Chapter 1612 - Zhang Family Manor

"No way—Old Qian's ambitions are that grand? Is he preparing for 'All Under Heaven Through Force of Arms'?" Lu Xuan could hardly believe his own deduction. "If he pulls all this off, it won't be Chairman Wen and Master Ma turning into Stalin—it'll be Qian Shuiting becoming Emperor, with House Qian as an hereditary dynasty! What's left for the rest of us!"

He hadn't been lying low in the Grand Library all these years just to end up carrying a sedan chair for the "second generation"!

"This is way too obvious!" Lu Xuan cursed indignantly. "Do they think we Elders are all fools?!" But five minutes later, he calmed down again. "Am I overthinking this?" Because those who had proposed or seconded the Youth League had, for the most part, no connection to the Nerds' Party core—if anything, they were on opposite sides. They were unlikely to be carrying Old Qian's sedan chair.

He had originally assumed the Youth League proposal was the Executive Committee bigwigs laying groundwork for a comeback after the current storm blew over. Now it seemed that wasn't the case.

This is getting hard to read. Could this be a chip Wen and Ma are using to buy off Qian Shuiting? Yes, that was possible. But he felt there was more to it than that.

Years of experience in officialdom had taught him: the easier something is to figure out, the more you need to think it over. If you still can't figure it out, wait and see.

"Forget it—it's the weekend. Let me relax a bit first." Lu Xuan stretched luxuriously and let out an earth-shaking yawn. The corridor was quiet; the office across the hall had its door closed. Today was Saturday—Cheng Yongxin had slipped away early. She was probably either reading with a cup of South Sea coffee at some café, or working on some article...

He tidied up his public opinion analysis notes and locked them in the office safe. Then he sorted the various documents and books on his desk—some to be filed, some to be returned—placing them in their respective trays. Naturalized staff would handle the rest. Soon his desk was spotless. This was a work habit he had cultivated over the years. A cluttered desk piled with documents signaled nothing but inefficiency.

When Liu Ziming saw Lu Xuan emerge from the library building, his expression was blank and distant—a look Liu Ziming hadn't seen in a long time. Having served Elder Lu for years, he knew: the colder the master's face, the more likely his own and his sister's backsides would suffer. He stood at attention with twelve-thousand-percent respect, awaiting orders.

Lu Xuan passed by without a word. Liu Ziming deftly took the briefcase handed to him. In truth, aside from a folding umbrella brought from the old time and space, a notebook, and a few pens, it contained nothing else. Lu Xuan had excellent operational security and never took documents or books out of the Grand Library.

From the library building entrance to the gate, Lu Xuan's pace was brisk. At 182 centimeters, Lu Xuan towered a full head-and-a-half over Liu Ziming. To keep up, Liu Ziming practically had to jog—but he always remained a step behind and to Lu Xuan's left, maintaining about a meter's distance.

A two-wheeled official carriage was already parked in the courtyard. It had been arranged by his secretary through the General Affairs Office. Including the driver, three fully armed guards were present. Since the terror attack, security had been elevated across the board. Any Elder leaving the Green Zone had to be accompanied by guards; for longer trips, an official carriage had to be reserved in advance.

The three guards snapped to attention and saluted. Lu Xuan nodded slightly.

Liu Ziming jogged over to the carriage, opened the door, and bowed: "Chief, please board."

This type of official carriage had only recently become common. Lu Xuan rarely rode in one. The interior had obviously been cleaned, but he spotted several strands of hair—long and short—clinging to the headrest, glaringly visible against the cream-colored velvet. Lu Xuan suddenly felt dizzy. He could almost smell the odor of people like Ming Lang, Cheng Yongxin, and Mu Min—people he found distasteful.

He dropped into the seat. Liu Ziming closed the door and climbed onto the rear platform, squeezing in with the escort guard. He called to the driver: "To Zhang Family Manor!"

Zhang Family Manor was Lu Xuan's "outer residence." Legally speaking, it belonged to his wife. Yes, he was married—like Xun Suji at the food factory, he had wed a local native's daughter.

Zhang Family Manor had originally been his father-in-law's property. His father-in-law was a clansman of Zhang Youfu, the well-known current member of the Lingao Advisory Council—and also a "landlord." But this landlord lived rather miserably. Though he had three or four tenant households working his land, during busy seasons he still had to labor in the fields himself—otherwise part of his land would lie fallow. His wife had died, and he hadn't remarried: he couldn't afford the bride price.

