Chapter 155: The Method of Killing Bears (Part Two)

How to Slay a Bear (Part Two) - FeiyueFeiyue's Thoughts: How to Slay a Bear (2) – Preliminary Planning and Preparation for Li Huan's Counter-Espionage Scheme

Remarkably, today's update is another five thousand five hundred words. (Considering the standard daily update of three thousand words, Banana has already compensated for the two days of rest, meaning he hasn't truly missed any updates! He's truly phenomenal!) Since Banana's updates are coming with such incredible energy, Feiyue feels compelled to contribute, even if not at peak performance. Here is the second installment.

In the book, and in Feiyue's posts, it has been stated that the situation of the Su family's first branch was so perilous that a rational withdrawal from the imperial merchant business became an unavoidable, albeit reluctant, decision. However, this withdrawal would require leveraging certain resources. After mentally preparing Su Tan'er, Li Huan decisively stepped in, took over the core decision-making power for the imperial merchant issue, and began crisis management.

As usual, before the plan was truly finalized, let's discuss the proper process Li Huan followed to handle the entire situation:1. Mentally prepare Su Tan'er and secure decision-making authority. (This was fundamental and of utmost importance.)2. Audit all of the Su family's ledgers and transaction records, especially interactions with court officials over the past three years since the imperial merchant issue officially began. (Banana only mentioned this in two sentences, but it was extremely crucial.)3. Discuss the personalities of the Su family's top stewards and the experienced foremen handling operations with Tan'er and her three secretary-like maids.

These were the three main tasks. Simply put, they all served one purpose: to understand how deep the waters were and how far the situation had escalated. Only after confirming these three points could Li Huan clearly define his role and responsibilities, validate the feasibility of his nascent ideas, and then establish the core and main axis of the overall counterattack plan, expanding outwards. (Unfortunately, Banana did not explicitly write about these three points in the text because doing so would have made the story less engaging and lost its narrative interest. Feiyue had to reasonably deduce the outline and logic of the entire plan after researching extensive materials.)

1. Regarding the first point, this concerns the allocation of responsibility. For Li Huan, he absolutely did not want to be involved in business conflicts in this lifetime; readers can clearly feel this from the very beginning of the book. However, after nearly a year of interaction with Su Tan'er—nominally his wife, but in reality, a friend—he could not completely ignore her plight. He had to help, but as mentioned in the previous installment, this was the culmination of a girl's life's work. One cannot simply intervene without full mutual understanding; this is a fundamental principle.

(It's like Tan'er playing a game: she's built a main character over three years, but now faces an insurmountable obstacle. If this system quest isn't completed, the character won't achieve a qualitative leap and will become useless, despite a significant amount of money already invested. If Li Huan were to take over and accidentally ruin it, Tan'er's distress would be immense.)

Furthermore, complete delegation of authority is absolutely critical in extreme crisis management. If two people have completely different mindsets and cannot understand or agree with each other, they might make contradictory decisions when commands are issued. This would leave employees at lower levels bewildered, ultimately leading to apathy, inaction, and complete failure. This concept is similar to 'a general outside the city is not bound by the sovereign's commands.'

In truth, if someone outside the first branch, or even Grandfather Su, had encountered trouble after three years of operation, Li Huan would likely not have intervened so thoroughly. Now, helping Tan'er is helping himself, allowing him to maintain his current slow but satisfactory pace of life. As the saying goes, 'A hero finds it hardest to resist a beauty's tears; a powerful figure is moved by a fair lady's grace' – especially when the woman before him is also his nominal wife.

2. If the previous point was about psychological preparation, this point is indispensable for truly understanding the situation. Such data verification could not be completed in a single day, but it was absolutely necessary, as it served at least six main purposes for which answers could be found:

A. The general flow and specific use of funds. This is the most fundamental aspect. Money in a business war is like ammunition in battle—finite. To achieve ultimate victory, one must know how to use their funds. This is the starting point. During the audit, the primary goals were to identify any available funds that could be repurposed (resource regeneration), detect any unnecessary urgent expenditures (resource waste), or pinpoint areas requiring increased investment (resource concentration). A rational redistribution of existing resources was essential because, given the crisis, there were inevitably inefficiencies that needed to be uncovered.

B. Tan'er's capabilities and shortcomings. This was a necessary check linked to the previous point. Every record naturally includes the name of the person who handled it, who is also the recipient of the decision-maker's delegated responsibility. Who a decision-maker assigns a task to can fundamentally reveal their own personality and flaws (Li Huan failed in this regard by misjudging Tang Mingyuan). Understanding Tan'er's operational style would allow for better collaboration with her.

C. The potential discovery of fraudulent accounts. This point aimed to determine if there were internal moles. Given the series of events occurring within a short period, it was impossible that there wasn't internal collusion with external parties. The greatest likelihood was financial impropriety. Fraudulent accounts could also further clarify the severity and authenticity of the events, which would aid in designing and refining the plan.

D. His own comprehensive understanding. This point requires little elaboration; Li Huan himself needed to clearly understand the entire flow and use of funds, and where his side's ultimate bottom line lay.

