"You’re here to plead for my aunt?"
Ireya looked at Li Yu in front of her, her brow furrowed.
After dealing with the matter of the assassin, the young girl’s mood had beco very low, not at all uplifted by having found the insider; instead, she had locked herself in her room, refusing to see anyone, not even eating dinner, until Li Yu ca knocking.
"Not exactly pleading," Li Yu said, "just thinking that soone else might have left the note."
"Who?"
"Not clear yet."
Ireya glanced at Li Yu again, then suddenly asked, "Did my aunt co to see you a few days ago?"
"Yes, she wanted to help her prove that she had nothing to do with Torres’s matter," Li Yu did not conceal the truth.
"Did you agree?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I’m not very interested in the internal affairs of the Arias family."
"So why have you changed your mind now? Did soone else co to you, offering an irresistible price?"
Miss Rabbit, having been stabbed in the back by relatives one too many tis, was now suffering from PTSD and found everyone a bit suspicious.
Li Yu shook his head, "You want to be able to give you advice when necessary, and now is such a ti. Regardless of who left that note, their purpose is very clear, which is to further divide you from the other mbers of the Arias family."
"Of course, I also thought of this possibility, but... the existence of the assassin or the insider is also real, and you can’t deny that. And now we have narrowed it down to three people.
"Paz, Aunt Tamara, and my aunt," the girl counted on her fingers, "and don’t forget a very important point, neither Paz nor Aunt Tamara can read or write, so they couldn’t have written the note."
"Maybe soone outside wrote the note and gave it to them to put in that room."
"Indeed, that’s a possibility," Ireya admitted, "but then how do you explain why they didn’t attack ? If they ambushed in the room, there was a very good chance they could have successfully assassinated . Exchanging their life for mine seems like a good deal, doesn’t it?
"But if the person who dropped the note was my aunt, then everything makes sense. No matter how much she wants to help my stepmother and brother, she wouldn’t sacrifice herself."
"Your analytical reasoning skills have greatly improved," Li Yu said, "but I still don’t believe that your aunt is the inside agent your stepmother and brother had in the castle."
"The reason?"
"Well, I looked over the voting list from that day again and found that your aunt is the only person Vanessa would have had a hard ti winning over no matter what.
"Even if we set aside your personal feelings, just from the perspective of interests, the benefits you could bring her as the Lord of Green Field far exceed any sincere offer your brother Blanco could make. After all, your brother has both a mother and an uncle by his side. No matter how generous, the share of benefits he could give her is limited.
"Unlike you, you have lost both parents and the person you trust most is her. Once you beco the Family Head of the Arias family, you will certainly rely on her, and by then she will be the second most powerful person in the entire Arias family."
"I don’t know why Aunt Alisa betrayed ," Ireya took a deep breath and said, "but it was you who told that everyone else in the family already knew the election results in advance, and only I was kept in the dark. If my aunt really wasn’t bought by my stepmother, why didn’t she tell beforehand?"
"Alisa must have had her own difficulties."
"What difficulties, in the end it’s all about looking out for oneself," the girl said coldly.
Li Yu didn’t argue, but simply said, "I’ve said pretty much all I have to say. Anyway, the reason I ca was to tell you that you’ve probably got the wrong person. In fact, deep down, you must also have doubts, right? It’s hard to accept that soone you’ve always trusted could betray you without any apparent reason."
Miss Rabbit fell silent upon hearing this, and after a mont let out a long sigh, "You’re right, I’m still a bit dazed. I was just recalling when my aunt used to take to play treasure hunting gas near the castle as a child. We relied on an old, torn map to search for the treasure left by the ancestors of the Arias family, but in reality, the silver coins had all been buried by soone she hired in advance."
A look of reminiscence flashed in the girl’s eyes, "I only now realize how hard it is to be a Lord. I dream of going back to that carefree life of the past. Ah... if only my father were still alive, none of this would have happened."
As she said this, it was clear that Ireya knew she could not go back.
She forced herself out of her mories and returned to the cold reality, "I want to believe in my aunt, but the facts are right before my eyes. If it wasn’t Aunt Alisa, how did that note appear under the table?
"Could it be that there’s an invisible person who could sneak past everyone’s eyes in broad daylight, walk brazenly into the room where I handle governnt affairs, leave the note, and then drift away without alerting the guards? That’s too strange."
"Indeed," Li Yu nodded, and upon saying that, he noticed that the girl had been secretly sizing him up. So he added, "If you have sothing to say, just say it."
"Since you think I’ve found the wrong person, can you help find the real inside agent?" Miss Rabbit blinked with anticipation and said, "Well, allowing you to do missionary work in Green Field might be difficult, but other things are negotiable. How about this? If you help out with this trouble, I’ll give you a piece of land first. What do you think?
"It’s the piece that belonged to my uncle Dias, in a pretty good location and not too far from Teacup Castle. My brother Blanco, unwilling to accept defeat and wishing to usurp the Lordship just like my stepmother, Vanessa, took off with him when things looked bad. But Dias got caught by the Purple Bird Flower Knight and is now locked up in the dungeon beneath the castle.
"His property and his domain were also stripped away. That guy was always busy drinking and hunting, never really managing his land well, leaving hardly any families left on it, a lot of the fields fell into disuse, and whatever little money he did make he spent on drinking. I had his place searched top to bottom and only found less than five gold coins and a bunch of IOUs.
"But don’t worry, I’ve almost cleared his debts by selling off the valuable things from his land. Of course, what’s left is basically just barren land, but if you can recruit enough farrs to re-cultivate those abandoned fields, you should still be able to make so money."
Miss Rabbit had already done the math for Li Yu, "With a good harvest, plus various other taxes, making thirty gold coins a year shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not as profitable as selling pepper, but the key is that as long as you keep to yourself, you could also engage in a bit of Paganism activities. Old rules apply, as long as you don’t overdo it, I can turn a blind eye."
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