Chapter 205: Treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
The first thing Han Kongque thought of was the densely packed small caves when he arrived, each of which might be the exit of a passage.
It’s still the old method. Korean Peacock controls a large amount of water and sprinkles it on all places that may be passages. Since many places are made of limestone, water penetrates very slowly in such places, and it is unlikely that there are passages in such places.
As long as there are artificially dug channels, water will definitely penetrate easily. The idea is good, but the results are not satisfactory.
Han Peacock sprinkled water on a large area, but these small caves did not respond at all. After more than an hour, Han Peacock finally gave up. These small caves were too dense and there should be no hidden passages inside.
During this process, Han Peacock also discovered many traces of excavations. It seems that these traces were left by the seniors who came in originally. They also had Han Peacock's idea, so they explored these small passages.
Finding no secret passage in the most likely place, Han Peacock turned his attention to the large cave outside.
Soon, Han Peacock discovered robber holes on three walls of the cave. However, these robber holes were not very deep. Each one was only two or three meters long. After nothing was found, the robber holes were abandoned. After all, they were
Digging a hole in limestone is not that easy.
Han Kongque smiled bitterly. Everything he could think of had been thought of by others. If there really was the passage he thought of here, the most likely possibility would be discovered by others first.
However, Han Peacock did not give up. Except for the dock side, there is still a large area of the cave that has not been explored. After all, others do not have Han Peacock's magical power to control water, so they cannot fully explore all the cave walls.
Sure enough, Han Kongque soon made a discovery. On the left rear side of the abandoned dock, Han Kongque discovered another buried passage next to a robbery hole.
When the general outline of the passage was cleared by Han Peacock, Han Peacock discovered that the edge of the robbery cave next to it was very close to the buried passage.
After just a little cleaning, Han Peacock discovered that this was a specially blocked passage. It was a passage built with huge stones.
It took Han Peacock half an hour to dig out the stone-blocked portal again.
Looking at the mountains of huge rocks, Han Peacock was very lucky. Only such a huge wall of ten blocks could hide from the eyes of tomb robbers after being covered up by time.
If he hadn't been able to manipulate water to penetrate, he would never have been able to discover the stone wall more than two meters thick. Each stone used in this stone wall weighed more than three hundred kilograms. If it weren't for Han Peacock's brute strength
, he really can’t open it.
Without the stones to hide, an iron door was exposed. Han Kongque pushed it, and the iron door was easily pushed open by him. The door was actually only ajar.
The door opened, and a bright light shot out from behind the door.
What's this?
The Korean peacock reached out and plucked a string of pearls from behind the door. Each pearl was the size of a dove egg, and they all shone brightly, looking very pleasant.
This is a luminous pearl! Although Han Kongque had obtained a piece of luminous jade before, this was the first time he had seen a real luminous pearl.
Looking at the long string of luminous pearls, Han Peacock didn't know what to say, but the value of such a string of pearls was immeasurable, which made his treasure hunt a complete reward.
After harvesting a string of luminous pearls, Han Peacock felt even more itchy. If he could get another emerald watermelon, it would be even more perfect.
According to unofficial history, Zeng Guoquan received a string of pearls presented by his subordinates. The beads were as big as today's Kyoho grapes and could also shine.
This string of pearls is "larger than the top of the finger, and when hung under the neck, the crystal clear light shines on the man's eyebrows. There are one hundred and eight pearls, and they are matched with clouds on the back and so on, and are transformed into court beads."
Others say that they once saw an emerald watermelon collected by Hong Xiuquan in Zeng Guoquan's home, and through various signs, they suspected that Zeng Guoquan set the fire in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's bank vault with the purpose of taking the property in the bank for himself.
Legend has it that it has a nose and eyes. It is said that Zeng Guoquan caught an emerald watermelon. It was cracked, with black spots like seeds and red flesh like flesh. It was bright and bright, almost unparalleled.
That is to say, he also got an emerald watermelon, which was bigger than a large pumpkin. There was a crack in the middle, and the black spots and red flesh inside were all naturally formed. It was absolutely priceless.
These legends have noses and eyes, and are very sensational.
However, these legends are actually unreliable. For example, this "emerald watermelon" is not the first time it has appeared in unofficial legends.
As early as when Emperor Jiaqing raided Heshen's home, people rumored that there was such a thing in Heshen's treasure.
