Mythical Three Kingdoms

In the end, Zhou Yu still had to give up on taking part in the tournament; every time he went up it felt like he was there to wreck the stage. After all, everyone had fought in the Northern Frontier war and knew exactly what kind of status Zhou Yu held.

So after they argued this point and got nowhere, Zhou Yu was hauled up to the rostrum by Chen Xi and the others. ”Zhou Yu, you’d better not go up there. Just quietly sit down here with us and act as a judge. If you go up, whether you win or lose, we all lose face. Hee Bi?”

On the other side, Guo Jia was escorted by a fifty‑man city management squad to the Government Office. Mann Chong sat in the main seat, while Guo Jia was surrounded in the middle.

”Right now, you have two options.” Mann Chong looked at Guo Jia with a blank face, completely ignoring Guo Jia shouting there about Mann Chong doing fishing‑style law enforcement and how he wanted to find Xun Yue to accuse Mann Chong of breaking the law and so on.

”What options?” Guo Jia’s Spirit instantly perked up.

”Option one: the money, I confiscate it and turn it over to the state, and then you can go find Zhongyu to accuse me of breaking the law or whatever.” Mann Chong said carelessly. If Guo Jia chose the first, then Mann Chong absolutely would not touch one cent of the dirty money, and would definitely turn the whole lot into the National Treasury.

”You’re just playing rogue here, aren’t you? Come on, there’s my hard‑earned money mixed in there!” Guo Jia said, displeased.

”Option two, you take sixty, I take forty.” Mann Chong said off‑handedly. Anyway, with Guo Jia’s temperament, odds were eight or nine out of ten he’d been scamming money in the chaos. Since he’d had a hand in it, he ought to get some hard‑earned money.

”Roll roll roll, take your forty percent, and this whole mess never happened. It ends here!” Guo Jia cursed under his breath.

Then, still annoyed, he pulled out a stack of bank drafts, counted out Ticket Exchanges for four Million Coins to give Mann Chong, and another two Million Coins for the Guard Unit that had hauled him over, telling them to take it back and split it. The rest he stuffed back into his own robe.

After that Guo Jia flung his sleeves in fury and left. Mann Chong smiled, casually picked up that stack of bank drafts. Guo Jia’s integrity was still reliable; once he agreed, he wouldn’t pull any tricks.

However, when Mann Chong took the drafts into his hand, his face inexplicably darkened several shades. Then he flipped through them and directly handed half of them to the city management members.

”Qin Qi, take this money and give the soldiers their autumn bonus.” Mann Chong said as he spoke, one hand stroking the Sword at his side, and then he chased out. Outside, Fa Zheng was in the middle of splitting the money with Guo Jia.

”Hurry up, hurry up, Xiaoo Zhi, hurry up and hand over the money, we agreed I get seventy, you get thirty.” Guo Jia said, wrapping his arm around Fa Zheng’s neck.

”What a brilliant method. One wave like this and all that money’s been laundered clean.” Fa Zheng gave Guo Jia a big thumbs‑up, then started counting the bank drafts. All the previous large‑denomination drafts had been transferred to Fa Zheng by Guo Jia.

”You two bastards!” Mann Chong came out with his Sword and saw Guo Jia and Fa Zheng splitting the loot by the wall.

”Hey, we agreed this whole thing ends here, all right?” Guo Jia glared at Mann Chong without the slightest fear.

”I see a huge pile of dirty money here, and I suspect there are private dark deals hidden in that pile.” Mann Chong said, face black.

Guo Jia snapped his fingers, and Fa Zheng jumped out from behind him in an instant.

”I really don’t want to say this, but Boning, this batch is not dirty money.” Fa Zheng raised his right hand, wagged his index finger, and said with a squinting smile, ”This is my personal legitimate income.”

”You tell me, what kind of business lets you earn that much in One Incense Stick’s Time?” Mann Chong said, face dark. He could guarantee that stack of Ticket Exchanges definitely totaled more than one hundred million coins.

