Making Money by Deceiving the Emperor from Home

Comedy, goofy antics, a connection between the past and present, and cultivation later on. Suddenly, the beat-up box started spewing things out with a gurgle, as if its brakes had failed. Writing brushes, inkstones, and piles of memorials! She had to pinch her thigh to make sure she wasn’t dreaming! She opened the memorials. The calligraphy was vigorous, and every single one was a masterpiece. But the content... wasn’t so great. Flooding in Jiangnan, an urgent need for military funds, calls to appoint an empress... Just then, another piece of paper emerged from the box. It said she had to return the memorials, no matter what? Why should she? The box had coughed them up itself. She’d picked them up fair and square. If she gave them back, what was she supposed to sell for money? More slips of paper came out one after another, all demanding the memorials back. Fine, she’d return them, but she’d have to recoup her losses. So she wrote a note and tossed it into the box: “One string of copper coins for one memorial. Deal!” Murong Ze stared anxiously at the box, but it didn’t budge. Murong Ze was furious. The other side was being completely unreasonable. Just as he was about to crawl through the box and settle the score, a note appeared inside. It told him to pay to get the memorials back. Murong Ze felt like chopping the box to pieces. Xiao Fuzi tossed a string of coins into the box. Before long, a memorial appeared. Murong Ze picked it up and checked it over. It was undamaged, so he tossed a gold ingot into the box. He’d meant to pay for all the memorials with the ingot, but after one appeared, the box went quiet. What was this? Could they seriously not do basic arithmetic? So he wrote a note and sent it over: “One string of coins equals one tael of silver. I gave you a twenty-tael gold ingot, so you should give me twenty memorials!” Before long, the memorials came back in a neat line, with just one missing.