchen, both children of Wu Wei.
Ever since Hao Xiangtong first arrived at the Wu Manor, Chu Qiguang had been hovering around Wu Bing and Wu Qingchen like a bee around flowers, going out of his way to please them.
Even after noticing Hao Xiangtong, he only gave her a casual greeting before turning his attention back to Wu Bing and Wu Qingchen.
Hao Xiangtong couldn't help but recall how Chu Qiguang had treated her the same way just a few days earlier. He had told her that riveting story, kept her company, and recently used a type of medicine named golden wine on her, charging only two thousand taels of silver to cover his costs.
The golden wine had worked like a charm. After using it, Hao Xiangtong felt a clear improvement in her physical prowess, and she felt that she would be able to reach the second state in just a month or two. However, the thought of the strikes that Chu Qiguang had administered all over her body after giving her the golden wine made her feel both vexed and embarrassed.
To avoid inappropriate physical contact, Chu Qiguang had used a wooden stick instead of his palms to administer those strikes, but even so, it had still been quite an embarrassing experience for Hao Xiangtong.
This embarrassing memory, coupled with the fact that Chu Qiguang was ignoring her in favor of Wu Qingchen, only made her feel even more vexed. She threw a frustrated punch at the pine tree beside her, then stormed away in a fit of anger.
Chu Qiguang's trio turned at the same time to look at the fallen pine tree.
"Why did Young Mistress Hao snap that tree?" Wu Bing asked with a puzzled expression.
"Maybe she woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning," Chu Qiguang shrugged. "She's always had a rather strange personality, and you can never guess what she's thinking. By the way, have either of you heard of golden wine before?"
Chu Qiguang had spent the four thousand taels of silver that he had earned from Hao Yongtai and Hao Xiangtong entirely on Ear Opening Pills. He cultivated throughout the night with the help of these pills, and by now, he could already direct his qi and blood to his nails and tongue, leaving only his teeth and hair among the four extremities.
Once I get another four thousand taels of silver from Wu Bing and Wu Qingchen, I should have enough money to reach the third state in just a few more days.
At his current rate of progress, he would reach the third state in less than three months. If anyone were to learn this, they would be so astonished that their jaw would drop to the ground!
After finalizing the golden wine deal with Wu Bing and Wu Qingchen, Chu Qiguang was approached by Hao Yongtai, who handed him several sheets of paper and said, "This is what you wanted us to find out for you, Brother Chu."
Chu Qiguang read through the documents presented to him, and after some contemplation, he said, "I have a rough idea of what's going on. Let's go and talk to your father and Master Wu about this."
***
In the guest hall of the Wu Manor, Chu Qiguang was once again meeting with the two clan leaders.
He laid out several documents as he said, "Over the past few days, Yongtai and I have been looking into the Ding Clan, and this is the data that we've gathered."
The statistics that Chu Qiguang presented were backed up by evidence gathered by the cat fiends, so they were highly credible. However, neither Wu Wei nor Hao Wen was particularly sensitive to numbers.
Accounting in this world was still in a very rudimentary stage, and people also feared that learning too much would increase the risk of demonification. Looking at the statistics being presented by Chu Qiguang, Wu Wei assumed that he was planning to accuse the Ding Clan of tax and forced labor evasion.
"How is any of this going to help us?" he asked in a puzzled manner. "Right now, both the Demon Vanquishing Department and the county office are on their side. Even if we accuse them of tax and forced labor evasion, it's not going to get us anywhere."
Chu Qiguang pointed at the documents on this table as he explained, "This is not a matter of tax and forced labor evasion. Take a look at this... According to our research, over five hundred baskets of coal are transported out of the mines on Plum Mountain on a daily basis. If each basket weighs thirty kilograms, then that amounts to over fifteen thousand kilograms of coal per day, or over four hundred and fifty thousand kilograms of coal a month."
"That's certainly a lot, but how does this matter to us?" Hao Wen asked.
"The Ding Clan has already been maintaining this rate of coal excavation for close to eight years."
Even with this information, Wu Wei and Hao Wen still weren't connecting the dots, so Chu Qiguang continued, "Plum Mountain isn't a big mountain to begin with, and excavating such large quantities of coal over such a long period of time is bound to cause significant damage to the mountain, thereby ruining its spirit veins."
The two clan leaders' eyes finally lit up at this revelation. They had never imagined that these statistics could lead to the conclusion that the Ding Clan was damaging the spirit veins.
"You're saying the Ding Clan has ruined the spirit veins of Plum Mountain?"
The spirit veins of Plum Mountain were said to originate from the distant Ancestral Dragon Mountain. They formed the foundation of Azure Sun County's feng shui, and they were also regarded as one of the main reasons why the county produced so many wusheng, wujuren, and wujinshi.
In particular, the current imperial clan placed great importance on feng shui and fortune. The founding emperor of the Great Han Empire had once sent people to measure all the spirit veins under the heavens before compiling the findings into a book. Furthermore, the sites of the current capital city and imperial palace had been carefully chosen in accordance with feng shui conventions, and damaging or destroying any spirit vein had always been strictly prohibited by law.
"Once their destruction of the Plum Mountain spirit veins comes to light, the entire county will turn against them, and His Majesty will surely punish them severely," Chu Qiguang said.
Wu Wei and Hao Wen nodded eagerly, and they were even more impressed with Chu Qiguang. In just this brief window while Li Changqing was out of the picture, he had already found damning evidence that could bring down the entire Ding Clan.
However, Chu Qiguang still wasn't finished.
"Something else that we've discovered is that the coal sold by the Ding Clan is extremely cheap. I'm talking less than half the market price, so there must still be more secrets on Plum Mountain. Unfortunately, it's very tightly guarded by formidable martial artists and patrol teams that scour the mountain day and night, so the people we sent haven't been able to infiltrate."
Chu Qiguang hadn't even revealed the full extent of things. Through his investigation, he discovered that the entire mountain had virtually been transformed into a miniature military base. As soon as Qiao Zhi drew close to the mountain, he immediately said that there was an extremely powerful cultivator present, one that even he couldn't remain undetected by. In light of this, Chu Qiguang was convinced that Plum Mountain was hiding a huge secret.
Of course, at the moment, Chu Qiguang was still unaware that the Ding Clan was using the living corpses of the Immortal Dao as miners. The powerful cultivator that Qiao Zhi had sensed was a high-ranking member of the Immortal Dao, who had been stationed on the mountain to control the living corpses.
"Even so, the Ding Clan's coal is only sold for no more than eight qian of silver per fifty kilograms, which means their annual income from the coal mining operation amounts to less than ten thousand taels of silver. How do they have so much money to send bribes to the capital? If they're sending tens of thousands of taels of silver to the capital every year, they have to be at least making several times that amount in return!"
"How are we supposed to know how much money the Ding Clan earns each year?" Wu Wei asked with tightly furrowed brows. "The only way to find out would be to get a hold of the Ding Clan's account books."
"There are always paper trails that can be traced, especially when such large sums of money are involved," Chu Qiguang said as he laid out another document. "Here are the goods that the Ding Clan's trade convoys send out each month. Do you think these goods are enough for them to earn tens of thousands of taels of silver per year?"
Hao Wen and Wu Wei examined the document and saw that the Ding Clan dealt solely in everyday necessities like iron pots, salt, tea, cotton, and grain.
"Even if we assume that all of this is sold at market price, the Ding Clan would only make twenty to thirty thousand taels of silver a year," Chu Qiguang continued.
Hao Wen and Wu Wei exchanged a puzzled glance. The numbers simply didn't add up.
