Fighting a war requires more than just men and weapons. It needs money.
So on the shelves in the stone chamber, there is also a small box containing banknotes and some gold bricks.
That is Jin Feng’s war reserve fund, prepared for emergencies, and his capital to make a comeback.
But once chaos erupts, whether banknotes can be exchanged is uncertain. Jin Feng had been planning to go to the prefectural city to convert all the banknotes into gold.
Now it saves him the trouble.
“Darling, how many chests?”
Guan Xiaorou saw Jin Feng open the inner door and guessed his intention.
Jin Feng thought for a moment and said, “There are many places needing money lately. Move three chests.”
Now Xihe Bay is building houses everywhere, and veterans are sent in batches to Cat Mountain and Tiger Head Mountain for training. Money flows out like water. This sum has other uses too, so Jin Feng cannot move it all in.
“Alright!”
Counting silver and moving silver is one of Guan Xiaorou’s greatest hobbies. She agreed and reached out to lift one.
But she could not move it.
Gold’s density is roughly twice that of silver. The same chest can hold only five hundred taels of silver, which Guan Xiaorou could lift with gritted teeth.
But filled with gold, one chest is over nine hundred taels, making it much harder for her to lift.
“Fool, gold is about twice as heavy as silver. This chest is nearly a thousand taels,” Jin Feng said with a smile. “You can’t lift it. Let me.”
“I’ll lift it with you.”
Guan Xiaorou rolled up her sleeves without argument.
Jin Feng had no choice but to let her.
Tang Xiaobei was still carefully checking the ledger sent by Luo Lan, and knowing she had no strength, she did not join in.
After moving the chests, Jin Feng locked the iron door again, then asked Guan Xiaorou to call Zhang Liang.
When Zhang Liang arrived, he saw dozens of large and small chests placed on the ground outside the warehouse.
Jin Feng was opening them one by one to inspect, then marking them with dye.
Seeing Zhang Liang approach, he looked up and said, “Brother Liang, I’ve marked these chests. Arrange two teams. Carry the red-marked ones into the warehouse, and send the white-marked ones to Man Cang.”
Besides gold, Tang Fei had brought back these chests from the capital.
But fearing issues with the gold, he did not go elsewhere first and came straight to the back mountain with his men.
After handing over the gold, Tang Fei said he needed to deliver the chests to the iron forging workshop, but Jin Feng, considering their eagerness to go home and that some items in the chests were valuable and not immediately needed, had Old Tang unload them at the warehouse door.
“Alright.”
Zhang Liang instructed his deputy, then ran over to help Jin Feng.
When Jin Feng lifted a chest lid, Zhang Liang glanced inside.
He thought Jin Feng was storing some treasures in the warehouse, but saw the chest full of stones.
“Gentleman, these stones are special, right?” Zhang Liang asked curiously.
“Brother Liang, you recognise them?” Jin Feng looked up in surprise.
“No, but you had Old Tang bring them thousands of li back and lock them in the back mountain warehouse. They can’t be ordinary stones,” Zhang Liang replied with a smile.
“Yes, these are ore stones. They look plain, but cost tens of thousands of taels.”
Jin Feng said with some heartache.
“Tens of thousands of taels?” Zhang Liang’s eyes widened. “Can they refine gold?”
“They can’t refine gold, but they can refine something more precious than gold.”
Jin Feng smiled mysteriously. “By the way, any news on the saltpetre mines I asked you to scout?”
“Not yet,” Zhang Liang shook his head. “But several escort teams are returning soon. They might have information.”
“That’s fine.”
The two chatted casually for a while until Zhang Liang’s deputy arrived with two teams of veterans.
One team carried the red-marked chests into the copper coin warehouse, while the other loaded the remaining chests onto carts and sent them to the iron forging workshop.
After all the work, Jin Feng was sweating profusely.
Back home, Run Niang had prepared bathwater, and Jin Feng went straight into the bathhouse.
Guan Xiaorou went to bring him clean clothes, but he did not come out until half an hour later.
“Darling, if you do this again next time, I won’t bring you clothes.”
Guan Xiaorou wrung water from her hair and said angrily.
Only then did she notice Qing Mulian had arrived at some point, sitting at the stone table, looking at them with a half-smile.
She made “tsk tsk” sounds and deliberately glanced at the sun.
Guan Xiaorou stamped her foot in embarrassment, covered her face, and went inside.
“The gentleman has quite the leisure,” Qing Mulian sighed. “I’m miserable, sleeping rough outside every day…”
“Stop being sarcastic with me. Did I make you go suppress bandits?”
Jin Feng did not indulge her and asked directly, “If you have business, say it. If not, go somewhere cool.”
“You…”
Qing Mulian instinctively wanted to slap the table, but remembering why she came, she withdrew her hand.
Bandit suppression had been going on for some time. At the start, the gains were indeed great.
Following Jin Feng’s advice, Qing Mulian used lightning warfare. In just five days, five thousand-man bandit suppression teams wiped out seven bandit groups collecting annual grain in the five counties around Jinchuan.
But the remaining bandits in the five counties got wind of it and fled into the mountains.
Then Xiao Yu mobilised the masses and tracked a few groups, but the bandits knew the terrain better. Of several groups, Qing Mulian only caught one.
Since then, she had been circling the mountains with the suppression teams, playing cat and mouse with the bandits.
“Gentleman, the bandits have been hiding from us for over a month. Help me think of a way.”
Qing Mulian scratched her head irritably. “The grain we seized from the bandits is almost gone.”
Jin Feng’s bandit suppressions in Jinchuan always yielded great harvests, so Qing Mulian thought she could make a fortune this time, at least sustaining the war with its spoils.
But reality taught her a lesson.
The first seven bandit groups destroyed did provide plenty of grain and over twenty thousand taels of silver.
But after that, no such luck.
When the bandits fled into the mountains, they took not only silver but grain too.
The over five thousand troops now relied on the initial seizures for food and funds.
Holding out this long was already good.
Before suppression began, Qing Mulian had asked Jin Feng several times to command, but he refused.
Besides being busy with other matters, the main reason was that he foresaw this problem.
The bandits knew the terrain too well. Wiping them out in unfamiliar territory was extremely difficult.
But Jin Feng was not one to give up easily. In his recent spare time, he had been thinking about how to solve it.
In fact, even if Qing Mulian had not come today, he planned to send someone to notify her.
“Actually, I have thought of a way.”
