Chapter 4 Leafy Fatso

  My goodness! So much money! Bundles and bundles of 100-yuan bills, estimated to be tens of millions, plus some gold bars, jade carvings, lotus seeds, etc. I'm so excited that my heart is racing, just like someone who can't even afford a meal suddenly winning a billion-dollar jackpot.

  How could so many valuable things be buried here? Who would bury them here, it's absolutely impossible for Chen Baoguo and his son to have that much money. The only possibility is Chen Jiugui, but where did he get so many valuable things from? He can afford to take out tens of thousands, but not this much. This makes me think of his brother who works in Nanning, could it be the spoils of corruption?

  I took a deep breath to calm my extremely excited mood, then turned off the flashlight, afraid of being seen from outside. Suddenly facing such a huge sum of money, my heart couldn't calm down for a long time. I originally just wanted to steal 100 yuan from Chen's wine jar to cover my expenses on the way to Hunan to visit my sister, but unexpectedly stumbled upon this big secret.

  I'm clever, so I started analyzing in my mind at this time. The result of the speculation is that Chen Baoguo's brother got a treasure by bribery and sent it back to his hometown for hiding. There was too much money put far away, which was not safe, so he put it in the village, within his own control. Chen Jiugui estimated that he had said before that he wanted to buy Chen Baoguo's house base, so he helped him lay cement floor and build a house, actually for secretly hiding things. Finally, he found someone to secretly do something to this house, which attracted lonely ghosts and wild devils locked in the house, making it a haunted house, causing Chen Baoguo's family to break up and die, and then he bought this house again to cover people's ears and eyes.

  I'm really smart! I analyzed the whole thing reasonably in an instant, and I don't know if it's right or not. Except for Chen Jiutong, I really can't think of who buried it, because the burial place is very new, estimated to be less than half a year.

  But none of that matters, what's important is how I'm going to deal with such a huge treasure? If I take it away and get caught, I'll probably be shot. If I don't take it, how can I just leave it here?

  After a fierce ideological struggle, I still decided to take these things away. Isn't life's wealth and nobility obtained through adventure? After being hungry for over a decade, finally having a big piece of fat meat at the corner of my mouth, but not having the guts to eat it, deserving to be poor for a lifetime.

  The faster the better, I put everything into a large and thick snakeskin bag, and when I picked up that long lotus root, I found out that it was actually an ivory carving.

  After putting everything into the bag, I closed the big door of this house. I didn't carry it back home, but instead headed straight to the mountain. After passing by where Chen Bao Gu was buried and crossing over two more mountains, I carried the snake skin bag which weighed over a hundred kilograms, resting only once at the foot of the mountain.

  I'm going to the place where Chen's body was found in the mountain cave, first hide the money there, and then go back to get it when I have a chance. Although that mountain cave is extremely dangerous, with a red striped snake, no one knows there's a cave there, except for hiding inside, nowhere else is safer, so I can only take the risk.

  After entering the cave, I had never been so scared. Without the ancient bronze dagger and the phoenix bone needle, Tiantian was also not there, I could only grit my teeth and walk quickly inside. When I reached the three-forked cave entrance, I put down the snakeskin bag, took out the flashlight and found a small and deep pool of water.

  This water pool is only as big as a pot, and the depth is unknown. The flashlight can't shine to the bottom. I went back to the entrance of the cave and carried the bag over, opened it and threw all the jade carvings and gold bricks into the water pool. After seeing these things sink to the bottom and disappear, I left. Then I hid the banknotes in a hidden stone crevice and hurriedly left the cave, afraid that if I walked any later, I would encounter something terrifying.

  I only brought a bundle of cash out, as the fare to go to Hunan, but this bundle is also an astronomical figure for me, it should be around 10,000 yuan! Last year, I sold fish at Bazhen for almost three months, and every day was a lucrative business with no capital. In three months, I only earned over 1,000 yuan. Until the last few days when it was taken away in that mountain valley, there were still 300 or 400 left, which could have been used for several more months if it hadn't been taken away.

  After leaving the cave and returning home, I took Xiao Jianye away from the village overnight, carrying her on my back to the town, asking for directions and buying a bicycle to rush to Guilin, boarding a bus to Liuzhou after dawn, and then going to Guilin from Liuzhou.

  If I go to Hunan, apart from Bazhou, the closest place would be Guilin. After all, Bazhou is not convenient for transportation, and Guilin is at least famous. In those days, there were no mobile phones, no internet, and ordinary people could only communicate by writing letters. Once you left home, it was like disappearing into thin air, I wasn't worried about being chased after.

  If this money was indeed embezzled by Chen's brother, then even if it went missing he wouldn't dare report it, and could only suffer in silence. If I don't report it, then there won't be any trouble for me, besides, he may not necessarily know that I'm the one who did it.

  Having money in your pocket makes the scenery along the way especially beautiful. When I arrived in Liuzhou in the afternoon, I bought a lot of expensive and delicious things at once, and also bought a lot of snacks. Xiaojianzi probably hasn't seen anything like it before, and was so happy that she danced with joy.

