Quick Wear: I am the shopkeeper at the Merit Pawn Shop

The furniture here seems to be made of rosewood, huanghuali, and mahogany.

It was indeed Sun Youtai who came.

But it was not pulled from some treasure warehouse, but from the storage room.

Repaired the broken furniture and put it to use.

As for Gu Kaizhi's paintings, they were painted by a master of ancient painting.

Shen Mo told Sun Youtai that the King of Chu was looking for Gu Kaizhi's paintings, and Sun Youtai was shocked.

This painting by Gu Kaizhi was recently acquired by him. It has since been viewed by many celebrities, and this fact cannot be concealed at all.

If the King of Chu came to ask for it, he would have to give it to him.

So, the fake painting replaced the real one.

The most ingenious part of this is that if Marquis Wei An really wants compensation here, he will definitely send someone to carefully check the authenticity of the painting.

But now, in order to ensure that Marquis Wei An has money to use at the auction, the King of Chu will not let Marquis Wei An compensate for their losses here.

Since no one compensates for the losses here, naturally no one will come to check whether the painting is authentic.

All of this was Shen Mo's plan. Although Sun Youtai was also involved, he had actually made plans for the worst. The worst that could happen was that Gu Kaizhi's original works would be destroyed, which was always better than being forced to take sides for no apparent reason.

The struggle for the throne has always been accompanied by blood and rain since ancient times, and he is now guarding the emperor's small treasury and does not want to pay attention to the disturbances of the struggle for the throne.

When Wei Anhou returned, he felt more and more aggrieved the more he thought about it, but he still had to prepare the silver for the auction at Qianbao Pavilion.

By the day of the Qianbao Pavilion auction, he had finally scraped together 50,000 taels of silver.

Shen Mo and Sun Youtai sat together in the box, watching the price of the painting that the King of Chu liked rise little by little. When the price reached 45,000 taels, there was no more bidding sound in the audience.

Sun Youtai and Shen Mo looked at each other and said, "I heard that Marquis Wei An prepared 50,000 taels of silver this time. We can still make a push."

So Sun Youtai asked the manager beside him to shout out forty-eight thousand taels.

Wei Anhou’s face turned as dark as a pot, and he shouted out forty-eight thousand one hundred taels.

When some people saw that Wei Anhou was so stingy and only added a hundred taels, they couldn't help but laugh out loud, and the price of the private room upstairs was immediately raised to forty-nine thousand taels.

When Wei Anhou was about to add another 100 taels, the King of Chu couldn't stand it anymore and said: "50,000 taels."

His words suddenly made the entire auction hall silent, with only the auctioneer's voice remaining.

"The King of Chu offered fifty thousand taels, fifty thousand taels once, fifty thousand taels twice..."

Marquis Wei An wanted to scold the King of Chu, but since he was here, he should have spoken up earlier. If the King of Chu had spoken up earlier, so many people wouldn't have come out to compete with him. Everyone still had to give the King of Chu some face.

Finally, he used 50,000 taels to buy the painting. Wei Anhou's heart was bleeding. He narrowed his eyes:

Now that 50,000 taels of silver have already been spent, it would be better to go all out and board the King of Chu's ship!

Qianbao Pavilion box.

A middle-aged man who looked like a shopkeeper came to Sun Youtai's box with silver bills.

"Second Boss, this is the money I got from selling the paintings after deducting the commission."

That’s right, Sun Youtai is a shareholder of Qianbao Pavilion and the second largest owner of the company.

In fact, Qianbao Pavilion was founded by a few merchants engaged in maritime trade and has branches all over the country.

Some treasures and antiques are bought and sold here, and auctions are held regularly.

Sun Youtai took out a hundred-liang note and handed it to the shopkeeper.

"Thanks a lot."

"It's not hard. It's our duty to work for our employers." The shopkeeper said quickly.

As soon as the shopkeeper left, Sun Youtai divided the banknote into two.

Gave one portion to Shen Mo.

"This time we teamed up to trick Marquis Wei An, and this can be considered the fruit of our victory."

