AEOGA CH52

The errand boy went to call for a physician. Since the Jiang family had made their fortune in medicine, they kept several physicians in their household, and soon a doctor arrived in a hurry, carrying his medical kit.

Entering the front hall, the doctor was first drawn to the two strangers, pausing slightly in surprise—though their faces were hidden, their extraordinary presence was impossible to ignore. Seeing blood flowing continuously from Jiang Yue’s arm, he was suddenly startled: “Was Master injured by a villain?”

Who could be so bold as to slash Master Jiang?

The errand boy hesitated, not daring to say that Master had suddenly lost his mind and slashed himself…

Yun Yao said calmly, “Treat him quickly.”

“Yes, Young Master’s spouse.” The doctor set aside his curiosity and began dressing Jiang Yue’s wound.

“Applying the medicine will hurt a bit, please bear with it, Master,” he instructed specifically. When treating such external injuries, the pain during dressing was no less than a second injury, often unbearable for patients.

Yet throughout the entire dressing process, Jiang Yue did not even knit his brows once. Not only did he not cry out, but he didn’t even show an expression of enduring pain.

The doctor marveled inwardly; having treated so many patients, it was his first time seeing someone so indifferent to pain.

Master Jiang was truly no ordinary man.

After treating the wound, Jiang Yue dismissed the attendants, leaving only four people in the front hall: himself, Yun Yao, Lu Xuechao, and Xie Chongjin.

Jiang Yue’s expression had calmed down, though suppressed excitement still flickered in his eyes. If slashing himself could not prove enough, the complete lack of pain throughout the dressing process was sufficient to demonstrate that this pain-numbing effect was not fleeting; it could last long enough to be used during medical treatments.

“I made a fool of myself in front of you two just now.” Jiang Yue did not speak with the tone of an elder to juniors; this invention alone was enough for him to treat both of them as honored guests. “Have the two of you come today because you have thought over the partnership?”

Lu Xuechao nodded: “The terms Young Master Yun mentioned last time were very generous. I indeed intend to cooperate with your esteemed manor, and not only regarding Mafei Powder.”

“Oh?” Jiang Yue was surprised. “Does Divine Physician Lu hold other miraculous medicines in hand?”

Mafei Powder alone was enough to drive the world mad. If there were other miraculous medicines, he would have to weigh whether the Jiang family even had the capacity to buy them.

Lu Xuechao said, “I heard that besides Jiang Yan Pharmacy, the Jiang family also owns restaurants, grain shops, cloth shops, and other establishments.”

Jiang Yue nodded: “Does Divine Physician Lu wish to acquire shares in those shops? To be frank, due to the recent floods, as a merchant, I still harbored a heart to aid the people, so prices for those businesses were pressed to the absolute minimum, making them essentially loss-making endeavors. If Divine Physician Lu feels the share is insufficient, Jiang Yan Pharmacy can offer forty percent. It is not that I refuse to give you those shops, but giving them to Divine Physician Lu would only cause you to suffer a loss.”

Jiang Yue assumed Lu Xuechao felt the profit share was not enough and wished to buy into other industries. He did not view the other party as greedy; holding the exclusive formula for Mafei Powder, the other party could easily open a pharmacy far more famous than Jiang Yan Pharmacy, yet chose to share it with them, meaning the Jiang family was the one profiting.

He was an honest man, holding nothing back regarding the deficit across his properties. Unscrupulous merchants would seek someone to take over a mess, but he held onto his conscience, unwilling to let anyone be duped, preferring to let the shops rot in his own hands.

Jiang Yue’s words made Lu Xuechao even more certain that he was a trustworthy person.

That way, there was no fear of him blabbering after their identities were exposed.

“Not acquiring shares, but purchasing,” Lu Xuechao said. “Those shops, I want all of them.”

The restaurant would be used immediately. As for the other shops, though not needed right now, they would sooner or later be useful, so preparing early was best.

Both Jiang Yue and Yun Yao were startled.

Jiang Yue emphasized once more: “Divine Physician Lu, those shops are all losing money…“

Taking shares was already a loss; wasn’t purchasing them just throwing money down the drain?

Or did the other party possess some way to bring those industries back to life?

Yun Yao, on the other hand, thought: They are truly wealthy.

