In Zhao's house, the lights are brightly lit, and the search of the house is still going on.
"Sir, my brothers have almost searched through the entire Zhao family. Following your instructions, except for those that are difficult to move, we have kept them for the time being. Most of the other valuable things in the Zhao family are here."
In the hall, Zhao Cheng, a member of the Jinyiwei family, came forward and reported to Jia Lian.
Jia Lian put down the Zhao family's salt tax accounts from previous years and glanced at the boxes and cages that were already full in the courtyard. As expected of Jin Yiwei, who is famous for confiscating homes, he is professional in confiscating homes. He finished the matter in such a short time.
After giving Zhao Cheng an approving look, Jia Lian slowly walked down the stairs to see these belongings.
There were hundreds of boxes and cages filled with gold, silver, jewelry, antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and all kinds of precious objects. With so many belongings piled together, the entire spacious courtyard was suddenly filled with wealth.
But looking at it, Jia Lian frowned slightly.
Except for those jewelry and antiques that were difficult to appraise in a short period of time, at first glance, there was much less real gold and silver than he had imagined.
In order to successfully complete the task assigned by the emperor, Jia Lian spent a lot of thought on this trip. There are more than 20 salt merchants in Yangzhou, not to mention the dozen or so small ones, at least every one of the seven major salt merchants.
, he has a relatively clear understanding.
Although the Zhao family is lower in popularity among the seven families, it is one of the longest-standing salt merchants. Long before Yangzhou was established as the "salt capital" by the state, the Zhao family was already in the
The salt industry gained a foothold.
All in all, it's been at least thirty years.
Even if there were ups and downs during this period, it is only reasonable that after such long years of making money in the salt industry, he should have accumulated wealth that is unimaginable to ordinary people.
"You guys, please take a quick look at the gold and silver guys and the silver notes."
Liu Xianglian, Zhaoer and other confidants received the order and immediately began to count. After a long time, Liu Xianglian made a simple calculation and replied: "My lord, according to the count of my subordinates, the gold ones weigh about 500 kilograms, and the silver ones total ten
Eight boxes, about 4,000 kilograms, gold and silver notes, totaling more than 20,000 taels."
Five hundred kilograms of gold is converted into about one hundred thousand taels of silver, and four thousand kilograms of silver is converted into more than sixty thousand taels.
To be honest, if it were placed in any aristocratic and wealthy family in Beijing, it would be considered very wealthy if they could find so much gold and silver through a house raid.
Just like the current Rongguo Mansion, if a house was raided, as long as his yard was excluded and all the remaining areas were included, including Jia Mu's yard and the warehouse, perhaps only so much gold and silver could be confiscated in total.
However, as one of the big salt merchants in Yangzhou with a long history, he could only get more than 100,000 taels of gold and silver from his home, which seemed a bit unscientific. Moreover, Jia Lian could see at a glance that most of the gold guys who took up the bulk were just
It’s just gold and silver jewelry from ladies’ houses!
There are actually far fewer gold and silver ingots.
So, Jia Lian turned to look at Zhao Cheng and asked, "Did you not find the Zhao family's bank account?"
When Zhao Cheng heard this, he didn't understand why Jia Lian felt that there were less things copied out, so he quickly explained: "Your Excellency, I have noticed that I personally took people to the warehouse... I dare not lie to you, so there are indeed only these things in the Zhao family's warehouse."
, all the younger ones have moved out. Brother Zhao Sheng and the others can testify to this fact that Beizhi definitely did not hide anything from you."
When he knew that Jia Lian was going to raid the Zhao family, Zhao Cheng volunteered to take up the task, because as the emperor's personal soldiers, their Jinyiwei did have a mature system for raiding the house.
Including how to clean a house inside and outside, including how to prevent the brothers below from hiding and taking privately, these are all routines. He also asked Zhao Sheng and others to teach Zhao Sheng and others the secrets of ransacking houses.
The purpose of following him to the warehouse was to reassure Jia Lian about him.
But he was overly worried. Jia Lian did not suspect that he was hiding anything secretly. There were only dozens of Jin Yiwei in total. Even if everyone filled their pockets, how many could be stuffed in?
"The Zhao family is a famous salt merchant, but they are so poor. I thought they could make a lot of real money."
Jia Lian muttered something and shook his head.
The people around him looked at their master speechlessly.
This is called poverty...
Looking at the wealth in this yard, it is worth at least hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in total, right? This does not include the Zhao family's house, manor, and other properties. Perhaps those are the bulk of the Zhao family!
