Chapter 132: Struck Rich! Struck It Filthy Rich!

"It's broken! It's broken! Smashed through!" A roar of cheers rang out as the vermilion-purple gates of the Shule royal city came crashing down.

By this point, only three double-hours had passed since Zhang Zhao had blasted down the walls of Shule, and already the royal palace — which had looked far sturdier than the city itself — had been taken.

For this, much credit went to the followers of the Three Teachings, who had truly fought with desperate ferocity. Zhang Zhao watched as whole families charged in together, brandishing battered shields and armor stripped from who knew where, men and women, young and old, howling and throwing themselves forward without a care for their lives.

While they drew the attention of a large part of the defenders, the foreign monk Rezhiti led a band of Buddhists in dismantling two small catapults from the base of the wall and used them to smash several great holes in the palace gates.

These weapons, which Idihad had originally intended to use against the Khotan army's siege, had fallen into Zhang Zhao's hands before they could even be destroyed!

"Charge in! Take our revenge!" Rezhiti, wearing a sleeveless coat of mail over his dark robes, roared and was the first to rush inside.

He truly was fierce. Behind him, a crowd of brawny shaven-headed men, blades and spears in hand, surged forward and struck out with everything at once. In no time they had cut down the few Karakhanid guards at the gate. They looked nothing like eminent Buddhist monks — more like a gang of bald-headed bandits out for plunder.

"Old Zhong, go call Ma Yaozi back. We're entering the city. Fourteen, you stay with me. Those especially valuable porcelains and paintings will need your appraisal."

Zhang Zhao quickly made his arrangements. Even if these followers of the Three Teachings got inside, they would not dare enter the inner palace. At most they would loot the outer halls. The wealth and storehouses of the inner palace belonged to Zhang Zhao.

But as for those porcelains and paintings — a man from later times like himself, or a rough brute like Ma Yaozi, certainly could not judge their worth. That required a third-generation noble like Cao Yanming to appraise.

The Fengtian Army's numbers had finally swelled as well. The old and weak miners of the Jindou unit and the idlers of the Shenji unit had not yet been weeded out, so Zhang Zhao now had over a thousand men behind him — enough to strip the entire palace bare.

Inside the palace, terrified shrieks rose from every direction. High-ranking palace attendants in bright silk and brocade ran about screaming in panic.

The few surviving palace guards, once discovered, were immediately swarmed by the surging crowd and torn limb from limb. Everything of value on their bodies was then divided up among the followers of the Three Teachings, who had suffered in the west of the city for over a decade. Zhang Zhao even saw two men fighting over what looked like a pair of socks.

"Fuck your mother! This palace is to be left for the Great Sage Son of Heaven! If anyone dares set a fire, I'll light you up first!"

Ma Yaozi lashed out with his whip, making a Manichaean believer shudder all over. The fool had found several people hiding in a sealed chamber and, in his stupidity, had been about to set a fire to burn them out.

"Take this and get in there and drive those people out for me!" Ma Yaozi casually tossed over a round shield, then forced the Manichaean forward at the point of his whip, making him charge in first.

Soon women's screams came from within. It turned out those hiding inside were four or five gorgeously dressed palace women.

When the Manichaean came out, his face was flushed with excitement, and his bloodstained hands were groping all over a beautiful palace woman. She did not dare resist, but her screams nearly burst Ma Yaozi's eardrums.

"Get lost, get lost, get lost, get lost! These palace women are to be rewards for brave warriors. Are you worthy, you shit? Still groping! Fuck your mother!"

Ma Yaozi impatiently said "get lost" four times in a row, then reached out and pulled what looked like a gold necklace from a palace woman's chest and tossed it to the Manichaean, telling him to get far away.

The Manichaean, overjoyed, bobbed and bowed and ran off. He still had other places to search!

The rule Zhang Zhao had set was this: whatever they could carry away was theirs — except for gold ingots, goldware, porcelain, and paintings. That string of necklaces alone was enough to keep this Manichaean fed and clothed for years.

"All of you, come over here and kneel properly! You! Yes, you — put this on your head!"

Strange to say, in the past Ma Yaozi would have pounced on them long ago, and might well have raped first and killed after.

