dtnovels Chapter 165 Family History
Chapter 165 Family History
Yan Xiuyuan's face immediately turned pale.
"Miss, I have counted them. The total amount of these banknotes is 488,000."
Four hundred and eighty thousand!
Jian Yue gasped.
This amount of money is comparable to the wealth of two palace lords, right?
She looked at Yan Xiuyuan, who seemed to be shocked as well, staring blankly at Xie Chujiao lying on the ground.
Jian Yue quickly flipped through the dowry booklet, and then looked through the account book. Because she lowered her head, she did not notice the flash of light in Yan Xiuyuan's eyes.
The room was so quiet that the only sound was the rubbing of papers.
When Biyu and Zhihua saw that Yan Xiuyuan had no intention of calling a court physician for his wife, they shrank their necks and dared not speak.
Half an hour later, Jian Yue took out four of the account books and put them together with the dowry book. She counted out 90,000 taels from the banknotes and put them away: "This 90,000 is the income of these three shops in the past three years. I will take it away with the account books in the shops. I don't know where the rest of the money comes from, so let father take care of it!"
Yan Xiuyuan stopped Jian Yue, with a cold light in his eyes: "Yue'er, father can't afford to lose this person."
Jian Yue met his gaze in confusion and said in a faint voice, "What do you mean, father? Is it about my stepmother stealing my mother's dowry, or is it about my stepmother secretly saving up some private money?"
Yan Xiuyuan was speechless for a moment.
His original intention was not to let Jian Yue take the dowry book. But Jian Yue was about to reach the age of marriage, and she was eligible to take over her mother's dowry. If he insisted on stopping her, it would be suspected of usurping his wife's dowry.
He is an honest official and cannot have such a reputation.
Yan Xiuyuan sighed deeply and silently stepped aside.
After leaving the mansion and getting on the carriage, Mu Xiang reluctantly asked, "Why don't you take this opportunity to ask for your dowry?"
"It's not time yet." Jian Yue could only evade Mu Xiang in this way. When she was confronting Yan Xiuyuan, she felt the murderous intent. Although the murderous intent was very faint, she had a hunch that if she insisted on taking out the dowry of the original owner's mother, she might not be able to leave the mansion.
Jian Yue felt that the haze in her heart not only did not fade, but became thicker and thicker. She felt like she was trapped in a huge vortex, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to see the situation and circumstances around her.
After returning to Yue's house, Jian Yue asked Fu Wu to find out the whereabouts of Wen Jinhong, the fourth uncle of the Wen family.
Since Wen Jinhong was involved in her assassination, he should pay the price.
Yun Zhonghe was sitting in the warm room drinking tea.
Jian Yue pushed the door open and went in, sitting opposite him, staring at the thick tea smoke in a daze.
Yun Zhonghe took a sip of tea and asked, "Going home?"
"Hmm." Jian Yue lowered her eyes and looked at the table for a while before saying, "Master, although I have returned to my ancestral home, I don't know anything about my family. What kind of person is my father, what kind of person is my mother, as well as my grandmother's family and my grandmother's family, I know nothing about them."
Yun Zhonghe nodded: "I know a little about your father."
Jian Yue immediately looked at Yun Zhonghe with burning eyes.
When talking about Yan Xiuyuan's family history, we have to start with Yan Xiuyuan's father.
Yan Xiuyuan's father, Yan Jinnan, was the former lord of Yanling Mansion. He had one wife and three concubines. His wife gave birth to a son and a daughter, but never had any more children. Yan Jinnan felt that his family was too small, so he later registered a son born by a concubine under his wife's name. This child was Yan Xiuyuan. It is said that his biological mother had a difficult labor and died after giving birth to him.
Yan Jinnan's two sons and one daughter are all very smart. The eldest son went all the way to high school and made it to Shangjing. Yan Xiuyuan is not bad either, and has always been among the top students in the college.
But when Yan Xiuyuan was sixteen years old, when Yan Jinnan was still working in Yanling Mansion, Yan Xiuyuan heard from somewhere that his biological mother did not die in childbirth, but was abducted by the mistress of the house. Yan Xiuyuan was very angry and impulsive at the time, and had a big fight with Yan Jinnan and his wife. He was so upset at the time that he almost broke up with his family. Later, after repeated persuasion from the clan, the matter was settled.
But since then, Yan Jinnan's wife has left him alone. Not long after this incident, Yan Jinnan was promoted, and the whole family except Yan Xiuyuan followed Yan Jinnan.
Yan Xiuyuan stayed in Yanling Prefecture. With the help of his clansmen and his hard work, he ranked second in the palace examination. Later, he was sent to Jing County, Qiongzhou, and it was while serving in Jing County that he married Yan Zhenzhen, the daughter of the richest man in Qiongzhou.
When Yan Xiuyuan was serving in Jing County, he was an honest official with outstanding political achievements, so he was promoted to the lord of Yanling Prefecture as an exception.
Jian Yue poured Yun Zhonghe another cup of tea.
That was all Yun Zhonghe knew. As for Yan Xiuyuan's ex-wife, he only knew that she was the daughter of the richest man in Qiongzhou. Besides, she had been dead for more than ten years, and the richest man in Qiongzhou had long since faded from people's sight.
No wonder the original owner didn’t have Yan Xiuyuan’s closest relatives in his memory. It turned out that his closest relatives were not in Yanling Mansion at all, but in Shangjing.
The original owner had never seen her grandmother and uncle's family until her death, which means that Yan Xiuyuan had a very bad relationship with them, or he had no contact with them at all.
Just like after she returned to her ancestral home, Yan Xiuyuan never mentioned his other family members to her.
Jian Yue thought for a moment and asked, "Master, what do you think of the Yan clan members towards my father?"
Yun Zhonghe thought about it carefully: "It is said that after Yan Jinnan's family left, the clan sponsored Yan Xiuyuan's studies and sponsored him until the end of the palace examination. As for the real situation, I'm afraid only your father knows."
"If this is the real situation, my father should never have been well off. Master said that if a good official wants to have political achievements, he must have strong financial support in addition to means and strategies. Jing County is a well-known poor county in Qiongzhou. My father was able to turn it into a wealthy county, and the construction alone required a huge amount of expenditure."
Yun Zhonghe nodded: "It is said that your father did not do anything significant in the first two years after he arrived in Jing County. It was only after he got married that he started to build Jing County in a big way."
Jian Yue suddenly realized: "So his financial support should come from my mother."
"It's also possible."
Jian Yue asked Muxiang to bring in the account books and dowry books she brought back.
"Master, help me take a look. This is my mother's dowry book and the general ledger of the three shops. The accounting time starts from ten years ago. There is no earlier time."
Yun Zhonghe looked at the dowry booklet first.
As expected of the dowry of the daughter of the richest man, the wealth was so abundant that it was enviable. The booklet contained ten boxes of gold, silver and jewelry, four boxes of rare calligraphy and paintings, twenty-six shops, three farms, and 860 acres of land.
With just this wealth, even if Jian Yue did nothing, she could spend three lifetimes lying down. The hundreds of thousands of taels of silver notes that Xie Chujiao had must be the income from the shop and land over the years.
Jian Yue suddenly thought of a question...