Chapter 226: The Account Books

In the afternoon, several men from the mechanical factory arrived, bringing with them a gas engine, a water pump, and a suction hose. After the gas generator had been running for an hour, the diesel engine finally started, and the water pump began to continuously draw water from the well, discharging it directly into the moat.

In less than two hours, the well was pumped dry, revealing a dark bottom. Several powerful police flashlights shone down, and the iron box that Gou Er had sunk on the night of D-Day appeared in the light. It was intact, sitting squarely at the bottom of the well.

“Get it up here, quick!” Lin Baiguang said excitedly.

Wu Xiang acknowledged and was about to climb down the rope when Mu Min stopped him.

“Wait a moment! The water has just been pumped out. It’s likely to be low on oxygen down there.”

After waiting a while and testing with a burning candle lowered into the well, she finally let Wu Xiang slide down the rope. Another native worker followed, helping to secure the box with a rope sling. Then, they used a hand-cranked hoist to lift it up, bit by bit.

The box was extremely heavy. Lin Baiguang estimated that it contained a great deal of valuables. He ordered the men below to be pulled up first, to prevent the box from slipping and falling on them—the space in the well was too small to dodge, and it would be fatal.

With great care, they finally lifted the box out. It sat dripping by the well. Lin Baiguang examined it carefully. It was described as an iron box, but it was actually made of hardwood reinforced with iron. The outside was intact, and even the lock was still in place.

However, with the box submerged in water like this, it most likely contained only gold and silver, not letters or other documents. Otherwise, they would have been ruined by the water…

At this thought, he was slightly disappointed. Treasure was nice, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.

Nevertheless, he decided to transport the box back first. The box was loaded onto a cart and taken away.

The box was opened in a special room of the Internal Affairs Committee. Mu Min was very curious and had long wanted to see what ancient treasures looked like. She took a hammer and, with a few swift blows, smashed the lock. Inside, they found everything well-sealed with oilcloth and grease. The box itself was very sturdily made and lined with a thick layer of animal hide, coarse and prickly to the touch.

“It’s wolf skin,” Mu Min, having handled cases of illegal trade in protected animal hides, recognized it at a glance. “It insulates against cold and dampness. Gou Er was really meticulous.”

They removed the wolf skin, but there was no chest full of glittering treasure. Instead, there were packages of various sizes, carefully sealed in oil paper. As Mu Min was about to open one, Lin Baiguang suddenly stopped her.

“Don’t open it.”

”?” Mu Min was puzzled.

“It’s better to have someone from the Planning Committee present,” Lin Baiguang said. “We should open and register them at the same time, to have a record.”

Reminded by him, Mu Min realized that besides the two of them, there was no one else present. If any issues arose in the future, it would be hard to explain.

“I was too hasty. I should have waited for someone from the Planning Committee to arrive before breaking the lock.”

“It’s not a big problem. It’s not too late now.”

They called the Planning Committee, and after a while, Sun Xiao arrived. He brought the special documents for inventorying spoils of war.

They opened the sealed oil paper packages one by one, counting and cataloging the contents. The items taken out were a motley collection: gold and silver ingots of various sizes, stacks of gold leaf, rolls of Spanish silver dollars, various pieces of pure gold and gem-encrusted jewelry, and gem-encrusted utensils and weapons—some with a distinct foreign style. Sun Xiao photographed, numbered, and registered each item.

There was some water seepage and moisture in the box, but the items were well-preserved. This reassured Lin Baiguang slightly—even if there were paper documents, the damage should not be too great.

As they cleared the contents to the bottom, they found two smaller iron boxes. These were real iron boxes, sealed with several layers of oilcloth. Lin Baiguang’s heart skipped a beat—such careful moisture-proofing meant it was most likely documents.

They pried open the boxes. Inside were more oil paper packages. Lin Baiguang opened one and saw a stack of letter envelopes. He exclaimed excitedly:

“Found it!”

Sun Xiao and Mu Min both leaned in to look. Sun Xiao laughed, “How strange. You weren’t this excited about a box full of gold and jewels, but a few letters get you this high!”

“You don’t understand. A single piece of paper can be worth much more than several boxes of gold and silver,” Lin Baiguang said, patting the small iron box. “I dare say, Gou Er would rather lose all the treasure here than this little box.”

After the inventory was completed, the gold, silver, and jewels were transported away by a vehicle sent by the Planning Committee. The seized documents and materials were handed over to the Political Security General Directorate. He called in several native interns from the directorate to catalog these documents.

Besides the letters, there were many other important items, primarily several account books. Lin Baiguang flipped through them but didn’t quite understand the format. He decided to ask Sun Xiao for help. Although the accounting rules of ancient and modern times were different, an accountant would be much more sensitive to numbers and order.

