Chapter 4372 — Preparing to File a Complaint
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"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