”Simple.” Fa Zheng felt around on the ground, and after exerting himself, pried up a floor tile from the ground.

”Fengxiao, how much do you think this brick is worth?” Fa Zheng asked with a grin.

”Tens of millions of money.” Guo Jia answered with the same cheeky grin. Hearing this, Mann Chong’s face twisted; he instantly understood what Fa Zheng and Guo Jia were up to. In this era there wasn’t even a concept of money laundering being illegal. The very idea of ”money laundering” wouldn’t show up until the Qing Dynasty fifteen hundred years later.

”See, that’s how simple it is.” Fa Zheng stuffed the brick into Guo Jia’s arms, then shoved the money into his own robe.

In that moment, Mann Chong’s face was written full of rage; he really wanted to hack down these two bastards with his Sword. But he knew very clearly that these two bastards hadn’t actually broken any law.

”See? In our case it’s one willing buyer and one willing seller, no coercion, perfectly proper trade.” Fa Zheng wore the kind of ”this is how I am, go ahead and bite me” face that just begged for a beating.

”Between me and Xiaoo Zhi it’s a normal transaction.” Guo Jia completely agreed. When the two of them set up this little play, they had calculated it all in advance: a simple wave of the hand and they could blur away tens of millions of money—why wouldn’t they do it?

As for fraud or whatever—what do you know, this is called charging the aristocratic family tuition. And gathering crowds for gambling and blowing it up this big, don’t you know that’s illegal? Didn’t Mann Chong tell you that?

No? Fine then, since you’ve forgotten that clause, let Mann Chong give you a little hands‑on, personally demonstrated, taught‑by‑example reminder to reinforce your memory.

At this moment Mann Chong was about to explode from rage, but after carefully running through the laws he himself had set, aside from that mass gambling incident that Guo Jia’s bunch had already exposed, this current matter didn’t really seem to be breaking any law.

The previous mass gambling, that was Guo Jia and a whole pile of aristocratic families; as for Fa Zheng, he was just doing business, flipping things around once. Sure, ripping up a brick on the spot and selling that many of them was indeed kind of deranged.

But to be fair, if someone insists on selling like that, you really can’t do anything—private transactions, don’t touch any other issues, and there’s no so‑called Financial Power problem. Mann Chong felt a bit embarrassed.

”You two bastards just wait.” Mann Chong took a deep breath; he finally understood why back then Li Youu was so fed up with the Bai Family, the Zheng Family, those guys who didn’t really do anything evil, but kept burrowing through loopholes in the rules all day long.

Because compared to those who simply ignore the rules—you can just chop them—this bunch of punks is purely drilling into loopholes. They’re not challenging the rules or trampling them; you can only deal with them strictly according to the rules.

”Don’t look at me like that, I’m really scared.” Guo Jia said with a smirk, stuffing the floor brick back into its place and clapping the dust off his hands.

On the other side Fa Zheng started counting money, ticking out ninety ticket exchanges of a million coins each for Guo Jia, and Guo Jia just shoved them straight into his robe without even counting.

”You can stare at me all you want, I’m still not giving you any. Never thought I’d have a day this nouveau riche.” Fa Zheng wore the same punchable expression as Guo Jia, then stuffed the remaining fifty million into his own robe. ”Can’t believe I’ve actually had a time when I gifted people ninety million coins.”

Mann Chong nearly coughed up a mouthful of blood; this wave really showed him just how savagely someone could exploit loopholes.

”You two just wait and see how I deal with you later!” Mann Chong was furious enough to choke; he could clearly feel that what Guo Jia and Fa Zheng had done was illegal, but even he couldn’t articulate exactly how these two had broken the law.

After all, Mann Chong belongs to that ”ruthless but few words” type. Once he’d stated his stance, he flung his sleeves in anger and walked off directly.

