Chapter 124: Plundering the Family Assets
With Wei's greedy nature, she would dare to steal Feng's money as long as she found the opportunity!
If Wei doesn't take the opportunity to get a piece of the pie from Zhang, who has been held hostage, she will chop off her head and let Wei kick it like a ball!
I went forward to check the lock on the cabinet and found that it was a small iron lock, which did not match the large cabinet on the floor.
This kind of lock is generally used to lock dressing boxes. It is small and delicate, perfectly matched with dressing boxes, and is cheap.
Wei probably bought it just for the cheap price.
Gu Tang went out and found a thin stick, inserted it between the lock rings, and pried it hard. The thin iron lock was deformed by her.
After prying twice more, the iron lock was quickly pried open, and fell from the cabinet with a "ding-dong" sound and landed on the ground.
Gu Tang picked up the lock and put it into the system backpack, then opened the cabinet and began to search for the silver.
The top layer of the cabinet was filled with Wei's clothes, and the bottom layer was filled with Gu Liansheng's. They were all long gowns and robes worn by scholars, about 50% new, spotlessly clean without a single patch, and made of fine cloth and hemp cloth.
Below that are some fabrics in four colors: blue, cyan, brown, and gray. These are all common materials that can be used by both men and women.
Below the fabric is the bottom of the cabinet, that’s all. The entire cabinet only has these things.
Gu Tang piled all the clothes and fabrics on the bed and shook them one by one to see if there was anything hidden inside them.
After checking everything, Gu Tang found nothing.
Looking at the messy clothes and fabrics on the bed, Gu Tang felt a little strange. This was the only cabinet in the room that was locked. According to common sense, a locked cabinet must contain valuable things.
But there were only clothes and cloth in there, not a single silver or copper coin was to be found.
Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that Wei did this on purpose to cover up where she really hid the silver.
But Gu Tang felt that Wei was not smart enough.
Coming to the cabinet again, Gu Tang looked at the bottom of the cabinet carefully, and suddenly picked up a thin stick and knocked on the bottom of the cabinet.
This cabinet was Wei's dowry. Some families would make some secret compartments in the dowry cabinet so that after their daughters get married, they can hide the gold and silver items given as dowry by their parents in it and use them for self-defense in the future.
Although Wei had a bad reputation before she married into the Gu family, she had a mother who favored her.
When her mother was young, she worked as a maid in an official's family for more than ten years. Later, she redeemed herself and said that she brought the reward from her master and her own savings of many years. She probably had hundreds of taels of silver in her hands.
In order to ensure Wei's marriage, Wei's mother announced early on that she would give her daughter a dowry of five taels of silver.
It was Feng who was blinded by the five taels of silver at the beginning, and that's why she hired Wei back.
The Wei family did give five taels of silver as a dowry. In addition to these, Wei's mother also secretly gave a little more.
But Wei was stupid and was tricked by Feng's words.
Later, the news reached the ears of the Wei family, which naturally caused dissatisfaction among the Wei family.
As soon as Wei's mother passed away, Wei's brothers and sisters became estranged from Wei. They didn't interact very closely and their relationship became increasingly cold.
The dowry given by the Wei family, the subsidy given secretly by Wei's mother, plus the silver that Wei asked for from Zhang, and also Feng, who would give silver to the first wife every year, either openly or secretly, sometimes two or three taels, sometimes one or two taels.
The expenses of the eldest wife's family were all paid from the public fund, so they had no use for the money that Feng gave them.
Gu Tang counted on his fingers and figured that as long as the Wei family was a little more frugal, the eldest branch's assets would at least be around 20 or 30 taels over the years!
So, what about the silver?
After knocking on the cabinet once, Gu Tang heard a sound at the very edge that seemed strange.
She couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong, but when she tapped, there were slight differences from the sounds beside her.
Adhering to the principle of preferring to kill someone by mistake rather than let the guilty go, Gu Tang went to the backyard to get an axe and violently smashed the bottom of the cabinet, revealing a hint of red.
Gu Tang was delighted. As expected, she had guessed it right. There really was a secret compartment in this cabinet.
After breaking off the broken wood, a red lacquered wooden box the size of two palms was revealed at the bottom of the cabinet, with a small iron lock hanging on it. Its appearance and style were exactly the same as the lock she had just pried off.
It seems that Wei wanted to save trouble by buying two identical locks from the same iron shop.
He took the box out and put it on the ground. Then Gu Tang swung the axe and the iron lock broke immediately.
When I opened the box, I was immediately dazzled by the white silver inside!
Gu Tang didn't have time to count, so he quickly closed the box and put it into the system backpack.
Then he stuffed all the clothes and fabrics on the bed back into the closet, closed the door, and ran back to the west wing quietly.
When she returned to her room, Gu Tang took out the box, called out to her father, and asked him to come in and talk.
Gu Lianshan had been guarding the main room to prevent Gu Liansheng from suddenly opening the door and returning to the east wing.
Hearing his daughter's cry, he knew that she had succeeded, so he quickly responded and hurried to the west wing.
"How is it?" After entering the house, Gu Lianshan asked with a curious look on his face.
Gu Tang took out the box behind him and said, "I found a box of good stuff! Open it and take a look. I guarantee you will be surprised!"
Looking at the red lacquered wooden box, Gu Lianshan had a premonition.
I took the box and opened it, and what I saw was a box full of silver!
Gu Lianshan's hands holding the box couldn't help shaking, and he was dumbfounded: "This, this is what you found in the big house?"
"That's right!" Gu Tang nodded, took the box back, and poured the silver onto the table.
"Be careful, don't drop it!" Seeing her casually pouring silver onto the table, Gu Lianshan hurriedly stood over and put his hand on the edge of the table to stop the silver from rolling to the ground.
As all the silver was poured out, Gu Tang quickly sorted it out and weighed it one by one on a scale.
There were three chubby little silver ingots, each weighing five taels, and the three together weighed exactly fifteen taels.
Gu Tang put it on the corner of the table: "This should be my aunt's dowry. Didn't her mother say that she secretly gave a lot of silver? These three silver ingots should be it."
Gu Lianshan nodded: "I guess so. This silver ingot must have been exchanged at the bank."
Apart from these three silver ingots, the rest of the silver was silver coins of various shapes, which Gu Tang simply gathered together and felt heavy.
"It's a little more than twenty taels. If you round it off, it will be twenty taels. Add the silver ingots, and the total will be thirty-five taels of silver!" Gu Tang showed the scales to her father.
Looking at the number on the scale, Gu Lianshan was furious: "Let's not talk about Wei's own dowry, that was given by her mother! The remaining twenty taels, minus the silver that Wei stole from you, the remaining five taels, must have been secretly supplemented by your grandmother! It's not enough to supplement it openly, I didn't expect that she would secretly supplement it so much!"
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