I sat on the floor and continued to listen to Su tell me about their family like a child listening to an adult's story.

Su's family is divided into three branches, although they are called Huainan Su family to the outside world, but there are actually three surnames, but the last surname, Su did not tell me.

The three surnames are divided into three families, among which the Luo family, in addition to the duties of general craftsmen and carvings, also has the responsibility of protecting Su. In Zuxun, this responsibility cannot be shirked and abandoned, that is, if there is a war, the Luo family must fight to the last person for the Su family.

The origin of this rule, Su himself has researched, at the beginning, the Su family because of exquisite craftsmanship, will undertake a large number of royal projects, and the royal project, in addition to designers and supervision, must also have a lot of craftsmen to carry out construction, the Su family then visited some agile and powerful workers to train, the ancestors of the Luo family appeared in this way, because the Luo family is strong and powerful, and soon became a common worker of the Su family, because of the long-term day and night relationship, The children between the Luo family and the Su family intermarried, and the two families slowly became one.

At the beginning, everything happened naturally, and Su himself laughed and said that these people who intermarried with the Luo family gave birth to children who were always physically strong, with thick hands and feet, and rarely gave birth to such exquisite hands as the ancestors of the Su family. But the descendants of Su Luo's marriage are often prominent, and the Luo family eats and sleeps, and they are particularly good at giving birth and living for a long time.

After a long time, the people in the Su family's mantle began to wither. Su's ancestors are estimated to also have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the Su family with thick wrists have all changed their surnames to Luo, and the people of the Su family have become thinner.

And the exquisite and skillful hands of the Su family are the necessary conditions for many ancestral memories and specific tools of the Su family, and the ancestors of the Su family stipulated that the Su and Luo families could not continue to intermarry in order to inherit the mantle. In addition, after two generations, the two families were too many in-laws related by blood, and the two families officially became a family, and the intermarriage stopped. But at this time, there are only a few Su family members with exquisite hands.

In all industries, there is the saying of the ancestors, that is, the so-called mutual lines, each industry, to leave a convenient way for other industries. Legend has it that in the dark rules of the money village, there is a rule called Liusi, which means that every fourth day of the first month of June, the money of the money in the bank, the scale will be four points shorter, and all the money in and out of the bank on this day will be hard to get four points of profit, this practice is actually called changing the weights and measures, that is, the rules set by the ancestors, all the money in and out of the village on this day is still unified, but the excess profits will be reflected on the next day.

What is 360 lines, because there are 365 days in a year, except for five days, everyone does not work, and every day of the rest, there is a line that will steal the line, and all other businesses must turn a blind eye, this legend was later used by dishonest business people as an excuse for lack of catties and taels.

Su told me that this kind of rule is of course a rumor, but similar rules are not uncommon, and the real intention of Liusi is very interesting. In the early days, the best way for a money bank to make others believe that it was financially strong was to accumulate cash and valuable collateral, and the money bank was prosperous in the prosperous era, and "treasures" were things that money banks competed for. And the treasures of that era are nothing more than the authentic handiwork of calligraphy and ink treasures, as well as the incredible and irreproducible works of art made by craftsmen. The so-called priceless treasure has a price, and it is safe to keep it at a price. It's valuable when you get it, but the effect is priceless.

Why does the bank need these reputations? It is because the ancient Chinese were not interested in borrowing, and the money you deposited in the ticket number could not be released with loans. How do ticket numbers make money? It is to collect interest from depositors.

Yes, you read that right, at the beginning of the box office bank, it was to collect interest from the depositor, and he only kept your money on behalf of him, and he had to take a lot of risks, so the depositor had to pay the storage fee. Therefore, the security and strength of the ticket number is a huge factor that attracts depositors. For example, if I want to go to the capital to buy a property, I can't take a few tons of silver on the road, and I will die of exhaustion if I am not robbed. So I deposited the bill number in exchange for a bill of exchange, and after I arrived in Beijing, I used the bill of exchange to withdraw the silver taels.

So what are the risks for savers? I took a piece of paper to the capital, and when I wanted to exchange the paper for money, the money bank went out of business, and I had a piece of waste paper in my hand. Therefore, choosing a money bank ticket number that seems unlikely to go bankrupt is the primary factor in risk resistance.

According to legend, when the princes and nobles were in decline in the feudal era, there was no cash, and they would use goods, which were often half price in pawnshops, while in the money bank, they were full price, and some items were equal to cash. How many silver taels these items can be exchanged for depends on the negotiations at the time, but the actual value of these items tends to increase exponentially over time. Therefore, since the long-term operation, how many such items are a symbol of the strength of the money bank's ticket number.

When the money village was prevalent, some people asked for a "box", for example, a treasure armor, only one piece, but when entering the money village, often with a few empty boxes, the name of the warehouse is a "set" of treasure armor, the expected value will be much larger, the public is more stimulated, and later, even the treasure armor is not needed, only need a set of empty boxes, and then make a big splash, it is enough. All of a sudden, people with treasures sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and there were more and more money houses with treasures.

This kind of thing was soon discovered, and more and more people began to doubt the authenticity of these treasures, and many money banks began to make up nonsense, and what unicorn bones were also made up as a category of treasures. In order to avoid causing a crisis of confidence, Qian Zhuang began to look for other endorsements. The background of the Su family's famous craftsmen is of course also targeted.

In Su's own words, the Su family started by making boxes, which was worried that they would be investigated in the future and would be guilty of colluding with Qianzhuang, so these boxes were designed to be impossible to open. It can only be opened by using the Su family's special method. If you force open the chest, it will trigger the trap inside.

The Su family did not say anything to the outside world: if the agency would cause any consequences, the box made by the Su family was obviously open by no one who dared to take risks easily. The value of the treasures from the royal craftsmen's family is also much higher. The Su family was thriving because of this.

Later, during the Xianfeng period, a large number of ticket numbers went out of business, mergers, and the scam of treasures was gradually realized. The Minister of Investigation asked the Su family to open the box in person to prove their innocence.

No one knows how to open the box, only know that after this incident, the royal family did not condemn the Su family, but instead put a seal on the box and personally applied for a ticket number, which is called "Stay Four", the No. 12 and No. 3 cabinets face the ordinary people, and the No. 4 Su family can use the "broken coin" to withdraw the boxes they made at that time at any time. And when they don't take out the box, they have to calculate the interest on the four, and the life and the life are hundreds of years.

No matter how much these boxes were worth at the time, after such a long time, the accumulated interest was astronomical, and I couldn't help but feel heartache when I remembered what the girl at the counter said, and I didn't know how much the interest was cleared at that time.

"That doesn't make sense, does it?" I asked Su, "Why did the emperor do this to your family?" ”

"Because the boxes that our family gave out were not empty. There's something in it. Su said, "But those are not treasures. It's something else. Because of the characteristics of these things, they must belong to us, and they cannot be stored with us, and because our family bears these characteristics, the royal family will support us for life and death, until the contents of the box are destroyed. ”