Because there were too many items, they also enlisted the help of several other transmigrators who were skilled in classical Chinese to help with the sorting. The first step was to register the letters. The correspondence was bundled according to the sender’s name. Lin Baiguang requested the files on the Gou family, compiled from seizures and interrogations after the destruction of the Gou estate, from the archives to cross-reference the senders’ names and identities.

Unfortunately, apart from a portion of the letters, most either had no sender or recipient names, or used code names like “South Sea Fisherman,” “Qiongshan Old Man,” or names of halls like “Zhi Mei Tang” and “Wu Ci Xuan.” Some even had only a floral signature. It was impossible to tell who was who. After cross-referencing, they found that many of these names also appeared in Gou Da’s correspondence.

If only they knew who these names referred to—at least they could send people to investigate. Lin Baiguang estimated that, given Gou Da and Gou Er’s range of activities, these people were most likely in the Qiongzhou Prefecture and Leizhou area, not too far away.

He ordered all the documents seized from the Gou estate to be brought over for combined analysis.

Lin Baiguang couldn’t be of much help for the time being. He had someone add more carbide lamps in the conference room, and sent in tea, food, and plenty of ice. He himself stayed in his office, studying the information he had already gathered, trying to piece it together to understand Gou Er’s activities in Qiongshan.

Every hour, he sent a messenger to the conference room to inquire about the progress. The reply was always: “No particular discoveries yet.”

Around ten o’clock at night, the first major discovery was finally made. Sun Xiao brought in an account book.

“If this booklet were to be dropped in Guangzhou, it would probably cause an earthquake in the official circles of Qiongzhou.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a bribery ledger,” Sun Xiao said, handing him the book.

It turned out to be an account book for gifts and favors, the same kind as the “gift accounts” that were haggled over when a magistrate’s private secretary handed over his duties. It was nothing more than a list of officials who needed to be managed and the standard amounts of silver for the “three festivals” gifts. The kind of business the Gou brothers were in couldn’t last long without the protection of the government. Even if there was no collusion, they still had to pay their respects to buy peace.

Gou Er’s “favor ledger” was extremely detailed. Lin Baiguang glanced through it and saw a complete list of officials from five sets of government bodies in Hainan—Lingao County, Chengmai County, Danzhou, Qiongshan County, and Qiongzhou Prefecture—as well as Xuwen County in Leizhou. Each official had personal information such as their native place, examination degree, and birthday. In addition to the officials themselves, there was also information on their families and children. The compilation was very detailed. There were many changes in the ledger; some names were crossed out, with notes on the time of their departure and the reason: promotion, retirement, transfer, death, or conviction.

A quick glance revealed the trends in the local and surrounding officialdom and the prices of bribes from the first to the seventh year of the Tianqi reign.

On it, the information on key figures in Lingao’s official circles, such as Wu Mingjin and Wu Ya, was also complete, along with the standards for gifts on the three festivals and birthdays.

Lin Baiguang, however, was not as excited as Sun Xiao. He had seen similar things before.

“It won’t cause an earthquake, because this is just a record of the unwritten rules of officialdom,” Lin Baiguang said. “Gifts for the three festivals and birthdays, and the ‘ice and charcoal’ allowances, were considered legitimate income for officials during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Even the emperor knew that his officials below had this. It won’t cause any waves. We need a ledger of real, large-scale bribes.”

“I thought it was a ticking time bomb…”

“In this era, this is nothing. It’s useless,” Lin Baiguang thought. But this thing is still very useful. At the very least, it’s a data sheet for navigating officialdom. It will be of great significance for our intelligence personnel to infiltrate the Ming officialdom in the future.

“Is there a ledger of genuine bribes?” Lin Baiguang was more concerned about this.

“It seems there is, but it’s useless. It’s all in code.” Sun Xiao pulled out another booklet.

This was the real bribery ledger. It clearly recorded the date, the person to whom a certain amount of silver or goods was given for a certain matter, the matter to be handled, and the result. But the names of the recipients were all in the code names used in the letters. It was impossible to tell who was who.

Lin Baiguang noticed that the last bribe was made in the fourth month of the seventh year of the Tianqi reign. Gou Er had bribed someone to speak to Wu Mingjin and prevent him from reporting his son Gou Chengxuan’s cheating in the county school’s routine examination to the provincial education commissioner. This had saved his xiucai title.

“What a pity,” Lin Baiguang said after studying it for a while. “But from the matters they were asked to handle, these people should be officials—or at least people very close to officials.”

“It’s a pity we don’t know who they are. Otherwise, with this information, they would have to obey us.”

“Hehe, it’s not that simple.” Lin Baiguang, having navigated officialdom for many years, knew that this kind of thing could be useful or useless, depending on the situation. “But we can use it. The key is to know who is who.”