Five days later, there were no more poor people in the Nanyue imperial city, because everyone was equally poor.

Ning Chen treated everyone exactly alike. Whether they were high officials and notables or ordinary folk, he left each of them one scrap of cloth to cover their shame.

This was the Nanyue imperial city, after all, where a whole nation's power and wealth came together.

In the end, the grain they'd scraped up came to nearly three million dan, give or take.

Gold, silver, treasure, antiques, paintings and calligraphy, and rare books filled more than a hundred carts.

Metal took up more than thirty carts on top of that: fine iron, copper and the like.

Every cart in the imperial city had been seized, and even then there were barely enough.

But when Ning Chen asked around, it turned out a few carts were still empty.

They couldn't go home empty, could they... So every piece of furniture made of precious wood was coming too. The emperor's dragon thrones, for one: he'd wrecked the one in the Hall of Sacred Heaven, but there were others elsewhere in the palace. The Empress's phoenix seat, too. Every last piece got packed up and taken.

Ning Chen rode his beloved Diaochan, idly rolling two... Eastern pearls around in his hand.

Each pearl was the size of a ping-pong ball. Pearls like that were extremely rare.

They'd been seized from the Nanyue palace, a whole box of them, and Ning Chen had taken two to play with.

He watched, beaming, as the soldiers packed the gold, silver and treasure into the carts.

Then he laughed out loud and turned to Feng Qizheng. "If Kang Luo found out his house had been robbed, how do you think he'd take it?"

Feng Qizheng snickered. "He'd blow up on the spot, for sure. At the very least he'd bring up three pints of blood."

Ning Chen shrugged. "Too bad. We won't get to see the look on Kang Luo's face, or his impotent rage.

Oh, right. Send someone to tell Qin Qiao and Yuan Long and the…