Based on this rough calculation, you should have a family fortune of one million, right? If you call this poor, other wealthy families in the world will be ashamed to death.
After all, I knew that my master had a high vision, so no one dared to say anything. However, Zhao Cheng solemnly said: "Bizhi also thinks that what the master said is true. Beizhi has been in Jinyiwei for almost ten years, and he has followed the adults above.
Many people who commit crimes consider themselves to have some experience.
Generally, no property can be found when a house is searched, either because these families did not keep all their property at home, but hid it somewhere else, or they received the news in advance and moved and hid their property."
After listening to Zhao Cheng's words, Jia Lian began to think about it. Before tonight, the Zhao family would never have imagined that he would lead troops to ransack their home, so they would not transfer their property in advance.
From this point of view, either he had a high regard for the wealth of the salt merchants, or the Zhao family acted cautiously and dispersed their property.
If it's the former, fine, but if it's the latter, it's a problem.
Zhao Cheng saw what Jia Lian was thinking, stepped forward and said with a smile: "In the past, if a low-ranking officer suspected that the prisoner was hiding or transferring property, in addition to torture and interrogating the prisoner and his family records, there was something more effective.
That is to bribe the housekeepers in his house and make him confess voluntarily.
Because those criminal officials dared to hide their family property just to leave a way out for their descendants, and generally they would not tell the truth. But those housekeepers knew most of the affairs in the house, and after the master's family committed the crime, they lost their loyalty.
It is very easy to bribe.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! It just so happens that the Zhao family has been entrenched in Yangzhou for many years and has many properties under its name. Without the help of someone who is familiar with the Zhao family's family affairs, it would be really troublesome for adults to do an inventory. As long as this Zhao family
If the housekeeper or steward is willing to serve you, the rest of the matter will be much easier."
Jia Lian's eyes lit up. Sure enough, experienced people can work very efficiently. Although it was the first time for Jia Lian to confiscate a house, he had a hunch that he would encounter many such things in the future, so he had to learn and summarize in advance.
Come out with some experience.
So he immediately agreed with Zhao Cheng's statement and asked people to call the Zhao family's housekeeper and the two main stewards.
After some coercion and inducements, all three of them expressed their willingness to atone for their crimes.
"Your Excellency's guess is correct. Our master did not put all the silver in the bank. Moreover, he didn't put it outside. He just put it in this mansion..."
In order to seek leniency, the housekeeper of the Zhao family immediately began to reveal the secrets of the Zhao family after surrendering.
"Our master has built a secret room under the rockery in the east garden of this mansion. On weekdays, no one except the master and the eldest son is allowed to enter."
There was a secret room, and Jia Lian, Zhao Cheng and others all understood why they couldn't find it. In this case, unless you dig three feet into the ground to search, it would be really difficult to find it in a short time.
So, under the leadership of the Zhao family's housekeeper, Jia Lian led people with countless torches to the Zhaojia East Road Garden.
As expected, the secret room was built under a huge rockery and controlled by secret mechanisms, just like the settings in later TV series.
Jia Lian was just amazed, but after stepping on the stairs and entering the secret room, Jia Lian's expression became difficult to look at.
This secret room is very spacious, and the entire body is made of carved white stone. There are also some oil lamps lit in the wall stacks for lighting.
Walking inside, you don't feel suffocated. It can be seen that the original builders put some thought into it and at least did some ventilation.
What shocked Jia Lian was that several more stone chambers were opened to the north of the secret room. In each stone chamber, there were at least one, as many as three or four, and about a dozen women were imprisoned, many of whom had wounds on their hands, feet, and necks.
The quilt was chained.
These women were all beautiful in figure and appearance, but their clothes were in tatters and their expressions were numb. Maybe when they saw so many of them coming in, they all hid in the corner in fear.
Seeing only these women, it was not difficult for Jia Lian to understand the purpose of the Trojan horses, torture stools and a series of facilities and instruments of torture that were filled in the secret room in front of him, even if Jia Lian had never seen most of them.
His face became gloomy and terrifying.
Although he had known that where there is light in the world, there must be darkness, especially in this feudal era, it should not be strange for such a thing to happen. But seeing such a dirty and dirty scene with his own eyes, Jia Lian immediately felt depressed.
A murderous intention.
The other people who followed Jia Lian down naturally saw it. For a moment, everyone looked at each other, but neither spoke nor dared to speak, because they all saw that Jia Lian was angry.
