After drinking the wine, I got drunk. The dim moonlight accompanied the young lady to sleep.
The Zheng family house fell into silence.
Bai Song pretended to sleep in the guest room. It was past three o'clock and there was no sound of anyone again, so he got up carefully and pushed the door open to go out.
Everyone chatted while drinking, but they also learned that Miss Zheng had a task assigned by her father while she was staying at the house.
It is said that all the accounts of the Zheng family are kept in this house.
Bai Song was thinking about it. He wanted to know why the Zheng family was rich. He should know some clues by looking through the accounts.
In the deep night, Bai Song explored all the way.
After visiting Zheng's house several times, I have a rough understanding of the structure of the house.
The servants are in the west, the master is in the east, the miscellaneous room is in the north, and the front hall is in the south. According to the structure, the warehouse and accounting room should be in the northeast.
In this regard, Bai Song was very confident. He walked through several walls in the northeast direction and saw the kitchen first. When he saw servants getting up at night, he hid for a while. After walking a few steps to the north, he saw three warehouses.
.
One warehouse had a strong medicinal smell, and the medicinal materials were obviously stored there.
A warehouse contains sundries, mostly various brocades.
The remaining room is filled with sacks, neatly stacked together, and the warehouse will be filled to the brim.
It looks like there is rice grain.
Bai Song looked for the account book, but couldn't find it for a while. He was about to turn around and look for others, but suddenly he felt that the rice grain warehouse smelled wrong.
When leaving, Bai Song suddenly thought of something. He rubbed his fingers on the sack, then put it on his fingertips and licked it.
The next second, Bai Song's expression changed drastically.
It’s salt!
Bai Song was afraid that he had made a mistake, so he tried elsewhere.
Finally, it was determined that the sacks on the other side were indeed full of salt.
Is this warehouse full of salt?
I couldn't count them clearly in the middle of the night, but I guessed there were at least five or six hundred sacks, and each sack weighed at least thirty or forty kilograms of salt.
Doesn’t this warehouse hold about 20,000 kilograms of salt?
No matter how many members of the Zheng family there are, they will not use so much salt.
The daily requirement of salt for one person is six grams.
Even if one person needs ten grams a day.
One pound of salt is enough for one person to eat for two months.
These 20,000 kilograms of salt are probably enough to feed the entire people of Jixian County for a month.
Moreover, a considerable number of people's salt intake is far below the human body's needs.
There is so much salt piled up together, obviously because the Zheng family is involved in the sale of salt.
Salt merchants are a business monopolized by the imperial court. The Zheng family is involved in the salt trade. Isn't this trying to grab a meal from the royal bowl?
No wonder the salt in Jixian County is so expensive, no wonder the Zheng family is not short of money. Now they finally found the root cause.
Bai Song was secretly happy. This crime was not a small one. Once the court knew about it, the whole family would be implicated.
From the beginning, Bai Song felt that for a family as big as the Zheng family to operate stably, there must be some shameful things going on.
Sure enough, we finally caught the Zheng family's braid. I didn't expect that the Zheng family was so courageous that they actually sold private salt!
wrong!
With the size of the Zheng family, I'm afraid it's not as simple as buying private salt. How can such a large amount of salt be sold secretly?
There must be collusion with the local government, and the governor of Youzhou must also know about this matter.
If the local government is used as a cover, even if sufficient evidence is found, the Zheng family cannot be brought down.
Unless sufficient evidence is obtained, the evidence can be directly submitted to the court.
This is also a big project and requires careful planning.
Just as I was thinking about it, it seemed like someone was getting up at night again.
Bai Song quickly gathered his thoughts and walked to his room.
Although it is not easy to start what I am thinking about, I have gained a lot tonight.
Just seeing these salts, there is still no explanation for Caihe's previous failure to buy salt.
Fortunately, the two lines were finally connected together, and even though there was some confusion in the matter, the whole thing became increasingly clear.
…
Bai Song half slept for a while, and when he saw the sky was getting bright, he got up.
When I went out, I saw that the servants of the Zheng family had not yet gotten up early and were walking around alone.
When I arrived at the entrance of the young lady's courtyard, I saw the lights in the young lady's boudoir, and I felt a little confused.
This young lady was drunk last night and had a good sleep. Why did she get up so early today?
"Adou."
Bai Song called softly at the door.
There was no sound inside, Dongxiang seemed not to be there, but the door was open.
Through the crack in the door, Bai Songzheng saw the young lady inside sleeping asleep at the table, with a lamp lit in front of her and an ink tray beside her.
Bai Song's heart was moved, and he thought, could it be that this young lady didn't forget to pay after she was hungover?
During the conversation last night, I actually heard Adou say that he was upset about the account book.
There is no one in the room now, except for a sleeping young lady. It is really a God-given opportunity.
Bai Song gently opened the door, slipped in, and walked to the table while holding his breath.
I called Adou again and saw that there was still no response, so I felt relieved.
There is indeed an account book on the table, and there is also an abacus on the table.
Bai Song was overjoyed and picked up a book and opened it.
Last night I found salt in the warehouse, and today I found the account book in the lady's room.
Sure enough, God opened his eyes and helped me in everything.
This first account records the monthly expenses received by each clan member of the Zheng family from June last year to the present.
It's just how much money each family received is compared every month. There may be some special circumstances in between, and one or two small sums are more or less interspersed.
Each family receives different amounts of money based on their different status in the clan. If divided equally, a family can receive 3,000 yuan per month.
This amount is considered short. For a wealthy family like the Zheng family, one branch of the family receives three thousand per month, which can only be considered as barely surviving.