Later, people said that when Sun Dianying bombed Cixi's Mausoleum, they also said that an "emerald watermelon" was also found in Cixi's coffin.
This watermelon has been used as a prop in too many historical stories.
Han Kongque didn't know if Zeng Guoquan had ever obtained an emerald watermelon, but he knew that Jiang Lin and the others had one in their hands.
Now the pearl that was once said to have fallen into the hands of Zeng Guoquan has appeared here. This makes Han Kongque happy but also full of doubts.
No one knows how much property Zeng Guoquan gained during this great robbery of Tianjing, but it is "nonsense" to say that Hong Xiuquan's holy treasury fell into his hands.
Hong Xiuquan's holy treasury is the legendary Taiping Heavenly Kingdom treasure. This treasure is very famous, so Han Kongque must investigate it, and he did so. Bai Xiaoyi once gave him an analysis report,
A very detailed analysis and demonstration of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom treasures was made, proving that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom treasures are real.
On August 14, 1864, Zeng Guofan petitioned for the dismissal of 25,000 Hunan troops. After these people returned to their hometowns, they did buy some fields and built a few houses, but their basic living conditions did not change much.
Therefore, the property that the Hunan Army seized after capturing Nanjing was not as "amazing" as popular legends say. In fact, they did not steal much Taiping Heavenly Kingdom treasure.
Zeng Guofan "has always been famous for his frugality." "Zeng Guofan's Family Letter" says: "I taught my children to be diligent, thrifty and modest... Every time I spend a piece of money, I must think twice. My brothers are at home, so I should teach my children and nephews to be diligent and respectful."
"Since I have power outside, the children at home are most likely to become arrogant and arrogant, both of which are ways to ruin the family."
It can be seen from the records in "Books from the Family of Zeng Guofan" that Zeng advocated not leaving property to his descendants. If the descendants are unworthy, it will be useless. If the descendants are strong, they will not worry about not having enough to eat. This is what he calls "the increase and decrease of wealth".
reason.
In March 1872, after Zeng Guofan passed away suddenly due to "occasional numbness of his feet and a tongue that was unable to speak", "Zeng Laojiu" began to edit "Zeng Guofan's Family Letters".
But after the book was edited and sorted out, the Zeng family had to put it on hold temporarily because they had no money to publish it...
Coincidentally, in November 1890, Zeng Guoquan passed away at the age of 66. His children wanted to compile "Collected Works of Zeng Zhongxiang" for him, but they could not find the money.
Hong Xiuquan's holy treasury is the so-called Taiping Heavenly Kingdom treasure. Perhaps today Han Peacock will be able to uncover this mystery.
With this string of pearls, it shows that Li Xiucheng did bring out a lot of treasures from Tianjing. No matter what Hong Xiuquan thought, his holy treasury in Tianjing did disappear anyway, and the most likely reason is that it fell at that time.
In the hands of his only general Li Xiucheng.
This idea was not only shared by Han Kongque, but also by Zeng Guofan. Tianjing fell, Li Xiucheng's entire army was wiped out, and a large number of Tianjing's jewels disappeared from the world.
There are rumors at home and abroad that Hong Ni's wealth is like a sea, gold and silver are like a sea, department stores are full, and more property is hidden underground.
After Li Xiucheng was captured, Zeng Guofan used coercion and inducement to ask for the whereabouts of the gold and silver many times. This was also the reason why King Zhong was executed late.
Li Xiucheng was really powerful and unyielding. He was very loyal and never revealed the whereabouts of the jewelry.
Some people even drained the lake in the back garden of Tianwang Mansion and dug three feet into the ground, but found nothing.
This is the mystery of the treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The so-called mysteries of the treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are divided into two types. One is the mystery of the whereabouts of the gold in the Tianjing vault, and the other is the mystery of the treasures hidden in the Dadu River by Yiwang Shidakai. These are the two major treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
What Han Kongque is now looking for must be the whereabouts of the Tianjing cellar gold, and this is the place where this batch of cellar gold is most likely to exist.
Han Peacock walked up and down the passage carrying a string of luminous pearls. The entire passage was not long, only less than a hundred meters. There was also a stone wall blocking the north side. This showed that this place should have been deliberately hidden, but in
Here, Han Peacock found nothing.
Is there such a string of luminous pearls placed here? This is obviously impossible.
Han Kongque looked at this passage. It was a narrow passage that only one person could pass through. There was really no place to hide anything. Could he have deduced it wrong?
