The chest arrived quickly, and it was indeed very large. If filled to the brim with silver, it could hold at least five thousand taels. Even the two slightly smaller chests could hold two or three thousand taels each.

Three chests together would amount to nearly ten thousand taels — possibly more. One could imagine just how vast Liu Wenju’s fortune truly was.

And one could also imagine how many people this Liu Wenju had bled dry over the years.

The fact that Liu Wenju could part with this much silver so easily suggested that the silver he held on hand was staggering. Without ten times that amount in reserve, how could he give away ten thousand taels?

Ten thousand taels of gleaming silver — it was enough not only to buy a mansion in Jizhou City, but to purchase a great many lives as well.

This was a treacherous world. To hire a top-grade assassin to kill someone not easy to kill might cost just a few hundred taels.

Even Li Chi hadn’t anticipated Liu Wenju acting so decisively.

The truth was, Liu Wenju was a clever man. If he hadn’t been clever, he would never have taken the silver borrowed from Liu Shanshen and immediately handed over more than half of it to Cui Hansheng.

He understood perfectly well that in Dachu’s current state of affairs, making more money required the power that only officials could provide.

Cui Hansheng’s favor had translated directly into silver coins.

Yu Jiuling was also looking at the silver. Unlike Li Chi’s expressionless calm, Yu Jiuling could feel his heartbeat quickening. This was the first time in his life he had seen so much silver gathered in one place.

It could make a man’s eyes go blank. That was the magic of money.

Li Chi appeared to be in deep thought. He showed no surprise at the ten thousand taels of gleaming silver, which only confirmed Liu Wenju’s suspicion that this man truly had a remarkable background. He had to be someone of considerable standing within the Prince’s estate.

Otherwise — even Prefect Cui Hansheng’s eyes had gone glassy at the sight of all this silver. Why would this gongzi show not the slightest surprise?

Yu Jiuling, meanwhile, was thinking: this man is far more generous than the second-in-command of Yanshan Camp. Truly, if you’re going to run a con, you have to aim at people who aren’t ordinary.

To be honest, the reason Liu Wenju was being so lavish was that he desperately wanted to make contact with Prince Yu’s estate.

As far as he was currently concerned, Prefect Cui Hansheng’s boat was too small. He could keep Cui Hansheng happy all he liked — at best, it would let him do as he pleased within Xinzhou City.

The Prefect was too small. Xinzhou was too small.

But if he gave enough silver, he could certainly win a far greater return. What Prince Yu could provide was incomparably beyond anything Cui Hansheng could offer.

They weren’t the same kind of people, didn’t operate in the same world.

Liu Wenju’s cleverness lay precisely in this — what was clearly a crisis, he had turned around in the shortest possible time, making his decision and sacrificing accordingly. He intended to transform this crisis into an opportunity. If he could just establish communication with the Prince’s estate, eventually he might be able to speak with the Prince himself.

While Liu Wenju was thinking all of this, Li Chi was thinking that Liu Wenju was probably thinking exactly this.

The two men’s thoughts were nearly identical. The only difference was that Liu Wenju was thinking about how best to cultivate this connection, while Li Chi was thinking: this man has a lot of money — surely he can be squeezed for a bit more.

Ten thousand taels was an enormous sum to any ordinary person — enough to drive them mad. But looking at those ten thousand taels, what Li Chi was calculating was how many good horses that money could buy at current grassland prices.

When Dachu was at its height, one good horse from the grasslands had sold for about forty or fifty taels. Now the asking price was over a hundred taels, and the horses weren’t even as fine as they used to be.

If you wanted to build a fighting force, ten thousand taels might buy you seven or eight hundred good horses, but then you’d need seven or eight hundred capable men to form a cavalry unit — and just their equipment alone would cost another several tens of thousands.

Factor in all the other miscellaneous expenses, and two hundred thousand taels of silver would just barely be enough to bring an eight-hundred-man cavalry unit to combat readiness.

And this wouldn’t even be a proper heavily armored cavalry. The fully armored heavy cavalry under General Luo Geng in Youzhou — each cavalryman, counting mount, full equipment, attendants, and pack horses — ran to over a thousand taels per man.

Two hundred thousand taels would only cover a little over two hundred fully armored heavy cavalry.

This was why even the Youzhou Army, which boasted five thousand heavy cavalry, had fewer than five or six hundred who were truly fully armored. The rest were heavy cavalry without full plating.

Such heavy armored cavalry was magnificent and fearsome to behold — but without other military units supporting them, they could be toyed to death by light cavalry. Fully armored mounted troops were most devastating against infantry.

The same two hundred thousand taels could outfit ten thousand infantrymen with proper regulation weapons.

Of course, if you were talking about a rebel army like those with rakes and shovels counted as soldiers, two hundred thousand taels might buy you forty or fifty thousand men willing to risk their lives.

Given how far Dachu had collapsed, if you promised five taels of military pay to every person and delivered it on the spot, there would be more people willing to die for those five taels than you could count.

At this moment, Liu Wenju looked at Li Chi — who appeared completely composed — and had no idea that Li Chi was in fact calculating how much it would cost to build an army.

“My lord?”

Liu Wenju called out tentatively.

Li Chi pulled himself from his thoughts. He glanced at Liu Wenju and asked: “What is it?”

Liu Wenju immediately fawned: “My lord, please — might this be the silver that was taken from you?”

Li Chi was silent for a moment, then said: “Since the silver has been recovered, I must first thank Prefect Cui, and I thank you as well.”

Liu Wenju started to speak, but Li Chi continued: “However, I have one small additional request.”

Liu Wenju immediately said: “My lord, you need only give the order. As long as it is within your humble subject’s ability, I will do everything in my power.”

