The most valuable items were the four cases of gold and the books, calligraphy works, four treasures of a study, antiques, and jade articles in the cellar. It was the vital reason why Father Lu hid these articles in plain sight.
Gold in chaos, antiques in prosperity.
Gold is a hard currency. Given the current situation, these four cases of gold are the most valuable. As long as you have gold, you won’t starve to death. It can be easily sold on the black market and can be cashed out in a bank.
When the living standard improves in the future, it will be the world of ancient books, calligraphy, antiques, and jade articles.
So it has been through all the dynasties.
Feng Qingxue was impressed, "I admire our father so much, in an indescribable way. What did he bury in the private plot of land?"
"The private plot?" Lu Jiang thought for a moment, "There should not be anything too important, because that plot was originally a yard of our family’s, used as a cover. What’s buried now are some unclaimed holdings. I remember there was a jar of silver dollars, mixed with some small and large yellow croakers, and several iron boxes containing larger vase-like bronze incense burners."
Even so, when the private land was being partitioned, Father Lu secretly approached Wang Zhengguo and had this piece of land assigned to his family.
"I’m really curious about our ancestors’ background, ordinary landlords couldn’t have accumulated such a vast fortune."
Feng Qingxue had heard from her elders about the true lives of landlords. Real landlords owned large tracts of land and reared cattle, horses, and mules, hiring farmers and laborers to work. Life wasn’t as luxurious as one might imagine during regular times, let alone during droughts or floods when everyone would lose income. Some landlords’ daughters-in-law even had to do housework. Such landlords were wealthier than ordinary people, but such wealth hardly approached what the Lu Family amassed. Just consider the fortune they had hidden, never mind what was pilfered.
Moreover, many items passed down by the Lu Family weren’t things ordinary families could have, like the Threes Empires Calligraphy and the jade Ruyi scepter Father Lu gave her, along with the jewelry – their historic nature were apparent at first glance.
Lu Jiang admired her sharpness, saying, "An ancestor of our family was an Imperial Scholar during the Qianlong era, holding a high-ranking official position in his later years and was much treasured by Emperor Qianlong. The Threes Empires Calligraphy was a gift from Emperor Qianlong to the ancestor. His three generations before were just ordinary peasant scholars, who almost left their families in the lurch to foster this ancestor. He came second in the Imperial Examination, which shielded his three generations of offspring. His grandson wed a princess from the house of Baylor. It’s said that wealth cannot last for more than three generations. With generations that followed less and less able, the family of the eldest son migrated here during wartime, burying and forgetting its past."
Since then, people only knew that there was a landlord Lu Family here, but they didn’t know the origin of the Lu Family, only the legitimate eldest son’s family knew their own history. The genealogy is currently in Father Lu’s hands and will be passed to the legitimate eldest grandson, Lu Tianjun, in the future.
Feng Qingxue was shocked, then joked, "Oh, you have royal blood from the Qing Dynasty in your veins!"
"What royal bloodline, descendants of the princess who married don’t bear the Aisin-Gioro surname, so what royal blood do they hold? Bloodlines are traced through the father’s lineage. Furthermore, in this day and age, anyone claiming to be of royal descent is self-aggrandizing. After ten or eight generations, who knows how diluted the bloodline becomes!" Lu Jiang was self-aware.
Feng Qingxue nodded, "You’re right! Looking at the situation in front of us, if others knew about our ancestry, our family would be doomed!"