Family Cultivation: My entire family are Villains

Chapter 404: 204. Inventory Gains

Bang... Bang... Bang... Bang... Bang...

In the former Sword Control Bureau Yamen, now the main hall of Hou Mansion, Hou Yujie instructed ten Hou Family Warriors to place five heavy chests onto the ground, producing five loud booms that captured the attention of everyone in the room, including Hou Yuxiao, as over thirty pairs of eyes were fixed on the chests.

Each of the five chests was the same size, about three meters long and two meters wide, rather large actually. However, it was not so much their size, but the fact that it took two martial artists to move each one, indicating that their weight far exceeded what one could normally imagine.

Cough cough cough...

This eerie atmosphere lasted for more than ten breaths. Upon hearing the cough from Hou Yuxiao, everyone regained their composure, hastily collected themselves, and tried to look less overwhelmed.

Hou Yuxiao did not mock anyone because his own feelings at the moment were much the same as theirs. After all, the senior members of the Hou Clan gathered today knew exactly what those five chests represented.

After the chaos of the Rakshasa Festival with demons, the Great Luo Sect, Ling Cheng Escort Agency, Lonely Moon Sect, and Qijue Gate, four second-rate powers met their demise in succession; then, together with the Holy Church's army, they marched to Hexi, and both Tianding Sect of Wanyang County and the four third-rate powers within the Prefectural City were destroyed following the siege; finally, on the second day of the ninth month, just three days ago at the meeting held in Golden Wind and Drizzle Building, Hou Yuxiao personally killed the leaders of seven third-rate powers...

Having destroyed so many second-rate powers, Hou Clan hadn't counted their gains even once. Now that nearly three days had passed and the affairs of the three prefectures in Hexi were almost settled, Hou Yuxiao had gathered all the high-ranking members of the Hou Clan for a major inventory check to see just how much the Hou Clan had gained since the evening of the Rakshasa Festival!

Just by the weight of the five chests, one could tell that the bounty was anything but small. Hou Yuxiao stifled the excitement in his heart; after all, he was still the Family Head and needed to present a certain image before everyone.

"Fourth Elder, give us a report on these five chests one by one."

"Yes, Eldest Brother!"

Hou Yujie bowed and stepped forward, approaching the first chest. With a gentle nudge, he opened it, and immediately the room was bathed in a layer of golden light. The composure that everyone had just managed to regain vanished instantly upon seeing the mounds of gold and the precious and mysterious Martial Arts manuscripts piled inside the chest, their eyes widening in awe.

"This first chest was sent over from Tongling by our third sister. It contains the confiscated wealth of Great Luo Sect and three others. It took our sister a full twenty-five days to thoroughly account for all of their assets. The contents of this chest are just the tangible assets seized from these four powers. There's also an account book attached that lists all the properties owned by these four second-rate powers. Let me first give Eldest Brother a summary."

After finishing his words, seeing that the crowd was still captivated by the sight, Hou Yujie couldn't help but reveal a hint of a smile. He had the same reaction when he first saw so much gold, so he wasn't in a hurry. He waited for everyone to calm down before taking the account book that sat on top of the pile in the chest and started reading it.

"Great Luo Sect's treasury had a total of seventeen million taels of current silver, along with silver notes from Great Jin Tongbao and Luosha Silver Shop worth three million taels each. Apart from the silver notes, this chest contains four thousand jin of gold, which is equal to seventy-two thousand taels of gold, and when converted to silver taels, that's seven hundred and twenty million..."

"Seventeen million plus six million, plus seven hundred and twenty million; that's a total of three billion and twenty million taels. How can Great Luo Sect have so much silver stashed away?"

Hou Yuduan was the first to calculate the total silver holdings of Great Luo Sect and was utterly astonished, but he also raised doubts. To him, the figure seemed exaggerated for a second-rate power in a prefectural city like Great Luo Sect, which had over three billion taels of silver...

Of course, it wasn't only Hou Yuduan who felt this way. Many in the room looked puzzled, especially Li Sanyun, Bai Yunfan, Nie Xinchuan, and Liu Jianghong. Before joining the Hou Clan, they, too, were leaders of second-rate powers and understood the situation all too well.

Even the strongest third-rate powers cover at most one county, with a population ranging from three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. Even with exclusive resources and industries, the normal annual income would barely reach two hundred thousand taels. An income exceeding two hundred thousand meant either they were an exceptionally strong third-rate power or they were engaged in some disreputable business.

At first glance, earning two hundred thousand a year for a hundred years would amount to twenty million, so for a second-rate power like Great Luo Sect that had been established in Tongling for hundreds of years, having thirty million taels of silver didn't seem all that much.

The problem lies not in the income they reported, but in the expenditures they didn't.

According to the classification of the world's second-rate powers, a third-rate power is expected to have over a thousand Martial Sect Disciples. Martial artists aren't like ordinary people; where average folks can get by on five taels of silver for a year, martial artists would barely sustain their basic food needs for a month on that amount, not to mention their associated Martial Arts training, cultivation, weapons—all of which are highly costly.

For ordinary Martial Artists of the Open Body Realm, even the poorest of third-rate powers has to spend at least twenty taels per month for each disciple. This means that just to maintain their Sect Members, it would cost twenty thousand taels a month and two hundred and forty thousand a year, not to mention other expenses like weapons, horses, Martial Arts mental methods, cultivation Elixirs, Yuan Gang Beads, and so forth...

As a matter of fact, if a second-rate power isn't strong enough and doesn't control profitable businesses, sustaining such a large number of martial artists would be difficult, and running at a loss is their usual state of affairs.