The clerks in the room were already at their wits’ end, and seeing someone causing trouble made them even more flustered. Not daring to lose their temper in front of the foreign official, they could only grit their teeth and drive her away in low voices: “Go away, go away, go back, don’t pollute His Excellency’s eyes!”

Before Lin Yuchan could stand steady, several people transformed into hurdlers, leaping over the counter to chase her away.

It wasn’t that they feared she would cause trouble, but Guangzhou trading houses had never had the custom of employing servant girls – from shopkeepers to laborers, they were uniformly male. Just like women weren’t allowed on fishing boats that went to sea, it was very unlucky for a proper business place to have a woman mixed in.

It was just that this girl, surnamed Lin, was truly useful, and the shopkeeper couldn’t drive her away, so he grudgingly allowed her to stay. But she didn’t know how to avoid strangers and ran out to watch the excitement – she didn’t understand propriety.

Although Hart had studied Chinese culture, his knowledge was limited after all. Not understanding the clerks’ mentality, he asked puzzledly: “What are you doing? This maid says she can explain the account books – why are you stopping her?”

This had an immediate effect. The clerks instantly got goosebumps, fearing they’d arouse suspicion before the official. They could only stand in place and explain with stammers: “This… she’s talking nonsense, don’t take it seriously, she probably can’t even read…”

Taking advantage of this chaotic moment, Lin Yuchan had already picked up the account book to examine it.

The clerks were dumbfounded. She really could read!

The little girl had a palm-sized face, but her expression was quite proper, similar to the scholars they’d seen at academies and examination halls. Her thin lips slightly parted as she recited strings of numbers – it didn’t seem like she was making it up.

Perhaps her opium-addicted father had taught her. He’d been a scholar after all, and teaching his daughter to write her name to raise her value when marrying was common enough.

But seeing her serious expression, her cultural level was far above “writing her name.” They didn’t know where she’d secretly learned reading and writing. The clerks thought such an improper woman would be immediately driven from the hall if she met a more conservative official.

Unfortunately, the foreign official lacked this awareness and acquiesced, even tossing over another ledger with the hint: “This one seems to have problems too.”

Lin Yuchan usually paid attention to how Wang Quan and Mr. Zhan kept accounts. Fortunately, Defeng Trading House mostly dealt in bulk business with few customers, so the accounts weren’t complicated – simple and convenient.

Also, fortunately, they hadn’t used any complex Western bookkeeping methods, but used Chinese characters in a straightforward narrative: “On a certain day, a certain person bought so many dan of tea, priced at…”

Only the handwriting was quite sloppy, and to save time, they’d created many abbreviated symbols, making it look chaotic at first glance.

Lin Yuchan switched to exam-taking analysis mode, quickly browsing several pages, thinking there seemed to be no room for falsifying accounts.

She looked up and asked Hart, “What don’t you understand? I’ll try to reconstruct it.”

The nearby clerks stopped blocking her and instead stepped back several paces, their eyes flashing with contemptuous but excited light.

They thought: The foreign official is about to fly into a rage! This time she’s in for it! Best to drag her to the yamen for a beating – see if she dares speak out of turn again!

But this young foreign official didn’t “act for heaven” as they expected. Instead, he carefully examined that presumptuous servant girl, his brow furrowing repeatedly, his lips moving as confusion appeared on his face, but he said nothing.

“You…”

In foreign eyes, Chinese people all looked similar. Moreover, Lin Yuchan’s appearance had greatly changed. Hart vaguely felt this girl looked familiar, but feared revealing ignorance by recognizing her wrongly.

“I’m the patient you helped at the church.” Lin Yuchan generously reminded him. “I’m now working… as a helper at Defeng Trading House.”

She vaguely introduced her status to avoid his probing questions, especially about how she’d spent those two taels of silver.

Hart said “Ah,” recalled for a moment, and a smile appeared on his tense face.

Little swindler. Had swindled the pastor out of some pocket money.

And had eaten and drunk freely at the church.

Enemies meeting on a narrow road – so she was hiding here.

However, compared to this group of evasive clerks, Hart found her particularly pleasing to the eye. Compared to cunning, stupidity was more intolerable.

“I knew we would meet again!” Planning to give these stupid clerks a good embarrassment, he stood up with a beaming smile, very enthusiastically took her hand, saw the healthy pink color of her nails, and patted the back of her head, laughing: “I must go back and tell Reverend Morrison. He’s been wondering where that devout girl went.”

As a respectable English gentleman, he felt that shaking hands with a humble foreign maid was harmless. Lin Yuchan’s moral views came from over a century later – she didn’t think anything of it at all.

But the watching clerks were all stunned. What they saw was: a foreigner publicly molesting a Chinese woman! Daring to pull and tug at her!

For the sake of Chinese-foreign harmony, everyone unanimously endured it, looking at Lin Yuchan with grievance and silently praying she wouldn’t lose her temper.

Lin Yuchan indeed didn’t lose her temper, even showing Hart a slight smile, saying calmly, “Thank you for your concern. Is that old pastor still in good health?”

The clerks’ gazes instantly turned contemptuous. This servant girl was young but scheming – she didn’t dodge at all, obviously intending to curry favor with the foreigner!

