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The ship's supervisor was arrested on the spot, the ship was towed back to the dock, and the grain was moved back to the warehouse; not a single grain was transported out.

The Lu family's shops in Huzhou City were also seized.

There were seventeen shops in total, including silk shops, cloth shops, grain shops, pawnshops, and money shops, located on the most bustling streets of Huzhou City.

On the day the lockdown was carried out, the people of Huzhou flooded the streets, making every street completely packed.

Some people found bolts of cloth thrown out of the silk shop, some grabbed grain that hadn't been moved yet at the grain store, and some picked up copper coins that rolled out of the smashed counter at the pawnshop.

The officers and soldiers tried to maintain order, but the crowd was too dense, pushing and shoving, jostling each other like a pot of boiling porridge.

Some people lost their shoes in the crush, some lost their hats, and some squeezed out of the crowd clutching the stolen cloth, their faces filled with an almost frenzied excitement, shouting "Heaven has opened its eyes!" and "Long live the imperial court!"

The Zheng family's businesses in Songjiang were the first to be seized and the most thoroughly investigated.

The Zheng family had been operating in Songjiang for three generations, starting with the salt industry and gradually expanding into the cloth, tea, and shipping industries, practically controlling the economic lifeline of Songjiang Prefecture.

In Songjiang City, seven out of ten shops are owned by the Zheng family, and the remaining three are also closely connected with the Zheng family.

On the day of the sealing, the prefect of Songjiang personally led soldiers to affix seals to each household, from the east to the west of the city, and from the south to the north. Eventually, they ran out of seals and had to have them written on the spot.

The clerk's hand ached from writing the seals, and it took several people to finish sealing the last shop.

The Zheng family's estate outside Songjiang City was even larger, covering thousands of acres and spanning three counties, with over a thousand tenant households.

When the estates were seized, the tenants were initially very afraid, thinking that the imperial court was coming to take their land and drive them away.

Later, when they heard that the Zheng family had committed a crime, their land had been confiscated, and the tenants were allowed to continue farming as usual, only with a new employer, their expressions softened somewhat. Some even secretly breathed a sigh of relief—a new employer couldn't be any more ruthless than the Zheng family, could it?

The Zheng family's private army was surrounded in a fortified village outside Songjiang City.

That fortified village was built against the mountain and surrounded by water on three sides, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack. It was the old nest managed by the Zheng family for generations.

The foreman of the fortified village was surnamed Shen, the tall, thin man who had confronted Han Zhang on the city wall for three days and three nights. Han Zhang did not launch a direct attack, but instead had the fortified village completely surrounded and its water supply cut off.

The well water in the fortified village was not enough to feed 300 people for three days. On the second night, some of the villagers, unable to bear it any longer, lowered themselves down the wall and surrendered.

On the morning of the third day, Steward Shen opened the gates of the fortified village.

He stood at the door, wearing a faded old cotton robe, his hair neatly combed, his expression as calm as a stagnant pool.

He saw Han Zhang on horseback, looking down at him without speaking, only nodding slightly. Han Zhang nodded back, waved his hand, and the imperial guards filed in and took over the fortified village.

As Steward Shen was being led away, he turned back for one last look at the fortified village.

The morning light spilled over from the eastern mountain ridge, bathing the entire fortified village in a pale golden glow. He gazed at that light for a long time, then turned and followed the Imperial Guards into the still-lingering morning mist.

The Cui, Lu, and Zheng families had deeper and more difficult-to-uproot roots in Jiangbei than in Jiangnan. But Xiao Jue gave them no chance to breathe.

On the tenth day of the first lunar month, the imperial decree reached Jiangbei. The Cui family's old residence in Qingzhou was surrounded, the Lu family's ancestral graves in Yanzhou were placed under guard, and the Zheng family's ancestral hall in Xuzhou was sealed off.

The family genealogies of the three families were taken out of the ancestral hall and examined page by page. All those whose names appeared in the genealogies, regardless of whether they were legitimate or illegitimate, or whether they were close or distant relatives, were to be dealt with according to the imperial decree.

The Cui family's old house in Qingzhou was a large mansion with five courtyards. The main house alone had nine rooms, the east and west wing rooms each had seven rooms, and the back garden covered more than ten acres, complete with pavilions, terraces, rockeries, and ponds.

On the day the house was sealed off, the Imperial Guards carried out a line of chests that stretched for half a mile. There were more than forty chests of silver alone, three warehouses were filled with grain, and countless silk fabrics, antiques, paintings and calligraphy, gold and silver jewelry were also seized.