護花近衛 - 第4358章 好生意 - 翰墨軒

This put Wei Zhaotong in a thoroughly foul mood. His rank had gone up, true enough, but from now on there would be no more raking in piles of spirit jade—after all, his distant cousin could hardly be expected to travel all the way to the Weihu Sea to purchase supplies, could he?

Had he known it would turn out this way, he might as well have stayed put in the Gaolin Sea and remained a deputy shopkeeper with a fat cut of the profits.

By the same token, his distant cousin, the purchasing steward, had run into trouble of his own. Ever since Wei Zhaotong was transferred away, he had lost his inside man in the Hong Merchant Guild; after all, a branch shopkeeper could hardly do what Wei Zhaotong had done—issue him inflated price quotes while actually collecting payments at a steeply discounted rate.

The Hong Merchant Guild had always conducted its business aboveboard and under strict supervision; it would never stoop to such tricks as falsifying prices. Only a man consumed by greed like Wei Zhaotong would dare tread the crooked path and do things on the sly.

Still, even if the Hong Merchant Guild could no longer be milked for the price difference, the purchasing steward could at least turn to other merchant guilds and find other partners to continue lining his own pockets—only now Wei Zhaotong would get no share of it.

From the Gaolin Sea of the Eastern Continent to the Weihu Sea of the Southern Continent, Wei Zhaotong felt the drop all at once. Had he never known the days of scooping up great profits, it might not have mattered so much; the trouble was that such things were addictive. Once a man grew used to the side roads, he could never again walk the straight path.

Now he merely drew a fixed monthly stipend. Even if a branch shopkeeper's stipend was, by ordinary standards, already quite handsome, to Wei Zhaotong, accustomed as he was to lining his own pockets, it was a mere drop in the bucket.

Yet he dared not brazenly tamper with the Hong Merchant Guild's internal accounts. Quite apart from the fact that the foothold he had established here in the Weihu Sea was nowhere near solid enough to let him run everything single-handedly, the tight surveillance of the Hong Shadow Group alone was enough to keep him from making any rash move; at most he could resort to roundabout means and skim a little off the top.

But in the end, that could not satisfy his greed. Ultimately he found another way, exploiting the chaotic conditions of these southern waters and taking up the pirate trade.

Naturally, Wei Zhaotong could not go and play pirate himself. For safety's sake he dared not secretly keep pirates in his pay either. Every time, he merely acted as the man behind the scenes, quietly contacting the pirates, then buying the goods back for himself while simultaneously demanding enormous compensation from the escort agency.

Once he had fleeced one house, he moved on to the next. Over the years, no small number of escort agencies and clients had fallen prey to Wei Zhaotong.

But he went about it with extreme caution and secrecy. Moreover, the vast majority of escort agencies, once an escort shipment went missing, would do all they could to play the matter down in order to preserve their reputation—quietly offering him compensation and settling it privately. No one would make a great fanfare of it and voluntarily leak such an ugly affair for outsiders to know.

And so Wei Zhaotong had always rested easy. Outsiders knew nothing of these dealings of his, and could not even begin to suspect him. Only this time, he had stumbled—and fallen flat on his face before the Qingtian Escort Agency.

Wei Zhaotong had never imagined that a shipment already in his grasp could be snatched back by Wei Zhao, still less that Qi Wenmo would believe it so utterly and come knocking with men in tow, raising such a storm that the whole city knew of it!