There is no problem with such an account.
But as Bai Song turned back, it was July this year.
The number in the account book suddenly increased, and the number of the Zheng family members jumped from 3,000 per month to 300 per month.
When he first saw the three hundred, Bai Song was stunned and thought he had received less than before.
After taking a closer look, I discovered that the word "two" was written behind the three hundred!
From three thousand coins to three hundred taels!
In one month, each family’s expenses increased a hundred times!
What is this concept?
Bai Song's scalp felt numb. This was the expense of a branch of the family. The Zheng family had more than a dozen families in Youzhou, not counting the expenses of the main family.
A rough calculation shows that each clan of the Zheng family spends about 5,000 taels a month on receiving money from the family's treasury.
This number is quite outrageous.
Even if you sell private salt, you won't make such a big profit.
And since July this year, the numbers in the accounts have been increasing month by month, which shows that the Zheng family is becoming richer and richer day by day.
But Bai Song went to buy salt, and the sound of the salt shop was not good at all. Even if he raised the price and increased profits, it would be in vain if he couldn't sell it.
Based on the market price, a bag of half a kilogram of salt costs one hundred cents. Five kilograms of salt can be sold for one tael. Zheng Jiayuan's basic monthly expenses alone would have to sell tens of thousands of kilograms of salt to support it. This does not include the cost.
How could the entire Youzhou sell tens of thousands of kilograms of salt a month?
The more I think about this, the more outrageous it becomes.
This first account scared Bai Song to death.
Look at the second account on the table.
What is recorded above is the monthly living expenses of the family, such as rice, food, oil, water, etc., as well as furniture and other items.
These accounts have smaller numbers and less visual impact than the previous one.
But after reading it, Bai Song discovered the same problem.
Starting from July this year, the Zheng family's expenses increased suddenly, and our monthly daily expenses amounted to several hundred taels of silver.
Bai Song quickly looked at other account books.
I flipped through several books, and the things recorded in each place were different, but without exception, the account numbers became larger and the expenses increased sharply after July this year.
In July of this year, something big must have happened to the Zheng family.
In addition to this discovery, the table also discovered a problem.
All ledgers record outgoing accounts, and none of them record incoming accounts.
There is no record of the sale or purchase of salt.
It's definitely impossible to get out without getting in.
The only explanation is that Adou is not in charge of the ledger.
The ledger in which the accounts are entered is definitely in the hands of a more important person.
It is estimated that Zheng Tai'a will keep it personally.
This matter is troublesome. If the ledger with the recorded records could be stolen and handed over directly to the emperor, wouldn't the Zheng family be implicated in the nine clans?
It's just that this is troublesome.
Zheng Tai'a recognized Bai Song, so how could Bai Song have the chance to get close to him now?
Is it possible for you, my wife, to continue to steal?
It's obviously not realistic either.
It is probably impossible to take action on the core ledger in the short term.
We can only start from the outside and see if there are any updated clues.
Moreover, the Zheng family is by no means as simple as buying and selling private salt. What did this family do to become so rich?
After thinking about it, Bai Song suddenly thought of a detail.
A few days ago, when I went to buy salt in person, the official accidentally made an entry in an account book after selling the salt.
If you could look at the accounts of various salt shops in the city, you might gain something else.
Just as I was thinking about it, there was movement outside, and it seemed that Dongxiang was back.
Bai Song quickly put down the account book. There was nowhere to hide in the room, and he saw Dongxiang was about to come in.
Bai Song leaned forward, gently lifted Adou's hair, and brought it to the side of his face that smelled of alcohol.
"what are you doing?!"
In an instant, Dong Xiang came in from outside the house and saw Bai Song standing close to the young lady. She was startled and screamed.
This sweet scolding woke up Adou from his sleep. As he stood up, his warm cheek touched Bai Song's mouth.
Adou was confused. He rubbed his eyes and thought he was dreaming.
Bai Song pretended to be panicked, backed away repeatedly, and saluted with his hands raised: "Miss, please calm down, it's Bai who lost his temper."
"You bastard! Get out quickly!" Dongxiang blushed and beat Bai Song randomly.
Bai Songzheng got the chance and slipped out of the room.
Seeing Mr. Bai leave, Adou sat in the room blankly, touching his face that was still wet, he felt shy, and his eyes were filled with mist for a while.
"Miss, this... this Mr. Bai is getting more and more rude. He actually... took advantage of the lady to sleep... and kissed her secretly..."
"You...stop talking...I..."
"No! I'm going to help the young lady to ask, but what does he mean? Although our young lady is a sideline, we can't let him bully her like that. We've already kissed her, so we should make it clear whether we want to marry or not!"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous."
Dongxiang didn't care much, she just went out and chased Bai Song.
Dongxiang chased him all the way but couldn't find anyone. After asking the servant guarding the door, she found out that the man had run away.
I was thinking of swearing a few curse words, but suddenly I saw someone coming in front of me, it was an old lady.
Dong Xiang was like a mouse seeing a cat. He stood at attention after a while and said softly: "Old Master, you are here. You don't even want to invite a car on this cold day."
"Has that boy from the Bai family been here in the past few days?"
Dongxiang didn't know the old lady's intention, but she didn't dare to let the old lady know that the young lady had done something ridiculous. She winked at the servant at the door, and then said: "As for the old lady, the young master came here a few days ago. When he learned that the old lady was no longer there, he
gone."
"Send someone out to inquire and find the boy. If he doesn't come, he will be kidnapped."
Dongxiang responded, thinking that she would find this scoundrel without the old man opening his mouth.