usatvline Chapter 466 Cao Li
Chapter 466 Cao Li
"If you don't answer honestly, that will be the outcome." Zhongfeng pointed at the two maids who were beaten and bleeding.
The man followed the direction of Chongfeng's finger and saw the little maidservant who was beaten all over. He had a bold guess in his mind, that is, Hongqiao might have been exposed, but he didn't know whether Hongqiao had confessed him.
The man rolled his eyes, his tone still carrying the arrogance of a scholar, "I am Cao Li, a humble man."
Is this man a scholar? If not, he looks quite like one. If he is, doing something like this is truly disgraceful to all scholars. However, sometimes scholars can be even more ruthless than military commanders in their schemes.
[The former Prince Consort and the Imperial Censor before them were both genuine scholars.]
Scholars tend to be dull, and the more dull their personality is, the more likely they are to have problems.
Xie Qingzhi agreed with this matter.
Before, the scholar from Yousong Academy wanted to trick the girl into elope with him so that she could marry into a wealthy family.
[He is a scholar.]
The mechanical sound of the system sounded in Gu Jianchu's mind, and helped Gu Jianchu answer his questions.
[How could such a good scholar end up on such a path of no return?]
After hearing the system's answers, Gu Jianchu was still a little shocked. She never expected that this person was actually a real scholar.
[It's not that Cao Li has embarked on such a path of no return, but rather that he has been a bad person since childhood.]
[It seems there is a story behind this. Tongzi, please tell us in detail.]
Gu Jianchu instantly became interested.
Cao Li was born in Jiangnan. His family had been merchants for generations. He was very bright from a young age. When others were still learning the Three Character Classic, he could already recite it by heart. When others were just learning the Four Books and Five Classics, he had already mastered them all. The Master thought Cao Li was a genius and wanted to discuss with the Cao family about training him well and sending him to the imperial examinations in the future.
The Cao family had been engaged in business for generations, so they were naturally delighted to have such a descendant. If he could become an official in the imperial court, it would change their current situation of being confined to business.
Cao Li, however, disagreed. He had no desire to enter the imperial court as an official. He felt he was too intelligent to be associated with such pedantic elders. Furthermore, his family had been involved in business, and he had been influenced by them, so he preferred being a businessman. Initially, Cao Li didn't overly display this side of himself. He followed his family's instructions and studied diligently with his teacher.
While not all members of the Cao family were kindhearted, they somehow managed to produce someone as bloodthirsty as Cao Li. At first, no one knew about this, until one day, the teacher stumbled upon a large number of dead cats and dogs in the academy. Initially, the teacher assumed it was a prank, a deliberate revenge, and ignored it. Later, while the wife was awake at night, she witnessed Cao Li capture two cats, torture them to death, and then hang them from a tree.
Although he cherished Cao Li's talent for study, he saw that Cao Li had so disregarded his own life. If he continued to behave like this in the future as an official, he would ultimately be a disaster and would also damage his reputation as a teacher. Although he also wanted to cultivate a talent, such a talent was a double-edged sword. In comparison, the Master saw more harm than good, so he expelled Cao Li and sent him home.
Cao Li returned to the Cao family and followed his father into business. His father thought that if Cao Li wanted to study again in the future, he could find a new academy and spend some money on it. However, Cao Li had made it clear that he did not want to study, and since he had been expelled, the Cao family did not force him and let him go.
After Cao Li joined his father in business, he constantly resorted to cunning tactics, trading inferior goods as genuine goods and even smuggling salt. He also colluded with foreign powers to resell military supplies. If discovered by the imperial court, this would be a serious crime punishable by the death of all nine generations of his clan. When Cao Li's father discovered this, he was furious and told Cao Li to stop. Cao Li refused to listen, even thinking the Cao family was pedantic. In a fit of rage, he directly severed ties with the Cao family, even claiming that his money had nothing to do with the Cao family, saying that the Cao family was cowardly and that he would definitely expand and become powerful to show them off.
[No wonder he did something like this. This Cao Li is a paranoid person. What happened next?]
Later, Cao Li did make some money thanks to his cleverness, but it wasn't long before the government discovered their collusion with foreign countries to resell military supplies. They set up a tight net to apprehend them, but Cao Li was lucky enough to escape by jumping into the water while his accomplices were resisting.
Cao Li was born in Jiangnan and had been able to swim since childhood. He held his breath in the water for a long time, and only emerged after seeing that everyone in the government office had left. He thus escaped a disaster.
After learning about this incident, the Cao family tried to find out Cao Li's whereabouts, but they were unable to find out. They could only inquire with the government office, and when they learned that Cao Li had not been arrested, they breathed a sigh of relief.
Cao Li accidentally learned that the Cao family was inquiring about him. Besides feeling ashamed, he felt more than anything else that his family was trying to make fun of him, mocking him for not listening to them. He became even more anxious to make money and achieve something big to prove himself to his family.
Cao Li left Jiangnan for the capital, intending to prove to his family that he could thrive anywhere. However, upon arriving in the capital, he found that nothing was going his way. He partnered with others to invest in a horse farm, but they nearly lost everything. Not only did he lose all the money he had saved, but he also lost the little he had earned.
Later, after some visits, he discovered that the noble ladies of the capital were extremely fond of Jiangnan cloth. So, he borrowed tens of thousands of taels of silver from the usury and decided to start a cloth business. As long as he could get hold of Jiangnan's cheap goods and sell them to the noble ladies of the capital, he would surely make a fortune. His ideal was quite fulfilling. Cao Li contacted his former friends from Jiangnan and asked them to help him organize the business. However, a natural disaster struck on the way to the capital from Jiangnan, and the entire shipload of cloth capsized. He was left to bear the responsibility for the damage, and lost all the money he had borrowed from the usury. Debt collectors began to come to his house demanding payment, and beat him up if he couldn't pay.
Cao Li remained skeptical, believing the boat capsized due to bad luck. He believed the loss was simply a matter of chance, a chance occurrence that befell him simply because he was unlucky. He concluded that the cloth business could still be profitable.
Everyone feels unlucky, yet they still invest in this. If he doesn't lose money, who will? The main reason is that he's too arrogant. Since he was a child prodigy, he thinks he's superior and smarter than everyone else, and that anything he believes in will definitely succeed. But he forgets that this world has rules.