Red Mansion: Picking up a Lin Daiyu

Chapter 198: The warehouse is full of corn and the silver is overflowing

After Yue Ling drew his sword, the soldiers behind him quickly began to line up in the Hu family's courtyard and went to various places to maintain order.

The head of the Hu family felt a huge tremor in his heart.

This scene was so similar to what he saw outside the Pan family’s gate some time ago.

The soldiers drew their swords and looked very majestic. Everyone in the courtyard retreated, not daring to argue at all.

In the room, the women who were originally watching the excitement outside from the windowsill, saw a good thing undergo a drastic change and become what it is now. They were so scared that they burst into tears and hid behind the curtains crying.

The head of the Hu family panicked for a moment, but he was the head of the family after all. He secretly made up his mind, threw away the support of the people around him, knelt on the ground, and kowtowed: "Your Majesty is right, I will offer you a cart of gold. I hope that Your Majesty will show some leniency and give me some time to clean the courtyard."

"Tomorrow, no, before dark, I will definitely deliver it to the treasury for the Marquis."

Yue Ling sneered and slowly sheathed his sword. "Master Hu is a sensible man. I am not a bad person. Since you can follow the law, I will not make things difficult for you. You must count the gold and send it to the treasury before dark. If I come here a second time, I will not leave so easily."

Under the gaze of the crowd, the head of the Hu family still knelt humbly, kowtowed repeatedly, and said: "I dare not, I will obey the order of the Marquis."

Yue Ling's gaze did not linger on the head of the Hu family. He turned his horse's head and said in a muffled voice, "Withdraw the troops."

The entire Hu family watched Yue Ling and his group leave. After the door was closed, everyone felt relieved and breathed a sigh of relief.

After the servant came forward and helped the head of the Hu family up, everyone fell silent again and couldn't help but look at the butler who had just said the wrong thing.

The housekeeper looked stern.

Although there was no room for maneuver at this moment, the desire to survive still drove him to kneel before the head of the Hu family and kowtow.

The head of the Hu family looked around and felt that everyone's sympathetic eyes were not on the housekeeper, but on him.

He was so angry that he kicked the butler to the ground.

The housekeeper did not dodge or evade, and was kicked in the heart, but he quickly got up and knelt in front of the master to beg for mercy.

The head of the Hu family said calmly: "Drag him out and feed him to the dogs."

Following the words of the Hu family's head, someone else stepped forward and asked, "Head, what we originally brought back was brass, why do we have to compensate him with a cart of gold? This cart of gold is worth more than 100,000 taels, this..."

The head of the Hu family said angrily: "Don't you understand? This is a trap set by Yue Ling! Where is the gold? Where is the treasure? Idiots, what a bunch of idiots!"

"This family and that family all think they are the top figures in Cangzhou, but they are all manipulated by Yue Ling!"

The head of the Hu family took a few deep breaths and it took him a long time to calm down.

"Sell all the shops and fields in Cangzhou, use the remaining grain to exchange for silver, and send it all to the warehouse in the north of the city."

"What Yue Ling wants is not a cart of gold, but the roots of my Hu family!"

"Leave some money for the journey and divide it among yourselves. After tomorrow, I will leave Cangzhou with my family. There will no longer be any Hu family in Cangzhou..."

If you can't afford to offend, the best way is to hide.

All the servants of the Hu family in the courtyard were in great grief.

What made them sad was not the relationship with the Hu family. They were just sad that they no longer had the Hu family as a big tree, and were no longer superior to the poor outside. They could no longer bully the people and use their tiger skins...

……

The streets of Cangzhou city are no longer as chaotic as they used to be.

After several days of providing porridge, most of the victims were able to survive and regain basic mobility.

In this way, they were all assigned to live in renovated houses throughout the city.

With the help of the map drawn by Lin Daiyu, Yue Ling divided the victims into different areas.

Ten households were grouped into a group with a group leader, and ten groups formed a group with a group leader. Then porridge stalls were set up near their settlements to distribute porridge, and the victims were managed separately.

There were already victims of the disaster who were half-naked on the streets.

Even the elderly widows and widowers who were unable to move were sent to charity homes for care.

Today, a large number of soldiers marched out of the government office fully equipped. The sounds of armor and weapons colliding were heard everywhere in the city, and the murderous aura seemed to cover the entire Cangzhou city.

The soldiers went to the houses of various wealthy businessmen to carry out Yue Ling's orders and completely shattered their fantasy of changing their fate with gold.

When they walked towards the merchants' homes and asked for gold, the heads of each family knew that they had fallen into a trap set by Yue Ling.

There was no major commotion, no bloodshed.

Silently, each family was drained of vitality, like a dead object.

After Yue Ling entered the city, he first established his authority with the Gao and Pan families, cut off the cash of merchants, and then sold grain outside the city, compressing their savings to the extreme and putting them under great pressure. At this critical moment, people tend to lose their minds and pin their hopes on one thing.

But they didn't know that during the previous investigation, Yue Ling had handed over the matter to the Nanpi County Magistrate. The gold and treasures were prepared with the silver taken away by Nanpi County Magistrate Chen Youmin.

