When they arrived at Shanshui's house, Cheng Yue was sitting in the main room waiting for Shanshui.
After all, the two of them were not married, so she did not follow him to Shanshui's bedroom.
Soon, Shanshui came out with a somewhat old carved wooden box.
Cheng Yue took a look and thought, wow, this wooden box looks pretty good. It must have been expensive when I bought it.
She once again became interested in her future father-in-law who was no longer alive.
Shanshui opened the wooden box, and inside were yellowed land deeds and house deeds, as well as five layers of gold ingots.
Cheng Yue's eyes widened.
Judging from the size, the weight of this gold ingot is about ten taels per ingot. There are twenty ingots in one layer, and one hundred ingots in five layers, which makes a total of one thousand taels.
If these one thousand taels of gold were converted into silver, it would be ten thousand taels.
In Da Qi, one tael of gold could be exchanged for ten taels of silver.
"I've never heard Dad mention that we have gold or shops at home. Ayue, look, these shops aren't in Taoyuan County. There aren't any in the county town at all; they're all in the prefectures. Yunzhou Prefecture has the most, five in total. In Jiangnan, Fuzhou, Suzhou, and Hangzhou Prefectures have ten shops combined. Here in Taizhou Prefecture, there's a courtyard rented to a fellow Jinshi who's using it to run an academy. There's a lease agreement, and rent is paid every six years."
"There are three houses in total, one in Yunzhou Prefecture, one in Hangzhou Prefecture, and one in Fuzhou Prefecture. They are quite large, but there are no leases. Instead, there are deeds of sale, and they are all dead deeds."
Shanshui took out the yellowed papers one by one and said with a frown.
"No, Shanshui, what did your Mo family's ancestors do? Didn't Uncle Mo ever tell you?"
Cheng Yue patted his chest to calm himself down.
Is the person she plans to marry of any status? The 10,000 taels of silver note last time had already shocked her enough, and she had finally accepted it. Now there was another 1,000 taels of gold, plus so many house deeds, land deeds, and indentures.
Who exactly was her deceased future father-in-law?
"Hunting. My father said my ancestors were hunters. I've thought about it before and even asked Awu to find out where my father moved from. However, the records in the government office show that my father has always been from Yunzhou Prefecture and there is no record of other relatives."
Mountains and rivers.
"What about your mother? Isn't it said that when getting married, you have to go to the government office to exchange for a marriage certificate? Where is your mother from?"
Cheng Yue asked.
"I don't know. The government didn't write anything about it. My father said my mother had a difficult labor when she gave birth to me. When I was little, I wanted to ask about my mother, but my father would shut up. As I grew older, I didn't want to ask anymore."
Shanshui lowered his eyes and recalled many things from his childhood.
He and his father don't talk much usually, and both father and son are taciturn.
He has been in more and more contact with the Cheng family recently, and he sometimes wonders what kind of person his mother is. However, his father is dead, so he has no way of knowing.
No one in the surrounding villages had ever seen his mother. They only knew that twenty years ago, a man named Mo settled down in Lihua Village with his son. He was a poor man whose wife had died.
"Shanshui, tell me, is Uncle Mo one of those young masters from a wealthy family who was framed, or is he the kind of person who rebelled against his family and lived in seclusion in the mountains in order to be with his beloved? Or maybe you are not Uncle Mo's child, and Uncle Mo was just entrusted by a good friend to take care of you and raise you, or maybe..."
Cheng Yue began to imagine all kinds of melodramatic domestic fighting stories.
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