I am chasing a rough man in the 80s
Chapter 113: The Quirks Left Behind By The Ancestors

Chapter 113: Chapter 113: The Quirks Left Behind By The Ancestors

At the top of the jar were a bunch of silver ingots, packed full, with silver coins filling in any gaps.

This gave a clear idea of just how dedicated was the person who packed this jar.

Yu Jingting casually picked up an ingot. Though he had never seen one before, he knew from storytelling podcasts that they were valuable.

"Shall we melt one down later to make some jewelry?" Yu Jingting picked up a large one, about to put it in his pocket, but Suizi snatched it away.

"We can’t melt it down!!!" Suizi noticed the words "Qing Dynasty Treasury Silver" engraved on the bottom of the ingot and quickly envisioned an auction price string in her mind.

This kind of intact treasury silver, kept for a dozen or twenty years, would not fetch a low price at auction.

Silver itself is cheap, but if it’s an antique, that’s another matter.

If he melted it down to make ordinary jewelry, that would be like throwing pearls to swine!

After taking out pile of silver ingots and coins, at the bottom of the jar were two wooden boxes embedded with panels of ivory. They should have had gems too, but the gems had been prised out.

Combining this with the tooth marks seen on some of the silver ingots, Suizi rubbed her forehead.

"Despite speaking ill of your ancestors is not a good thing, your ancestors were really... reckless."

She could almost picture the scene.

After a gang of bearded bandits plundered the treasure, they gnawed on the silver ingots one by one and prised out the gems from the box, the whereabouts of which were unknown.

Glancing at Jingting, who wanted to melt down everything he saw, Suizi easily imagined the gems from this box most likely ended in someone’s mouth.

If the gems were still there, the box itself would have had a collector’s value.

Suizi was distressed.

"That’s why every group should have someone like a literati, who waves a white paper fan. If there was just one person among your ancestors who was worldly and educated, he wouldn’t be so reckless!"

At this point, she still remembered to instill the importance of knowledge to her man.

"Let this be a lesson! Don’t just listen to uninformative storytelling podcasts, read books!"

Yu Jingting seemed indifferent, stroking his chin, contemplating what else he could melt down - after all, he had three women at home, both old and young, and making some jewelry would be great!

Seeing that he raised his hand to pry the ivory pieces out from the box, Suizi slapped his paw.

"Don’t pry! And don’t bite anything inside. Any-Thing!"

"It’s a waste not to chomp on good stuff a few times." After Yu Jingting said this, he glanced at her, she was his favorite, so it was normal to fancy a nibble, wasn’t it?

Suizi rubbed her forehead.

"Why did this strange peculiarity get passed down..."

It seemed like the Yu family elders genuinely had a habit of gnawing things!

The more Suizi observed Yu Jingting, the more she felt that he had indeed inherited the family heritage – his ancestors damaged antiques, he nibbled her, she still had a bite mark on her chest from a few days ago. What a bad habit!

"It seems that the legend of your family’s treasure is real. Your great-grandfather and the others, they robbed not a noble but a third-class official, look at this."

Suizi opened the box and showed him the blue gem inside.

It was a half-finger-length cylindrical object, and the base metal wrapping had turned green due to rust.

"It doesn’t sparkle, it’s dirty and damaged, look, the base is rusty, what a piece of junk."

Yu Jingting felt that this thing wasn’t worth making into a necklace for his wife.

"....." Bandit’s aesthetics indeed favored flashiness, size, and shininess, historical and artistic value would not be considered.

"This is a sapphire hat knob, a hundred-year-old treasure. The scratches, damages, and rust are all traces of its history. Only those of third rank or above were allowed to use a sapphire hat knob, and anyone else attempting to use it would be beheaded."

"Can the rust on the bottom be scrubbed off with a steel wool?" Yu Jingting felt that with a little scrubbing, the green rust on the base could make it barely wearable for his wife.

Suizi put down the gem and looked at him helplessly.

"Don’t scrub off the rust, it is very valuable. Scrub it and ..... its value will plummet a hundred-fold."

"Who would be crazy enough to buy these rusty things that dead people have used?"

Suizi kept silent about his opinion and continued to rummage through the jar.

The remaining long box was standing upright. Suizi did not open it, but casually handed it to Yu Jingting, signaling him to investigate it.

Suizi continued to search and drew out two gold coins.

While Yu Jingting was inspecting the box, he commented.

"Our ancestor must have used the same principles as making ’Pork with Pickled Vegetables’, right? Look, it is prepared the same way. A layer of pickles, a layer of pork, stuffed full in the gaps with blood sausages and vermicelli."

This not-so-large jar was surprisingly full.

"These two gold coins are worth money—don’t think about melting them down to make jewelry. Don’t even think about it!" Afraid he might be tempted to melt down the antiques again, Suizi hurriedly said.

Qing Dynasty gold coins were rarely minted with even fewer in circulation, therefore the amount passed down is meager.

"This is a ’Long Yang’, weighing about 30 grams or so. Lucky our ancestor didn’t chew on this one."

Suizi was almost moved to tears.

She had seen this thing at an auction in her past life, a small one sold for 3 million and the price would rise in the future.

This gold coin was very soft, one bite could easily break it, but surprisingly, it was preserved intact.

That it could escape from the mouth of the old Yu family ancestors who loved to chew on things was indeed a great fortune.

"These two are the most valuable. I’ll give one to you and one to Jiaojiao. I guess our family won’t be short of money in the future. Let’s keep these meaningful things as family heirlooms."

Suizi thought for a moment and added: "I plan to have two children. If you have the ability in the future, you can buy another one, so there will be no favoritism."

"Didn’t we decide to only have one?" Yu Jingting stopped opening the box, focusing on the key statement.

"Seeing how you and Jiaojiao get along, I think it’s not bad to have one more." People’s ideas change every day.

He carried Jiaojiao all the way back today, which moved Suizi greatly.

"Let’s make it clear in advance, no matter how much we have in the future, we absolutely cannot have the bad habit of giving all our wealth to our son and raising our daughter to marry into wealth. If you can’t do this, I won’t give birth."

Upon hearing that she was willing to have his child, Yu Jingting was so delighted he couldn’t find north. Fearful she might change her mind, he immediately agreed.

"My superior seed is not wasted on weak pests who fight over money. Besides, these small things are not that big of a deal."

Until now, Yu Jingting was still focused on "melting these things to make some jewelry for the women of the house".

What was inside the long box with the hidden latch mechanism remains unknown for now.

Suizi analyzed the items in front of them for him.

"This pile of silver coins is the cheapest. Together, they can buy a small house in the northern county town - I’m referring to many years from now. The price of those few that were bitten by your ancestors is halved..."

"According to you, did my ancestors chew away a toilet?"

Suizi’s mouth twitched slightly. This statement, though peculiar, seemed to be true.

About 20000 per piece with a total of eleven pieces, they could buy a one-bedroom apartment in a fourth-tier county.

"There are eight silver ingots, each one can exchange for ——" Suizi wanted to say one could exchange for a house in a second-tier city.

The market price in the future was close to one million, the two that have been gnawed.... price halved.