The door of the Taicang Silver Vault was opened. There was no blinding gold or silver glittering inside. On the contrary, compared with the bright daylight outside, the silver vault seemed a little dark.
At first glance, I thought I was in prison.
However, once I walked in and my eyes adjusted to the difference in optical fiber between inside and outside the warehouse, I didn't feel it was pitch dark anymore.
After entering the warehouse, there is a narrow passage with a candle as thick as a wrist burning every two steps on the walls on both sides of the passage.
Going further in, there are warehouses with boxes stacked on shelves. When you open the boxes, you will see neatly arranged stacks of silver ingots. Under the candlelight, they are so dazzling.
Theoretically speaking, each silver ingot should have a fixed weight, and each box contains the same number of silver ingots, so the weight of silver in each box should be consistent. One only needs to count the number of boxes to determine the amount of gold and silver in the vault.
However, Zhu Ping'an still insisted that Liu Tangguan and the warehouse soldiers open every box and take out the silver and weigh it tirelessly.
Before weighing, Zhu Ping'an specially checked the scale and weighed himself. The number was consistent with the number he weighed at Linhuai Marquis Mansion before coming here. It can be basically believed that the scale in Taicang Silver Vault has not been tampered with.
Zhu Ping'an divided the warehouse soldiers into three groups: one group was responsible for opening the boxes and taking out the silver, one group was responsible for carrying and weighing, and the other group was responsible for putting the weighed silver back into the boxes.
Zhu Ping'an assigned a Dongchang officer to supervise each group of warehouse soldiers. The Dongchang officers represented Emperor Jiajing, and with their participation in the supervision, the entire inventory process was like being notarized, and the results had a strong credibility.
After weighing a box, Zhu Ping'an and Liu Tangguan recorded the numbers respectively, and each had an Eastern Depot foreigner to supervise them.
After weighing a box, the Dongchang foreign officer who was in charge of supervising the third group of warehouse soldiers would put a seal with numbers on it. This was a seal that Zhu Ping'an had prepared in advance, from "one" to "three hundred", so that he could know how many boxes were weighed by the number, saving the trouble of summarizing and counting the boxes at the end.
There were a total of thirty boxes of silver in the first warehouse area, eight of which contained silver ingots of obviously lower quality than those in the other boxes. It was obvious at a glance that they were not pure silver. Zhu Ping'an specially marked a "?" on the seals of these eight boxes of silver to distinguish them. When recording the numbers, he also added a "?" at the end to distinguish them.
By the time we finished checking the first warehouse area, it was already noon.
Someone outside brought in food, and Zhu Ping'an asked people to eat in batches. However, Zhu Ping'an did not eat it because he was worried that the food might be tampered with. In addition, Zhu Ping'an deliberately ate a lot in the morning just to prepare to go to the warehouse on an empty stomach at noon today.
After lunch, the inventory was much more effective.
The second warehouse area was the same as the first one, with also thirty boxes of silver, but the silver in ten boxes in this warehouse area had deviations in quality.
The third warehouse also had the same thirty boxes of silver, but fifteen of them had deviations in quality.
The fourth reservoir area...
Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Zhu Ping'an and his team finally finished checking all the warehouses, the silver vaults, and the gold vaults. They counted everything and found a total of 172 boxes of silver and 87 boxes of gold.
You can go out after the inventory is completed. As for the data, it still needs to be sorted outside.
The process of leaving the treasury is stricter than entering the treasury.
The people inside went out one by one.
The officer at the door also checked one by one, being very serious and responsible.
“Quack~Quack~”
Ku Bing came to the door, squatted down, stretched out his arms to expose his ribs, then slightly bent his legs and jumped hard twice, clapped his hands above his head, and loudly imitated the quacking of a duck.
"come out."
After jumping, he shouted and crossed over a bench in front of him to prove that he did not smuggle any money.
The officer then carefully checked the soldier's shorts one last time before allowing him to leave.
one
Next one
After checking countless times, the official was bending over to check the shorts of the person going out. The moment he stretched out his hand, he suddenly saw a cucumber shaking in front of him.
What the hell?!
What's this?!
Naked?!
It's an eyesore!
The judge almost vomited blood and was about to curse when he suddenly remembered Zhu Ping'an who was naked before entering the warehouse.
"Master Zhu, please."
The official immediately straightened his waist and extended his hand to invite Zhu Ping'an to walk out of the warehouse.
Zhu Ping'an didn't hesitate and walked out. He wasn't even wearing shorts, so there was no need for this last step of inspection.
After stepping out of the warehouse, Zhu Ping'an quickly went to the locker room and put on his official uniform again.
I am not an exhibitionist. I just took off my clothes to take inventory, and I will naturally put my clothes back on after the inventory.
More than half of the officials who had watched the ceremony in the morning had already left, and Prince Yu and Princess Ning'an had left even earlier. Now there were only about a dozen officials left outside.
Zhu Ping'an put on his official uniform and walked out of the locker room. The Bloody Sword followed him and never left Zhu Ping'an's side.
"Haha, Zihou, have you finished inventorying the warehouse?" Zhang Guanku and others outside the door looked at Zhu Ping'an with complicated expressions.
"Well, the data has been recorded, but the final statistics have not been done yet. Our accountant in Taicang is here. Please come out to help count the data." Zhu Ping'an nodded, then showed them the rice paper full of numbers in his hand, and pointed to Liu Tangguan who had just walked out, "Liu Tangguan also has a copy of the same data."
After Liu Tangguan changed his clothes, Zhu Ping'an, accompanied by Dixuejian and other Dongchang foreign officials, followed Zhang Guanku and others to an office in the Taicang Silver Vault.
Soon, five senior accountants from Taicang, including "Ghost Hand Zhang", were invited into the room. After entering the room and paying their respects, "Ghost Hand Zhang" set his eyes on Zhu Ping'an, glancing at this very young official of the sixth rank of the empire, with arrogance and contempt in his eyes.
This is the confidence of an accountant at the top of the pyramid of the accounting world.
When it comes to writing stereotyped essays, "Ghost Hand Zhang" knows that he is not as good as Zhu Ping'an, but when it comes to accounting and statistical data, "Ghost Hand Zhang" has ten thousand reasons to be proud of himself. He believes that even if he lets Zhu Ping'an do one hand and he only uses one hand to do the accounting, he can still be far better than Zhu Ping'an.
After the accountant arrived, Zhu Ping'an didn't say much. He just briefly asked Liu Tangguan to hand over the data he had counted to the accountant, and they would count the data of Liu Tangguan and he would count the data in his hand.
The two sets of data are the same. After the statistics are completed, check whether the statistical results are consistent.