togophonebook Chapter 286 Empty
Chapter 286 Empty
Wang Xiaoyue took the lead, urging Eunuch Li Hongen to open the array's restrictions so she could enter the courtyard to investigate.
Li Hongen glanced at the people behind her and reluctantly pulled out a jade pendant.
"Princess, this is the token for entering and exiting the Princess's residence in Yue'an Blessed Land."
"It can only be activated with your own blood essence."
"Actually, this old servant can only wander around in the courtyard; I can't go into those rooms."
"I'm just a housekeeper."
Wang Xiaoyue took the token, then bit her finger and dripped her blood onto it. Since birth, her blood had been changed from that of a hundred different families, making her bloodline very special and impossible to impersonate.
After absorbing the blood, the jade pendant quickly began to glow.
In the darkness.
She seemed to instantly sense a blurry shadow of the earth, or perhaps she felt a connection in her heart with a hundred or so people, a spiritual resonance.
However, Wang Xiaoyue had never studied Taoist magic.
So these feelings just passed by.
If she had truly studied Taoist magic, then with this jade tablet, she could have easily taken control of the blessed land and manipulated everything within it, including these hundred or so mechanical figures.
When Li Hongen saw the jade pendant light up, he breathed a sigh of relief and felt more relaxed.
"Princess, please keep this token safe."
"Once you have achieved sufficient cultivation, you will naturally be able to control everything in this secret realm."
"Come, let this old servant show you around your residence."
Li Hongen led the way, followed by Wang Xiaoyue and the others, as they curiously stepped into the princess's residence.
Aside from Fu Hongying and Da Qing looking around curiously.
Hu Jiaoniang and Yang Silang both had calm expressions.
For Consort Hu, wasn't the Imperial Palace more prestigious than this?
It was nothing more than pavilions and towers, cleverly arranged and decorated, overlapping and repetitive, which was really hard to move her heart.
As for Yang Silang, what a coincidence.
When Zhou Mingxuan was in the capital, he married a princess, and the wedding was held at the princess's residence, which he attended.
to be frank.
The Princess's Mansion of the Great Shun Dynasty, perhaps because Emperor Yongchang doted on his daughter, and also because it was recently renovated for her wedding, is better than this place in terms of scale, structure, and decoration.
Princess Yue'an's residence is large in area, with a solemn exterior, but the interior should be extremely luxurious and elaborate.
But once inside, perhaps because it was built more than a decade ago, Yang Silang felt that many parts were rough and lacked something.
For example, the large gold bricks paving the ground, although uniform in size, have slight differences in color, one being light gold and the other dark gold.
More importantly, regardless of their depth, these bricks are all old bricks.
I wonder which prince or princess's residence it was taken from?
Furthermore, the connecting corridor, which should have been linked by densely carved stone railings, was changed to wooden railings. There were no complicated carvings; they were simply smoothed out and then coated with a thin layer of paint, mainly for cost-saving purposes.
Looking at the stone bricks and wood carvings in the courtyard, they were all cut corners, let alone compared to the real Princess Shun.
In terms of refinement, Yang Silang felt it couldn't compare to the Gong family compound.
Moreover, many houses had their doors wide open, and were completely empty inside; there was absolutely nothing inside, they were just empty houses.
Wang Xiaoyue is just young, not stupid. She has eaten and lived well in Yan Kingdom and grew up under the protection of the powerful eunuch Li Hongen. Her taste is no worse than that of ordinary noble ladies.
She could tell that the house seemed to be just for show; it looked impressive from the outside, but the inside was terrible.
Li Hongen led the group swiftly toward the backyard, explaining as he understood people's hearts.
"Princess, when this princess's residence was built, His Majesty originally allocated funds to properly decorate the interior."
"At that time, the imperial court and the rebels were each deploying 300,000 troops to fight a fierce battle in the Central Plains."
"The army was short of funds for pay, so the Emperor gritted his teeth and diverted the money..."
"This courtyard is just a residence, nothing special; please continue forward, His Majesty has left you some good things."
Seeing his confident assertion, the crowd followed him to a secluded courtyard in the backyard.
Sure enough, there was a passageway with four extremely large storerooms on each side, each with a magic lock talisman on its gate.
Li Hongen led her to Warehouse No. 1.
"Princess, come here, place the token in the center of the formation, and the seal will be broken."
"Vault Number One is the silver vault... How can martial arts training be done without silver? His Majesty has stored a million taels of gold here for you..."
Li Hongen looked smug.
A million taels of gold is equivalent to tens of millions of taels of silver. With that kind of money, it would be enough to build a prestigious family from scratch.
Wang Xiaoyue placed the token in the center of the magic lock array as instructed.
Sure enough, a flash of blue light appeared, and the magic lock disappeared.
Li Hongen pushed open the door first, then froze.
The crowd peered out from behind him and, sure enough, the place was packed full of large iron frames.