The housekeeper of the Zhao family was so frightened that he immediately knelt down and said, "Sir, please calm down. These women were all sent by the master to capture them and have nothing to do with the villain.
Our master runs a brothel and two brothels under his name. Most of these women are disobedient among them. Some of them offended the Zhao family and their wives and daughters were captured by their subordinates... Your Excellency, it is clear that these are really
It’s all done by our master, it has nothing to do with villains and others..."
Squinting his eyes slightly and looking at the Zhao family housekeeper who was kowtowing in front of him, Jia Lian asked indifferently:
"Besides your master, who else has come in to play?"
Although his body was shaking a little, the Zhao family housekeeper still didn't dare not reply.
"In addition to our master, maybe the eldest son is the only one. It's just that the eldest son is afraid of the master and usually doesn't dare to come in. So he dares to sneak in when the master is not at home."
"There is no one else? Could it be that your master and uncle moved these things in personally?"
"Well... usually when the master comes in, if he doesn't go in to look at the gold and silver, he always asks his cronies to follow him..."
"Confidant?" Jia Lian looked at him coldly: "So, that includes you?"
The housekeeper of the Zhao family was so frightened that he was so frightened that he kowtowed twice on his head with a bang, and blood started to pour from his forehead.
"Although villains have come in before, they only bring people in when there are new gold and silver bricks to be moved in. Usually villains don't come in. Sir, you are aware that villains are already in their fifties and sixties.
And he is ugly. When the master is doing such things, he doesn’t like to have villains following him..."
How old is he? Jia Lian shook his head and looked at Zhao Tang, who was at least fifty.
But she didn't bother to ask him any more, and just said to Liu Xianglian, who also looked ugly: "I'll ask Erlang to take a few people and send them out so that I can take good care of them and get them some food."
After Liu Xianglian agreed, Jia Lian said to the Zhao family housekeeper: "Where is the treasury? It hasn't been opened yet."
"Yes." The housekeeper of the Zhao family climbed up, quickly walked to the other side, hugged the stone tower next to him and twisted it, then touched the wall and pushed it to the left. With the sound of the stone door opening, he appeared in front of everyone.
It was an even larger stone room.
The walls inside were also embedded with oil lamps. Under the guidance of the weak light, countless yellow and golden things were revealed.
What kind of wealth is that?
I saw that in the center of this large stone room, there were more than ten five-story-high shelves made of what appeared to be golden nanmu planed in parallel. Surrounding these wooden shelves were large wooden tables connected end to end.
Above, the trapezoidal silver bricks are neatly placed on the table, showing a larger ladder shape.
On the wooden shelves in the middle, the situation is almost exactly the same, except that instead of silver bricks, there are gold bricks on them.
At a glance, it is impossible to estimate how many gold bricks there are and how many silver bricks there are!
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Even Jia Lian couldn't help but widen his eyes slightly when he saw such a simple and extremely luxurious scene.
"How much gold is there and how much silver is there?"
Jia Lian couldn't help but tilted his head and asked the housekeeper of the Zhao family.
The steward replied: "Replying to your lord, only our master knows the exact amount, but according to the villain's estimate, the total number of gold bricks and gold leaves is about one hundred thousand taels, and the silver is estimated to be one million taels.
Our master doesn't like banknotes, but he likes to have people build them in this style, and move them here and place them neatly. Almost every day he comes in to take a look. In addition to gold and silver, there are also some
Our master’s favorite curios will also be placed here.
Therefore, our master strictly prohibits anyone from entering this stone room, and even all the lamp oil in it was added by him himself, and he never let anyone else handle it."
After hearing what the housekeeper said, Jia Lian felt that he had indeed underestimated these salt merchants!
Even though Jia Lian was like this, Zhao'er and others behind him were even more stunned.
My God, one hundred thousand taels of gold, that’s more than one million taels of silver! Doesn’t it mean that the total value of the gold and silver here is at least more than two million taels of silver?
Although they had heard about millionaires and millions of assets before, they only really understood the meaning when they saw what it looked like to have millions of taels of silver piled together!
Such a huge amount of gold and silver makes them feel dizzy just by looking at it. It's no wonder that the Zhao family master comes in every day to take a look.
If this was suddenly stolen, wouldn't it be painful to death?
After a brief walk around for two times and feeling what Mr. Zhao had felt, Jia Lian took a deep breath and immediately ordered people to bring boxes, a lot of them, and put them all away!