A marriage alliance with an Elder seemed like a good deal to him. First, it gave him the Elder Council as a backer. Second, the Tiandihui had already made a name for itself, and by marrying into the Elders, he became "one of them"—surely the Tiandihui would treat his family differently.

So when Lu Xuan came to the Zhang household as an agricultural training instructor and showed obvious interest in his big-footed daughter, the match was easily made.

Despite its name, Zhang Family Manor was just a courtyard house. Its location was already beyond the Third Ring of East Gate Market—technically suburban. Even the road in front was unpaved. Fields and woods surrounded it on all sides. With its gleaming new brick walls and black-lacquered gate, it had the air of a newly-rich country squire.

The compound faced south. The entrance followed the local building style: no plaque, no sign—about the same as a local gentry residence, except the walls and buildings were noticeably taller. The main difference was a side gate without a threshold, wide enough for carriages to pass through. The manor had three courtyards front to back, making it one of the more substantial properties in the area.

Since marrying this native wife, the Zhang family had begun to prosper. A squat three-room stone cottage with a thatched roof had been renovated into a grand five-room tile-roofed house. The courtyard, once enclosed by reed fencing, now had proper brick walls.

Though Lu Xuan was a "soy sauce Elder," he was not without influence. Working at the Grand Library had its advantages: requests for document searches piled up, and who got priority was entirely up to him, the office manager in charge of general affairs. Where there's power, there's rent-seeking—this was common knowledge from the old time and space. Lu Xuan didn't use this to extort or demand bribes; instead, he cultivated goodwill by being helpful. As a result, he had a fine reputation across departments. And all those temporary assignments had given him the chance to build connections with other Elders. So as long as he asked for something that didn't violate major principles, it was easy to get done.

The path to wealth he'd found for the Zhang family wasn't farming or commerce—it was contracting construction jobs. Of course, neither old Mr. Zhang nor his brother-in-law knew how to lay bricks or raise beams, but digging holes and hauling dirt they could manage. So old Mr. Zhang organized his relatives and tenants—men and women—into a labor gang that specialized in earthwork for construction projects.

Riding the wave of the Lingao Construction Company's building boom in recent years, the Zhang family's contracting business had grown larger and larger. The whole family treated him with ever-greater respect. Lu Xuan also shared modern concepts of management and accounting, offering occasional guidance, and the household fortunes flourished. The house grew grander and larger.

Unexpectedly, after only two or three prosperous years, accidents began happening on the job sites. Old Mr. Zhang fell from a scaffold one night and died. A few months later, an oxcart hauling earth had its axle snap; it overturned, crushing his brother-in-law and sister-in-law on the spot.

Lu Xuan, the son-in-law, naturally became the owner of Zhang Family Manor. The rest of the Zhang clan didn't think this was "natural" at all—by clan law, a daughter and son-in-law had no inheritance rights. But Lu Xuan was an Elder, and no one dared discuss clan law with him. Some muttered in private that the deaths of father and son were "suspicious." Of course, no one could produce any evidence, and after one unlucky soul who had been particularly vocal was sent to a labor camp for "slandering an Elder," the rumors vanished completely.

To avoid suspicion, Lu Xuan transferred the thriving contracting business to Zhang Youfu in his wife's name, taking instead twenty percent of the after-tax profits each year as a "franchise fee." He also leased out the Zhang family's original farmland to the Tiandihui under a full-package arrangement. Naturally, the household underwent "a sweeping revolution." Though it was still called "Zhang Family Manor," it was really "Lu Family Manor" now.

The annual franchise fees from the contracting gang and the Tiandihui gave him the means to keep renovating the manor. Construction had proceeded in fits and starts for three or four years; only last year had the third courtyard been completed, giving the compound its current scale. The walls were six meters high; the main buildings in the second and third courtyards had been rebuilt as two-story structures. Apart from a few vine trellises and some young trees, the courtyards had no other landscaping. Though the rooflines curved upward and the brickwork was fine, compared to the other residences now appearing in East Gate Market, it looked rather plain.

At this moment, the atmosphere inside "Lu Family Manor" was oppressively tense.

Liu Ziming's shout of "The master is home!" brought all the servants in the house rushing out to stand in rows in the courtyard.

Lu Xuan stepped down from the carriage and surveyed the courtyard. A soft "hmph" escaped his nose, and everyone around him bent their backs a few degrees lower.

Everyone in the manor knew that this normally amiable Chief Lu was actually very difficult to serve. Once his temper flared, the punishment was always terrifying. Even without Liu Ziming's frantic eye signals, they could read from Chief Lu's icy expression that the master was in a foul mood today. No one wanted to court disaster—they all held their breath, heads bowed, backs bent.