Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

At this moment, the Crown Prince's wife was extremely troubled in preparing marriages for his illegitimate sons and daughters, because the birth mothers of these two children were constantly nagging and making demands, making it much more troublesome than preparing marriages for the other illegitimate sons and daughters of the Prince of Zhou in the past.

She arranged marriages for the sons and daughters of the Zhou king, since she was not their legal mother but only their sister-in-law, so they and their mothers were in a relatively good mood.

When it comes to the sons and daughters of the Prince of Zhou, she is their legal mother, their birth mother. She is afraid that the Princess Consort of the Prince of Zhou will mistreat their children, so she will always find fault with them. If the Princess Consort of the Prince of Zhou is impatient with them, they will complain to the Prince of Zhou.

Although most of the time the Crown Prince Zhou was too lazy to pay attention to them, once he did, it became the Crown Princess Zhou's business, which annoyed her to no end.

If it weren't for the fact that such a marriage requires the matriarch to manage it, and it would be unreasonable to leave it to the concubines, then the Crown Prince's wife wouldn't want to get involved in the affairs of each household and would let them handle it themselves.

Therefore, in families with many concubines, the head wife has such a hard time because she has too many things to worry about.

The Crown Prince's wife truly envied some families in the capital who had few concubines or illegitimate children in their harems, and whose small populations meant the matriarch had far fewer worries.

Sure enough, when Linlang came to pay her respects that day, she saw Princess Qingyang and her mother, Consort Cai, walk in.

As soon as Consort Cai entered, she said, "Your Highness, Qingyang said she wanted to see the dowry Your Highness had prepared for her. I told her that Your Highness is very busy right now and doesn't have time for you to look at this and that, but she insisted on coming to see it, and I, as her mother, couldn't do anything about it."

Although she put on a smiling face, everyone knew that it was not Princess Qingyang who dared to ask to see the dowry. Princess Qingyang did not seem to have such boldness. The person who brought it up must have been Consort Cai who encouraged Princess Qingyang to see the dowry, for fear that the Crown Prince's wife would not handle her daughter's dowry well.

However, it is normal for her to have such concerns as the birth mother of the Princess of Qingyang, because some mistresses do indeed inflate the price when preparing dowries for their illegitimate daughters.

Although the government gave 10,000 taels of silver, the price of the items purchased was not actually 10,000 taels; it was all an overstatement.

Consort Cai was clearly afraid that such a thing would happen, so she naturally kept a close eye on it.

Although the Crown Princess of Zhou had never had such a bad reputation when preparing dowries for the girls in the household before, Consort Cai still felt it was better to keep an eye on things.

Of course, the main focus is on clothes and jewelry, which are what her daughter will wear in the future. If they are made too poorly, people will laugh at her, so she naturally has to keep an eye on them.

Although the Crown Prince's wife was annoyed by these people constantly bothering her, she still arranged for people to take her and her daughter to check.

Of course, we need to bring enough people to prevent the mother and daughter from doing anything underhanded, such as taking away our purchases and then claiming that we didn't have enough. This is not just my wild guess; there are indeed such extreme individuals who have done this, just to gain more benefits.

They also arranged for Linlang to go and take a look.

Linlang was young, so the Crown Prince's wife didn't assign her any tasks. However, she would often have Linlang supervise any work that needed to be done. Although she couldn't do the work herself, being a supervisor was still useful. It would also allow Linlang to see how things were done, and if she and her eldest daughter-in-law couldn't manage in the future, she would give Linlang some tasks as well.

Linlang had no problem being a supervisor, but she was too lazy to take on any job.

In some worlds, if you don't have money, you might have to do chores to earn some. But in this world, there's so much dowry and betrothal money that it's enough, so you don't have to work hard.

Fortunately, she is still young and doesn't need to worry about the Crown Prince's wife assigning her any tasks. When she gets older, and the Crown Prince's wife assigns her tasks, she can simply say that she is not capable enough, that she can manage her own small household but not the entire household, and then decline the assignment. It is likely that the Crown Prince's wife will not force her to manage the household.

It turns out that the Crown Princess of Zhou was right to send several people to follow Consort Cai. Consort Cai was the kind of person who was greedy for small gains. This time, she insisted on seeing her daughter's dowry. First, she really wanted to see how well the Crown Princess of Zhou had arranged it. Second, she wanted to steal some things so that she could say that the dowry wasn't enough and ask the Crown Princess of Zhou to add more for her daughter. As for the things she stole, she would naturally keep them and leave them to her son's family later.

Indeed, besides her daughter, she also had a son, but she wasn't favored and couldn't rise to the rank of concubine, so she couldn't save much money for her son.

The thought that her son would suffer as much as Master Chu and others after leaving the family and moving out of the mansion made her try every possible way to make more money.

So he set his sights on his daughter's dowry, thinking that since the dowry was all paid for by the public funds, he could just skim some money off it, and if his daughter was short, he could just have the public funds make up the difference.

This way, the daughter's interests won't be harmed, and the son can also accumulate some wealth. Isn't that great?

The idea was wonderful, but unfortunately, the Crown Princess of Zhou was no pushover, and Linlang was no pushover either. So, her plan to have her daughter cover for her while she stole the jewelry was clearly doomed to fail.

This was the first time Princess Qingyang had done something like this. Her heart was pounding and she was very nervous. Anyone who paid attention could tell that something was wrong with her.

Given Princess Qingyang's personality, Consort Cai still dared to take her along to fleece the Prince Zhou's mansion; Linlang really admired her for that.

Sure enough, Princess Qingyang's acting skills were completely inadequate, and the people sent by the Crown Prince's Consort quickly noticed something was wrong. As a result, the Crown Prince's Consort's people split into two groups: some kept an eye on Princess Qingyang, and some kept an eye on Consort Cai.

No one wanted to make Linlang work hard, so they didn't assign her any tasks. They just let her oversee the overall situation and keep an eye on Consort Cai and Princess Qingyang.

Linlang was very satisfied with this job. She thought that if everyone stopped Consort Cai and Princess Qingyang from doing what they were doing, then she wouldn't have to take action; if everyone didn't discover what Consort Cai and Princess Qingyang were doing, then she could step in and question the mother and daughter.

However, the Crown Prince's consort's people were clearly very effective. Even though Princess Qingyang, in cooperation with her mother, made various attempts to divert everyone's attention to her side and get her mother to take action, Consort Cai still had people on her side, especially her sister-in-law Shen Linlang—she was older than Chu Yue, so Linlang was her sister-in-law—who kept an eye on her mother, preventing her from stealing anything valuable. This made Princess Qingyang anxious, because she also wanted her younger brother's family to have more wealth in the future, so they wouldn't have to separate and suffer like her second uncle's family. (End of Chapter)