"Otherwise, I'm afraid I'd have to kneel before our ancestral tablets and confess my failures."
The Elder Master said this self-deprecatingly.
But Xiao Jing knew it wasn't that the Xiao Family was poor at managing its assets; they simply chose not to.
If the Xiao Family Patriarchs over the generations had wanted to do so, they wouldn't have just a single plot of land in Tonglin.
They would have long ago been like some of the other Noble Families, appearing to have exhausted their wealth when, in reality, they had used it all to acquire farmland.
It was said that the family of a certain minister in the court did exactly this.
They appeared to live frugally, but the family's land holdings amounted to thousands upon thousands of acres.
After a century of inheritance, the silver coins in their cellars were piled mountain-high.
After a moment of silence,
The Elder Master leaned back in his chair and waved a hand, gesturing for him to rise.
