The adults involved in the case were all arrested and detained in Shuo Zhou's prison.
At first, these people pretended to be dumb and kept their mouths shut. When they were separated and "educated" by the other prisoners in the prison, many of them scrambled to be the first to spill everything they knew like water in a bottle.
As a result, both material evidence and witnesses were present. Those who were involved in the harvesting were all sentenced to be executed after autumn, while the others had to wait for further interrogation and sentencing.
This was the largest and worst case in Shuo Zhou City since the beginning of the year. Now that things had developed to this point, Li Yue could no longer interfere with the criminals. She simply shifted the focus from the criminals to the children who had been harmed.
There were about a hundred children who were rescued. Most of them were around ten years old, and most of them were boys.
Only a few of them were successfully picked up by their original families. The rest either didn't want to go home, or couldn't go back to their original families.
Originally, these remaining children were all arranged to be in the Shuo Zhou City Salesian Bureau, but the Salesian Bureau itself wasn't that big. It didn't have much power in Shuo Zhou City. Whether it was money or clothes, all kinds of resources were very tight. Occasionally, there would be people who would donate things, but it was barely enough to ensure that the children in the Salesian Bureau had enough to eat.
Now that there was a group of children, the Salesian Bureau faintly couldn't open the pot. The official in charge of the Salesian Bureau lost a lot of hair. He almost scratched himself bald on the spot.
The Li Family had been in business in Shuo Zhou for many years. During the holidays, they would naturally donate things to the Salesian Bureau.
Li Yue had made a small profit by opening a soap shop. Under the guidance of Uncle Fu, she originally planned to donate some money. However, when she went to the Ci Youths Bureau and saw the sallow and emaciated children, who were trying their best to give their survival resources to the younger children despite the lack of food and clothing, she had a new idea.
She wanted to hire the older children to work for her.
According to the current regulations, the children in the Salesian Bureau would usually stay until they were 14 years old before leaving. However, in order to reduce the burden of the Salesian Bureau, these children would usually leave the Salesian Bureau when they were 10 years old to find their own way to make a living.
In modern times, ten-year-old children were usually still in primary school and couldn't do much. Most of the commoner families here had already started to support the family.
Children with adult family members were better off as they had some support behind them.
Most of the children in the Bureau of Love were alone and had no one to rely on. If they were lucky enough to be accepted by a shop as an apprentice, or if they were kept by a wealthy family as a manservant, they would at least have a way to survive.
However, if one were to encounter an evil person and be beaten up and robbed of their money, that would be one thing. If one was unlucky, one might be swindled into a brothel, or be taken advantage of, or even be abused, quietly rotting in the mud. This was nothing new.
After Li Yue had this idea, she first went to communicate with Uncle Fu. The old man didn't say anything to discourage her and let Li Yue do as she pleased.
With Uncle Fu's encouragement and support, Li Yue didn't use the Li family's money. She spent all the money she had earned from the soap business and simply renovated a gambling house that had been abandoned due to internal strife in Long Long. The interior was built to look like a modern student dormitory, and she even put in a lot of pots and pans.
It took a month just to renovate the gambling house. Two months later, Li Yue looked at the brand-new dormitory building and the amount of insurance premiums that rose month by month. Only then did she have the confidence to go to the Ci You Bureau to look for the director.
The director of the Salesian Bureau was a thin, middle-aged man. When he heard that someone was willing to take in a large number of children, he was quite overjoyed. When Li Yue showed up, his face was full of unconcealable disappointment.
It wasn't that Li Yue didn't look like she didn't have the financial resources to take in children, but because she was too young and looked like a jade doll. The director of the Salesian Bureau only thought that she was a pampered darling of a rich family who came to have fun out of boredom. He was also worried that he couldn't afford to offend Li Yue, so he could only force himself to be alert and entertain her.
Li Yue described her plan to the director in a serious manner. She explained in detail, but the other party only listened perfunctorily. Li Yue had no choice but to promise to donate part of the money to the Salesian Bureau. Tie Chuanjia used both soft and hard methods to drag the director to the dormitory building.