The surprise I felt after discovering this passage has completely disappeared.
At the other end of the passage is the water vein connecting the underground labyrinth of Li Garden. If Li Xiucheng's wealth was also buried underwater, Han Peacock could only look at the water and sigh.
Could it be that the Holy Treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was really spent by Hong Xiuquan and others?
This seems unlikely. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom implemented the holy treasury system. The so-called holy treasury was "the private treasure of Hong Xiuquan." In other words, all the properties of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were confiscated and collected into the holy treasury for unified use by the king and the government.
This stems from Hong Xiuquan's understanding of the "Kingdom of Heaven". He once discussed it with foreign missionaries. He believed that the so-called "Kingdom of Heaven" could really exist, but it was made of gold, silver and jewels.
The value of the gold stored in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is extremely considerable. You only need to think about the fact that Hong Xiuquan confiscated all the gold and silver in half of the southern country, and you will know how much wealth he has amassed.
Even a rich country man could accumulate tens of thousands of taels of silver. As long as Hong Xiuquan got one-tenth of the wealth, it would be an astronomical figure. If he wanted to spend one-tenth of the wealth of half of China in more than ten years,
, this is really a technical job.
Of course, if the Taiping Army had money, how could they end up in such a miserable situation? So some people say that during the Tianjing Defense War, Tianjing City had used weeds to satisfy its hunger. If they had money, why not use the money then?
?
Han Kongque believed that this idea was as ignorant as Emperor Hui of the Jin Dynasty said "Why not eat minced meat". The Qing army came to the city with trenches all over the city, so what was the use of money?
Of course, no one knows the specific amount of cellar gold, but this batch of cellar gold is real.
Later, after Zeng Guofan regained Nanjing, the Qing government strictly ordered to track down the whereabouts of the "rebellious bandit"'s gold mines. Zeng Guofan repeatedly refused and said that no discovery had been made.
The pursuit of Jingjiao gold.
So some people say that Hong Xiuquan's gold collection was secretly hidden by Zeng Guofan. But this is obviously unrealistic.
After the fall of Tianjing, the Hunan Army openly robbed it for three days. When Zeng Guofan's wife returned to her hometown from Nanjing, she was accompanied by more than 300 ships laden with goods. Therefore, many people concluded that the treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom belonged to Zeng Guofan.
In Han Kongque's opinion, this statement is pure nonsense. At that time, Zeng Guofan did not dare to rebel against the Qing court. Since the Qing Dynasty suppressed the "Hongyang Rebellion", he has not been proud of himself and has been cautious. If those are really the gold in the holy treasury, then Zeng Guofan
It's just asking for death.
Therefore, more people do not believe that these treasures fell into the hands of Zeng Guofan. The Taiping Treasures itself is a mystery to this day. During the Republic of China, there were still people who dug it, but it was to no avail.
Since that batch of cellar gold was not hidden in Tianjing, there is only one possibility. It was transported out of Tianjing in advance, or it was hidden elsewhere, or it was used for other purposes.
However, according to Han Kongque, it is very possible that Hong Xiuquan could use it for other purposes. And what is the biggest use of this money?
Naturally, it was to purchase arms and supplies to protect the country. Han Kongque believed that this was the most likely possibility. Of course, some people said that Hong Xiuquan was stupid and incompetent, so how could he do such a thing.
As a leader of a country, is Hong Xiuquan really as incompetent as the legend says?
If he was really that incompetent, could he still conquer half of the Qing Dynasty?
You need to know what was his situation at that time, and what was his situation later when Yuan Datou and Sun Dapao were involved?
In actual terms, Hong Xiuquan is much stronger than Yuan Datou, Sun Dapao, Bald Jiang and his like.
It was such a person who actually ended up being rumored to be a fool and incompetent who had not left the harem for ten years.
Otherwise it is said now that history books are written by the victors. Since Hong Xiuquan was so incompetent, how could he support the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for more than ten years?
Therefore, Han Kongque was not surprised at all that Hong Xiuquan's gold cache was transported here. Since the possibility is so high, where is this gold cache hidden?
Han Kongque stared at this narrow passage and thought a lot, but he never thought about where the hidden gold was.
Han Kongque knew that after the Hunan army entered Tianjing, they burned, killed, raped, looted and looted the whole city for three days. They could be said to have made all the floating wealth on the ground, but that was just floating wealth, and there were more treasures hidden elsewhere.