When Shen Mo saw, he found that Sun Youtai had actually given him 20,000 taels.

"Isn't this a bit too much? You must have spent a lot of money to buy that painting!"

"Someone is pawning items for 1,000 taels at the pawn shop."

Sun Youtai didn't care.

"Don't think that these paintings are valuable just because they are painted by celebrities. There must be a channel to sell them. If there is no such opportunity, a poor family will take the paintings to the homes of the powerful and wealthy to sell them. I wonder if they will be eaten up by everyone," Sun Youtai said again.

Shen Mo believed this. Look, wasn't Marquis Wei An cheated out of 50,000 taels of silver by the King of Chu?

If it weren't for Shen Mo's plan, the person who was cheated would be Sun Youtai.

A few days later, the Sun family split up.

The reason was still the painting that Wei Anhou Mansion bought for the King of Chu.

In order to collect 50,000 taels of silver to buy paintings for the Marquis of Wei'an's mansion, Sun Youde moved silver from the Sun family shop and made false accounts.

After this incident, no matter how much Sun's father liked this illegitimate son, he had no way to keep him. The final compromise was for the Sun family to split up, and the 50,000 taels of silver were deducted from the private property given to Sun Youde.

After the family split up, Sun Youde moved out of the Sun family.

Sun Youtai officially took over all affairs of the Sun family and became the head of the Sun family.

Even Sun's father can no longer give him orders from now on.

The new head of the family, Sun Youtai, was very low-key when he took office. He did not hold any grand banquets, but only entertained a few businessmen with whom he did business in Beijing.

Although he held an official rank of fifth rank, he was always very careful about his conduct and knew that he was a businessman.

Shen Mo attended the banquet of the Sun family with his wife and daughter that day. What was unexpected was that at the end of the banquet, the emperor actually sent his eunuch to congratulate Sun Youtai on taking over the Sun family.

Sun Youtai gave his father-in-law a silver note of one thousand taels, and after receiving his father-in-law's advice, the emperor commended him for not siding with the King of Chu.

Originally, Sun's father still held out hope, thinking that Sun Youde's joining the Wei'an Marquisate in standing on the side of the King of Chu would not necessarily be bad for the Sun family, and that it was Sun Youtai who was making a fuss out of nothing and could not tolerate his own brother.

So when the family was divided, he followed the ancestral rules and gave 80% of the family property to Sun Youtai.

When the two portions were divided among the illegitimate sons, the largest amount was given to Sun Youde.

Sun's father originally planned to use most of his private property to subsidize Sun Youde.

The emperor's edict not only made him dare not give any subsidies, but he also called his beloved concubine Yao and gave her a severe scolding.

Let her restrain her son and not favor his concubine over his wife.

In a blink of an eye, autumn turned to winter and the capital city was hit by heavy snow.

A team of armored soldiers entered the city. The Hang brothers and sisters received the news that Hang Songyue had returned, and waited by the roadside despite the heavy snow.

Hang finally saw her second brother whom she hadn't seen for several years, and she burst into tears.

Although they had not met in these years, they had kept in touch with each other through letters, and Hang Songyue also knew that the whole family had settled in the capital.

After the emperor had given the generals a welcome treat, he would award them with titles for their merits.

Hang Songyue made great military achievements this time and was awarded the title of Lieutenant General of Beijun by the emperor and a mansion in the capital.

It was not until late at night that Hang Songyue returned home exhausted.

Shen Mo and Hang went to see Hang Songyue together the next day.

According to the client's previous life's trajectory, Hang Songyue did not end up with a good ending. Shen Mo caused Shen Cheng to die (nominally dead, not actually dead), and Wei Anhou naturally would not be targeted like in his previous life.

As long as all the members of the Hang family are alive, Hang Songyue will not investigate the cause of death of the Hang family members. Everything is changing.

As soon as Shen Mo and Hang Songyue entered the Hang family's house, they had just exchanged blows when Hang Songyue punched Shen Mo in the face with a heavy punch.