Chapter 518: Chapter 518

"If you ask how Rong Heng did it, the conclusion can only prove his knack for choosing the right people. For these businesses, aside from the initial investments, he rarely intervened. Moreover, he didn’t have much liquid assets as he would reinvest the profits into new shops constantly. Following this cycle, the number of shops naturally increased.

However, his annual turnover had reached tens of thousands of taels. According to the accounting room he left for her, Rong Heng was indeed wealthy, but his expenditures were far less than his donations. In other words, each year he d more money than he spent himself.

She had never realized that this man was such a philanthropist! ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novel{f}ire.net

Such humility and obscurity, truly impressive.

Because currently all the accounting rooms utilized the Single-entry Accounting Method, which was rather cumbersome, she discovered this issue after auditing the books. She then gathered all the accountants, gave roughly half a month’s lessons, mainly teaching them how to keep books and how to use the double-entry bookkeeping method.

Since her involvement in management, not only had the accounts become clearer, but she also implemented year-end assessments, and standards for year-end bonuses.

Of course, before establishing these standards, she had consulted with Rong Heng. Once Rong Heng agreed, the matter was settled. The main purpose of her leaving Beijing to work in various locales was to understand and take control of each shop, while concurrently shuffling and instructing the staff.

But nobody expected that this would take up more than half a year, to the point that she missed the summer harvest. By the time she returned to Beijing, the hottest days had just passed.

But during the first half of the year, the farms in Beijing harvested plenty of watermelons, tomatoes, yams, potatoes, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, corn, and many other seeds.

In the second half of the year, the focus continued on cultivating these food crops. Since the yield of sweet potatoes and corn was extremely high, in order to promote them widely, seeds had to be constantly kept. Thus, by the second half of the year, all of Rong Heng’s farms in Beijing were planted with these crops.

In early autumn, Rong Heng returned from fighting the epidemic and decisively received the Emperor’s highest commendation. Although Rong Yi and Rong Jin, who went with him, also received the Emperor’s praise, Rong Heng’s merit could not be stolen by anyone. If there was anyone to blame, it was their lack of decisiveness that allowed the duck at hand to fly away.

Tangyuan returned to Beijing one step ahead of Rong Heng, only three to five days apart. After not seeing each other for half a year, there were still frequent letters, so there was no sense of strangeness upon meeting. But the first time Rong Heng saw her, he was full of emotion and said, "This time, you truly have lost weight and have become more confident and beautiful."

The current Tangyuan had slimmed down to under 120 pounds. Although she still looked a bit chubby, compared to her previous weight of 200 pounds, it was an astonishing change! She estimated that if she went to Dongru Country now, definitely no one would recognize her.

Perhaps the separation made Rong Heng even more certain of his own feelings, such that seeing Tangyuan’s transformation now made it even harder for him to let go of his obsession.

But every time he wanted to say something to her, she would find an excuse to leave. If she really could not get away, she would draw a line between them, leaving him speechless. Rong Heng found her to be terrifyingly rational and heartlessly frustrating.

Logically, they weren’t young anymore. She was eighteen, and he was already twenty-eight. How many more years like these did they have to squander in life?

Especially as the three-year agreement approached its deadline, he grew more and more anxious, to the point of suddenly deciding to propose to the Emperor his intent to leave.