But now he held his head high with pride, looking down his nose at these women, thoroughly enjoying their grateful and adoring gazes.

I, Ma Yaozi, have been elevated. From a savage brute who only knew how to kill with a blade, I have become a man who understands some principles, who has compassion — a true nobleman who, apart from a body still savage, has become a civilized man in every other respect.

What he tossed to these palace women was his Fengtian Army squad-leader's identification plaque. With it, these women were marked as spoils of the Fengtian Army, and no one would dare touch them.

Though in the end these women would still be given as rewards to men of merit, that was far better than being raped on the ground at random and then cut down with a single stroke.

"Many thanks to the General for saving our lives! Many thanks to the General for saving our lives!" As Ma Yaozi turned and walked away, the kneeling palace women kept kowtowing in gratitude, making his receding figure seem all the more towering.

"O Buddha!" When the royal treasury was slowly opened, Qiong Re Duojin dropped straight to his knees, and even Dunzhu rushed forward several steps before forcing himself to stop.

In the orange glow of the torches, this treasury — at least the size of a football field from later times — was packed full of every kind of treasure.

Precious blades and armor from Persia and Transoxiana; countless Abbasid (Black-Robed Great Eater) gold coins and Persian Sassanid gold coins, all gleaming with the same dark-gold luster, filled wooden chest after wooden chest, and many were simply piled directly on carpeted ground.

Besides these gold coins, there were chest after chest of the finest gems of every color, top-grade Hetian jade, the most precious porcelains worth more than gold, and all manner of goldware filling half the room.

Silver coins? Hah! Silver coins were not even worthy of appearing here.

"Fourteen, how much would you say the treasure here is worth?" Zhang Zhao quietly drew a breath, then asked Cao Yanming, who was also somewhat dazed beside him.

"Cousin-uncle, we've struck it rich this time. This place..." Cao Fourteen gulped hard.

"There must be at least seven or eight hundred thousand strings of cash worth of treasure here. Our Guiyi Army headquarters brings in only a little over two hundred thousand strings a year, and that's counting our own work as traveling merchants buying and reselling goods.

In one stroke, we've laid hands on roughly four years of the Guiyi Army headquarters' income. It seems if you want to get rich, you really do need to go into business without capital!"

This enormous fortune stunned even a third-generation noble like Cao Yanming. For the first time, he felt what kind of benefits war could bring to the victor.

Zhang Zhao, too, was seeing so much wealth with his own eyes for the first time, though he had seen plenty of it in films and shows in his later life, so his resistance was a bit stronger.

This time they truly had struck it rich. One had to understand that even in the Great Tang, before the An-Shi Rebellion, the entire empire's annual revenue was only a little over thirty million strings of cash.

After the An-Shi Rebellion, in the Dali era of Emperor Dezong of Tang, a good year brought in only twelve or thirteen million strings.

And that was the Great Tang! A superpower empire with tens of millions of households, one that shone across the entire long river of human history.

With just this one haul, Zhang Zhao's take was already approaching one percent of the mid-to-late Tang annual revenue. Truly astonishing!

And this was only one of the storehouses — quite possibly not even the largest one. Judging from the stores of this Satuq Bughra Khan, the Karakhanid state truly deserved its reputation as the foremost of the three great powers of Anxi!

"Let all the men of the Hanshan unit and Liu Zaisheng's palace guards come in. Each man grabs one handful — only one handful — and then seal this treasury and guard it tightly."

Zhang Zhao thought it over. Most of this would have to go to Li Shengtian; he himself could probably keep only about thirty percent. Better to send a wave of goodwill first.

"Many thanks, Second Young Lord!" The Savage Bear's mouth split into a grin, and without the slightest courtesy he stepped forward and grabbed a great handful.

"You damn bear! Your mother really doesn't stand on ceremony, does she! Grab gold coins!"

Zhang Zhao smacked the Savage Bear on the head with a thump. The bear had just gone for jewelry and necklaces — damn it, one handful of that, how much would he be taking away!

"Wait!" After hitting the Savage Bear, Zhang Zhao patted the shamefaced fellow again, his expression so dark it could have dripped water.

"You alone grab twenty handfuls first. I'm afraid... some of our brothers won't be able to come grab for themselves."

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