Therefore, Zeng Guoquan interrogated Li Xiucheng severely, and Zeng Guofan also sent his staff to interrogate Li Xiucheng. One of them asked: "Can you point out several places in the gold and silver in the cellar in the city?"
Li Xiucheng used his autobiography to deal with Zeng Guofan. He cleverly made euphemistic narratives in his autobiography, and then led to the conclusions that "there is no gold and silver in the national treasury" and "no gold and silver in the family" to prevaricate Zeng Guofan.
When Tianjing fell, the whole city's slogan was: "Leave half a piece of rag for the monsters to enjoy!"
However, the Hunan Army still believed in the then-passed saying that "gold and silver are like a sea" in Tianjing. After the city fell, the Hunan Army dug cellars everywhere. Even Zeng Guofan openly mentioned "digging gold from cellars" in his report to the imperial court.
Later, Nanjing folk still had stories about collecting gold from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, such as the story of Jiang Lu and Wang Doufu getting rich.
Until the Revolution of 1911, there were still warlords who wanted to dig deep into the treasure troves of the Taiping Rebellion.
Various signs indicate that Tianjing City should have a gold mine.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom worked hard in Nanjing for ten years, and there has always been a legend that Hong Xiuquan hoarded gold and silver treasures.
The Hunan army who attacked Nanjing believed this statement very much. When the city was breached, the Hunan army dug cellars everywhere. Zeng Guofan even issued an order that "anyone who unearths gold in a thief's cellar will be reported to the official and confiscated, and violators will be punished."
After the Hunan Army entered the city, there was a legend that Zeng Jiu got the gold from the cellar. Zeng Jiu was Zeng Guofan's younger brother Zeng Guoquan, and he was the ninth oldest, hence the name.
His troops were the first to enter the Celestial Palace. According to legend, they dug up Hong Xiuquan's hidden gold and put it into his own pocket. In the end, in order to destroy the evidence, a fire burned down the Celestial Palace.
People in the Qing Dynasty recorded in their records that there was an emerald watermelon in Hong Xiuquan's gold cellar that was brought from the Old Summer Palace. It had a crack on it, with black spots like seeds and red texture like flesh. It was bright and smooth, all natural. This treasure is as good as today.
The string of pearls in the hands of Han Peacock is said to be in the hands of Zeng Guoquan.
At that time, in order to cope with the brutal military struggle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, all public and private properties had to be centralized in the "Holy Treasury". People's daily necessities were uniformly distributed from the Holy Treasury. Anyone who had more than one tael of gold or five taels of silver would be beheaded.
.
This system made the wealth of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom highly concentrated and provided the possibility for hoarding.
After the Tianjing Incident, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was run by direct descendants of the Hong family, and the wealth in the "Holy Treasury" became Hong Xiuquan's "private collection." Since it was a private collection, it would naturally not be used for official purposes. At least in the early days of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this money
The money cannot be used, so there is no such thing as being spent.
Since it has not been spent all, and it is not in Nanjing, the money cannot disappear out of thin air, and here is connected to the Yangtze River, and the Yangtze River line can lead directly to Nanjing. If the treasures there are transported here, Han Peacock is very
believable.
Various signs also indicate this. From the fact that Zeng Jiu dug three feet into the Tianjing at that time but did not dig out Hong Xiuquan's holy treasury, it is very clear about the problem.
Han Peacock walked back and forth in this passage countless times and soaked it with water again, but he did not find any place where water could penetrate easily.
The walls here should be made of limestone, and water should not be able to penetrate them. What's more, the walls are covered with a thick layer of moss, which will more easily prevent water from penetrating deeply.
There must be a treasure here. I believe that not only Han Kongque is convinced, but the experts who are doing geological exploration in Liyuan in the north should be even more convinced. There are also many stolen caves that can prove that since there is a treasure, then the treasure
Where is it hidden?
Looking at the empty passage, he took another look at the luminous pearls in his hand. If he didn't find this string of luminous pearls, forget about it. Now that he has found it, other treasures should be close at hand.
Therefore, Han Kongque did not believe that Liu Xiucheng would hide the treasure in the Li Yuan Underground Palace. If it was really hidden there, Han Kongque believed that it might have been obtained by Zeng Guofan and others. (To be continued, please search Piaotian Literature for better updates of the novel.