Traveling back to the Northern Song Dynasty: Picking up a princess as my wife

During this period, a considerable number of Jin soldiers passed by the foot of the mountain. However, since Emperor Huizong of Song and his important ministers were being escorted north from Taiyuan, the number of Jin soldiers passing through Tangyin was much smaller compared to the number of Jin soldiers escorting them.

During this time, Li Zhen led his men to target smaller groups of Jin soldiers, acquiring another batch of gold and silver jewelry. With the addition of later recruits, the small village now had about 130 people. Due to the increased population, the rice and flour in Li Zhen's spatial storage were almost depleted, which greatly troubled him. Each time he transmigrated, he had to inflict a wound on his body; insufficient bleeding wasn't enough, the entire jade pendant had to be completely covered to achieve the desired transmigration effect.

To solve the problem of feeding these more than one hundred people, Li Zhen finally traveled through time again that night.

A flash of white light, and Li Zhen was back in his familiar home, which was almost unchanged from before he transmigrated. The hands of the clock on the wall were still pointing to the same position.

Li Zhen used his mental power to retrieve the gold and silver jewelry from the space, and found that its quality had not changed from before, which relieved him.

He picked up his phone from the table and started looking for his classmate Cao Hua's number. Cao Hua was Li Zhen's high school classmate. Since failing to get into university, he had been working with his uncle in the gold and jewelry recycling business. Rather than asking others for prices, it was more reliable to contact his old classmate directly.

After listening to the dial tone on the other end of the phone, a familiar voice sounded: "Hello, this is Baitong Trading Company. How can I help you?"

Li Zhen said directly, "Cao Hua, I am Li Zhen. I have a batch of gold here, would you like to buy it?"

Actually, Li Zhen didn't initially have that much gold, because before the Song Dynasty, copper coins and silver were more commonly in circulation, and most of what he looted from the Jin soldiers was silver. Later, after being reminded by one of his subordinates, Li Zhen went to a money exchange in Tangyin City to exchange it for gold. Although he lost a lot in exchange fees, in modern society, silver was worthless, and gold was the hard currency.

Cao Hua said on the other end of the phone, "How much do you have? If it's a lot, I'll come over directly. If it's a small amount, you can just handle it nearby. I'll tell you the market price."

Li Zhen hesitated for a moment, but finally said, "There's a lot. You'd better come over."

Cao Hua on the other end of the phone said, "Damn it! Li Zhen, you didn't dig up your family's ancestral graves, did you? Send me your location on WeChat, I'm coming right now."

Less than an hour later, there was a knock on the door.

After Li Zhen opened the door, Cao Hua walked in. He immediately looked around and said, "Old classmate, your house is nice. How much did you buy it for?"

Li Zhen smiled and said, "I just bought it last year. My parents paid the down payment, and I'm currently miserably paying off the loan. I'm a little short on cash, so I thought I'd sell this batch of gold."

Cao Hua said with some displeasure, "If you need money, just tell me. Do you need to sell your ancestral property? How much do you need? I'll transfer it to you. As long as it's not more than 100,000, I still have it."

He then took out his phone, opened WeChat, and searched for Li Zhen's name.

Li Zhen quickly stopped Cao Hua, saying with a smile, "Thank you for your kind offer, old classmate. Why don't you take a look at the gold first?"

He then took out the box containing the gold, opened it, and placed it on the table.

Cao Hua's eyes lit up as he looked at the box full of gold ingots.

"Damn it! You still say you didn't dig up your ancestral graves? I've never seen so many gold ingots before."

Li Zhen, still smiling, said, "I found this in the foundation of the old house when we were renovating it a few days ago. I just brought it back and called you to see if you could give me a discount."

Cao Hua carefully took the gold ingots out of the wooden box and placed them on the table. Each gold ingot weighed about three or four ounces, and each one was worth nearly 200,000 yuan.

After looking at the gold ingots inside, Cao Hua said in a deep voice, "Old classmate, I won't lie to you. Recently, the Russians in the north are at war, and the price of gold has been rising continuously. Today's trading price is 580 yuan per gram. Listen to me, let it sit for a few more days, and the price will definitely rise a bit more."

Li Zhen knew gold was valuable, but he didn't expect it to be this valuable. He said to Cao Hua, "Let's sell it. After we sell it, I'll pay off the loan on this house first. We still need money to rebuild our house back home. Anyway, this is all unexpected wealth."

Seeing that Li Zhen really wanted to deal with the gold, Cao Hua stopped trying to persuade him and took out an electronic scale from his backpack to weigh the gold pieces one by one.

Then, somewhat embarrassed, he said to Li Zhen, "My old classmate, please don't take offense. Our company has regulations that this amount of gold exceeds my recycling authority. I need to call my uncle; he's the business manager, and his authority is greater than mine."

Li Zhen smiled and said, "Since they found you, they must trust you. Why don't you call your uncle?"

Cao Hua took out his phone somewhat embarrassedly and explained the situation directly over the phone. His uncle was also stunned on the other end of the line. This was a big deal. Once it was done, the commission would be substantial, and he might even get a promotion.

Cao Hua's uncle arrived in less than half an hour, bringing with him a more professional spectrometer, which conducted a detailed analysis of each gold ingot.

Finally, he spoke up, saying, "Cao Hua told me on the phone earlier that since you're his classmate, I'll get straight to the point. There are quite a few impurities in this batch of gold ingots, and we'll have to process and purify them when we get back. We'll need to deduct some of the loss costs."

Li Zhen nodded in agreement, because he knew that ancient gold refining technology was certainly not as advanced as modern technology, and depreciation was a reasonable expense.

After some calculations, the total weight of the gold was 12,500 grams. Based on today's gold recycling price of 580 yuan per gram, Li Zhen's box of gold was worth a full 7.25 million yuan. After depreciation, it would still be worth about 7 million yuan.

Li Zhen agreed to the price, so Cao Hua's uncle immediately called the company's finance department, and within ten minutes, seven million yuan was deposited into Li Zhen's bank account.

This was the happiest and most exciting moment for Li Zhen since his time travel. He never expected that Song Dynasty gold would be so valuable in modern times. He originally wanted to take out the several strings of jewelry he had brought with him, but looking at the more than seven million yuan in his phone balance, he decided to put it aside for now. Gold was fine, but if he produced jewelry as well, the lie would be hard to cover up.

With this money, Li Zhen could buy countless supplies and equipment, and then show those Song Dynasty people what true wealth and prosperity really meant.

As Cao Hua's uncle left Li Zhen's house, he said to him in the car, "Your classmate is no ordinary person. These gold-making techniques are all ancient technologies, and judging from the purity, they should be from the Tang and Song dynasties. He must have a lot more good stuff. You should try to get along well with him."

Upon hearing this, Cao Hua immediately asked, "Then isn't the price we offered too low? Uncle, you can't rip off my classmate!"

"Snapped!"

Cao Hua got a slap on the head, and his uncle said irritably, "That's your classmate. Would I cheat him? I even calculated the depreciation fee for him at the lowest possible rate."