Sure enough, the landlord, who was already somewhat interested, was terrified when he saw that the officer was about to draw his gun. He quickly waved his hands and said, "Sir, please calm down! Sir, please calm down! I'll tell them to change rooms right away, immediately, without delay!"
After speaking, he called out the three tenants and explained the situation. Immediately, some of the tenants protested. However, while this landlord, Liu, dared not disobey Ning Zhiheng, he was extremely domineering towards these tenants. He immediately launched into a tirade, telling them to get out if they didn't want to stay, and the military officer behind him also looked stern. Before long, no one dared to complain anymore.
Besides, there was no real loss; it was just a little more work to change rooms. The three tenants didn't dare to cause any more trouble, so they all backed down, went home to pack their things, and started changing rooms.
Seeing that things were going smoothly, Ning Zhiheng turned to the landlord, Liu, and said, "The room is cleaned up. I'll go back and make some arrangements and then come back. Tell the other guests that I prefer quiet and to not bother me unless necessary!"
After saying that, he took out twenty yuan in legal tender and handed it to landlord Liu, then said, "Give each of these three families two yuan as compensation, and the rest is the prepaid rent."
Landlord Liu's eyes narrowed into slits with delight; this official was certainly generous. Silver dollars were no longer allowed to circulate in the market. The Nationalist government had just issued legal tender, which was at its highest value in history. Even on the black market, twenty yuan of legal tender could be exchanged for twelve silver dollars.
The rent for one room was only two yuan a month, so three rooms only cost six yuan a month. As for the compensation to the tenants, well, none of these poor bastards dared to say a word; naturally, it all ended up in their own pockets.
Landlord Liu readily agreed, thinking that he had just encountered the God of Wealth early in the morning and that it was his destiny to have good fortune!
As dusk fell, Ning Zhiheng returned to the Liu family compound. He parked his military vehicle outside the gate; Nanjing, after all, was the capital, and its security was still quite good.
Besides, Ford military vehicles are for military use only; no civilians can buy them. No thief would be foolish enough to steal something so difficult to handle, and it's also impossible to dispose of. Furthermore, probably very few thieves these days can drive.
He packed the prepared items into bags and placed them in the room. The tenants in the courtyard, having been instructed by the landlord to keep their distance, knew that the officer did not like to interact with others.
As night fell, people, lacking entertainment these days, went to bed early. Ning Zhiheng waited until midnight, assuming everyone was sound asleep, before locking the other two rooms and bolting the door to his own from the inside. He had rented the two adjacent rooms to avoid disturbing the neighbors with any loud digging noise.
The room wasn't large; it consisted of an outer room and a bedroom. It was probably partitioned off by the landlord later to accommodate renters.
After carefully examining the ground, he quickly determined the exact location of the burial, which should be in the northwest corner of the bedroom. He gently lifted out the blue bricks on the ground and then took a steel shovel from the bag.
In the dim light, he began to dig, moving as quietly as possible to avoid making a noise. He remembered that the large urn containing the gold ingots was buried more than two meters deep; otherwise, it wouldn't have remained undiscovered for so many years.
Fortunately, he was physically strong and had more stamina than the average person. After digging for more than an hour, just when he felt he was almost at the right depth, he finally heard a crisp sound of something hitting the ground beneath his feet.
Ning Zhiheng was overjoyed; it seemed his calculations of the location were correct. He continued digging, and soon two earthenware urns, each the size of a water vat, appeared before him.
He brushed aside the topsoil, revealing multiple layers of porcelain plates lining the mouth of the earthenware jar. Ning Zhiheng, a discerning collector in his previous life, could tell that these plates were all ordinary porcelain plates made in a folk kiln. In his previous life, they would have been quite valuable, but now they were worth very little.
After all, after liberation, especially during that turbulent decade, a massive amount of cultural relics were destroyed. Many of these artifacts, which could be considered national treasures, were completely destroyed, leaving only a tiny fraction of them remaining.
Even in the 21st century, porcelain from the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods produced in folk kilns can fetch a good price. However, the total stock of cultural relics in China is still enormous, and porcelain from official kilns needs to be sufficiently old to command a high price.
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