At a quarter past the Hour of Mao, the sky was a dull gray, and morning mist tightly wrapped around the watchtowers of the capital's military camp.
Xu Youde's fourth-rank cloud-goose azure robe billowed in the wind. Standing below the commander's platform, he slowly drew an object from his sleeve—a dark gold beast-face coiled dragon token.
The garrison vice general stepped forward, receiving the token with both hands. His thumbs heavily rubbed against the scales of the coiled dragon twice, his rough fingertips pausing.
It was the real deal.
Without asking a single question, the vice general made a fist, turned around, and chopped his hand in the air.
Soon, three hundred heavily armored mounted guards formed ranks and rode out, the white breath from the horses' nostrils mingling in the cold wind.
The clatter of hooves shattered the tranquility of the capital.
Outside Chongwen Gate, the Zhao Clan's main merchant house.
Blue bricks and dark tiles stretched across half the street, showcasing the confidence of a century-old merchant family.
The three hundred mounted guards split into two groups, sealing off the north and south exits of the merchant house like an iron barrel.
Hearing the commotion, the neighbors didn't even dare push open their window lattices, only daring to peek out through the cracks in their doors.
"Oh my, what's going on?"
"Why are even the mounted guards mobilized? Isn't that the Zhao clan's branch?"
"Shut your mouth! Just watch the show, be careful not to get caught."
Xu Youde reined in his horse, his small eyes narrowing into two slits as he stared at the two black, shiny, copper-bound nanmu doors.
He raised his hand and casually waved it forward.
"Ram it."
He even skipped the formality of calling at the door.
Ten burly mounted guards leaped off their horses, hoisted a peeled siege log onto their shoulders, stepped back five paces, and exerted force in unison.
"Boom!"
Wood splinters flew everywhere. The thick wooden bolt snapped in two, and the heavy doors crashed inward, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Inside the courtyard, footsteps were chaotic.
Zhao Fujia, not even having buttoned his outer robe properly, rushed out leading fifty guards armed with eyebrow-height staffs.
Seeing this formation, the fat on his face twitched violently as he suppressed the panic in his heart.
"Audacious! Which path are you military lords from?" Zhao Fujia stood firm, hands behind his back, his voice booming like a bell, trying to use his aura to intimidate them. "At the foot of the Son of Heaven, the laws of Great Qian are supreme.
My branch of the Zhao clan runs a clean business. Without an arrest warrant from the Ministry of Justice or an endorsement from the Censorate, you dare to forcibly enter a private residence? Withdraw from the gates at once!"
Rules and procedures—these were the most commonly used amulets of the aristocratic families.
Xu Youde dismounted, stepping forward unevenly over the crushed wood. He didn't reply.
Reaching into his wide sleeve pocket, he pulled out a bright yellow scroll. Pinching the ends with both hands, he flicked his wrists, and the brocade unfurled abruptly in the morning breeze.
A glaring expanse of blank space. Only in the bottom right corner, that blood-red imperial seal, was sharper than a knife.
Zhao Fujia's words caught in his throat.
The staffs in the hands of the fifty guards clattered to the ground.
No explanation was needed. With a series of thuds, Zhao Fujia's knees hit the bluestone slabs heavily, his forehead pressed tightly against the ground.
The entire courtyard was filled with people kneeling in a dense mass.
"The imperial will is here. Proprietor Zhao, what warrant were you asking to see just now?"
Zhao Fujia lay on the ground, cold sweat soaking his inner garments. He swallowed dryly, his neck stiff, but he didn't raise his head.
"This commoner... this commoner is terrified. It's just that the Zhao merchant house pays exactly forty thousand taels of silver in taxes to the Ministry of Revenue every year, without ever falling short."
Zhao Fujia sped up his words, bringing out his backing. "Moreover, this commoner's eldest daughter was married just last month to the eldest son of the third steward of the residence of Grand Secretary Xu of the Grand Secretariat. There must be some misunderstanding here. Why don't you grant me half a day's grace, my lord, until I invite a document from the Grand Secretariat..."
"Thump!"
An extremely dull sound of physical impact interrupted this attempt at name-dropping.
Xu Youde raised a leg, and his thick-soled official boot kicked Zhao Fujia squarely in the chest.
Zhao Fujia slid backward over a foot along the bluestone slabs, clutching his chest and coughing violently, his face turning the color of pig liver.
"Misunderstanding? Do you think I came here early in the morning to shoot the breeze with you?"
Xu Youde roughly untied the red silk bundle at his waist, flipped his fingers, and opened the blue-covered account book to the fifth page.
He walked up to Zhao Fujia, flicked his wrist, and the account book smacked straight into Zhao Fujia's face.
"In the twenty-second year of Xuanwu, six thousand certificates of smuggling were concealed on the Lianghuai waterways." Xu Youde read off the accounts extremely fast. "Processed through Delong Exchange, cashed out at one hundred and twenty thousand taels. The base seal code is a copper coin stamp with a missing corner!"
Zhao Fujia's hand, clutching his chest, froze.
