In the afternoon, several people came from the machinery factory, bringing a gas engine, a water pump, and a water pipe. After the gas generator ran for an hour, the diesel engine finally started, and the water pump began to pump out the well water continuously.
It was drained directly into the moat.
In less than two hours, the water in the well was drained, revealing the dark bottom. Several police officers used powerful flashlights to shine down at the bottom. The iron box that Gou Er sank on the night of D-Day suddenly appeared under the powerful flashlights.
Under the light, it was intact and sank to the bottom of the well upright.
"Get it out quickly!" Lin Baiguang said excitedly.
Wuxiang agreed, and after installing the rope, he was about to climb down. Mu Min stopped him:
"After a while! The water has just been drained out, and there is probably a lack of oxygen down there."
After waiting for a while, he lowered the burning candle to try again, and then let Wu Xiang slide down the rope. Then an indigenous staff member came down to help tie the box with a rope buckle, and then the gourd was cranked by hand.
Lift it up little by little.
The box was extremely heavy, and Lin Baiguang estimated that there was a lot of property inside, so he asked the caregiver to pull the person up first to prevent the box from detaching and falling down in the middle. The underground area was so small that there was no place to hide, and his life would be in danger.
After being careful all the way, he finally picked up the box and placed it wetly beside the well. Lin Baiguang inspected it carefully - it was said to be an iron box, but it was actually made of hardwood and iron. The outside of the box was intact. Even the lock was hanging.
is good,
However, since this box is just soaked in water, it's probably just gold and silver inside, and it can't be letters or anything like that. Otherwise, it would be weird if it wasn't soaked to pieces...
Thinking of this, he was slightly disappointed. Although the treasure was good, it was not what he wanted.
Having said that, let's transport the box back first. The box was immediately loaded into the car and hauled back.
The box was opened in a special room of the Internal Affairs Committee. Mu Min was very curious and had long wanted to see what this ancient treasure was. So he took a hammer and smashed the lock three times, five by two, and opened it.
When I looked at the box, I saw that the inside was well sealed with oilcloth and grease. The box itself was also made very tightly and was lined with a thick layer of animal skin, which was rough and prickly.
"It's a wolf skin." Mu Min had handled cases of illegal trade protection of animal leather and recognized it at a glance, "Gou Er is really careful about insulating it from cold and moisture."
After opening the wolf skin, there was no box full of golden treasures. Instead, there were packages of various sizes carefully sealed with oil paper. Mu Min was about to open it when Lin Baiguang suddenly stopped him:
"Don't take it apart."
"?" Mu Min was confused.
"It's better to invite people from the Planning Commission to be present." Lin Baiguang said, "Register while opening the seal, and have a voucher."
Mu Min was reminded by him that there was no one else here except her and Lin Baiguang. If there was any trouble in the future, it would be hard to explain.
"My hands are quick. I should wait until the people from the planning committee arrive to smash the lock."
"It's not a big problem, it's too late now."
Immediately, I called the Planning Commission. After a while, Sun Xiao came. He brought special documents for counting the loot.
Now I opened the sealed oil paper packages one by one, counted them, and took out a variety of things, including gold ingots and silver ingots of different sizes, stacks of gold leaves, Spanish silver wrapped in columns, and all kinds of pure gold.
There were jewelry inlaid with precious stones, utensils and weapons inlaid with precious stones - some of them had an obvious exotic feel. Sun Xiao took pictures one by one, numbered them, and registered them.
There was a little water and moisture in the box, but the items were well preserved. This reassured Lin Baiguang - even if there were paper documents, the damage should not be too great.
After cleaning all the way to the end, there were two small iron boxes inside. These were real iron boxes. The outside was wrapped and sealed with several layers of oilcloth. Lin Baiguang's heart moved--with such attention to moisture-proofing, it was most likely that they were documents.
Prying open the box, there were oil paper packages inside again. Lin Baiguang opened one of them, revealing a stack of letter envelopes. He said excitedly:
"found it!"
Sun Xiao and Mu Min both leaned over to take a look. Sun Xiao smiled and said, "It's really strange. I haven't seen you so excited in a box of gold, silver and jewelry. A few letters have made you so high!"
"You don't understand this. A piece of paper is much more valuable than these boxes of gold and silver." Lin Baiguang patted the small iron box, "I dare say that Gou Er would rather lose all the treasures here."
I don’t want to throw away this little box.”
After the registration was completed, the gold and silver treasures were picked up and transported away by vehicles sent by the Planning Commission, and the seized documents and materials were returned to the General Administration of Political Security. He called a few indigenous interns from the General Security Administration to analyze the documents and materials.
catalog.
In addition to letters, there are many important things, first of all, a lot of account books. Lin Baiguang looked through it and didn't quite understand the system inside, so he decided to ask Sun Xiao to help. Although the financial regulations in ancient and modern times are different, people who are accountants are very familiar with it.
