Chapter 4372 — Preparing to File a Complaint

"Deputy Chairman, this ledger is something I've been secretly keeping for years. Every last one of Wei Zhaotong's tricks—selling high and reporting low, lining his own pockets—is recorded in here, down to the smallest detail," Chai Laoshi explained cautiously.

Keeping this ledger had been just about the only real work he had done in all these years, and it had cost him untold effort and heartache. If he had not been completely stripped of power by Wei Zhaotong and left a man with nothing to do, he would never have had the time to carefully investigate the other man's backroom dealings.

After all, no matter how domineering Wei Zhaotong might be, these dealings could never stand the light of day. Without painstaking effort, an outsider would never notice a thing, let alone record detailed, well-founded figures. Every entry was the fruit of years of hard work, gathered through all manner of covert inquiries and investigations.

"Then why can't I make sense of it?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled. To his eyes, what was written there was utterly incongruous—nothing matched up, front to back, and there was no logical order to speak of. Did this really contain evidence of Wei Zhaotong's crimes?

"That..." Chai Laoshi hesitated a moment before resolving to come clean. "The Deputy Chairman may not know, but I used the Number Eighteen Displaced Accounting Method. That's why it looks like a jumbled mess to outsiders, with no thread to follow. I had no choice—if I hadn't used such a covert method and this ledger had fallen into Wei Zhaotong's hands, everything would have been finished."

"The Number Eighteen Displaced Accounting Method?" Though still completely in the dark, Wei Zhao had the distinct sense that this was something formidable. Truly, every trade is a world apart—hearing the name, one might think it was some exceedingly powerful lost martial art.

"Exactly. The displaced accounting method is a highly unusual way of keeping accounts, with the sequence scrambled and shifted throughout. There are thirty-six varieties in all, according to how the order is disrupted, and they were devised by the great merchants of antiquity. Their purpose is secrecy and security. If you don't know precisely which numbered method was used, then even if this ledger fell into someone else's hands, they'd never find a clue in it," Chai Laoshi explained carefully.

"I see. I didn't expect you to be such a hand at bookkeeping." Wei Zhao could not help but regard Chai Laoshi a little more highly. The man might look timid and easily frightened, but in this respect at least he clearly had real skill. The displaced accounting method sounded like an extremely complex and profound discipline—and unless he was much mistaken, many a merchant guild steward might not fully understand it either.

"The Deputy Chairman flatters me. I was driven to it..." Chai Laoshi said with a bitter smile. His life and fortune were at stake—and against none other than the wily old Wei Zhaotong. No amount of caution could be excessive.

"But if that's the case, doesn't it mean only you can read this ledger? Even if you gave it to the other higher-ups at headquarters, they might not be able to make sense of it, would they?" Wei Zhao said, somewhat troubled. After all, this ledger was meant to be produced as evidence—if no one could understand it, its credibility would be invisibly diminished.

"That... getting every higher-up at headquarters to understand it would be a bit difficult. But if they're told it's the Number Eighteen Displaced Accounting Method, quite a few of them should be able to read it. Many of them rose step by step from branch steward, and are bookkeepers themselves," Chai Laoshi surmised.

"Good, then." Wei Zhao nodded. As long as the professionals could understand it, there was no problem. He promptly instructed, "Make a full copy of this ledger. I'll write a letter explaining the matter, and then we'll send them out together."

"Send them out? To Nakajima headquarters?" Chai Laoshi perked up at once, though a moment later he grew worried. "I've heard Wei Zhaotong has backers at Nakajima headquarters. Unless the Deputy Chairman takes the evidence there in person, a mere letter and this ledger alone probably won't accomplish much..."

"You needn't worry about that. I don't intend to send it straight to Nakajima, but to the North Island branch. Deputy Chairman Hong Zhong is there right now—he's an old friend of mine, and he won't treat this matter perfunctorily," Wei Zhao said with a smile.

As deputy chairman, Hong Zhong had earlier been jointly sidelined at Nakajima headquarters. This affair was the perfect opportunity: so long as he opened an investigation in his capacity as deputy chairman, bearing the evidence, no one would be able to block his return to Nakajima. Wei Zhaotong's backers especially, with their misdeeds held in Hong Zhong's grasp, would never dare oppose him openly—otherwise they would only be courting disaster.

"Deputy Chairman Hong? That's wonderful. I'll go copy the ledger right away," Chai Laoshi said, overjoyed. Unlike the honorary deputy chairman before him, Hong Zhong was a deputy chairman with real authority. To deal with a branch steward like Wei Zhaotong, an honorary deputy chairman risked being accused of overstepping; a deputy chairman with real authority, however, could act in a way that no one could find fault with.

What was more, Hong Zhong was a recently promoted deputy chairman who had long managed the North Island branch and had no dealings whatsoever with Wei Zhaotong—so naturally there was no fear of him shielding the man.

A short while later, Chai Laoshi handed Wei Zhao the copy he had just made, along with the original ledger, and Wei Zhao, having finished his letter to Hong Zhong, immediately used the Hong Merchant Guild's internal channels to send it all to the North Island branch with all possible speed.

That done, what remained for Wei Zhao was simple: while taking over the Weihu branch, keep a close watch on Wei Zhaotong, and otherwise simply wait quietly for Hong Zhong's response.

Simple as these things looked, however, they were not easy to do. For Wei Zhao, keeping watch on Wei Zhaotong was no trouble; the difficulty lay in how, all by himself, he was to take over a branch as vast as Weihu.

This was a far cry from running the Tiandan Pavilion back on Nakajima. The Tiandan Pavilion was a pill shop he had opened himself, with Tianchan and Xueli helping him, and it had none of this tangled mess of affairs—he simply refined pills, put them out for sale, and someone collected the money and kept the accounts.

The Weihu branch, by contrast, was not quite a top-tier branch among the many of the Hong Merchant Guild—clearly a notch below the North Island branch—but it was still countless times larger than Wei Zhao's own Tiandan Pavilion. The staff responsible for its various affairs numbered a hundred or more in all, and without sufficient experience one could not possibly manage it.

Wei Zhao was, after all, not of this trade. Not only did he lack any management experience in this line, but in matters of business strategy he was a rank novice who understood very little. If he were to rashly take over the Weihu branch, one highly likely outcome was that the entire branch would fall into paralysis and grind to a halt. (To be continued) R466