In Zhao's house, the lights were brightly lit, and the search was still going on.
"Sir, my brothers have almost rummaged 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 Jin Yiwei 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 this one has a relatively clear understanding of each of the seven major salt merchants.
Although the Zhao family is lower in reputation than the other seven salt merchants, it is one of the ones that has been around the longest among all the salt merchants. Long before Yangzhou was established as the "salt capital" by the state, the Zhao family had already established a foothold in the salt industry.
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, 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, a total of 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 to be able to find so much gold and silver through a house raid.
For example, in the current Rongguo Mansion, if a house was raided, except for his yard and all the remaining areas, including Jia Mu's yard and the warehouse, perhaps only so much gold and silver could be confiscated.
However, as one of the big salt merchants in Yangzhou with a long history, he could only find more than 100,000 taels of gold and silver in his home, which seems a bit unscientific. And Jia Lian could tell at a glance that most of the gold guys who took up the majority were just gold and silver jewelry from women’s homes!
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 too few things copied out, so he quickly explained: "My lord, 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 for Beizhi, Beizhi definitely did not hide anything from you."
Knowing 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 confiscating the family.
Including how to clean a house from top to bottom 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 go to the warehouse with him on the pretext of teaching Zhao Sheng and others the secret of confiscating homes, in order to reassure Jia Lian about him.
But he was overly worried. Jia Lian didn't suspect that he was hiding anything secretly. There are only dozens of Jin Yiwei in total. Even if everyone fills their pockets, how many can 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 grumbled 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!
After a rough calculation, there should be millions of assets, right? If this is called poverty, other wealthy families in the world would be ashamed to death.
After all, no one dares to say anything even though he knows that his family has a high vision. However, Zhao Cheng said solemnly: "Bi Zhi also thinks what the adults are saying is true. Bei Zhi has been in Jinyiwei for almost ten years, and has also followed the adults above to copy many people who have committed crimes, so he thinks he has 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 hid all their property. "
After listening to Zhao Cheng's words, Jia Lian began to think. 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 get him to confess voluntarily.
Because those criminals dare to hide their family property to leave a way out for their descendants, and generally they will not tell the truth. But those housekeepers knew most of the affairs in the house, and after the master committed a crime, he lost his loyalty, so it was easy to bribe him.
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 familiar with the Zhao family's affairs, it would be really troublesome for adults to do an inventory. As long as the housekeeper or manager of Zhao Mansion is willing to serve you, the rest will be much easier. "
Jia Lian's eyes lit up. Sure enough, experienced people can work efficiently. Although it was Jia Lian's first time to ransack a house, he had a hunch that he would encounter many such things in the future, and he had to learn and summarize some experiences in advance.
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 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 understood why they couldn't find it. In this case, unless you dig deep into the ground to search, it is 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 watch.
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 provided 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 chains around their hands, feet, and necks.
These women were all beautiful in figure and appearance, but their clothes were in tatters and their expressions were numb. Perhaps 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 benches 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 expression became terrifyingly gloomy.
Although he already knew that wherever there is light in the world, there must be darkness, especially in this feudal era, it should not be surprising for such a thing to happen. But seeing such a dirty and dirty scene with his own eyes, Jia Lian immediately felt a murderous intention in his chest.
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 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 is aware that these are really It’s all done by our masters and 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 trembling 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."
"Is there no one else? Did your master and uncle move 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 scared to death. He quickly kowtowed twice with his bangus, 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, I know 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..."
age? 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: "Please ask Erlang to take a few people and send them out. Haosheng will take 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?
In the center of this large stone room, there were more than ten five-story shelves that were made of what looked like golden nanmu planed in parallel. Surrounding these wooden frames are large wooden tables connected end to end. On the tables, trapezoidal silver bricks are placed neatly 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, they are placed on gold bricks.
At a glance, it is impossible to estimate how many gold bricks there are and how many silver bricks there are!
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, how much silver is there?"
Jia Lian couldn't help but tilted his head and asked the Zhao family housekeeper.
The butler replied: "Replying to your lord, only our master knows the specific number, 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 to put them neatly out of the annual profits. He will come in and take a look almost every day. In addition to gold and silver, there are also some of our master's favorite treasures, which he will also put in here.
Therefore, our master strictly prohibits anyone from entering this stone room. Even all the lamp oil in it was added by him himself and 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 is more than one million taels of silver! Doesn’t it mean that the total value of 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 briefly walking around for two times and feeling what Mr. Zhao had felt, Jia Lian took a deep breath and immediately ordered someone to bring boxes, a lot of them, and put them all away!
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