The most basic condition for growing cotton is that the land needs to be dug to the sandy soil layer. If Nanpi County were to do it alone, the speed of reclamation could not be guaranteed, and hiring people to do it would be a huge expense just in terms of food rations.

There is no better way than to bribe merchants. Now that the river channel has been dug, it can be used as a canal. The 50,000 mu of wasteland on both sides no longer needs to be reclaimed. After plowing the land, it can be cultivated.

The merchants were like old oxen who worked diligently to reclaim 50,000 acres of land for Yue Ling. After the land was reclaimed, they would be slaughtered for meat.

The situation is exactly the same as that of the Hu family. The merchants who have long run out of cash can only choose to use shops, land deeds, grain, etc. as collateral for silver.

Those who could not gather enough money could only go to jail and rely on the government for food.

The merchants who used to be so prosperous in Cangzhou City and bully the people were all wiped out in one day...

The Cangzhou commercial street, which had long been dilapidated, was now bustling with customers.

In the Xue family pawnshop, with a plaque reading "Feng Zi Hao" hanging on it, big red lanterns were swaying and people were crowded below.

Near the counter, an accountant stood on tiptoe, looking slightly angry, "Boss, don't be so cruel. Everyone has experienced poverty. The deeds of sixteen shops on one street, and you only give me three hundred taels?"

The shopkeeper of the Xue family responded coldly, "What's wrong with three hundred taels? Do you think Cangzhou is Jinling? Three hundred taels is too much. Are you going to sell it or not? If not, leave. There are people waiting in line behind you!"

The accountant looked at the land deed in his hand, which was originally worth five thousand taels, and his heart seemed to bleed. However, if he wanted to raise money at the moment, he couldn't get it from anywhere else. He could only grit his teeth and said, "Okay, okay, I'll sell it. How do you convert the grain?"

"Five cents a pound."

"Five cents! Why don't you just rob it?"

The shopkeeper said indifferently, "Sell it if you want. Next one."

"Sell it, don't worry, boss. If we sell the granary together, how much silver can we get?"

"What do you want your granary for?"

The accountant asked, "Without a granary, where does your merchant store the grain?"

"It's none of your business."

The accountant sighed and said, "Three thousand dan of grain costs five cents per jin, which can only be converted into one thousand eight hundred taels..."

After scraping together money from all sources, he pawned his ancestral home and even the women's head ornaments and jewelry in exchange for ten thousand taels of silver, which was barely enough to offset the one hundred kilograms of gold he dug up from Nanpi County.

The accountant squeezed out of the door and sighed again, "Our family is not like the Hu family. The Huang family dug up so much gold, but it turned out to be a good thing. It's really fate that plays tricks on us."

After taking a few steps, he saw the grain carts carrying grain from his family lined up out of the backyard of the Fengzihao, but the grain on the carts had not been unloaded yet.

The accountant could not help but step forward and ask, "Why are you out again? Did the grain be confiscated?"

The waiter said with a sad face: "The owner of Fengzihao asked us to send it directly to the warehouse in the north of the city..."

"what?"

The accountant's eyes widened in shock, and after a while he regretted, "Not only do I have to suffer this loss, but I also have to endure this humiliation. Why do I have to be the enemy of the Marquis?"

……

Okura in the north of the city,

Yue Ling was inspecting the so-called gold here.

If the merchants in Cangzhou City were to calculate the amount of "gold" they dug, they would have dug two to three thousand kilograms. But how could they find so much gold in the city at such a short time? In the end, they could only use silver to offset the loss.

There wasn't originally so much gold in the city, which further proved that this trap was set by Yue Ling.

But the gold had to be handed over. Otherwise, once people asked, "Why did other families hand it over, but you didn't?" this would still be a serious crime of hoarding ore and disobeying the imperial envoy.

When the heads of various families came here to pay silver, their faces were all as sad as if they had lost their parents. Moreover, when they saw the grain trucks leaving their homes, which were originally going to Fengzihao to exchange silver, now also arrived at the big warehouse in the north of the city, some were so angry that they vomited blood on the spot.

It turns out that the Xue family is just Yue Ling's white glove.

Seeing the purple faces of the heads of the various families, Jia Yun, who was sitting at the desk taking notes, couldn't help but laugh.

Yue Ling gave orders to the warehouse keeper: "The grain will be stored in the warehouse today, and the Changping warehouse will be re-established in the city. The price of grain this year must be maintained at 15 wen per catty."

"In the villages surrounding the city, we will rebuild the granaries according to the population and prepare for disaster relief..."

The warehouse envoy nodded repeatedly, "I will definitely live up to your trust."

The warehouse keeper was even more respectful at this moment than when he first met Yue Ling. Since he had taken charge of the granary in Cangzhou City, he had never seen so much grain.

Even the original large warehouse could not accommodate the people, so a new warehouse that was not yet completed was put into use.

The bags of grain were piling up and were about to overflow the warehouse, while the silver vault on the other side was unable to close its door after boxes of silver were delivered.

In the end, the excess gold had to be sent back to the government office for temporary management.

When the warehouses in Cangzhou City were first established, no one thought they would be as full as they are today.

Looking at such a magnificent scene from afar, Yue Ling finally smiled a little, "Since we have come this far, we can create a new world for Cangzhou."

(End of this chapter)