Confiscating estates was hard physical labor, and skilled work as well.
The homes and properties of the Eight Great Families of Jiangdong consisted of far more than a single ancestral residence or principal residence... Generally speaking, they each had an ancestral residence, regarded as their foundation and fallback, with considerable distances between them; they also had a principal residence near what had formerly been Jiankang City and was now Jiangning City. After Southern Chen fell and Jiankang City's outer walls were demolished, they generally also maintained a token principal residence in Jiangdu. Beyond these, they had large numbers of residences, estates, and fields in the traditionally fertile lands of Jiangdong, such as Wu Commandery, Yuhang, Kuaiji, and Yongjia.
What Zhang Xing and the others had done was capture the king to capture the bandits: with the force of thunder, they had specifically seized the ancestral or principal residences housing the core family members, ensuring their submission before sweeping through the rest.
They had also tackled the easy targets before the difficult ones, taking down the six peripheral families to establish various examples and points of comparison before coercing the Wang and Xie Families, who had Condensing the Core experts.
The facts proved that this series of targeted strategies had been effective. In the end, even the Wang and Xie Families had chosen to submit.
Only then did the Brocade-clad Patrol Cavalry finally have a free hand. More grain, in quantities substantial enough to matter, was unearthed from the ancestral residences and estates of the eight great clans. Considerable quantities of meat were also delivered before the New Year to the Jiangdu army camp on the northern bank of the great river, in exchange for ready supplies of army grain from north of the river. Together, these effectively eased the grain