The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 219

"Sir, what are your orders?"

General Xu Ming approached Zhou Chu and said respectfully.

At first, the general was somewhat resentful when he learned that it was this Jinyiwei centurion who had mobilized 20,000 troops. However, when he saw Zhou Chu order them to arrest the gentry and even kill all those who resisted, Xu Ming was shocked.

Such a thing, let alone him, even a general commanding 50,000 troops would not dare to do. This matter is of great importance. How should we explain it to the court afterwards?

But this young man did more than that; in fact, all the Imperial Guards in Suzhou Prefecture obeyed his orders. He knew Chen Zhao, the commander of the Imperial Guards in Suzhou Prefecture, who was as obedient as a grandson in front of this young man.

Therefore, Xu Ming did not dare to underestimate the young man in front of him at all, and even felt a sense of awe.

"Register the identities of these people one by one and send the notice down. Anyone who dares to lie about their identity will be dealt with by military law."

Zhou Chu's face turned cold.

Upon hearing this, Xu Ming's heart tightened. The so-called military law punishment meant beheading. He had not expected that the official in front of him was so bloodthirsty.

"Yes, my lord!"

After receiving the order, Xu Ming began to arrange for people to register the identities of the captured gentry and wicked servants. At first, some gentry falsely reported their identities, trying to disguise themselves as servants, but their clothes gave them away. After being exposed, they were executed by military law in front of everyone.

This terrified the gentry who had been hoping to get away with it, and they no longer dared to have any crooked thoughts.

After making an example of him, the identity registration went exceptionally smoothly. About half an hour later, Xu Ming arrived in front of Zhou Chu with the registered documents.

"Sir, they have all been registered."

As Xu Ming spoke, he handed the document in his hand to Zhou Chu with both hands.

Zhou Chu took the document, glanced at it, and found that among the nearly 20,000 people, there were less than 2,000 genuine gentry and wealthy households; the rest were basically slaves of powerful families.

For Zhou Chu, all of these were money.

When the families of the arrested gentry received the news, they were all in a panic. Especially after hearing that many gentry and their servants had been beheaded on the spot, they were even more anxious and began to try to find ways to get their masters out.

The next day, just as the families of the gentry were in a state of panic and at their wits' end, a message came from somewhere that Chen Zhao, a commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard in Suzhou Prefecture, had connections that could be made.

The people, who had been desperate, seemed to have seen a beacon of hope. They prepared generous gifts and went to Chen Zhao's residence to seek help.

After making inquiries from various sources, these people finally obtained specific information: to extort these wealthy servants, one would cost twenty taels of silver; to extort those gentry, one would cost thirty thousand taels of silver.

This price was set by Zhou Chu; it's not too high, the main goal is to increase sales volume.

Buying a new servant from a brokerage firm—one who is strong and capable of guarding the house—would cost at least ten or twenty taels of silver. The key issue is that even then, the servants might not be as easy to use as the old ones, and their loyalty might not be guaranteed.

Many of these wealthy servants were trained by the gentry from a young age, so their loyalty was naturally much stronger than that of newly purchased servants.

As for these gentry, each was to be paid 30,000 taels of silver, a sum set by Zhou Chu. This 30,000 taels had to be in silver, not copper coins.

If it were copper coins, Zhou Chu would have wanted more, but Zhou Chu's purpose in doing this was to collect the silver from these Jiangnan gentry.

If we were to say where the most silver was in the entire Ming Dynasty, it would undoubtedly be in Jiangnan. The wealthy merchants of the Jiangnan Chamber of Commerce each had at least several hundred thousand taels of silver.

Although these gentry members varied in social standing, they could all come up with 30,000 taels of silver with some effort. Even those few who genuinely lacked the funds would find a way to raise the money. This was not a problem for Zhou Chu to worry about.

In this way, just these two thousand or so gentry could collect nearly sixty million taels of silver for the court.

The total amount of silver officially recorded in the Ming Dynasty was around 800 million taels, but in reality, it was far more than that.

Due to the Yuan Dynasty's commercial taxes and many other problems, many gentry and wealthy households buried their silver. This amount of silver was substantial. In addition, with the continuous smuggling in Jiangnan over the years, silver from Japan kept flowing into Jiangnan, making the amount of hidden silver astonishing.

Soon, the families of these gentry began to line up to send money to Chen Zhao. To prevent Chen Zhao from being blinded by greed, Zhou Chu specially ordered Lin Lu to lead people to keep an eye on Chen's residence.

It wasn't that Zhou Chu didn't trust Chen Zhao; it was simply that the amount of money was too large. Money can be tempting, and Zhou Chu firmly believed in one principle: if you don't want someone to betray you, don't give them the opportunity to do so.

Meanwhile, the news quickly spread beyond Suzhou Prefecture, and the gentry throughout Jiangnan knew about it, that someone was going to measure land in Suzhou Prefecture and had even arrested tens of thousands of people as a result.

Immediately, public resentment boiled over. Because of the instigation of the civil officials and gentry, the uninformed people believed that the court was going to increase taxes on them. Countless people were furious and were secretly gathering an extremely terrifying force.

Zhou Chu naturally received this news as well, and smiled dismissively.

"My lord, the situation is so dire, how can you still be laughing?"

Yan Song paced back and forth in a panic.