Back at the Library Pavilion Mann Chong went straight to consulting the Zhou Rites, the Chief of Staff texts, Lyu Xing, Criminal Law, Canon of Laws, Qin Law, Nine Chapters Law and the rest, getting ready to hammer Guo Jia and Fa Zheng to death with a full legal barrage.

Mann Chong had steeled himself; doing this loophole‑drilling right in front of the guy who wrote the statutes, his belly was already full of fire. If it weren’t for the ”must have law to rely on before you can act” principle, he’d have arrested them on the spot.

Of course, the fact that Fa Zheng and Guo Jia both hold high office also played a part—without precise legal support, Mann Chong can’t just throw them in jail. If it were anybody else, under today’s circumstances, even if he couldn’t find the exact statute to use, Mann Chong would still forcibly feed the other party the Empire’s dictatorial Iron Fist.

In short, this whole episode had Mann Chong fuming.

”We’re not going to get in trouble for pulling this, are we?” Fa Zheng said speechlessly.

”Better we pull this than let other people pull it. Just happens we’re both broke lately; those folks ought to be subsidizing us a bit. Besides, even if Boning can’t fix it, Zichuan can. Zichuan’s attainments in this area are definitely no lower than Boning’s.” Guo Jia waved his hand casually as he spoke.

”True. Boning’s habit is to do everything strictly according to the law, with a statute to refer to. By the time this problem gets resolved, we’ll already be ’in the past’, and the law doesn’t apply retroactively.” Fa Zheng chuckled as he spoke. This line was Chen Xi’s demand, and Mann Chong had agreed to it.

By the time Guo Jia and Fa Zheng came back with tens of millions, the parade ground was already in total chaos. You couldn’t tell it was supposed to be a martial contest at all; it looked exactly like a giant free‑for‑all brawl.

”What the hell is this? Wasn’t it supposed to be a tournament?” Guo Jia asked, baffled. ”And what happened to my Escort, why do they look like that—faces all swollen and bruised? My Escort isn’t that lousy, are they?”

”Where did you two run off to? It is a tournament.” Chen Xi replied offhandedly. ”One‑on‑one, the number of participants was just too huge, so we turned it into a melee. But that adds a luck factor, so I tweaked the rules a bit. As for your Escort, Liangyu, his performance was too good, so, well, he got gang‑up‑on’d.”

Zhou Yu was standing to the side covering the upper half of his face with his hand, feeling extremely grateful he hadn’t signed up. Otherwise it really would’ve been humiliating; for this kind of battle format, Zhou Yu himself wasn’t confident.

At first Chen Xi thought there’d only be about a hundred entrants, but once the atmosphere heated up, more than a thousand people joined in. If he hadn’t excluded Inner Qi Refinement, the number would be even higher. As it was, everyone was Qi Refining to Gang, and some were residents of Ye City.

If it stayed one‑on‑one, Chen Xi figured they wouldn’t see a conclusion today, so with a grand wave of his hand he directly changed the contest rules.

Good thing Chen Xi was long used to tacking ”final interpretation rights belong to myself” onto all sorts of messy regulations.

Because there were just too many participants, Chen Xi declared that the top ten would be given an opportunity to break through to Inner Qi Manifestation. Anyway, whoever wanted to join could join; if you manage to make top ten but don’t have Qi Refining to Gang Peak strength, you may well fail to break through.

The rules were switched to melee rules: some people lucked into a five‑man melee with one advancing, others got thrown into a hundred‑man melee with fifteen advancing.

So the whole scene turned into this kind of crazy mess. Medics, emergency medic squads, Hua Tuo and Zhang Zhongjing were all standing by; plus the general selection forbade the use of weapons, so it only looked brutal—in practice there wasn’t much real danger.

This is how the scene ended up: the so‑called seed player Xiahou Ba drew a fifty‑man melee with eight advancing, stepped in and immediately got his face beaten black and blue by a crowd, then was tossed out of the ring.