“It’s quite simple.”

Li Chi said: “You’ve handled this so decisively and efficiently that I wish to offer you an opportunity in return.”

He leaned closer to Liu Wenju and said quietly: “My sworn brother Xiahou Zuo is currently leading troops at Daizhou Pass to hold back the enemy. This silver I was carrying was intended as a delivery to him. You will personally escort this silver to Daizhou Pass and deliver it to General Xiahou. He will know how to express his gratitude.”

Liu Wenju had no idea who Xiahou Zuo was. He looked blankly toward Cui Hansheng, who gave him a significant look. Not fully understanding the situation, Liu Wenju nonetheless immediately nodded: “Leave it entirely to your humble subject.”

Li Chi smiled and clapped Liu Wenju on the shoulder: “You’re a clever man. The Prince likes clever people.”

Liu Wenju broke into a smile, and even Cui Hansheng let out a breath of relief.

Li Chi rose to his feet: “You must go yourself. If you hope to gain an even greater opportunity, consider whether your funds happen to be comfortable — and if so, perhaps add a bit more silver on top. General Xiahou will surely be all the more pleased.”

Cui Hansheng leaned close to Liu Wenju’s ear and whispered: “The General Xiahou he mentioned is Prince Yu’s son.”

Liu Wenju’s eyes shot wide open. He immediately said: “Comfortable, very comfortable — even if it were not comfortable, I’d cut back on food and sleep to squeeze out a bit more.”

Li Chi smiled: “Excellent. I’ll remember you.”

With that he rose and walked out. Prefect Cui Hansheng and the others immediately fell in to accompany him, and this entire scene left Master Yuan and Yuan Jiabei gaping in shock.

Li Chi glanced back at Yuan Jiabei: “Go back first. I’ll come find you shortly.”

Yuan Jiabei nodded vigorously and pulled her father out of the casino. Master Yuan’s heart was still reverberating with shock. As his mind cleared, he recalled his own disgraceful conduct just now and looked at his daughter’s tear-streaked face — pear blossoms in the rain — and felt a piercing ache.

He was not, at heart, a bad man. He had simply stumbled into something he couldn’t find his way out of. Those ruined by gambling houses were mostly men just like him.

On the walk back to the post station, Yu Jiuling sighed: “Ten thousand taels of silver — bright and gleaming — and you just handed it over like that. Setting everything else aside, if you’d used all that to spoil your master at that place he frequents by the river, you could’ve kept him happy for a good long while.”

Li Chi shot him a sideways glance and said: “Right now at Daizhou Pass, the men who came from Yanshan Camp have withdrawn, but those ordinary people are still there — fighting with their lives on the line on the border without so much as one tael of military pay. That’s not right. It shouldn’t be this way. I’m having Liu Wenju personally escort the silver to Xiahou — Xiahou will understand what I mean.”

“Those volunteer fighters — each man’s share might only come to a few taels, barely enough for travel expenses. For some who died in battle, even that might not be enough to settle their families. I can only hope that this money, small as it is, might at least buy each fallen man a thin wooden coffin.”

Li Chi exhaled a long breath and said: “The court has lost all discipline. Even holding the passes relies on ordinary people rising up of their own accord. For now, this is all I can do.”

He smiled and said: “No need to worry. We still have what the second-in-command donated, don’t we.”

Yu Jiuling studied Li Chi carefully. He had always thought of Li Chi as a money-grubbing, tight-fisted man — greedy and stingy. Yet ten thousand taels had just been given away without so much as a blink.

He found himself re-evaluating Li Chi with a new measure of respect.

He understood clearly — faced with that much silver, how many people in the world could do what Li Chi had just done? He asked himself honestly whether he could. The answer was no.

If it had been Yu Jiuling’s choice, those ten thousand taels would obviously be better off in his own hands.

“Oh, by the way,” Yu Jiuling grinned. “What’s the story with that ridiculously pretty girl?”

Li Chi sighed: “She and Gao Xining are close friends. Her father is an academy instructor. It looks like he was set up — Master Yuan spent most of his life untouched by things like this, and once he got pulled in, escaping on his own would be nearly impossible.”

Yu Jiuling frowned: “I feel like something’s off about this whole situation. If it was really Master Yuan’s friend who set him up, there has to be a reason. Either this so-called friend is working for the Grand Chrysanthemum Casino, or there’s some other ulterior motive.”

Li Chi’s mind stirred at that.

An ulterior motive?

He thought back to the intelligence gathered earlier — Liu Wenju had his eye on Liu Yingyuan, and had schemed to have Liu Yingyuan’s father killed.

And if the person who lured Master Yuan into the casino was also connected to the Grand Chrysanthemum — could it be that Master Yuan’s situation also had something to do with this Liu Wenju?

He tried to replay the events in his mind. He had been somewhat distracted at the casino earlier, so his recollection wasn’t perfectly clear, but he did have an impression — Liu Wenju had glanced at Yuan Jiabei several times, seemingly without thinking.

Yu Jiuling said: “You had Liu Wenju personally escort the silver to Xiahou — it wasn’t just about getting some money to those volunteer fighters, was it.”

Li Chi smiled but gave no answer.

Yu Jiuling said: “Every time you smile like that, something bad is about to happen to someone. Every single time you give that little smile, I know someone’s going to be in trouble.”

Li Chi let out a great roaring laugh.

Yu Jiuling said: “There you have it — a quiet smile means someone’s in for trouble, but this full belly laugh means Liu Wenju is about to have a very, very bad time… should be entertaining to watch though, shouldn’t it?”

Li Chi still said nothing — just laughed and walked forward.

—