Without money, what is the point of being a traitor?

Chapter 161 This is my money!
Pei Yuan pushed the silver box again with force, almost in a panic.

The heavy silver box dragged across the ground, leaving deep marks.

Pei Yuan's face lost all color and he shouted, "Open it!"

This is not just 80,000 taels of silver, this is hundreds of thousands of taels of silver!

This is my money!
Song Chunniang was completely dumbfounded.

Seeing this, Cheng Leixiang immediately said, "I'll go get the crowbar."

Pei Yuan pushed the other silver boxes with all his strength without giving up.

Some can be pushed, while others are extremely heavy.

Pei Yuan was extremely panicked.

He used all his strength to smash a silver box with his fist and yelled, "Why hasn't anyone come yet?"

Pei Yuan's impotent rage failed to summon Cheng Leixiang, but he did hear a very slight "squeaking" sound.

Is it?

Pei Yuan looked around suddenly and then fixed his eyes on the silver box.

In the cash box?
Pei Yuan then reacted, stepped forward and hugged the silver box, lifted it a few inches with difficulty, and slowly moved forward.

The squeaking sound became clearer and clearer, and then many mice crawled out from under the silver box that Pei Yuan was holding and scattered.

What the hell!

Pei Yuan felt a chill in his heart.

He placed one edge of the silver box against the ground and, with great effort, lifted the box over, revealing its bottom.

I saw that a big hole had been bitten in the bottom of the silver box at some point, and rats kept running out of it.

Pei Yuan quickly glanced at the ground and saw a rat hole where the silver box had been placed before, with some newly turned up soil next to it.

Pei Yuan kicked the silver box, then pulled out the Bazhou sword like a madman and stabbed it around the rat hole.

The Bazhou knife was extremely sharp, piercing the compacted ground and causing the dirt to fly everywhere.

When it was pulled out one time, the Bazhou Sword brought out a stream of blood.

Pei Yuan seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw. He quickly stabbed the place where the blood was gushing out with the knife, then threw the knife away and started digging on the ground with his hands.

The soil that was pierced by the Bazhou knife was no longer very solid, and Pei Yuan soon dug it into a winding rat hole.

Pei Yuan felt hopeful and started digging at the cave wall with his hands.

After a while, Pei Yuan felt a pain in his finger and grabbed it with force, taking out a large silver ingot.

Judging from the specifications and style, it is clearly the silver from the Suzhou and Hangzhou Weaving Bureau.

Pei Yuan felt both despair and hope in his heart, and he shouted quickly, "Someone come! Someone come quickly!"

"Don't fucking sleep!"

After shouting, Pei Yuan estimated the direction of the rat hole, picked up the Bazhou knife, and stabbed the ground randomly.

The Bazhou knife sometimes pierced dense soil, sometimes pierced empty space, and sometimes even brought out a stream of blood.

While stabbing, Pei Yuan thought of the other silver boxes.

He shouted immediately, "Push them all down, push them all down! Don't let anyone steal your silver anymore!"

Having said that, he dropped the Bazhou knife and started to open other silver boxes.

The panicked Jinyiwei rushed forward, some helped to lift the silver box, and some stabbed the ground with knives and guns, looking for rat holes.

The results of the inspection made Pei Yuan's heart bleed.

There were a total of ten boxes of silver, and six of them had large holes bitten in the bottom.

Correspondingly, there are six rat holes on the ground whose leading directions are unknown.

Some mice were unaware of what was happening and actually poked their heads out to look.

Song Chunniang, who had been panicking, suddenly spoke up to remind them, "Why not go call Tan Tai Fang Tu!"

Pei Yuan immediately woke up as if from a dream.

That makes sense!

When it comes to digging holes, even these rats can't compare to old man Tan Tai!
Pei Yuan hurriedly stepped into the courtyard and shouted to the surrounding courtyards, "Tan Tai Fang Tu, come here quickly!"

In the past, given Master Tan Tai’s personality, he would have ignored her in a rage.

But today, the hot-tempered Mr. Tan Tai is very rational, honest and restrained.

Not long after Pei Yuan shouted, Tan Tai Fang Tu came rushing over from another courtyard, dressed in clothes.

When Tan Tai Fang Tu saw Pei Yuan appear in the room where the silver box was stored in the middle of the night, her heart tightened and she immediately had a bad premonition.

"Qian Hu, what's wrong?"

Pei Yuan thought the explanation was too slow, so he stepped aside and said, "See for yourself."

Wait until Tan Tai Fang Tu comes into the room and takes a look.

The overturned silver box, the big hole at the bottom, the rats running around the room from time to time, and the several conspicuous holes on the ground immediately made this old man understand what had happened.

At this moment, a piece of soil on the ground bulged up, and a mouse suddenly jumped out from the place where the silver box was originally stored.

