The black sedan was bumping along the dirt road, but it was driving very fast, and the green tents on both sides were rapidly retreating.
Lu Ming, who was sitting in the back seat, opened a small, slightly worn-out suitcase in his hand.
He glanced at Zhen beside him. She was looking at the scenery outside through the car window. She seldom traveled far, but for the first time, her beautiful eyes had some unusual color and some life in them.
Lu Ming then turned to the small suitcase and slowly opened it.
Although the small suitcase was worn out, it was filled with stacks of red banknotes.
This is the Imperial Coin, commonly known as the red note. The largest denomination is 100 yuan. One stack is 10,000 Imperial Coins, and there are 26 stacks in it.
That is two hundred and sixty thousand imperial coins.
The four great warlords in the north had the right to mint coins, usually silver dollars, and the most circulated currency in the four northern provinces was also silver dollars.
The official exchange rate was ten imperial coins for one silver dollar.
In other words, there were more than 20,000 silver dollars in this suitcase, which was a huge sum of money.
For example, in Wu'an, ordinary workers only earned one or two silver dollars a month, and it was barely enough to support their families, so there was nothing left. If this money was saved with current wages, it would take hundreds of years for generations to accumulate.
In addition, there is a small iron box in the corner of the suitcase, which is a family heirloom of the Lu family.
I don’t know when I will be able to come back during this escape, so of course I have to take it with me.
I have seen the iron box since I could remember, and my grandfather solemnly warned me not to tell my two brothers.
Looking back now, I realized that I was chosen by my grandfather as the successor when I was very young.
It is said that my grandfather just had a dream. It was too ridiculous to choose a completely incompetent person like me as the successor.
I closed the suitcase and looked ahead, and gradually the outline of a small town appeared.
It is the county seat of Linchuan.
"Young Master, they will understand sooner or later. How could you possibly harm Master Long? Wait until everyone calms down, then come back." said Jin Baoer, who was driving in front.
Lu Ming nodded.
In fact, the reason why I wanted to escape was not because I was afraid of the Shuanglong Society.
Jin Baoer is right. If I spend some time and effort to resolve the problems with the Shuanglong Society, I should be able to do so.
He had to run for his life because he was the mastermind behind the annihilation of the entire Lu family.
In particular, the other party probably thought of himself as a playboy before, so he didn't take it too seriously.
But now, especially if word gets out that I won the lawsuit, I'm afraid that next time someone wants my life, I won't be able to escape.
"Master, nothing will happen if we take all the bank's reserves, right?" Jin Bao asked worriedly.
Lu Ming nodded: "Uncle Zhong will find a way."
This money is all the reserves of Lu’s bank, as well as the money of many depositors.
Today in the lounge, I told Lu Zhong to suspend all businesses, and secretly told Jin Bao to go to my family's bank to get all the reserve funds, and also to take out the iron box from the safe. I also wrote an authorization letter and asked him to show it to the security personnel. If the other party disagrees, I will use force and catch them by surprise. Jin Bao should be able to subdue those guards, and she also has the password to the vault, so it will be no different from a robber.
There is nothing we can do about it. Time is tight and we have to do this.
He also left a secret letter to Lu Zhong, the butler and general assistant manager of his family's business, and asked lawyer Xie Wenquan to give it to him tonight.
The letter asked him to reduce his assets and sell off most of them to offset the reserve fund, so that he would not abscond with the money.
My family's business is no longer viable, so it's better to cash it out now and just keep the two high-quality businesses: the bank and the department store.
Lu Zhong thought that he could not manage too many businesses, so he should just focus on running the bank and department store.
I have no relatives at home.
My eldest brother's sister-in-law, who got married not long ago, was a new woman. Not long after my eldest brother died, she remarried.
My second brother is not married yet.
So, there is nothing to worry about at home.
However, I will be back sooner or later.
Looking in the direction of Wuan through the car window, Lu Ming gritted his teeth.
