Chapter 715: Businesspeople Know No End to Trickery
About 150 kilometers from the Grand Canal stood a secluded estate, the property of a certain high-ranking noble from the Imperial Capital. Several other nobles had estates nearby as well. These capital elites referred to them as gardens, places they would visit under the guise of leisure, serving as summer retreats.
But that was only nominally true. In reality, it was a secret base of the Qingping Society, known only to its A-rank members.
In terms of secrecy, the various branches of The Inn still had to do business and thus were easier to locate. In contrast, the Qingping Society’s bases were entirely off-limits to outsiders. Even lower-ranked members knew little about them, making them far more concealed than The Inn’s branches.
At this moment, Qi Xuansu, Dreaming Cloud, and Ceremony Prelude were waiting here for Madam Qi’s return. The silver shipment was being handled by two Canal Gang leaders, so Dreaming Cloud no longer needed to worry about it.
The three of them sat separately in the main hall, with the central seat left vacant. Dreaming Cloud sat to the upper left, Ceremony Prelude sat across from him, and Qi Xuansu was seated to Dreaming Cloud’s right.
Though it was deep winter and the hour was late, all three of them were Heavenly Beings, unaffected by the cold or heat. The doors of the hall remained wide open, allowing moonlight to stream in.
Just then, a gust of wind mixed with black mist swept in, forming a human shape upon the central seat. It was none other than Madam Qi.
The three Heavenly Beings let out a breath of relief. Although they had believed Madam Qi would be fine, her opponent had been a Pseudo-Immortal, and the Imperial Capital was The Inn’s territory. So they were not 100% confident. Now that they saw her return unharmed, they were completely reassured.
Madam Qi removed the abacus from her waist and got straight to the point. “When I used my Spiritual Body to grab the ship, I roughly tallied the amount. This time, we have secured a total of 480,000 Taiping coins.”
This was not a coincidence. Branches of The Inn did not hand over their entire assets to the headquarters. They had to retain some funds to keep operations running. Hence, the amounts handed over were typically whole numbers. That was because including odd change like Ruyi coins would only trouble the headquarters. Thus, the branches either rounded off or made up the numbers to convenient sums for ease of accounting.
Madam Qi did not actually use the abacus. She was just putting on a show, as usual. She had done the mental math instantly. “According to our prior agreement, I’ll take 40%, which is 192,000 Taiping coins; Dreaming Cloud will take 30%, so that’s 144,000 coins; Ceremony Prelude will get 20%—96,000 coins; and Gold-Plated Knife 10%—48,000 coins.”