With the real thing in front of him, the director immediately put away his perfunctory attitude. He looked at the clean and tidy dormitory building and said to Li Yue after a while, "Young Master, you are very kind and kind.
"Young Master is talented and kind. If you become an official, you will definitely become a famous minister."
"Thank you for thinking so highly of me. I am very useless and only want to earn a little money to support my elders. I don't dare to have wishful thinking."
The director of the Salesian Bureau repeatedly sighed. After a moment of consideration, he didn't say anything else and tactfully agreed to Li Yue's proposal.
Since the other party agreed, the rest of the matter was relatively simple.
Li Yue found a few young people from the Long Dragon to help her. They were all good-looking and didn't have a bad temperament.
Before she left, she walked around the few young people in black and glanced at Tie Chuanjia, who had a murderous look in his eyes, and Hoodlum, who almost had the words "Stay away from me" written on his face. She didn't feel like she was going to take in children. Instead, she felt like a gang leader who was going to cause trouble.
Wait, it seemed like she was indeed a gang leader who didn't have much power in society?
Li Yue squeezed the handle of the fan in her hand and looked at her "little brothers" with a headache. She couldn't recruit any more female gang members for the time being. She could only go to the kitchen and bring out the auntie who was in charge of cooking.
The auntie in the gang was big and burly and looked even scarier than Tie Chuanjia. Li Yue didn't have time to regret. She took the group of people to the carriage and went directly to the Salesian Bureau.
At this time, the children in the Salesian Bureau were playing in the courtyard. When they saw a stranger coming, they huddled together cautiously.
Li Yue casually glanced in their direction. A few of the children hurriedly hid behind the older children as if she was a scourge. Li Yue couldn't help but twitch the corner of her mouth.
Because the director had informed the other adults in the Salesian Bureau in advance, although they were a little curious, they didn't stop Li Yue and the others. On the contrary, they helped Li Yue gather the children in the Salesian Bureau who met her requirements in the courtyard.
Looking at the dozens of children of different heights, some of whom were obviously underage, and some of whom were disabled, Li Yue frowned.
The director rubbed his hands with a smile and seemed to be waiting for Li Yue to ask questions. Li Yue didn't want to argue with the old fox. She looked around and spoke loudly to the children in the courtyard.
"As you can see, I am the owner of Long Dragon Shop. I came to the Salesian Bureau this time because I have discussed with the director before. I want to accept some of you as apprentices in our shop.
Now that all of you are here, I will tell you the benefits of the shop. Then you can decide for yourselves if you want to work in our shop. "
At first, Li Yue was a little flustered, but when she talked about the benefits of the shop, she became calmer and calmer.
In front of about a hundred people, she explained the conditions she listed one by one, including that she would sign in the Salesian Bureau in front of everyone, that she would give all the children who came to be apprentices an opportunity to exchange their jobs for accommodation and food, and other detailed items.
At first, the children were also full of doubts, but when the head of the Charity Bureau testified, one of the older children was the first to step forward and press the red handprint. The rest of the children looked at each other, and then one by one they followed suit.
More and more children were willing to be apprentices in Long Dragon Shop, and the children who stood there stood out even more.
Li Yue slowly walked to the side of a crippled child with a broken arm and asked softly, "What's the matter?
"You don't want to be an apprentice?"
"… You … It's you!"
The child remembered his previous life as a thief and looked around nervously. When he saw that no one was paying attention to him, he bit his lip and lined up behind the other children with an unreadable expression, ready to press his red handprint.
With such a handicapped child standing up, the rest of the children didn't have to worry about anything.
In just four hours, Li Yue took in more than half of the children in the Salesian Bureau.
The Salesian Bureau was not close to the dormitory. Although the weather had turned warm, they could still feel the cool wind after walking for a long time.
When they came, Li Yue and the gang members drove three carriages. In order to pick up the children, the carriages went back and forth five or six times.
When the children arrived at the destination, many of them exclaimed when they saw the bright and tidy dormitory.
Their excitement lasted until the night, and many children couldn't even sleep. When they changed into new clothes the next day, they felt that they were back to reality.