The soul is transferred to another world, what a wonderful thing, but I have made such a mess of it.
"Jin Baoer, stop the car! Get out and change your clothes." Seeing that the vehicle was about to drive out of the green gauze tent dirt road and onto the asphalt road, there was no cover.
Jin Baoer immediately slammed on the brakes and the black car stopped at the asphalt intersection it was about to drive onto.
In the trunk, there were cloth clothes and pants, wigs, dyes and other things that Lu Ming asked Jin Baoer to prepare.
Lu Ming took a few and threw them to Zhen in the car, along with a wig and dye, "Change in the car, put on the wig, and make your face a little dirty. You've learned to sing opera, so you know how to put on makeup, right? The uglier you dress, the better."
The clothes these farmers wore smelled bad. Lu Ming thought she would at least complain, but she just hummed and started to do what he said. She was very well behaved.
After returning to the car, Lu Ming and Jin Baoer changed into cloth clothes and pants and put on wigs, so that they would match the shabby little suitcase containing the huge sum of money.
"Go to Lin's, the largest pawnshop in Linchuan, and tell them you have a car. Sell it to them for 20 silver dollars!"
Jin Baoer was stunned. "Master, this is too cheap, isn't it? Even if we are in a hurry to sell it, it is too..."
Lu Ming waved his hand. "Lao Lin and Shuanglong will always be at odds with each other. Moreover, because it is cheap, they can make a lot of money, so they will not let anyone find out the source of the car. If we sell it to them for 20 silver dollars, they will also know how desperately we are running for our lives and how serious the situation is. They will handle it faster and help us clean up the mess."
Pointing to the vehicle and the suit he had just changed out of in the trunk, he said, "They will do their best to help us destroy these, and the vehicle will soon be in a new state. Do you understand?"
Jin Baoer's eyes lit up, "Master, you, you are so smart."
"Go ahead." Lu Ming waved his hand.
Looking at Jin Baoer's back, Lu Ming nodded.
In fact, asking Jin Baoer to pay such a large sum of money to pick him up was a test for Jin Baoer and for human nature.
Although in the memory fragments, Jin Baoer is extremely loyal.
But after all, we are people who live on the edge of a knife. Sometimes, many things are just a matter of one thought.
I never want to test human nature, because sometimes, people's bottom line is so low that you can't imagine it.
But I had no choice at the time so I had to gamble, and it seems that the gamble was right.
…
Lao Lin arrived very quickly and was obviously a smart man.
The two parties quickly reached a deal after exchanging money for goods.
Lu Ming and the other two were taken to the train station by Lao Lin's carriage.
Wuan also has a train station, but Lu Ming went in the opposite direction and came to Linchuan County, a hundred miles away.
It was definitely not because he was afraid of the police or the Shuanglong Gang, but because in the future, the mastermind behind the scenes would want to track him down, making it difficult for him from the very beginning.
Bought a train ticket from Linchuan to Heishan City.
Heishan City is the most prosperous city in the province besides the provincial capital.
When they arrived in Montenegro, the three of them found a small hotel and stayed there for a few days.
What Jin Baoer didn't expect was that in Montenegro, Lu Ming broke up with him and asked him to stay here.
They also agreed that if Lu Ming came to look for him in the future, a missing person notice would be published in the Montenegro Evening News on the first day of every month, with every detail written down for Jin Baoer.
After staying for another two days, Lu Ming and Zhen boarded a train to the neighboring province.
When breaking up with Jin Baoer in the small hotel, Lu Ming secretly stuffed a stack of banknotes into his pocket.
If you deposit 10,000 imperial coins in a bank in a small city, the interest will be enough to support a family of three for a lifetime.
Three people came and two left, creating another obstacle for the pursuers.
After arriving in a city in the neighboring province and staying in a small hotel for a few days, Lu Ming also deliberately made friends and traveled with them, buying tickets to the west together.
In this way, the two people became three people, three people with completely different images.
