The Entry of Aristocratic Families

"Eighty taels? Are you trying to brush off a beggar! A business that pays for its own capital in a year and you offer eighty taels? I offer eighty-five! Give me five thousand shares of the cement factory!"

"Get out of the way! You bastard, I offer ninety taels! I'll take the coal plant!"

"Who are you cursing at?"

"Damn it, I'll beat your ancestors!"

"I offer one hundred taels for the glass factory! I'll buy them all!"

Crazy! Everyone had gone completely crazy!

The atmosphere in the grand hall had skyrocketed from hesitant observation to an absolute boiling point in just a few breaths. Those aristocratic officials and wealthy merchants from Jiangnan, who usually spoke in elegant prose and prided themselves on remaining unfazed even if Mount Tai collapsed before them, now completely exposed their greedy true natures.

The steward of a current rank-four Deputy Minister of the Court of Judicature and Revision did not even care that his hat had been squeezed off. With his hair disheveled, he stepped on the shoulders of the people in front of him to lunge forward. Clutched tightly in his hands were several Royal Bank banknotes soaked in sweat, and he screamed hoarsely, "Give me the steel plant! The base price is thirty taels, right? I offer fifty taels! Give it all to me!"

"You're stepping on my face! You scoundrel!" An old imperial censor was trampled underfoot, yet he still desperately reached out a hand, tightly gripping a land deed. "I am mortgaging my three-courtyard mansion in the west of the city! I want to buy the iron mine! Even at sixty taels a share, I want it!"

Within the crowd, the dozen or so "shills" that Wang Hao had planted early on acted like stirring sticks in a mudslide, driving the rhythm wave after wave.

"Oh my! A hundred thousand shares of the glass factory have already been bought! There aren't many left!" one shill shouted at the top of his lungs.

"What?! One hundred and ten taels! I offer one hundred and ten taels! Issue my receipt quickly!"

Under the frenzied price-gouging of these shills, what everyone originally thought were bargain prices now blinded everyone's eyes.

The steel plant soared all the way from thirty taels per share to fifty-five taels!

The cement factory was forcefully driven up from forty taels to seventy taels!

The most terrifying was the glass factory. Stimulated by the profit of 1.5 million taels, its price charged past the major threshold of one hundred and thirty-four like a runaway wild horse, starting from seventy-five taels, and it was still skyrocketing at a rate of five taels per incense stick of time!

In the private room on the second floor, the composure and smugness on Zhang Wuji's face had long since vanished.

His hands tightly gripped the armrests of his grand armchair, his nails turning pale from the excessive force. The muscles on his old face twitched violently, his eyes fixed on the constantly updating quotation blackboard downstairs, and his breathing was as rapid as a fully drawn bellows.

"How could this happen... How could it make so much money?!" A stormy sea raged in Zhang Wuji's heart. "The glass factory made 1.5 million taels in two months? This is exorbitant profit! This is daylight robbery!"

He originally thought the royal factories were just a gimmick, but he never expected them to be six monsters continuously spewing mountains of gold and seas of silver!

"Elder!" The Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue rushed into the private room, his face covered in sweat and his voice carrying a crying tone. "It's complete chaos down there! Those retail investors and wealthy merchants from out of town are seeing red! The prices have already been driven up by more than double! The eighteen million taels of principal we brought could originally buy more than half the board, but now, at these prices, we can't even swallow half of it!"

"Even if we can't swallow it, we must eat it!" Zhang Wuji abruptly stood up and fiercely slammed his hand on the table. His eyes were covered in bloodshot veins, looking like a gambler who had lost his mind. "These six major factories are a cornucopia! The Emperor wants to use these nine hundred thousand shares to cash out, but I will not let him have his way! As long as we hold an absolute majority of the shares, our noble families can interfere with the factories' accounts at next year's board of directors meeting! When that time comes, won't we have the final say over those millions of taels of profit!"

"But Elder, the prices are too high. Our current silver on hand..."

"Go transfer it! Go borrow!" Zhang Wuji roared without hesitation. "Send people to mortgage all the estates around the capital to the Royal Bank! Dig out all the silver from the cellars of the major families! Tell those family heads that if we let these nine hundred thousand shares fall into the hands of retail investors today, our aristocratic civil official faction will never be able to control the Emperor again!"

"At all costs! Sweep the goods for me!! Snatch them!!!"

Under Zhang Wuji's almost insane command, the overwhelmingly massive financial power of the aristocratic civil official group finally bared its fangs.

Millions, tens of millions of taels of capital surged madly into the trading hall like a breached flood.

"The Wang family of the south of the city invests two million taels, sweeping up one hundred thousand shares of the glass factory!"

"The Cui clan of Qinghe invests 1.5 million taels, buying out sixty thousand shares of the cement factory!"

"The Wang clan of Langya..."

With the fall of the hammer on every astronomical transaction on the large blackboard, the gong-striking eunuch's hands were almost numb from the vibrations.

This was not trading at all; this was robbing future money-printing machines!

No one thought it was expensive. In their greed-blinded brains, no matter how much money they spent today, as long as the factories were still running, as long as the Great Zhou Dynasty still needed to build houses, use iron, and buy glass, these shares would be money trees that would never fall in value!

Time passed minute by minute, and the sun moved from the east to directly overhead.

When the noon bell struck, the inventory number of nine hundred thousand shares on that massive blackboard had been completely crossed out with a red cinnabar pen, replaced by a glaring "Sold Out"!

Nine hundred thousand shares, fifteen percent of the equity, were swept clean by the frenzied capital elites and noble families in just four shichens!

A bizarre atmosphere permeated the hall.

Those who managed to buy shares hugged their equity certificates. Instead of feeling the pain of having spent millions of taels of silver, they trembled with excitement, tears almost falling from their eyes, as if they were holding their own fathers' memorial tablets.

"I bought it... I finally bought five thousand shares of the glass factory!" A wealthy merchant who had exhausted his entire family fortune knelt on the ground, kissing that specially made piece of paper. "Ancestors bless us! The next three generations of my Zhang family can just lie back and collect dividends!"

Meanwhile, those lower-to-middle-level officials and retail investors who failed to grab any beat their chests and stamped their feet. Some even slapped their own faces on the spot, weeping bitterly, as if they had missed the chance to ascend to immortality.

In the private room on the second floor, Zhang Wuji looked at the mountain-like pile of equity certificates before him, his old face flushed purple from extreme excitement.

Their aristocratic alliance had mobilized tens of millions of taels of ready silver and mortgaged countless farmlands and shops to forcefully snatch up six hundred thousand of these nine hundred thousand shares! They held the absolute majority!

"Hahaha... Hahahaha!" Zhang Wuji laughed wildly at the sky, laughing until tears came to his eyes. "A foolish boy! He is just a foolish boy after all! For a mere tens of millions of taels of silver, he has handed over his economic lifeline to our noble families!"

He stroked those certificates as if he were stroking the empire of the Great Zhou. "With these shares, my confidence when speaking in the royal court is ten times stronger than before! That impoverished scholar Zhuge Huaijin wants to fight? What does he have to fight me with? The financial power of this Great Zhou is ultimately grasped in the hands of our aristocratic families!"

Zhang Wuji thought he was the oriole waiting behind, the biggest winner of this capital feast.

But he was completely unaware that the moment they exchanged the true gold and silver that had slumbered in their cellars for centuries, along with the deeds to the fertile lands amassed by their ancestors over generations, for a few pieces of "paper" printed by the Emperor's inner court... Wang Hao had already silently slipped a steel-forged noose around their necks.