Numbers and organization are always much more sensitive.
Because there were too many things, I invited a few people who were good at ancient Chinese writing to help clean them up. The first thing was to register the letters. These letters were sorted and bundled according to the names of the senders. Lin Baiguang collected them from the archives
After the annihilation of Goujiazhuang, the documents on the Gou family's situation that were captured and interrogated were reviewed in order to check the name and identity of the person who wrote the letter.
Regrettably, except for some letters, most letters either do not have the upper and lower headings, or are replaced by secret codes, either "Nanhai Liweng", "Qiongshan Yisou", or "Zhimei Tang", "Wu this Xuan".
Some of them just had a monogram. It was really hard to tell who was who. After comparing them, I found that many names were also found in Gou Da’s correspondence.
It would be great if we could know who these names refer to - at least we could send someone to inquire. Lin Baiguang estimated that judging from Gou Dagou'er's ability to move, most of these people are in Qiongzhou Prefecture and Leizhou, not in the area.
would go too far.
He ordered that all documents and documents seized from Goujiazhuang be brought over and merged for analysis.
Lin Baiguang couldn't help much for the time being. He asked people to add carbide lamps in the conference room, brought tea and food, and enough ice cubes. He himself studied the information he had learned in the office and tried to
Put them together and figure out Gou Er's activities in Qiongshan.
Every hour, he sent a correspondent to the conference room to inquire about the progress, and he always came back with: "Nothing special has been discovered yet."
At around ten o'clock in the evening, we finally made our first major discovery: Sun Xiao brought an account book.
"If this booklet is thrown into Guangzhou, there will probably be an earthquake in Qiongzhou's officialdom."
"What good stuff?"
"It's a bribe account." Sun Xiao said and gave him the account book.
It turns out that it is a ledger used for sending favors and gifts. It is the same thing as the "gift ledger" that prefecture and county magistrates have to bargain with when handing over to their masters. It is nothing more than the information of various official figures that needs to be managed and the "three festivals" gifts.
Various regulations regulate the amount of silver. If the Gou brothers are engaged in this kind of business, they will not be able to do it for a long time without the government's care. Even if there is no collusion, they still have to manage it as usual to buy peace.
Gou Er's "Human Account" is very detailed. Lin Baiguang took a quick look and found that there were five teams from Lingao County, Chengmai County, Danzhou, Qiongshan County, Qiongzhou Prefecture in Hainan, and Xu Wen from Leizhou.
A list of all officials in the county. Each official has personal information such as place of birth, family name, and birthday. In addition to the officials themselves, there is also information about their families and children. It is compiled in great detail. There are many changes in this account book, including
The name of the person was ticked off, and not only the time of resignation was noted at the back, but also the reason for resignation: promotion, resignation, transfer, death, conviction, etc.
At a glance, the trends in local and surrounding official circles and bribery prices from the first year of Apocalypse to the seventh year of Apocalypse are clear at a glance.
Above, the information on Wu Mingjin, Wu Ya and other major figures in high-ranking official circles is also available. There are also gift giving standards for three festivals and one birthday.
Lin Baiguang was not as excited as Sun Xiao. He had seen something similar to this before.
"No, because this is just a booklet of the unspoken rules of officialdom." Lin Baiguang said, "Gifts such as three festivals and one birthday, ice and coal and two tributes were considered legitimate income for officials in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The emperor and I all knew the following
Officials are like this - they can't make waves. They need a record of real large bribes."
"I thought it was a time bomb..."
"This is nothing in this time and space, it's useless." Lin Baiguang thought, but this thing is still very useful. At least it is an information sheet that can be used in the officialdom. It will be of great significance for future intelligence personnel to break into the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty.
"Is there a genuine record of bribery?" Lin Baiguang was more concerned about this.
"It looks like there is, but it's useless. It's all code." Sun Xiao took out another booklet.
This is the real bribe account. It is written clearly on the years, months and days, how much money and property was given to someone for something, what the purpose was, and what the result was. But the name of someone on it is all
It's the secret code used when writing letters. I can't tell who it is.
Lin Baiguang noticed that the last bribery was in April of the seventh year of Tianqi. Gou Er bribed someone and asked him to tell Wu Mingjin not to tell the story about his son Gou Chengxuan's cheating in the county school routine examination. In this way, he could save his life.
gained the reputation of being a scholar.
"What a pity." Lin Baiguang did some research, "But judging from the tasks entrusted to us, these people should be officials - at least they are people who are very close to officials."
"It's a pity that we don't know who it is. Otherwise, if they have this set of information, they will have to obey us obediently."
"Haha, things are not that simple." Lin Baiguang has been involved in official circles for many years and knows that this thing can be useful or useless depending on the situation at the time. "But we can use it. The key is to know who is who."