Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

Chapter 1696 The Country Girl Looked Down Upon 17
After being scolded by Old Master Zhou, Master Zhou was just as indignant as Zhou Erlang, saying, "I was helping someone. That person was falsely accused and had nowhere to turn for help. I was thinking that if we had encountered such a situation before, we would also have had nowhere to turn. Now that we have finally become successful, shouldn't we help those poor people?"

Old Master Zhou was furious when he heard this. He immediately grabbed a stick and hit Master Zhou, saying, "If someone has money to ask you to intercede, are they someone who has nowhere else to turn? Besides, how can you be sure he was falsely accused? Even if he was falsely accused, the authorities will handle it. Our family isn't an official family, so why are you getting involved? You don't even know the situation, yet you dare to meddle? What if you offend some important person and bring disaster upon our family? How will you explain this to your family and even your clan, how will you explain this to our ancestors? How could I have given birth to such a fool like you?"

After being scolded by Old Master Zhou, Master Zhou realized that Old Master Zhou had a point. Unlike Zhou Erlang, he didn't stubbornly insist on defending himself. He just muttered, "If they are really being falsely accused, now that we have the ability, shouldn't we help those poor people?"

Hearing that he was still thinking about this, Old Master Zhou angrily struck him with his stick again, saying, "What did I teach you? When you're successful, you should help others; when you're poor, you should cultivate your own virtue. With our family's situation, we have neither money nor power. What ability do you have to get involved in those messy things? Besides, even if you were to get involved, you need to have the ability. Otherwise, is that helping others? I'm afraid that not only will you not be able to help, but you'll also ruin your own family! Think about your wife and children. Do you want to kill them?"

After that, Master Zhou completely fell silent.

Looking at him, Old Master Zhou felt utterly exhausted.

Back in the countryside, we just toiled in the soil for a living, so the eldest son wasn't very capable, and it didn't matter.

Unexpectedly, one day he became the heir apparent of a duke. With his brains, the eldest son is clearly not cut out to be the heir apparent of a duke.

Of course, even if he wasn't suited for the job, he couldn't change the heir apparent to his younger son. After all, Master Zhou was the eldest son, and the emperor couldn't bypass his eldest son and make his younger son the heir apparent.

Besides, the younger son might not be capable. What if his stupidity is just not exposed yet? We can't just replace the younger son because the eldest son is no good. If the younger son is no good either, who can we replace him with? So we still have to see. If all else fails, we can train the eldest grandson first. After we pass away, we can have the eldest grandson keep an eye on Master Zhou to prevent this fool from leading the Zhou family astray.

He's incompetent, yet he tries to act all high and mighty. How could he have given birth to such an idiot?

Perhaps because he was mentally exhausted and afraid to die, and because these things weren't too serious yet, Linlang discovered them and told Old Master Zhou. So, despite the stimulation from these two events, Old Master Zhou didn't die from the shock that the person behind the scenes thought.

On the contrary, the servants who instigated Zhou Erlang to gamble and those who instigated Master Zhou to take on lawsuits were all driven away, causing the people behind the scenes to lose some pawns.

Of course, for the people behind the scenes, this loss is negligible. After all, they can just drive those two away and give Zhou Erlang and Master Zhou some more servants. They can just give them their own people and stir up trouble again when the opportunity arises.

They didn't know that Linlang had told Old Master Zhou about this, so they just thought that Old Master Zhou was clever and cautious enough to have noticed it. They became even more determined to get rid of Old Master Zhou, thinking that once Old Master Zhou was gone, the others would be no threat, and it would be easier to deal with the Zhou family.

Before they could even make another move, Old Master Zhou punished another steward in the manor. Needless to say, it was because Linlang said she received a report that someone had embezzled a lot of money, so she reported it to Old Master Zhou.

In the end, Old Master Zhou dealt with this steward the same way he had dealt with the former head steward, and eventually managed to get more than 20,000 taels of silver.

Just then, he had new high-interest loans to repay, so he paid them off and had some left over. He listened to Linlang's advice and bought a small estate. After all, he knew he couldn't make a living on the meager salary from the manor; he needed his own property.

Linlang dealt with this steward for two reasons: first, he was also instructed by his aunt and others to target Old Master Zhou; second, he was quite greedy, so she dealt with him.

Although many people in the mansion were won over by the aunt and others and wanted to make a move against Old Master Zhou, some were not capable enough, and some were not greedy enough, so they were not on Linlang's priority list for punishment.

This steward is quite corrupt and capable; if we don't deal with him, Linlang fears that Old Master Zhou won't be able to handle him.

The person behind the scenes, seeing that they had lost a capable servant, did not realize that their plan had been discovered by Linlang and the others. They only assumed that the person had been reported by someone else. After all, the people in this mansion had been fighting fiercely before, and it was normal for them to report each other, remove others, and take their place.

It just delayed their important business, which annoyed these people behind the scenes. They thought they were a bunch of pigs who didn't get anything done but were good at this kind of intrigue.

Seeing that they hadn't succeeded in dealing with Old Master Zhou, those who wanted to cause trouble for the Zhou family thought they should get rid of Linlang first. Once Linlang was gone, Old Master Zhou would have no one to talk to, and things would be easier to resolve.

And sure enough, these people were right. Getting rid of Linlang would indeed make it much easier for them to deal with Old Master Zhou. After all, although Old Master Zhou was shrewd, he lacked power and influence, and couldn't investigate who was targeting him. If Linlang hadn't investigated the current crisis in the manor and reported it to Old Master Zhou, he wouldn't have known at all, and naturally, he wouldn't have been able to resolve it. In the end, he could only watch helplessly as Master Zhou and the others made mistakes. By the time he realized it, the damage was already done, and it would be too late for him to punish Master Zhou.

These people had a simple way of dealing with Linlang. After all, Linlang was a girl, and when she reached the age, she would definitely have to get married. So they immediately sent a matchmaker to propose marriage to Linlang, hoping to marry her off so that they wouldn't have to kill anyone and could easily drive away Old Master Zhou's right-hand man from his side.

So on this day, when Linlang went to pay her respects to the original owner's mother—after learning etiquette, the Zhou family, like other large families, started to pay their respects to each other morning and evening, unlike before when they lived in the countryside, where no one had time for such formalities. They would go to work in the fields after breakfast, and after a long day, they would come back, eat, wash up, and go to sleep—she saw a matchmaker arranging a marriage for her.

When Linlang saw a matchmaker arranging a marriage for her, she was reminded of the original owner of this body's marriage.