The script for a wandering hero and divine physician should be accompanied by poverty, yet the other party’s wealth was beyond imagination.

Xie Chongjin said, “My wife and I hail from Yujing, and our family is in business. We originally operated a restaurant in Yujing, and now wish to open a branch in Yun州. However, as we will return to Yujing later, managing it ourselves might be difficult, so we wish to buy them outright, while your manor retains a share and manages them on our behalf.”

So it was a purchase, but not entirely; on the surface, the Jiang family would still manage and operate them, but the true owners behind the scenes would become them.

Hearing that they came from Yujing, Jiang Yue and Yun Yao instantly understood where their extraordinary presence originated. The ambiance of the capital nurtured people well; beneath the feet of the Emperor, a gathering place for high officials and nobles, overflowing riches were everywhere. That the other party was wealthy and overbearing, offering to buy up over half of the Jiang family’s industries in one breath, was no longer surprising.

It was just that the fact that both of them were merchants still felt a bit strange. Although Jiang Yue had heard from Yun Yao that Divine Physician Lu was not a doctor, he had assumed he was raised by a medical family; who knew his family ran restaurants, two completely unrelated fields.

Jiang Yue and Yun Yao had heard that Huaman Pavilion in Yujing had recently taken the crown and dominated the market, which would inevitably leave its peers with dismal business. Perhaps the other party’s restaurant in Yujing had been suppressed by Huaman Pavilion, driving them to Jiangnan to claim a piece of the pie.

Understandable, completely understandable.

Since opening restaurants was their original trade, they surely had plans after buying the establishment, so Jiang Yue stopped objecting. The Jiang family’s primary industry was medicine; the rest were merely icing on the cake, and he had been anxious to dispose of them during losses anyway. He had maintained them for charity in the past, but now that the imperial court had provided disaster relief, he had no heart to continue running them, and it was time to sell these shops.

In this way, Yun Yao went from working for the Jiang family to working for both the Jiang family and the imperial family…

The four clever and capable people worked with great efficiency, wasting no time. They only began negotiating the partnership in the morning, and by the afternoon, the transfer of commercial deeds was already completed. Jiang Yue sold the shops under his name to the two at a low price, and the profit-sharing contract for the pharmacy was quickly settled as well.

Handing over the commercial deeds, Jiang Yue said, “This restaurant is now the property of you two, so it naturally ought to be renamed. Might I ask what your restaurant in Yujing is named?”

Since it was opening a branch, the name would surely be the same.

Lu Xuechao did not hide it, nor could it be hidden anyway: “Huaman Pavilion.”

Jiang Yue lost his composure: “…What Pavilion?”

Yun Yao was already thoroughly shocked: “That Huaman Pavilion, personally named by His Majesty, exclusively serving Yujing’s nobles, whose signature dish, Squirrel Mandarin Fish, ranks first on the World Gourmet Compendium, where a single dish is hard to buy for a thousand pieces of gold?”

Xie Chongjin let out a soft laugh.

Indeed, the reputation was quite resounding.

“Precisely.”

Yun Yao took a deep breath.

He had thought they were driven to expand into Jiangnan after having their business squeezed by Yujing’s Huaman Pavilion; the reality was that this was the original Huaman Pavilion, having achieved unmatched supremacy in Yujing and now coming to Jiangnan to continue squeezing out other restaurants.

If he remembered correctly, their Jiang family now even held a share in Huaman Pavilion…

In the past, Yun Yao did not believe in good deeds being rewarded with good returns and evil with evil.

Now, he believed it.

If the Jiang family had not performed so many charitable acts, how could such a windfall from the heavens have fallen upon them?

And indeed, that was the truth.

Had the Jiang family not accumulated virtue and performed good deeds, how could they have caught the eyes of Xie Chongjin and Lu Xuechao?

The Jiang family’s restaurant quietly changed its name.

A restaurant changing its name was originally nothing unusual. After His Majesty strictly investigated Jiangnan’s officials and merchants, punishing many unlawful merchants, a vast number of shops were seized, shut down, and subsequently sold or transferred; changing names was commonplace.

Yet what made this unusual was that the new name was Huaman Pavilion.