E. Identification of external enemies. Business accounts would invariably reveal the names of major competitors. The scale of fund circulation and corresponding transactions would provide an initial understanding of opponents' strength and size. Identifying as many potential external enemies as possible was crucial, as this knowledge would later inform who was sincere, who was deceitful, who was trustworthy, and who was contemptible in all diplomatic encounters, thereby enabling preliminary psychological warfare planning.

F. Officials (Government Attitude). This was the final key point. For a well-known local enterprise like the Su family, records of transactions with the government would undoubtedly outline the general procedures. The story's setting is the Wu Dynasty, an unfamiliar ancient era for Li Huan, so all information and understanding had to align with contemporary realities, especially regarding taboos and prohibitions. The main considerations were: How to gain as much support as possible from officials? How to identify and exploit relevant loopholes? Had other merchants colluded with officials? What would be the officials' likely attitudes when final measures were implemented? This would determine how far to proceed.

For a truly capable businessman like Li Huan, it was possible to extract incredibly useful information from these basic ledgers. (Feiyue, as a company cashier, clearly understands the vast possibilities; there are many underlying stories hidden beneath those simple records.)

3. This point served as a necessary supplement to the first two. While the initial steps merely sketched a general direction for the subsequent plan, its refinement and comprehensiveness required a deeper understanding of each key individual. The more profound the understanding, the more meticulous the plan could be, and the higher its chances of full realization. (The importance and severity of failures in calculation and planning are best exemplified by the later demise of the Wu family—one wrong move led to total defeat! How could one treat this lightly?)

Above, Feiyue has merely outlined some inevitable considerations for Li Huan. Even a correct decision, though a good idea, cannot be truly implemented in a plan document or become a definitive blueprint in one's mind without such detailed preliminary data aggregation. Although even with such preparation, failure is common (again, the Wu family serves as an example), not doing it would undoubtedly be far worse. For larger enterprises making overall strategic decisions, this is an absolute prerequisite for deep consideration.

However, let's remember that Banana never wrote Li Huan from an omniscient perspective; the protagonist, like us, can make mistakes. (Didn't the Wu family miscalculate their own situation?) Therefore, he had to be extremely careful and make all possible preparations. After a preliminary data review during a single night, Li Huan reached a conclusion...

The seemingly severe situation was, in fact, far less dire than it appeared. At this point, the identities of the culprit and the internal mole could largely be confirmed: the Wu family and Steward Xi.

What? I hear some readers protesting? How could he know so much in just one night? Yes, because the situation was incredibly obvious. By cross-referencing the ledgers with the maids' testimonies, and considering the assumptions he already had after the assassination attempt, he could solidify these into established facts.

However, he still had to feign uncertainty when asking about the recent situation from everyone, including the internal family members like Tan'er and the three beautiful maids, and external acquaintances like Yun Zhu. The genuine ignorance of those closest to him would create a much more convincing performance than a feigned act, significantly increasing the plan's chances of success. (Anyway, Tan'er would find out who the external enemy was at the annual meeting.)

Next, let's explain how Li Huan came to these conclusions, to avoid accusations of 'Feiyue fabricating details.'

First, regarding the identification of the external enemy:

This was quite obvious. The specific line of reasoning began, of course, with Su Boyong's assassination attempt. The moment this happened, the first branch's power instantly spiraled out of control. Banana wrote that Li Huan had largely determined, even before his late-night conversation with the ailing Su Tan'er, that all schemes could only be aimed at seizing the imperial merchant benefits. It was precisely this imperial merchant lead that drastically narrowed the possibilities for the perpetrator. In the entire Jiang Prefecture, only two families had the strength to compete with Su's Textile for imperial merchant status: the Wu family and the Xue family.

Furthermore, do you remember Li Huan writing poetry during the Lantern Festival's 'Night of Fish and Dragons Dance'? That poetry gathering was very important, as it was Li Huan's first formal meeting with the Wu brothers. At that time, the Wu family displayed generosity, hospitality, courtesy, and discernment. In short, they were formidable individuals. And the Xue family's representative? He wore his emotions on his sleeve, was easily manipulated without realizing it, and simply did not impress Li Huan. Such a precise and ruthless assassination and power grab could certainly not have been orchestrated by someone of the Xue family's caliber. If it were, they would have needed extremely strong backing. Ultimately, all suspicions could only point to the Wu family.

Next, the discovery of the internal mole:

This point was actually even clearer, and it wasn't even Li Huan who discovered it, but rather Grandfather Su and Tan'er themselves. Simply put, the grandfather and granddaughter had long felt that Steward Xi, while capable, harbored ill intentions and was unreliable. Therefore, truly significant matters could not be entrusted to him. Grandfather Su subtly interfered with Tan'er's marriage arrangements to thwart Xi's ambitions, while Tan'er herself had shown him no warmth in recent years, maintaining only appropriate courtesy. A shrewd individual like Li Huan, as clearly stated in the book, had completely discerned people's true natures within two months of entering the Su household. Since it wasn't his concern then, there was no harm done. But now, investigating an internal mole was utterly simple; what else could possibly remain hidden?

With the data preparation complete and the adversaries fully revealed, the next step was to tailor a plan to ensnare them. Li Huan, like a hunter, fixed his gaze on the strong black bear, a true killing intent rising within him.

“You people have gone too far. Even a live-in son-in-law can't find peace.”