Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

Putting everything else aside, just the concubines that Master Zhou and Master Zhou took in with ulterior motives are probably about to cause trouble.

Indeed, after several years in Beijing, apart from Old Master Zhou who wanted to live a few more years and didn't take any concubines, both Master Zhou and Master Zhou couldn't resist the temptation and took concubines.

This is actually quite normal. Although Madam Zhou and Madam Zhou were not ugly compared to women from the countryside, there were too many beauties in the capital. In addition, Madam Zhou and Madam Zhou were getting old. With Master Zhou suddenly becoming rich and powerful, how could he resist the temptation of women throwing themselves at him?

What they didn't know was that most of these women who threw themselves at them were actually arranged by someone behind the scenes. This included not only the two aunts, but also the previous aunts, and even people from other families in the capital who wanted to plant spies in the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion.

It's just a matter of getting a cheap maid; arranging it is very easy.

Because it was a low-cost arrangement for some people in the capital, Master Zhou and Master Zhou had a lot of people with ulterior motives around them. As long as their backers gave the order, they could cause trouble.

They're all troublemakers. You can imagine that if it weren't for Linlang protecting them, the Zhou family would have been in chaos long ago. After all, with the intelligence of the eldest and second masters of the Zhou family, it's hard for them not to cause trouble.

Old Master Zhou tried hard to stay clear-headed, but he was old and lacked energy. In addition, there were too many troublemakers in the mansion, so he couldn't manage so many things. It was always a case of trying to solve one problem only to have another arise.

Thanks to Linlang's sewing and mending in the back, the Zhou family was spared from disaster.

However, Linlang's methods are secretive. If anyone poses a serious threat to the Zhou family, Linlang will nip the danger in the bud.

For example, when the people under the Duke of England's household, where my great-aunt worked, were commissioned by Master Zhou to kill him, Linlang directly undermined the Duke of England's household by destroying it. In the end, the assassins were also imprisoned, thus resolving the crisis.

Because Linlang's methods were very secretive and outsiders couldn't see through them, the result was that Aunt and others felt that the Zhou family was very lucky. After all, every time they tried to cause trouble, something would happen and it would be interrupted. It felt like the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion was being protected by something. They didn't want to say that it was a blessing from heaven, because saying it was a blessing from heaven would make them a little scared. They were afraid that the heaven in this blessing was the ancestors of the Zhou family.

If the Zhou family truly has the blessings of the ancestors of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion, then wouldn't they see them causing trouble for the descendants of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion? What if the ancestors get angry and punish them?
Therefore, they dared not mention that the Zhou family's good fortune was a blessing from heaven; they could only say that the Zhou family was lucky.

Leaving aside the fact that the actions of the aunt and others always failed, they increasingly felt that the Zhou family was lucky. They worried that one day, they might be afraid that the people who protected the Zhou family were their ancestors, and that they would cause them trouble. Just consider that when Zhou San Niang listened to her trusted nanny's words, she not only did not think that what she said was wrong, but even felt that this was exactly right. No matter what, she could not follow in her cousin's footsteps and marry the son of a minor official. Then, after her father-in-law passed away, she would quickly become a member of the lower class of society, just like her family before her, and like her grandfather, she would be reduced to her original state in her old age and become a village woman.

Therefore, you must find someone with good conditions to marry. If you can't find one, you can be a concubine to someone with good conditions.

Then she thought that being a member of the imperial clan was a good thing, as the children born to them would be secure in the future, and she would definitely not be reduced to a village woman like her grandfather in her old age. So, even though she failed to seduce Li Yu, Zhou Sanniang was still unwilling to give up and still planned to seduce a member of the imperial clan.

She had no other connections, and among the imperial clan, she only knew people from the Yonghe Prince's Mansion and the Ying Prince's Mansion.

Right now, the Prince of Ying's mansion is in mourning because of the death of the Princess Consort. It is obviously unrealistic for Li Yu to go and seduce someone from the Prince of Ying's mansion at this time, since he only managed to get close to Li Yu when he was delivering festival gifts to the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion.

Since the Prince of Ying's mansion is not working out, Zhou San Niang wanted to seduce people from the Prince of Yonghe's mansion. Coincidentally, her second aunt was there and had connections.

It must be said that the death of the Princess Consort of Ying disrupted the Second Aunt's plans, because she originally wanted Zhou San Niang to seduce someone from the Prince of Ying's mansion. In the end, the Linlang sisters would be one wife and the other concubine for someone from the Prince of Ying's mansion. If word got out, the people of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion would definitely be laughed at.

Now that Zhou Sanniang sees that the people of the Prince Ying's Mansion are observing mourning, she wants to seduce the people of the Prince Yonghe's Mansion. If she really succeeds, although some people will laugh at the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Zhenguo's Mansion for climbing into someone's bed, it will definitely not be as exciting as two sisters marrying into the same mansion, one as the principal wife and the other as a concubine.

What she really hoped for was that Zhou San Niang would seduce Li Yu, so that the two sisters could marry the same man, one as his wife and the other as his concubine. The concubine would even be the one who climbed into his bed, which would be even more exciting. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, which was what she regretted the most.

Although the incident at the Prince Ying's Mansion prevented Zhou San Niang from seducing anyone there, forcing her to focus on the Yonghe Prince's Mansion instead, which disappointed her somewhat, the fact that a scandal involving a bed-climbing incident was better than nothing was still a good thing. So, although Second Aunt was upset that the incident at the Prince Ying's Mansion had ruined her plans, she didn't stop Zhou San Niang much after hearing from her informant that she wanted to target the Yonghe Prince's Mansion—as long as she didn't try to climb into her son's bed.

She didn't want her son to get involved with someone as stupid and vicious as Zhou Sanniang, not even as a concubine.

As for Zhou Sanniang, that foolish and scheming troublemaker, if she were to get involved with her son, she would worry about future unrest in the household. After all, she and Linlang are sisters, and it is said that they used to have a good relationship. If she could betray them, wouldn't it be even easier for her to betray them if she had any needs? So how could she let such a woman into the family, not even as a concubine?

Unfortunately, Zhou Sanniang had her eye on her son. She wasn't familiar with the others, but she had met her second aunt's son a few times in recent years because of their kinship, so she considered him a suitable candidate.

Seeing that Zhou Sanniang had really set her sights on her son, the second aunt's smile vanished, and she quickly sent her spies to stop Zhou Sanniang's actions.

The informant, having received orders, naturally advised Zhou Sanniang, saying, "Third Miss is going to the Yonghe Prince's Mansion and will need your aunt's help in the future, so it's best not to marry her son. Otherwise, your aunt will become your mother-in-law, and conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are likely to arise. If you lose your second aunt's help there, you might not be able to live a good life." (End of Chapter)