This immediately caused Huaman Pavilion to ignite a massive wave of discussion across Jiangnan.

Without needing any hype or promotion, Huaman Pavilion itself was the biggest golden sign.

No one dared to suspect that this Huaman Pavilion was merely an imitation chasing clout. Although many restaurants had rushed to imitate Huaman Pavilion after it became famous, taking similar names like “Xiangman Pavilion,” “Caoman Pavilion,” or “Huaman Pavilion” with alternate characters in hopes of riding the coattails and leeching luck, none could produce dishes worth presenting, failing to stir even the slightest ripple. As for the exact three characters of “Huaman Pavilion,” absolutely no one dared to reuse them.

It was common knowledge that the plaque of Yujing’s Huaman Pavilion had been personally inscribed by the current Emperor, serving as a famous trademark verified by His Majesty himself. Anyone with a sane mind would not steal this trademark, lest it be deemed deceiving the monarch. Currently, His Majesty was right in Jiangnan, having just cracked down on a batch of counterfeit and substandard merchants; rushing to clout-chase at this crucial juncture was simply begging for death, wasn’t it?

Therefore, this had to be genuine.

The news of Huaman Pavilion opening a branch in Yun州 quickly spread throughout Jiangnan.

Previously, when Huaman Pavilion’s fame spread far and wide in Yujing, every wealthy merchant in Jiangnan had longed to taste it. Supposedly, it was something only Yujing’s high officials and nobles could eat, unpurchasable with mere money; being able to taste it was a supreme honor, and everyone wanted to be the first to try it.

Longing and waiting, when the branch of Huaman Pavilion finally opened in Jiangnan, the wealthy merchants all remained completely still.

They were truly terrified by His Majesty.

His Majesty had just carried out a heavy cleanup, where the gun shot the bird that stuck out its head; they all tucked their tails between their legs, not daring to run off to consume at such a prestigious location.

Those with money did not dare to go, and those without money could not go, making the business of Yun州’s Huaman Pavilion less bustling than Yun Yao had imagined.

Knowing it was related to the current strict atmosphere from above, Yun Yao said to Lu Xuechao, “I’m afraid they won’t come for a while.”

Lu Xuechao said, “They can abstain for a while, but they cannot hold back for a lifetime.”

Human nature had always been thus.

The wealthy merchants possessed immense wealth; what kind of beauty could they not obtain? Spending a few taels of silver could purchase a pretty servant. Why were they so eager to spend dozens or even hundreds of times the normal price to bid on shouma at auctions? Were they all mindless fools?

In the final analysis, the shouma itself was not important; what mattered was using it to compete and show off against one another, displaying their wealth through extravagant spending at auctions to hear a few words of envious flattery, satisfying their vanity.

Who spent more money, who could claim the beauty amidst fierce bidding—these were all matters of great prestige within their social circle.

Shouma were low-class luxury goods, a means to flaunt status, position, and financial power.

Even if the shouma industry was explicitly banned, human vanity remained endless. Such demand would always exist; people with money, power, and influence always hoped for the existence of “luxury goods” to make themselves appear superior, distinguished from the common masses.

And so, Lu Xuechao brought Huaman Pavilion to Jiangnan.

From the very beginning, his positioning for Huaman Pavilion was a high-end restaurant, an existence that only imperial royalty and nobles could afford to enjoy. If Yujing officials had followed the trend, how could these Jiangnan merchants possibly resist?

Wanting to show off, wanting to compete, wanting to satisfy vanity—wasn’t going to Huaman Pavilion for a meal far more effective than buying a bunch of shouma?

They would obediently send their money to him.

Of course, Lu Xuechao did not want these delicacies to forever remain exclusive to the rich and powerful, which contradicted his original intention of letting fine cuisine enter thousands of households.

Shifting the target clientele from “influential officials” to “wealthy merchants” was, in a sense, imperceptibly lowering the barrier.

As the target audience lowered step by step, it would become more and more widespread.

Lu Xuechao was not worried this would ruin Huaman Pavilion’s reputation or cause a loss of those nobles who needed to satisfy their sense of superiority and vanity.

After tasting such delicacies, who could still endure unpalatable food?

Besides, a few nobles were utterly insignificant compared to the tens of thousands of common people.