If Jin Feng wanted to take concubines, there were plenty of girls in Xihe Bay and Guan Family Bay waiting to marry him. There was no need to resort to despicable methods like coercion or robbery.
At this moment, he only felt anger.
“Over by the stables, Great Leader, follow me!”
Shuanzi got up from the ground, pointing to the northwest corner.
In the northwest corner of the flat area, there was a row of low wooden huts next to the stables.
The veteran soldiers had only searched the tiled courtyards earlier and hadn’t checked other places. They hadn’t expected these unremarkable wooden huts to be hiding so many people.
Jin Feng opened the door of one of the wooden huts and nearly retched.
In a room less than twenty square metres, at least a dozen women were crammed together.
They ate, drank, and relieved themselves in this single room, and the stench was unimaginable.
Most of the women’s clothes were so tattered they barely covered their bodies, and some were completely naked.
Many had vacant stares, lying on the ground without moving. Only two glanced toward the door.
“That damned Liu Jiang!” Qing Mulian said through gritted teeth.
If Liu Jiang were here, she would have hacked him to pieces.
The next five rooms were the same.
It wasn’t until the sixth room that things were different.
The dozen or so women locked in this room were dressed relatively neatly. When they saw someone open the door, they all shrank fearfully into the corner.
These must be the new batch.
“Master, what do you plan to do with them?” Qing Mulian asked in a heavy voice.
Having grown up in luxury, this was the first time she had seen such a tragic scene.
She could hold herself together and appear expressionless in the face of bloodshed on the threshing ground, but now tears glistened in her eyes.
“Mulian, you and Amei are women. Go talk to them, let them return to their homes,” Jin Feng said.
“Alright.”
Qing Mulian nodded and walked into one of the wooden huts with Amei.
“Dazhuang, take the first squad to stay and protect Mulian and Amei. The rest of you, search the remaining areas.”
Jin Feng felt uneasy himself and turned to leave with the veteran soldiers.
The warehouses, kitchen, and the bandits’ thatched huts were all open spaces, easily searched with a glance. It took just over half an hour for Tie Niu and the soldiers to complete the search.
They only found a few women cooking in the kitchen.
“Master, it’s a good thing you didn’t choose to hold Iron Tank Mountain. We could’ve been besieged for three years, and they still wouldn’t have starved,” Tie Niu said with a smile. “You wouldn’t believe it, those warehouses are stuffed with grain, more than the Iron Forest Army had after restocking.”
“Great Leader, you may not know, but before Liu Jiang took over, government troops once surrounded Iron Tank Mountain. Every year, Liu Jiang keeps the new tribute grain and sells the old stock, just in case of another siege,” Shuanzi explained. “Liu Jiang told us more than once that the grain on the mountain is enough to feed everyone heartily for three years.”
“Looks like we won’t need to sell grain for a long time,” Jin Feng said, finally breaking into a smile.
Due to a lack of able-bodied labour, Dakang had been short of food in recent years. Even with money, it was sometimes hard to buy large quantities of grain.
Fortunately, Xihe Bay and Guan Family Bay grew their own crops and could buy some grain, or the textile factory wouldn’t have been able to afford to feed its workers.
“Let’s go see what else Liu Jiang left behind besides grain.”
Jin Feng turned and headed toward Liu Jiang’s courtyard.
At the entrance, the kneeling woman glared fiercely at Jin Feng. If looks could kill, he’d likely be riddled with holes.
“Keep glaring, and I’ll gouge your eyes out!” Tie Niu kicked her in the shoulder.
Jin Feng didn’t stop him.
Shuanzi had already explained that this woman managed the kidnapped girls and had as much blood on her hands as any bandit.
Inside the courtyard, Jin Feng sat casually on a stone bench under the shade of a tree, watching the soldiers carry out sacks and two chests from the house.
The sacks were filled with strings of copper coins, and the chests contained rows of silver ingots.
“Master, we’ve counted it all. The copper coins and silver ingots together are worth one thousand two hundred and ninety taels,” Tie Niu reported.
“Only a thousand or so taels?” Jin Feng frowned slightly.
“Great Leader, Liu Jiang’s real treasure is hidden in the kitchen,” Shuanzi said, pointing to the stove. “It’s probably under the stove.”
“How do you know?” Jin Feng asked curiously.
“Once, when I came to see Liu Jiang, I saw him come out of the kitchen with a jade pendant. That woman quickly shut the kitchen door, but I noticed the pot wasn’t on the stove,” Shuanzi replied.
“Go check.”
Jin Feng gave a nod, and Tie Niu immediately led men into the kitchen.
After clearing the ashes, they found a water tank covered with an iron plate under the stove.
Tie Niu had the stove dismantled and the entire tank brought into the courtyard.
“You dog, Shuanzi, you dare betray the Great Leader? When he returns with his men, he’ll skin you alive!” the woman at the entrance screamed, going berserk and struggling to rush at Shuanzi.
“Stay put!” The soldier guarding her kicked her down and tied her to a pillar.
She kept cursing, so the soldier tore a strip from her clothes and stuffed it in her mouth.
In the courtyard, the soldiers pulled out small chests filled with gold, jade, and various treasures from the tank.
Finally, they found a stack of silver notes.
Tie Niu quickly tallied it up, smiling. “Master, there’s two hundred taels of gold, three thousand taels in silver notes, and we haven’t counted the jade and such.”
“Now that’s Liu Jiang’s real haul,” Jin Feng said, smiling too.
Lately, he’d been spending heavily on building the factory, feeding so many people, and buying large quantities of ore for iron smelting. The money he brought back from Weizhou City was nearly gone.
Just when he was worrying, this windfall came unexpectedly.
With gold and silver at roughly a ten-to-one exchange rate, two hundred taels of gold equaled two thousand taels of silver.
Add the three thousand taels in silver notes and the earlier one thousand-plus taels, and Jin Feng finally had enough liquid funds.
“No wonder so many people want to be bandits. Robbery makes money so fast,” Jin Feng couldn’t help but remark.
With the current scale of the textile workshop, earning thousands of taels would take years.
Yet robbing the Iron Tank Mountain bandits took just one day.
Thinking of the other bandit groups, big and small, in Jinchuan County, Jin Feng felt a stir of temptation.
But it was just a fleeting thought.
Taking down Iron Tank Mountain this time involved a lot of luck. After this battle, other bandits would know Xihe Bay’s reputation and wouldn’t underestimate them again.
Future fights wouldn’t be so easy.
It was better to use this haul to develop the business properly. That was the long-term plan.
As he was thinking, Qing Mulian returned with Amei.
“Master, what if those women don’t want to go home?” she asked.
“Why not?” Jin Feng frowned.