Then, several more mice pushed desperately from behind to widen the opening of the rat hole.

Tan Tai Fang Tu's face changed drastically, and he shouted, "Where did this evil demon come from!"

As he said this, he opened his big hands and slapped the ground with all his might.

The sound of Tan Tai Fang Tu's slap was quite astonishing!

Everyone in the room felt their bodies sway, and a lot of mud fell off the beams and wooden planks on the roof.

The situation on the ground was even more alarming.

Looking out from the room, I saw several deep grooves on the ground, and some rats that had luckily escaped were rushing out in panic.

Judging from the gullies on the ground, in addition to the seven passages that have been opened, there are three more that are almost completed!
A total of ten rat holes collapsed directly under the shock of Tan Tai Fangtu!

Pei Yuan reacted quickly. He looked at the direction where the rat hole extended and said to someone, "There must be someone in that direction to help. Ask Sikong Sui to send someone to find them immediately."

The personal guard who was listening to the order was an experienced Jinyi captain, who quickly reminded him, "Yangzhou is a big prefecture, and there may be some people in the post station of the prefecture seat who are not easy to deal with."

Pei Yuan was furious and said, "What time is it now? Tell Sikong Sui that if anyone tries to stop us, we will chop their hands off and stomp their feet!"

The guard left in a hurry.

The commotion here soon alarmed more people.

Cui Bohou and Chen Toutie also rushed over with their men.

Now that there are sufficient manpower, Pei Yuan calmed down a little.

He ordered Cui Bohou, "Ask your men to guard the gates of the post station. No one is allowed to go in or out. If anyone dares to mess around, don't hold back."

Then he said to Chen Toutie, "Take two guards with you and go to a place with a good view outside the post station and hide in the dark. No matter what happens, don't expose yourself easily. Come back to see me after daybreak."

After the two hurried away, Pei Yuan turned back and shouted, "The rest of you, dig them out!"

The newly arrived Jinyiwei quickly used the things in their hands to dig along the ravine.

After a while, a large number of dead rats and some silver ingots dragged away by the rats were dug out from the ditches.

Tan Tai Fang Tu rested for a moment, took a deep breath, then opened his hands again and raised them with all his strength.

There was a ditch on the ground, as if it had been plowed by an ox, and fresh soil from the ground, the crushed bodies of rats, and ingots of silver were all rolled out.

Pei Yuan was overjoyed when he saw this, "Well done! Someone come and collect the silver!"

The Jinyiwei who were digging hard rushed forward to search, and found all the silver and mice in the soil and piled them up separately.

Tantai Fangtu opened two more rat holes in one breath before stopping to rest. The Jinyiwei were busy collecting and stacking the silver.

There were also a lot of dead rats piled up nearby.

At this time, Sikong Sui and his men hurried over.

Pei Yuan's eyes lit up, and he quickly asked him, "How is it, did you catch the person?"

Sikong Sui replied, "No! I have dispersed my men and have been looking for a long time, but I have not seen anyone coming to help. I am afraid that someone may lure the tiger away from the mountain, so I came back to ask the captain's opinion first."

Seeing that it was late at night and there were still sporadic snowflakes falling, Pei Yuan did not dare to let Sikong Sui go out to take the risk.

Pei Yuan no longer expected to catch the mastermind behind the incident, he would be thankful if he could get the money back.

All he could do was to say, "Find the silver first, and as for the rest, I'll find another way."

At this moment, Tan Tai Fang Tu's CD was ready again, and he continued to dig up the rat's nest.

When Cheng Leixiang found the crowbar, Pei Yuan asked people to light torches everywhere to illuminate the place. He also asked Song Chunniang to open the silver boxes one by one to check the missing figures.

Eighty thousand taels of silver, each silver ingot is fifty taels, a total of one thousand six hundred.

After deducting the sample that Pei Yuan gave to Han Qianhu, there were still 1,599 yuan left.

That is to say, among these ten silver boxes, except for one with 159 yuan, the others all contain 160 yuan.

Song Chunniang first pried open the lids of the silver boxes and checked the four boxes that had not been bitten by rats. After counting, she found that the number was correct.

He opened the six boxes that had been bitten by rats and counted them one by one.

But whatever was short was filled from the pile of silver that had been dug up from the ground.

In this way, the four silver boxes were filled up bit by bit.

The fifth stolen silver box was only replenished with a few silver ingots, and the pile of silver was almost empty.

Pei Yuan looked unhappy and asked Song Chunniang, "How much more is left?"

Song Chunniang calculated silently and answered, "One box is short of 45 silver ingots, and another box is short of 61 silver ingots. In total, we are short of 106 silver ingots, 5,300 taels."

