Chapter 43: Going Up the Mountain

Meng Chengwei had considered this approach before. In fact, he had thought about it from the beginning. However, what he really wanted was the Ye family’s tea-making method and Ye Chongming’s connections as the head of the tea business. Trying to steal the garden households would mean tearing his relationship with the Ye family apart, and it wouldn’t benefit him. After all, stealing the garden households would cost a lot of silver. By next year, if he didn’t offer such high prices, those households wouldn’t cooperate with him; if he did offer high prices, he would feel it was a loss.

Buying raw tea without the tea-making method wouldn’t produce good quality tea cakes or loose tea, making it pointless. So he hadn’t considered this tactic.

But now…

He was extremely agitated.

Seeing Meng Chengwei pacing back and forth in the room, Liu Qilin said, “If something happens to the Ye family girl, they certainly won’t like us and will suspect we set it up. If they suppress the news and don’t admit their girl lost her virtue, randomly marrying her off to a poor family, our plan will fail.”

Seeing that Meng Chengwei was deep in thought and had taken his words to heart, Liu Qilin continued, “But if we put pressure on the garden households and try to steal them, the Ye family will have to seriously consider cooperating with you. If we can’t use kindness, we must use force.”

Meng Chengwei turned around, sat down on a chair, and smiled, praising, “Well said, Manager Liu.”

“There’s no time to lose. You handle this matter,” he said, adding, “Act quickly, or it will be too late.”

In Lin’an, paying taxes and fees to the Tea Bureau on the second day of the Mid-Autumn Festival was customary. Once the procedures were completed, tea merchants and garden households would immediately sign the pre-order tea contracts outside the Tea Bureau.

This way, tea merchants wouldn’t have to make another trip up the mountain, and the garden households could have lunch provided by the tea merchants, saving them the trouble and expense.

Before taking on the task, Liu Qilin clarified, “We didn’t inquire about which garden households cooperate with the Ye family to avoid alerting them. We still need to find out, which will take some time. The earliest we can go up the mountain is tomorrow.”

Although they hadn’t inquired about the garden households cooperating with the Ye family, Liu Qilin had followed Meng Chengwei’s orders to establish connections with the Tea Bureau and give a gift to a minor official to become acquainted. Therefore, as long as they arranged another meal and gave a generous gift, they could obtain the list of garden households cooperating with the Ye family, saving some time.

Meng Chengwei nodded, “Go ahead.”

…

While Liu Qilin was contacting the minor official at the Tea Bureau, Ye Chongming had already arrived at the home of a Li Zheng.

This Li Zheng, named Zhou Jiawang, was in his sixties, about the same age as Ye Chongming. They had known each other for decades, and Ye Chongming had always been good at maintaining relationships. The two old men had a deep bond.

Ye Chongming didn’t hide anything and directly explained the situation, “I have no other choice but to ask for your help. I know that in the face of great profits, you can’t guarantee that every garden household will listen to you and keep their tea for the Ye family. I don’t need you to do much. Just accompany me to the yamen to change the white contracts to red contracts after the garden households sign them. I’ll cover all the costs.”

“Additionally, the tea currency is voluntary. Initially, I was worried that the tea silver would be robbed and there wouldn’t be enough silver, so I discussed issuing tea currency with the Baofeng Money Shop. Now that the tea silver is safe, I’m still offering tea currency to show my gratitude to the money shop’s owner for helping me in my time of need. The interest I’m offering to the garden households is half a tael of silver for every hundred taels. If any garden household doesn’t need the money urgently and wants to earn this interest, they can take the tea currency.”

As he spoke, he gestured, and Li Fu opened a rattan box, revealing a hundred taels of silver in front of Zhou Jiawang. Besides the silver, there were also several bright silk fabrics.

Zhou Jiawang’s expression didn’t change much, but Ye Chongming could see the glint in his eyes.

As the Li Zheng in the prosperous Jiangnan tea mountains, Zhou Jiawang’s family was relatively well-off. But this was only in comparison to the surrounding garden households. They weren’t truly wealthy. Saving a hundred taels of silver in a year was considered very good. A hundred taels of silver was a significant amount for him, not to mention the silk fabrics, which were worth dozens of taels of silver each.

Ye Chongming’s request wasn’t excessive. It was just changing the white contracts to red contracts, and the garden households didn’t have to pay taxes themselves. As long as they sold their tea to the Ye family, whether the contract was white or red didn’t matter to them.

As for the tea currency, if the Ye family couldn’t provide silver and had to give tea currency, it would be a problem. But the Ye family clearly had silver, and the garden households could choose to take silver if they didn’t want the tea currency. The interest on the tea currency wasn’t low either, so it wasn’t difficult. These two tasks were easy for him, and he would be doing the Ye family a favor without harming the garden households’ interests. He would also get a hundred taels of silver for free. Why would he refuse?

“Alright, we’ve been friends for a lifetime. There’s nothing more to say. Leave it to me,” he said cheerfully.

He pretended to decline the silver, “Take the silver back. I can’t accept it.”

Of course, Ye Chongming insisted, and after some back-and-forth, Zhou Jiawang accepted the silver.

Feeling a bit guilty about taking the silver for nothing, Zhou Jiawang said, “Let’s go. I’ll accompany you up the mountain. We can visit the two nearby villages before it gets dark. You can stay at my place tonight to avoid the trouble of going up and down the mountain.”

That was exactly what Ye Chongming had planned. Even if Zhou Jiawang hadn’t suggested it, he would have asked Zhou Jiawang’s son to accompany him.

Now that Zhou Jiawang was willing to go himself, it was even better.

The two villages at the foot of the mountain had about thirty and forty households, respectively. However, only about thirty households had tea gardens. With Zhou Jiawang leading the way, Ye Chongming smoothly signed contracts with these thirty households.

As for the red contracts, Ye Chongming and Zhou Jiawang only informed the garden households. They didn’t need to go to the yamen themselves. As the Li Zheng and guarantor, Zhou Jiawang would go to the yamen with Ye Chongming to handle the procedures. The garden households had no objections, and Zhou Jiawang had their verbal authorization.

That night, Ye Chongming stayed at Zhou Jiawang’s house.