There was absolutely no way an outsider could get their hands on such top-secret base accounts. Ignoring the pain, he scrambled to grab the account book off his face.
"Do you think the Imperial City Department investigated this, or did one of your families have a mole?"
Xu Youde crouched down, his fat face close to Zhao Fujia, his voice lowered extremely quietly. "Neither. The Grand Secretariat voluntarily sent this out last night. Once you're in, confess early."
At this moment, Zhao Fujia's eyes were filled with horror.
"The Ministry of Revenue has a deficit of three million taels in military provisions, and Grand Secretary Xu needs to give everyone an explanation. Six aristocratic families are the dirt unilaterally designated by the Xu faction to fill the hole."
Xu Youde reached out and patted Zhao Fujia's pale cheek. "That married daughter of yours probably won't even be able to enter the side door of the Xu residence. A scapegoat needs to have the awareness of a scapegoat."
These words were more fatal than that kick.
The information gap was directly flattened, and the aristocratic network in Zhao Fujia's heart collapsed.
His arms lost their supporting strength, and he slumped limply onto the ground, the account book in his hand sliding onto the blood-mottled stone slab.
Without orders, the surrounding guards didn't even dare breathe loudly.
Xu Youde stood up and waved his hand toward the door.
"Ransack!"
Two hundred mounted guards surged in like wolves and tigers. The door to the accounting room was kicked open, and the copper locks on the storehouses in the backyard were smashed with iron hammers.
In less than an hour, sixty heavy camphor wood chests were carried to the center of the courtyard.
The chest lids were pried open one by one, the cold gleam of silver ingots and the bright yellow of gold bricks mingling together, dazzling the eyes.
Xu Youde rubbed his hands together and strode over to the first chest full of gold ingots. He bent down, casually grabbed a fifty-tael horse-hoof gold ingot, and weighed it in his hand.
Then, under everyone's astonished gazes, he directly stuffed the gold ingot into his mouth and clamped his jaws shut.
"Crunch."
"Inventory." He spat out a bit of gold dust from his mouth.
A mounted guard clerk nearby clicked his abacus rapidly, and soon bowed to report: "My lord, the ready silver along with the gold bricks and property deeds amount to approximately eight hundred thousand taels."
"Only eight hundred thousand taels?" Xu Youde's face darkened. "This little bit of money isn't even enough to pick my teeth!"
He turned to look at the bluestone slabs under his feet, then at the steaming live-water pond not far away.
"Those white marble floor tiles are nice. Go, get thirty iron pry bars and dig them out by the roots! One tile can sell for two taels of silver; load them all onto the carts!"
Pointing at the fish in the pond, Xu Youde continued to roar: "The koi in the pond were also bought with real gold and silver! Get nets, scoop them all out, take them to the East Market, and sell them by the pound as live fish! Even a carved pillar on a canopy bed, you must chop it down and weigh it as high-quality firewood!"
Greed, bottomless greed.
Hearing these words, the mounted guards were momentarily stunned, then roared their assent.
This official is truly interesting.
The sound of iron crowbars prying bricks, the splashing of nets hitting the water, and the cries of the crowd all mixed into a chaotic pot. This wasn't just raiding a home; this was a swarm of locusts passing through, determined to scrape the Zhao family clean until not even a layer of skin remained.
At the corner of the commercial street.
Three men dressed in the green official robes of the sixth rank stood in the cold wind. They were spies sent out by various government bureaus.
Watching the white marble-paved ground being dug full of potholes and the precious koi fish flopping in the muddy water, Xu Youde was only one step away from ordering his men to tear down the roof beams.
The three men exchanged a glance and turned around in unison.
With hurried steps, one ran toward the Ministry of Personnel, one toward the Ministry of Revenue, and the last headed straight for the Wenyuan Pavilion of the Grand Secretariat.
Xu Youde, this mad dog, had truly taken a bite right into the neck of the noble families. This fire was going to burn through half the sky over the capital.
In the courtyard.
Xu Youde plopped down onto the lid of a large wooden chest filled with gold bricks. The hem of his green official robe was instantly stained with mud and ash, but he couldn't care less.
He flipped the blue-covered ledger to the second page, his thick, short index finger tapping heavily on the four large characters written there.
Qi Family Bank.
"The Zhao family has been plucked clean," Xu Youde cleared his throat and ordered the mounted guard general beside him. "Leave fifty men here to wrap things up. The rest of you, mount your horses and follow me to the Qi Manor!"
He tucked the ledger into his robes, patted the chest beneath him, and sneered, "Two months? I can fill this three million tael deficit in three days. Let's go!"
The three hundred mounted guards mounted their horses once more.
With the clatter of iron hooves, they lunged toward their next piece of fat meat.
...
At the same time.
Over the vast waters of the Tongzhou Grand Canal outside the capital, a thick mist hung in the air.
A five-masted ship with a very deep draft broke through the morning fog, slowly docking at the ferry pier amidst the rippling water.
On the green flag flapping fiercely in the wind at the bow, there were no extra decorations, only a single, sharply drawn character embroidered in gold thread.
—Xie.
