Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 342, Half a Move Ahead of Heaven

The cause and effect of the matter are roughly as described.

At least that's what the Embroidered Uniform Guard's investigation revealed.

Shen Tu's next move surprised everyone.

He chose to turn himself in and expose the matter.

This is absolutely one of the most incomprehensible behaviors to the general public.

The agreement to cooperate with the prefect of Zhenjiang and the establishment of the trading company in Zhenjiang would be a win-win situation and would not violate any of the imperial laws.

By exposing this matter, Shen Tu not only gained no benefit himself, but also found himself implicated.

Even a three-year-old child knows how to choose from such a multiple-choice question, so why would Shen Tu do something that harms others and benefits no one?

Fang Yong, with his omniscient perspective, guessed that Shen Tu was perhaps more afraid of himself than of them...

In short, Shen Tu became involved in this case of illegally converting rice paddies into mulberry fields.

The Lu family thought they had done everything perfectly, leaving no trace of wrongdoing.

Even if everyone knows it was their family who did it, as long as the key evidence points to Shen Tu, they can be largely spared from being implicated.

But it turns out that God doesn't fulfill people's wishes.

A series of coincidences emerged during the investigation.

Some clues that shouldn't have surfaced eventually pointed to the Lu family.

The third young master of the Lu family even went so far as to betray his own family for the sake of justice, personally standing up to identify his father.

Shen Tu was merely an innocent company president who was being used by his subordinates.

But is she truly innocent?

Fang Yong looked at Shen Tu kneeling below, pondered for a long time, and ultimately did not make a move.

This person is talented, capable, and knows when to advance and retreat.

The only thing that made Fang Yong feel uneasy was this.

That means Shen Tu underestimated him.

Fang Yong was never a cold-blooded emperor, nor was he someone who discarded his tools after they had served their purpose.

However, there has always been some misunderstanding about him.

Cheng Fan and Prince Zhongshun: "You son of a bitch..."

Fang Yong could tolerate his subordinates being greedy for money and women, or coveting power and merit, or even those like Shen Tu who wanted to make a name for themselves.

As long as we follow the steps and do not go against his wishes, that's fine.

Shen Tu didn't need to do these unnecessary things at all.

All he had to do was submit a memorial, expressing his truest thoughts and the difficulties he was facing, and Fang Yong would naturally help him solve them.

Instead of trying to survive with elaborate plans, as if he had reached a dead end and was defying fate to win against heaven.

But Fang Yong had no intention of doing anything to him.

Unbeknownst to him, Fang Yong seemed to have developed a rift with his subordinates.

It's no longer possible to communicate without barriers...

"Get up."

Fang Yong spoke up.

Shen Tu, kneeling below, felt much more relaxed.

He stood up, and most of his anxiety dissipated.

It seems he has successfully escaped from the dead end.

Previously, he had been working on establishing a national chamber of commerce.

Shen Tu believes that this is simply an advanced system that is different from the inefficient old bureaucratic system. The chamber of commerce model, which operates on the basis of assets, will no longer be limited by bloodline, allowing him to create an unprecedented and unparalleled business as a businessman.

Of course, this move would also grant him enormous power. However, despite submitting numerous petitions, he never received Fang Yong's approval.

Therefore, Shen Tu chose to establish a trading company on his own.

In reality, trading companies are not much different from national chambers of commerce, except for their size.

Simply put, it was the prototype of a national chamber of commerce.

Shen Tu's initial idea was very simple: he wanted to make a name for himself through the trading company and prove the superiority of this system to Fang Yong.

That was indeed the case at the beginning.

With the help of the trading company, industries in Nanjing and surrounding cities quickly recovered and developed.

This was the time when Shen Tu was most proud and self-satisfied.

However, as the trading company rapidly expanded and more and more merchants joined in, he found that the trading company he had personally built was beginning to slip out of his control.

The original purpose of establishing trading companies was to reduce meaningless competition and make rational use of resources. However, as trading companies developed, they themselves became the biggest competitors, quickly monopolizing all resources.

Trading companies operate entirely on a profit-driven model. In pursuit of profit, they expand rapidly, sometimes even disregarding rules, ethics, and laws.

In order to expand, members of the trading company actively used various means to suppress ordinary merchants.

Ordinary merchants were utterly powerless against such a behemoth as the trading company.

Shen Tu attempted to stop this behavior through management.

But with little success.

Even his own rights were shaken.

In the short term, he could still use the president's prestige to control the expansion of the chamber of commerce.
However, this approach cannot be sustained in the long run. If it continues, he will either join the expansion efforts or stand against the trading company, ultimately having his power usurped by the other members of the trading company.

Neither of these two options is what Shen Tu wants to see.

More importantly, as his power expanded, Shen Tu began to suspect the presence of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Huaiyin Army around him.

He is a smart man.

Some subtle clues had made him realize that everything he did was being watched from above, silently observing his every move.

Both of the previous options were dead ends.

If he is sidelined by his members, the trading company he built will inevitably go down a path of no return, eventually committing a heinous crime and being destroyed by the Huaiyin Army. As the founder of the trading company, he cannot escape responsibility.

However, if he joins the expansion and becomes the helmsman, he will also be pushed by the crowd to fall into the abyss step by step, and his ending will probably be even more tragic than the former.

Shen Tu never considered that Fang Yong would spare his life out of consideration for their past relationship.

How could a feudal lord who rose from the ranks of river bandits possibly be merciful?

Shen Tu could only try his best to survive and escape his inevitable death.

If a bomb keeps growing and will eventually explode, and this process is irreversible, how can we minimize the risk?
The answer is to deliberately detonate it, causing it to explode prematurely.

The trading company is like a ticking time bomb.

And so, what happened next began.

Shen Tu devised more than one plan to lure various families within the business community. In the end, the greedy Lu family was the first to fall for it, becoming the fuse that detonated the bomb and a sacrifice for Shen Tu's survival.

The most serious crime Shen Tu committed in this incident was disobeying the king's orders and forming a private society.

However, Fang Yong only rejected his policy of establishing a national chamber of commerce, but did not explicitly prohibit him from forming small business associations.

Therefore, this offense was not a particularly serious mistake, the trading company did not suffer any major losses, and the so-called "conversion of rice paddies to mulberry fields" was not his doing.

Shen Tu believes that if Fang Yong hadn't specifically wanted to kill him, he should have been able to survive.

But if Fang Yongfei wanted to kill him...

What can he do?

Fang Yong was half a move ahead of Heaven; he was Heaven himself.

Given Fang Yong's current power, if he's determined to kill him, he has no chance of escaping death.

(End of this chapter)