  I had a hundred thousand yuan on me, so I'm basically a millionaire now. I also bought some new clothes and shoes for Xiao Jianzi. When I left home, I only brought a stack of money and that pearl, which I put in my pocket, so I also bought a small leather bag to carry them in. To avoid being robbed, I made the bag look dirty and old. The bag contained Xiao Jianzi's clothes and some food, then we went to the station and boarded the bus to Guilin.

  This bus goes through Liupu Yangshuo and then to Guilin, but I only need to get off at Yangshuo and spend the night there. The next day, take a bus to Yongzhou Daoxian in Hunan.

  After five or six hours of bumping, it was finally over 9 pm when we arrived at Yangshuo. I got off the bus with Xiaojianzi and the bus continued on to Guilin.

  I had tens of thousands of dollars on me and didn't dare to run around randomly, so I found a hotel entrance to stay in. Little Sakaki was also exhausted and fell asleep on the bed without even taking a bath. Being with a child who can't speak is also quite suffocating, no one says anything, but it's also kind of fulfilling.

  After resting for a night, I took the bus to Gongcheng County the next day, then transferred to Jiangyong County in Hunan Province, and finally arrived at Daoxian County from Jiangyong County. In those days when transportation was underdeveloped, it's already a blessing not having to walk, so taking multiple buses wasn't a big deal.

  Finally arrived in Dao County, at least my sister is in this county, although I still don't know exactly where she is. After getting off the bus, it was already after 3 pm, I rented a house in the county for a high price, and after resting for two days, I started going to the countryside to find my sister.

  According to my analysis, if my sister were to attend school, she should be in elementary school grade 6 to junior high school grade 1. After all, people who read books at that time are quite old, and now at the age of 15, they should be in high school, and at most, they would only be in junior high school grade 1.

  I bought a bike and rode it down to the countryside, asking school by school if they had a student named Li Mógu. I went to over ten schools in one day, but I basically couldn't understand their dialects. A few days later, I reluctantly hired an interpreter.

  This translator is called Ye Fei Jiu, a local girl who is 19 years old this year. She is familiar with most of the local dialects and, most importantly, she can also speak Hakka. I hired her for 7 yuan per day, including meals, starting at 9 am. If we don't return by 8 pm, it's an extra 1 yuan per hour. We settle the wages every three days. After hiring Ye Fei Jiu, all I had to do was follow her and she would ask questions wherever we went, then tell me the results. To motivate her, I paid her 100 yuan in advance, which is equivalent to ten days' wages. If it's more than that, she can keep the change; if it's less, I'll make up for it later. I hope she can help me to the best of her ability.

  To save time and improve efficiency, I also bought a second-hand motorcycle, the old Qiangling 50 used by the butcher, which made a "ding ding" sound when it was ignited.

  Although I bought a car and learned to ride it in half a day, it was just starting the fire and twisting the throttle. However, Ye Fei said that I didn't dare to sit on it, saying that my skills were not up to par. Helplessly, I got up early and practiced for more than a week. At that time, I wasn't practicing driving on wide asphalt roads, but instead went down to the village streets and alleys, running everywhere, with all kinds of road conditions. Practicing like this for a week would make it difficult not to get familiar with it.

  Finally, Ye Fei was relieved of my driving skills. A few days later, I took her and Xiao Jianye to the countryside, arriving at a place called Xinche Township.

  When our car drove to a riverbank, we saw dozens of people gathered there. Ye Fei, who loved to join in the excitement, had to go and take a look.

  I had no choice but to stop the car and follow Ye Fei Chou with Xiao Jian Qi to join in the commotion. The crowd on the riverbank was buzzing with discussion, and Ye Fei Chou told me that someone had jumped into the river to commit suicide and hadn't surfaced yet.

  As soon as the sound of Hei Jiao's voice fell, three people suddenly drilled out from the river surface. They drilled out of the water to change their breath and then drilled back into the bottom of the water, repeating this for over ten minutes before finally coming ashore. The three people who went into the water were all young men between twenty and thirty years old. One of them came ashore holding his head in pain, possibly a family member of the drowning victim!

  The drowned person couldn't be found, the onlookers by the riverbank all showed worry and disappointment. At this moment, if Tongtong was here, I could have helped out.

  Ye Fei quietly asked the people on the riverbank and told me that the ones who jumped into the river were a grandmother and grandson. It's said they had a fight between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, then for some unknown reason, the grandmother brought her 5-year-old granddaughter to play by the river, pushed her into the water with one hand, and then jumped in herself.

  After the grandfather and grandson fell into the water, a child herding cows by the river saw them immediately ran back to the village to tell the adults. The river water was flowing slowly, but after the people who were called came down to the river, they couldn't find the people who had fallen in no matter what.

  Those three divers rested on the shore for a few minutes and then swam to the middle of the river again, diving down to search. At this time, Ye Fei told me that their village chief had arrived.

  A man in his 40s came to the riverbank, asking someone to ride a bike to inform the police station, and also asked a young man about my age to go back to the village to call San Shu Gong to take a look.

  Less than twenty minutes later, I saw a few people gathering around an old man with a flower-patterned jacket coming to the riverbank. This must be the Third Uncle that the village chief mentioned! However, what shocked me was that this Third Uncle was actually blind. What's the point of looking then? He definitely won't find anything.