When Pei Yuan heard this number, he felt so heartbroken that he almost suffocated. He gritted his teeth and jumped into the ditches to search again.

The Jinyiwei had searched very carefully before, but Pei Yuan found nothing after searching for a long time.

He looked out in the direction where the rat hole extended.

I saw a courtyard wall in front of me, and the rat holes disappeared at the base of the wall.

Pei Yuan wanted to find Tan Tai Fang Tu, but when he turned back he couldn't find her.

So he asked, "Where is Tantai Fangtu?"

One of the guards replied, "Captain Tantai went to dig behind the wall outside the courtyard."

Pei Yuan felt a little relieved.

The fact that so much silver can be dug out from the ground now shows that the person who stole the silver has indeed just started.

Maybe we can dig out the remaining silver from the cave outside.

Pei Yuan was thinking when a Jinyiwei rushed over from outside the courtyard and said, "Sir, Captain Tantai wants you to go out and take a look."

Pei Yuan's heart tightened and he strode out.

The ground outside was in a mess, as if it had been bombed heavily.

Pei Yuan took a quick glance and began looking around, "Where's the silver?"

Tan Tai Fang Tu also had sweat on his face, "Captain, there is no silver!"

Pei Yuan's body froze, and he almost shouted, "No silver?!"

Tantai Fangtu hurriedly approached the wall and explained, "Sir, look. The soil here is very fresh. Not to mention silver, there are not even any mice."

Pei Yuan asked blankly, "What about the rat hole from before?"

Tan Tai Fang Tu swung the ground vigorously, large pieces of soil splashed out, and a long groove appeared at the base of the wall.

There was nothing in that long ditch except mud.

Tantai Fangtu pointed, "The rat hole doesn't extend here."

Pei Yuan thought for a moment and immediately said, "Then go back and dig deeper. Even if we have to dig three feet deep, we must find the silver!"

Return to the courtyard.

The Jinyiwei followed Pei Qianhu's idea of ​​digging three feet into the ground, and they didn't care whether it was the direction of a rat hole or not, they just dug everywhere.

Cheng Leixiang found some baskets from somewhere.

After a careful search, the excavated soil was put into baskets and dumped outside the yard.

As time passed, more and more areas in the yard were dug, but not even a missing silver ingot was found.

Tan Tai Fang Tu almost risked his life to dig deeper into those rat holes, trying to find out if there was a passage that turned downwards. However, the soil became harder the deeper he went, and its color began to change, but he still could not find any trace of the silver.

Pei Yuan's face looked extremely ugly.

He dug the soil for a while, but seeing no results, he set his sights on the courtyard wall.

Pei Yuan thought about it and shouted, "Someone, tear down that wall for me!"

Hou Qing, who was standing by, heard this and volunteered, "I'll do it!"

As he spoke, he took a sledgehammer from under the eaves.

Hou Qing spat on his palm, raised the hammer with both hands, and smashed it against the wall with all his strength.

When the hammer hit the wall, dust and dirt fell off, and visible cracks appeared on the wall.

Hou Qing's hands were numb from the shock. After a long while, he swung the hammer again and smashed it over.

When the hammer fell, there was a "crash" sound, and it seemed as if a silver bottle was breaking.

Everyone who was watching exclaimed in surprise.

It turned out that the mud on the courtyard wall had fallen off, revealing a painting on it.

The painting was drawn purely in thick and thin ink, and looked quite simple and old-fashioned, as if it had been there for quite a while.

In the painting, there is a strange-looking old monk with a protruding forehead, wearing tattered clothes. He has a seal with his left hand and holds a bowl in his right hand, which he is handing forward with a sly smile.

Below the portrait of the old monk was a coarse linen bag with a few mice with their heads sticking out vividly painted inside.

Next to the pocket, there were some silver coins drawn.

Hou Qing was right next to him.

He was stunned for a moment, without thinking too much, and just looked at the painting in front of him.

Then, he saw something and shouted, "Qian Hu, look."

Pei Yuan had already taken the Bazhou sword in his hand and was slowly retreating with his men.

Hearing Hou Qing yelling, he asked warily, "What?"

Hou Qing pointed at the silver in the painting and said excitedly, "This silver is exactly the same as ours."

Pei Yuan looked over when he heard that.

Sure enough, I saw a small pile of silver that was exactly the same as the one in the silver box.

You know, in order to ensure that the silver was correct, the Suzhou and Hangzhou Weaving Office made a special mold and cast a new one for this money.

In order to get a sample, Han Qianhu specially asked Pei Yuan to go to Suzhou in advance.

Hou Qing discovered something again and said, "Hey, there's a Suzhou and Hangzhou weaving stamp on it."

This guy with a not-so-bright brain also noticed something was wrong, and his voice couldn't help but become lower.

(End of this chapter)