Liu Ershun suddenly looked down, glanced at Lin Yuchan’s thin, long feet, and had a sudden realization, saying quietly: “I heard foreigners, like Manchus, prefer big-footed girls!”

He deliberately spoke in Chaozhou dialect to ensure the foreigner couldn’t understand. The clerks naturally understood and snickered, their contemptuous expressions intensifying.

Before the laughter ended, Lin Yuchan suddenly looked up.

The clerks’ expressions froze, their snickering stopped abruptly, and their mouths awkwardly twisted into lines.

“What… what’s wrong?”

Contempt aside, if this servant girl caught the foreigner’s eye, they absolutely couldn’t offend her.

Lin Yuchan noticed everyone’s gazes and realized her earlier behavior had been too casual, greatly lowering the Great Qing’s standards of female virtue.

The nail that sticks out gets hammered down – she couldn’t show personality at this moment. She quickly shook off Hart’s hand with chaste determination and sternly scolded the clerks: “Why don’t you hurry and find the shopkeeper? Are you leaving me to handle this alone?”

Everyone awoke as if from a dream and quickly sent two people running out.

Lin Yuchan turned to Hart: “I’ve seen Mr. Zhan sometimes not record certain incoming and outgoing goods in the general ledger to save trouble, but all the delivery receipt stubs are stored in boxes. I’ll check them one by one for you.”

Although Lin Yuchan looked down on Defeng Trading House’s methods inside and out, after quickly weighing the situation, she had to help with today’s matter.

Hart the wealth god wanted to realize his dream of a “clean customs” and make an example to deter all foreign trade houses in Guangzhou City.

If Defeng Trading House confusedly became that chicken to warn the monkeys, being labeled by customs as tax evaders, even if they later cleared their name, they’d still face lengthy litigation and huge bribes.

When the nest is overturned, no egg remains whole. If something went wrong with Defeng Trading House, she, the lowest-level bonded laborer, definitely wouldn’t have good days ahead.

If Defeng Trading House unfortunately collapsed, according to bankruptcy liquidation procedures, she would certainly be among the first batch to be sold.

The clerks actually understood this principle too, which was why they first thought of bribery to gain breathing room. Who knew the foreign master wouldn’t take this approach – they could only be dumbfounded.

Lin Yuchan felt it was “every man’s responsibility” to stand up and struggle through reconciling the accounts.

The ledger was sloppy, but fortunately, the key numbers were clear. She’d also paid special attention to the daily account reconciliation process, slowly working backward from transactions she knew about, back to before Wang Quan bought her, then to the beginning of the year…

Hart’s brow gradually relaxed. While sizing up this cunning little maid, he flipped through customs records for comparison, finally commenting with some amusement: “How have you been losing money all along?”

This question the clerks could finally answer, competing to say: “Times are bad, fewer foreign merchants come too, not like previous years, not like previous years!”

Flipping through the ledger, Lin Yuchan was secretly shocked. Defeng Trading House served as middleman between tea farmers and foreigners, taking high commissions and lending money for interest – seemingly profiting without capital, yet had been losing money these past two years.

No wonder Hart, as Deputy Inspector General of Guangdong Maritime Customs, discovered Defeng Trading House’s tax payments decreasing yearly and suspected foul play.

But Hart immediately pointed to another entry and asked: “Even so, on a certain month and day, a certain foreign trading house purchased so many dan of tea from Defeng Trading House, and the full proper tax of two and a half taels of silver per hundred jin of tea was paid. But your accounts show no related records. Where are the taxes Defeng Trading House should have paid?”

Ordinary clerks couldn’t answer this question. Tea house workers had clear hierarchies – they weren’t allowed to inquire about responsibilities outside their own, to prevent overstepping authority for private gain.

But Lin Yuchan wasn’t bound by such rules. Having often heard Wang Quan’s complaints while working, she immediately said: “We did pay, just to the ‘Likin Bureau.’ The Likin Bureau people said they were acting on orders from the prefectural yamen, deducting taxes to serve as military provisions for bandit suppression. Oh, and the berthing fees for foreign ships based on tonnage – we paid those too. Whether they entered the customs treasury, I don’t know.”

She’d read in historical materials that after the Opium Wars, customs were reformed with tariffs flowing directly to central finances to pay war reparations, while local governments lost revenue sources and had to exploit the people even more ruthlessly, leading to more uprisings.

She spread her hands with feigned grievance: “We can’t pay taxes twice.”

Sure enough, hearing this, Hart immediately frowned again, writing several lines in his little notebook.

With Lin Yuchan opening this line of discussion, other clerks suddenly caught on, everyone talking at once to complain: “The government exploits us harshly – every year there are different types of taxes, all off the books! Your Excellency, please see clearly!”

These thoughtless words immediately revealed countless loopholes to Hart. His face flushed, his green eyes widened, and he asked with excited restraint: “So the receipts submitted to customs were all forged?”

