Chapter 190 - 190 Astonishment! A Mountain of Treasures! (4)

190 Astonishment! A Mountain of Treasures! (4)

“It must be worth a fortune. Just one ingot should be worth several million, and as such, a whole chest is worth hundreds of billions!”

“Hahaha! You’re joking so seriously, it almost seems real!”

“Old Li was only emperor for a few days. His copper coins are practically worthless!”

“The one above doesn’t understand. How could they be worthless? You could say most of them are worthless, but there are definitely some special editions in there worth over a million!”

“Let me just say this: Old Li’s copper coins are about the same price as ordinary Ming dynasty coins. Good quality ones can be worth from several dozen to 200 yuan! After all, there’s a large quantity of them! But as the one before me mentioned, there are indeed special editions worth over a million!”

Seeing this, Luo Feng nodded, “It’s similar to official silver, depending on the edition. There’s not much to say. We’ll have experts examine them later.”

With that, Luo Feng continued to inspect the remaining chests.

He wiped his sweat.

Opening chests was indeed a physically demanding labor.

After opening several chests in a row, Luo Feng was truly exhausted.

Upon opening all 42 chests… 22 of them were filled with official silver ingots… 5 contained gold ingots… 5 held copper coins… 5 had broken silver pieces and a few broken gold pieces, and lastly, the last final 5 chests contained various gold and silver jewelry.

Even though these Ming dynasty official ingots and gold bars had some value, had Li Zicheng the rebel king used this fortune to purchase artistic pieces instead, the whole collection would have been worth billions if not trillions of yuan!

However, a fact worth considering was who would go to such lengths to bury all the art pieces purchased?

After all, gold and silver were much easier to bury as they would not break or be destroyed easily.

Or one could say that, while these gold, silver, and copper pieces have high value in modern times, they were not considered to be astronomically high. Any wealthy individual, say for example, a certain entrepreneur with a Ma surname could make that amount in just a few days. However, in ancient times, such a large amount of gold and silver was indeed a massive fortune.

Consider this: if one piece of silver could buy 1000 pounds of rice, in ancient times, you could support many people and even many concubines. But in modern times, 1000 pounds of rice is almost nothing, and women would even scoff at you for purchasing such a huge quantity of perishable goods.

When calculating purchasing power, one must take into account the social status of that purchasing power.

“So, these 42 chests filled with gold, silver, and jewels, how much are they worth in total?”

“Several hundred billion, perhaps?”

“Come on! Not everything is worth hundreds of billions, okay?”

“At most, just a few billion!”

“Only a few billion? The official silver alone should be worth more than that, not to mention the broken silver pieces!”

“These certainly aren’t all of Old Li’s possessions! They say these were the ones he buried while he was on the run!”

“Indeed, he took the entire Ming dynasty treasury with him! How could there be only this much gold and silver?”

“Is this too little for you? You all really make me laugh!”

After examining these treasures, Luo Feng also felt that something was amiss. It felt too little.

Considering Li Zicheng’s reputation, there should be more than this.

He had plundered the entire capital city, after all.

Was this all there was?

However, everyone made a good point: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Perhaps he had hidden treasures along the way multiple times, and by the time he reached this place, there wasn’t much left.

But according to Old Li’s escape route, when he arrived in the south, there should still be a significant amount of treasure. The treasures buried here should be quite numerous, right?

Luo Feng began to suspect that there might be other hidden treasures of Old Li’s within Dalong Mountain.

He recalled the mantra:

Stone cliff rapids, three bridges…

The mantra suggested that the treasures were not limited to one location but were spread across multiple sites…