With General Yves' permission, General Ulric spent each day either training the soldiers or meeting with monks, wandering scholars, spiritual mediums, and others.
Very quickly, he gathered and summed up three to five ways that might let them communicate with the heavens.
But during this time, General Yves was not in the military camp. He was leading his men to take control of the captured city.
Some of the rich families in the city had already escaped with their whole households before the war started. Others were blocked inside by the enemy and not allowed to leave.
Now, General Yves was leading his people to collect the rewards of victory.
After they took the city, he didn't touch the citizens right away. Instead, he had his soldiers make a list of which families were rich. Once the list was finished, they began moving.
The streets in the city were so quiet that it felt completely still. All the stores and homes along the roads had their doors shut tight. From time to time, groups of soldiers marched past with steady steps.
General Yves wore armor, carried a sword, and rode a tall horse straight to the richest family in the city, the Chu family. In less than half an hour, bags of grain were being carried out of the front gate. After the grain, wooden boxes full of gold, silver, and jewels followed.
The head of the Chu family brought his family and personally walked the soldiers out the door.
Some people opened a small crack in their doors to sneak a look. They saw the Chu family handing over large amounts of food and treasure. But strangely, the head of the Chu family didn't look as upset as they had expected.
General Yves was the last to leave. He got back on his horse and quickly moved on to the next house.
After three to five days of this, General Yves managed to gather just enough supplies for the army to get by.
The soldiers didn't go crazy or start killing people. They only took from the rich landowners. This made the regular citizens feel more at ease. Slowly, people started to open their doors and come outside.
Unlike the rich, normal families didn't have much food. The weather had been dry for many days with no rain. Now that the danger had passed for the moment, people had no choice but to go out to find water or they would die of thirst at home.
They saw that soldiers were still patrolling but not stopping people from leaving the city. However, anyone coming back in had to be checked. So the people gathered their courage and left to look for food and water.
General Ulric didn't get many chances to see General Yves during these days. Yves was busy leading the search through the rich households. Each family on the list had to give up at least half their fortune in exchange for peace.
"Commander. From what I see, these landowners are still hiding a lot. How could such a huge city only have 800 shi of grain? I say we drag out these local snakes one by one and crush them. If they think they can fool us with just 800 shi of grain, then they better be ready to face the consequences."
Ulric's eyes were filled with anger.
He had actually come to talk to General Yves about the spiritual mediums. But when he heard the soldiers report what they had gathered these past few days, he became furious.
Eight hundred shi of grain might sound like a lot. It could feed thirty thousand men for about ten days. But with the current situation, what would they do after those ten days?
It was far from enough.
General Yves listened to Ulric and replied with rare sarcasm, "Looks like all we can do now is hope for blessings from the gods."
Everyone could tell he was teasing Ulric.
Ulric was a bold man who always said what was on his mind. He answered seriously, "Commander, I really did find a few methods."
As he spoke, he pulled out a piece of paper from his coat. On it were written three ways to connect with the heavens.
To get results quickly, he brought his people straight to General Yves' home as soon as he heard Yves was back.
Now those people were waiting outside.
Ulric had them brought in. There was a wandering scholar, a spiritual medium, a Taoist priest, and a monk. Four people in total. As soon as they stepped inside the room, they were shocked by the piles of gold and treasure laid out all over the floor.
Sophia held a box full of treasure. She was clearly excited. But once she calmed down, she started to think carefully about how to handle all of it.
She used to think the treasure she found was just a one-time thing and not much in quantity, so she went to a few random shops and pawned them without thinking too much. But now, there was an entire box filled with gold and silver jewelry, jade, gemstones, pearls, and agate. When she counted, there were about fifty to sixty pieces.
Not only were there a lot more this time, but the quality was also better than the first batch.
Normal pawnshops probably couldn't handle something this big.
After thinking for a moment, Sophia made a phone call.
She called a senior she knew from university, someone who had no connection to the Jiang family.
When Amelia answered the call, she was quite surprised.
"Sophia? Why are you suddenly calling me?"
Amelia had heard some things about Sophia. She liked her junior, even though they studied different majors.
Sophia always looked soft and gentle, like dough, and she seemed easy to talk to. But if someone tried to take advantage of her, they would find out that the dough had thorns inside and would get hurt.
"Amelia, I need to ask you something. I have a batch of gold, silver, and jewelry that I want to sell. I'm hoping you can help me find a trustworthy buyer, someone we can work with for a long time. I'll give you three percent of the deal. What do you think?"
Amelia studied cultural relic restoration. It was the kind of field where you wouldn't go hungry, but you wouldn't get rich either. At least it sounded fancier than Sophia's major in animal husbandry.
Even though she didn't know exactly what Sophia had, Amelia felt that her way of speaking was very honest and clear.
"Send me pictures of everything first. Let me take a look."
Amelia didn't think too much about it at first, although she did know a little about such items.
But once Sophia sent over the pictures, Amelia stood up right away and zoomed in to take a closer look.
"Sophia, where did you get these?"
Sophia paused for a second. "It's a little hard to explain, but I swear I didn't get them through any illegal way."
Amelia didn't keep asking. Everyone had their own secrets.
"Where are you now? I'm going to buy a plane ticket and come to you."
Sophia quickly stopped her. "Amelia, let me come to you instead."
She was the one asking for help, so she didn't feel right making someone else travel so far.
But Amelia said, "No, no, no. These things are real treasures. You can't risk anything happening to them."
In the end, since Amelia insisted, Sophia bought her a plane ticket and promised to pick her up at the airport that night.
After that, Amelia asked Sophia to send a few more photos.
Sophia sent them, but Amelia didn't reply for a long time.
Since she had waited a while with no response, Sophia went to do her own things. This village was in the countryside, and there were no hotels around.
Luckily, the house had a few extra rooms. Sophia had checked them before and saw they were full of old things, so she hadn't bothered with them. She didn't expect they would become useful so soon.
Sophia counted her money. She still had more than two hundred thousand yuan, and that whole box of valuable items.
She decided to ask a few village aunties to help her clean and tidy up the house.