The clerks’ faces instantly went white: “This…”

Lin Yuchan went all in, nodding: “I haven’t participated in clerical work, but I think so. But you can’t blame the tea houses. With local government approval, goods that paid likin and miscellaneous taxes needn’t be included in total export amounts. If we paid taxes based on those nominal transaction numbers, the tea house would have gone bankrupt long ago.”

All the clerks fell silent, looking at her incredulously.

Never mind where she’d learned all those professional terms she rattled off so easily – the foreign master’s attitude had just softened somewhat, and she made a suicidal announcement that the trading house falsified accounts!

Even if they’d let something slip first, she should have stubbornly helped cover it up!

They quickly knelt in unison: “Your Excellency, please don’t believe her! This woman speaks nonsense – she wants to show off and attract your attention… she understands nothing…”

Hart pressed his temples: “So noisy.”

Lin Yuchan quickly weighed the situation: trading houses being exploited by local government leading to decreased profits and reduced tax payments was fundamentally in conflict with customs interests.

If it were a different corrupt Great Qing official who practiced graft and embezzlement, seeing reduced customs taxes from trading houses would certainly rage and prosecute.

But Hart…

If his character truly matched that biography in the history books, then for the “sustainable development” of customs, he would consider trading houses’ profitability and wouldn’t blindly squeeze money without distinguishing right from wrong.

Moreover, trading houses had to pay taxes anyway. Paying customs meant money for reparations – treaties were signed, and this money couldn’t be defaulted on. Paying the Qing government would go toward building gardens and suppressing peasant uprisings…

Comparing the lesser of evils, paying customs was better.

Lin Yuchan pursed her lips and sent Hart an affirmative look.

If it were anyone else in the tea house, even threatening their life wouldn’t make them dare expose their bottom line like this. If Lin Yuchan hadn’t had a bit of insider knowledge about Hart’s character and customs operations, she wouldn’t have answered so frankly either.

Even if her calculations were wrong, she hadn’t invested in the tea house herself – she wouldn’t lose a penny, right?

Only the group of clerks felt catastrophe approaching, thinking this woman must be sent by rival trading houses to sabotage their business. Hadn’t her few short sentences just confirmed Defeng Trading House’s tax evasion?

Anyway, words alone proved nothing. Liu Ershun made a gesture, just thinking of having someone tie her up, when Kou Laicai burst in, sweating profusely.

“The shopkeeper… the shopkeeper’s back…”

Wang Quan flew into the shop like the wind, his braid tip flailing on his buttocks, glasses askew on one ear, oil and sweat beading on his pores, breathing like a bellows.

“This humble one sees… sees… huff huff… sees, cough cough cough…”

He’d rushed over from the shops near Guangxiao Temple. Kou Laicai’s stammering explanation wasn’t clear, but hearing “foreign tax official,” Wang Quan understood everything, abandoned his “donation solicitation team” and turned around. Unable to find a carriage, he desperately ran the whole way, his heart bouncing wildly in his throat. He hadn’t been this nervous even when foreign steamships bombarded the city.

Entering the door, he saw clerks kneeling everywhere, the foreign master lounging with crossed legs in the red sandalwood grand master’s chair he usually sat in, fingers twirling a strand of his red hair, thoughtfully flipping through a stack of old files on the counter, saying quietly: “Troublesome…”

Only Lin Yuchan stood, still righteously saying: “…Other shops should be pretty much the same – they can’t survive without keeping two sets of books. When officials come to inspect, nobody dares speak up – they just patch whatever loopholes they find…”

Wang Quan collapsed in a heap, feeling the entire shop’s roof swaying before his eyes, ready to fall at any moment.

He didn’t know who had told this damned servant girl about “dual contracts.” Could it be the bookkeeper, Mr. Zhan? Besides him and Wang Quan himself, nobody knew.

But he was smarter than the clerks, knowing explanations were useless now – better to interrupt her first.

“Outrageous!” His thunderous shout drowned out Lin Yuchan’s voice. “Why aren’t you kneeling when speaking to His Excellency! Don’t you understand propriety!”

After speaking, he threw himself down to kneel, kowtowed three standard times, then pulled Lin Yuchan’s sleeve downward.

Actually, if not in a court setting, the etiquette for meeting officials needn’t be so elaborate. But Wang Quan was well-versed in worldly ways – this gesture contained flattering intent while subtly reminding the foreign master: You’re an outsider, we’re the natives – we have to teach you the rules. Please know when to stop.

Sure enough, Hart was also somewhat stunned by this shout, listening to the clerks’ chaotic introductions: “This is our shopkeeper. If you have business, speak with him! Hey, servant girl, kneel! Kneel!”

Lin Yuchan looked at Hart’s crisp Western suit – impressive as it was, she didn’t feel like kneeling.

Considering he was the future Great Qing’s god of wealth, she felt her attitude was already respectful enough. But he belonged to the “invader” camp after all – if she knelt, she’d become a traitor.

Standing stubbornly felt somewhat cowardly, though.

Foreigners shouldn’t be so obsessed with ceremony, right? When Hart gave her medicine to save her life, she’d just bowed to him several times.

Lin Yuchan composed herself, returning to her meek and obedient little servant appearance, tidying her sleeves and obediently watching Hart’s expression, waiting for him to say “rise.”