During this time, Lu Ming saw news from Wuan in the local evening newspaper.
However, a war broke out between the two brigade commanders in Wuan against the Qi chariots and horses.
All this was due to the riot of the local gang Shuanglonghui. Another brigade commander felt that there was an opportunity. He thought that the power of the brigade commander who originally controlled Wuan had been weakened, allowing the gang to do whatever they wanted.
Looking at the newspaper, Lu Ming could only scratch his head.
The newspaper also said that the Shuanglong Society rioted and besieged the court, seriously injuring a police officer named Li.
As for his own case, although it was the origin of everything, it was obviously insignificant to this major event and was not mentioned at all.
Li Mingxuan is such an unlucky kid, Lu Ming didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
When the evening paper was thrown into the wastebasket on the train, the train also left the four northern provinces and drove into the imperial direct jurisdiction area with black smoke.
…
After staying in a city for a few days, Lu Ming and Zhen boarded a train heading south.
In this way, after going around in circles, going south and north, and making a big circle, we arrived at Anshan Province, one of the four provinces in the northern region.
It has been more than two months since they left Wu'an, and Lu Ming and Zhen have changed their costumes several times.
Zhen never asked Lu Ming what he was going to do, but just followed him on the train going north and south in circles.
In Anshan, Lu Ming bought a train ticket to a city in the Western Regions thousands of miles away.
Then, after arriving at that city, he made a few more detours and finally bought a train ticket to Donghai City from Hanzhou, a city in the heart of the empire.
Donghai City is Lu Ming’s final destination.
Donghae City, officially known as the "Donghae Special Autonomous Metropolitan Area".
This was once the capital of the Zhongzhou Dynasty and was extremely prosperous.
In this world, Lu Ming is a Central Plains person.
Thousands of years ago, Westerners destroyed the Zhongzhou Dynasty and turned Donghai City into the private territory of the royal family. It was then renamed a free city-state and has evolved into a special autonomous region. Due to its special geographical location, Donghai City has become the most prosperous and largest city after the imperial capital.
In Lu Ming's eyes, Donghai City is to the empire what New York was to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, or what Shanghai was to China in the same era.
I have seen photos of that bustling skyscraper.
In the memory fragments, a playboy like "myself" is also very interested in the highly developed East China Sea metropolis with all kinds of extravagant entertainment life. If it weren't too far away, thousands of kilometers away, I really want to go and see it.
Various photos of Donghai City will also remind people of New York in the 1940s and 1950s. From the perspective of urban development, the two are very similar.
This year is the 949th year of the Empire. From a certain perspective, the technology and development level of this world are very similar to those of my world in the 1940s and 1950s. However, because this world has no uninhabited areas and the strange ocean of chaotic electromagnetic waves, the entire world map has not been cleared up yet. It is only based on scientific calculations that this world is believed to be a sphere.
Because of these geographical features that are completely different from those on Earth, the technological points of this world are also different.
Of course, I only have a general idea of these, and I still need to slowly understand the details myself.
As for now, the great hermits hide in the court, and since I cannot hide myself, I hide in the market.
There is no city better suited to hiding one's own needs than Donghai City.
If I go to the countryside, I'm afraid I'll attract more attention.
In the East China Sea, there are all kinds of people, and the population structure is extremely complex.
It is a huge city with a population of millions, and no one knows how many fugitives from other places are hiding in it.
Moreover, Donghai City, which is thousands of miles away from the four northern provinces, is simply two different worlds from the four northern provinces, with different lifestyles and mental states, and almost no information from each other.
The manipulator behind this might be able to make things happen in the four northern provinces, but I don't think he can do whatever he wants in Donghai City.
Of course, I still have to be extra careful.
More importantly, his heirloom is also somewhat related to the East China Sea.
I have many questions, including why my family had encountered such a horrific disaster.
Perhaps, the answer can only be found in heirlooms.
Therefore, the East China Sea is an inevitable journey.