However, the legendary million-tael gold was not found. After searching around, Daqing finally found a hundred-tael gold ingot that had fallen to the ground in a corner.
"Mr. Li, are you mistaken? There isn't a million taels of gold here at all?"
I'm currently reading Chapter 285, "Empty," and I'm completely engrossed in it.
"You added an extra 'ten thousand'?" Wang Xiaoyue asked with a suspicious look.
Li Hongen looked aggrieved.
"My princess, I was the one who led the men to move all the items in these eight storerooms into the warehouse. How could I forget?"
"This isn't right..."
"Is it possible that the fighting on the front lines is tense?"
"Mobilizing troops and setting out on a large expedition both require money."
"So that prince simply moved the silver from the treasury first, thinking he would return it later."
"Since we've already diverted money from the renovation budget, diverting another amount won't be a big deal, don't you think?"
Wang Xiaoyue fell into deep thought and realized that it made sense.
Li Hongen, however, seemed to have his hair standing on end and loudly defended the emperor.
"What does 'moving' mean?"
"Thunder and rain are both blessings from Heaven."
"National affairs are of utmost importance; a little silver is nothing at all."
"His Majesty left the princess four treasuries for silver, medicine, armor, and weapons, as well as four treasuries for treasures, merits, materials, and tools."
"The mere treasury is the least valuable of all these things, so what does a little less silver matter?" he stubbornly insisted.
Li Hongen then led Wang Xiaoyue and her group to Warehouse No. 2.
"Come, Princess, please look at the medicine storehouse. It contains all the resources for cultivation, from skin refining to becoming a Martial Saint."
"Among them, there are dozens of bottles containing marrow from mushrooms that are over a thousand years old!"
"With the medicine storehouse, you can quickly expand your forces."
"For example, cultivating a group of truly loyal and obedient subordinates who would die for you..."
Wang Xiaoyue shook her head. She had no intention of restoring the glory of the Great Yan Dynasty or anything like that, so why did she need so many assassins?
She placed the token on the magic lock array pattern in front of the gate.
Boom!
The second medicine storehouse was opened, and all the shelves were empty. This time, even the shrewd Daqing wandered around the storehouse but didn't find anything worth picking up.
Li Hongen was dumbfounded.
He muttered to himself, "How could this be?"
"In the past, when the Emperor was having a bad time on the front lines, he would often come to this blessed land to relax."
"Did they start filling the gaps in the outside world with the stuff from the warehouse back then?"
He still refused to believe in superstition.
Then he took Wang Xiaoyue to open the remaining six warehouses.
The armory contains two thousand sets of fine iron armor and four thousand sets of leather armor.
The armory contains several thousand sets of commonly used weapons, including spears, swords, waist knives, shields, and bows and arrows.
The treasure vault contains dozens of magical artifacts and dozens of divine weapons.
The Gongku contains many royal collections of martial arts techniques.
The material storehouse contains all sorts of rare and precious natural materials, all of which are rare treasures for cultivation.
The armory is simpler; it consists of numerous mechanical puppets, sturdy and durable, suitable for battlefield combat.
The result was that when one database was opened, it was completely empty; when another database was opened, it was pristine and brand new.
They found only a hundred taels of gold in eight warehouses.
Li Hongen's father-in-law was so angry that he cried.
"Your Majesty..."
"Didn't you promise to leave the princess with the means to make a comeback?"
"Now that we have nothing, how can we start over?"
Wang Xiaoyue comforted him instead.
"Mr. Li, don't be sad."
"To have such a large and blessed place, brimming with spiritual energy, is already very good..."
Yang Silang said quietly.
"As a monarch wielding immense power, do you think he believed he could rebuild the dynasty, or that a daughter who hadn't been properly trained from childhood could rise again?"
"The battle is fierce ahead; perhaps with another investment of resources, we can win."
"However, how many lines of defense does the Yan state need to maintain in the face of these rebellious kings?"
"Even if the warehouse here was full of things back then, by moving a little here and a little there, it would have been emptied long ago."
It took Li Hongen a long time to recover; the treasuries he had been in charge of were now empty shells.
Fortunately, the princess's residence was not truly an empty shell.
In the backyard was a granary, filled with royal tribute rice, which was beneficial for cultivation and enough to feed several people for a lifetime.
There are Lingxi white millet and jade marrow green rice, etc.
The back garden was transformed into a herb garden, where many precious herbs grew lushly.
Transplanted millennia-old or century-old precious materials are not uncommon, and many are the main materials needed to break through to the level of Martial Saint or True Person.
Li Hongen slapped his forehead.
"This old servant remembers, His Majesty left you a storage ring in the main hall."
"Perhaps there's something else inside..."
He then led everyone to the main hall.
Sure enough, there was a storage ring on the table.
As usual, after the blood was dripped, the storage ring was opened.
Wang Xiaoyue turned the bag upside down and poured out only a few items.
A letter; a large, gleaming silver talisman; two jade slips; and two large pills.