At first, the children worked honestly in the soap shop as helpers or went to the Changlong Gang Headquarters to clean and do all the work they could.
Seeing that there were more people, Li Yue hurriedly opened a dessert shop. Not only did she sell the commonly seen preserves and pastries, but she also sold cakes and bread that could only be found in modern times. Because of the live promotion of the cute children this time, the business was even more popular than the soap shop.
What Li Yue didn't expect was that the children, who got along well with each other, would quarrel over who could work in the dessert shop. They quarreled and became really angry, and it turned into two groups of children fighting.
On one side were the children who grew up in the Salesian Bureau, and on the other side were the children left over from the big case at the beginning of the year. If the gang members guarding the dormitory didn't see the situation was bad and directly reported to Li Yue, and Li Yue asked Tie Chuanjia to forcibly suppress the two groups of children, there might have been a bloody case in the dormitory.
Looking at the two groups of bruised and swollen children, as well as the young men who were leading the two groups, Li Yue was extremely angry. Not only did she not feel anything in her heart, she even wanted to laugh.
She knew that there were conflicts between these children, but she didn't expect the tipping point to be so complicated.
In the first three months of working in the dessert shop, the soap shop, and the gang's headquarters, the children would rotate between each other. Later, according to the evaluation of the old staff in the shop, they would make detailed and fixed arrangements. There was nothing to be angry about.
The two groups of children knelt on the ground and didn't say anything. Li Yue knew that they were still angry, so she didn't say much. She slowly patrolled every dormitory with Hoodlum to check the hygiene. When they walked to the roof, Hoodlum looked at the children below and asked Li Yue in puzzlement:
"Most of them are not sincerely grateful to you. Why do you still help them?"
"I didn't want them to be grateful from the beginning.
I just … wanted to give them more choices. "
A trace of doubt appeared on Hoodlum's face. Li Yue held her forehead and asked him a question that seemed to be unrelated to the current topic:
"Hey, Hoodlum, if you didn't have your mother by your side in the beginning, where would you be?"
The youth thought for a moment and replied, "I should be in the belly of a jackal."
"I don't want to ask about this … Forget it, it's about the same.
Well, if I didn't meet Uncle Li, I should be learning some bullshit skills to please men in the brothel, and then in a few years … I would be a person who 'a pair of jade arms for thousands of people to use as pillows, and a little red lips for thousands to taste'. "
"But, you are very good to them, but they are not good to you."
"I'm not as good to them as you think. I hire child labor and don't pay them. If it were in my hometown, I would be arrested and sent to prison.
Even here, they don't owe me anything.
I'm just doing what I can to make investments that don't incur a loss. "
Hoodlum shook his head, his eyes full of disapproval: "They still owe you."
"It's just … investments … There will always be a little loss, but it's just in the early stages. Later on, I will get back the capital and interest!
Forget it, let's not talk about this for now. Say, they still have the energy to fight and cause trouble. Is it because they have too little work and are too idle? "
The youth nodded wordlessly. Li Yue held her chin and thought for a while. Suddenly, she thought of a good idea. She hurriedly pulled the youth downstairs.
In the courtyard of the dormitory building, the group of children didn't dare to cause trouble in front of Tie Chuanjia. They all knelt quietly. When they heard the noise, they looked up and saw their nominal boss, who was actually their peer, wearing a warm smile on his face. Their hearts all thumped.
Li Yue didn't criticize the children. She simply announced to the children that from today onwards, every child would have cultural and physical education classes.
The children were a little confused when they heard this, but when they practiced the horse stance, learned how to write, and memorized the initiatory books, it only took a few days for them to change from curious fighter jets to dispirited sick chickens.
What if the children keep asking for trouble?
It must be because there is too little homework!
What if they still dare to cause trouble?
Double the amount of homework!
Since then, not a single child dared to cause trouble in the dormitory building.
Li Yue was a little proud of herself for calmly resolving the conflict between her subordinates. However, she didn't have the guts to mention it in front of Li Xunhuan. She was afraid that Tanhua Lang would give her the same treatment. She could only secretly brag to her friends. She even wrote a letter to Yuan Suiyun, who was far away in Guannei.