Loving money is human nature and goes deep into the bone marrow. It is a gene engraved in the soul.
The piles of cash gave these villagers a great stimulus, and they turned around to look for them. Xiao Qin's grandfather seemed to want to stop him, but in the end he could only shut up.
"Why don't you hurry up and look for me?" Hu Qiu pretended to urge.
I nodded quickly, and as soon as I took a step forward, Xiao Qin's grandfather pulled me back.
"Xiao Zhang, just let them find it. You can rest here for a while!"
My heart tightened. Did the old man discover something?
But I underestimated Hu Qiu's wisdom. She had obviously been prepared for it. As soon as Xiao Qin's grandfather opened his mouth, she took out a full 20,000 yuan in cash from her bag and stuffed it into Xiao Qin's grandfather's hand.
Xiao Qin's grandfather was suddenly stunned and looked straight at the 20,000 yuan in cash in his hand. He had obviously never seen so much money.
"Village chief, thank you for your hard work. If anyone finds the beads later, please give me some money and you can keep the rest for buying groceries!" Hu Qiu said.
When the old man heard this, his eyes suddenly lit up. A string of beads obviously didn't cost so much money, which gave him a hint of greed in his eyes.
"This is not good!" he said.
"This is very good, village chief, so thank you for the hard work!"
Hu Qiu didn't give him a chance to pester me. He pretended to be angry and dragged me around, turning around and running away while uttering reproachful words.
Xiao Qin's grandfather seemed to be still hesitating, when another villager shouted loudly.
"I found one!"
He raised his hands excitedly, ran over here quickly, stopped in front of us excitedly, and handed the beads over as if offering a treasure.
Hu Qiu quickly took it over.
"Uncle, thank you. You can go and get the money from the village chief. We'll find it later!" Hu Qiu said.
When the villager saw Grandpa Xiao Qin holding 20,000 yuan, he ran over excitedly.
Hu Qiu and I quickly sped up and left. With the cover of the terrain and vegetation, we soon disappeared from everyone's sight.
Soon we returned to where we were before. Just when we were about to pick up the compass, we suddenly felt a bad feeling, as if there were a pair of eyes staring at us.
I frowned immediately, and after thinking about it, for the sake of safety, I used a blindfold on the spot, and then I felt better.
Not daring to delay, I crawled to the rock on my hands and knees, reached out and picked up the star compass on the ground.
Fortunately, the compass was not damaged!
I looked down at the compass in my hand and found that the needle on it was still pointing north.
"Have you discovered anything?" Hu Qiu asked.
I looked at the compass and shook my head gently.
"The compass is here, which means Hou Bao'er and the others must have passed by here. Let's look for it and see if there are any clues!" Hu Qiu said.
I nodded and began to search carefully nearby. The first thing I paid attention to was the ground, but after looking for a long time, I found nothing except some wild boar footprints.
Could it be that it was really a wild boar that attacked Hou Baoer and the others?
But this obviously doesn't make sense. Hou Baoer said on the phone that something was chasing them, but he didn't know what it was. Even if they had never seen anything before, it was impossible that they didn't recognize wild boars!
Just when I was looking down and confused, Hu Qiu suddenly called me not far away.
"Jiuyang, come here quickly, there's a situation here!"
I looked up and found that Hu Qiu had climbed onto a big rock on the mountain at some point. I quickly followed him.
This is a natural boulder, the size of a room, standing there like a cliff. Hu Qiu is looking down at it with his head lowered.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Hu Qiu pointed to the river below and said, "I thought it flowed eastward, but I didn't expect it to turn here. Look!"
Indeed, the river was blocked from view by a steep terrain below. I thought the river flowed from east to west, but unexpectedly from here, I could see that the river had bypassed the steep place and flowed to the north.
The human feeling is like a circle.
However, even if we stand here, we can only see a few tens of meters in length, and it is blocked by mountain peaks further north, but we can basically determine that this river is a circle, and it seems to be just around this
village.
"I think this river is a bit strange!" Hu Qiu said.
"What's wrong?"
"First, Xiao Qin's grandfather took us here and stopped leaving. He also made up stories about there being locusts in the water, so that we would not dare to cross the river."
"Second, when you asked the villager where the river leads to, Xiao Qin's grandfather obviously interrupted you on purpose. He seemed to be hiding something!"
I nodded in agreement, this was indeed strange, "But why would he do this?"
"It's very simple, he doesn't want us to cross the river, or he doesn't want us to notice the river," Hu Qiu said.
"Why aren't we allowed to cross the river? Is there really something wrong with this river?" I looked down at the river at my feet. No matter how I looked at it, it was just an ordinary little river.
Hu Qiu thought for a moment and suddenly said: "Do you remember what I told you about the big wooden barrel before?"
"Remember, what happened?"
"That was one of the most profound impressions I had when I was a child when I read reports about Changshou Village. Those wooden barrels were large and sealed. I remember them floating on the river at that time. I was very curious about what was in them."
"In addition to water, what else can the barrel hold?" I said.
Hu Qiu shook his head, "It's not like that. The barrel in my memory is very light, and more than half of it floats on the water. If it were filled with water, it would not be able to float so much!"
I nodded, Hu Qiu's analysis made sense.
"How about we go up the mountain and take a look. We should be able to see the whole thing from the top of the mountain!" I suggested.
"There's no time, someone is coming!"
I turned around and saw someone hurriedly running towards me.
"Let's go, don't be discovered, these people are too weird!"
Hu Qiu grabbed my hand and pulled me down. After squatting down, he grabbed the few beads he had just hidden in his pocket.
Then, Hu Qiu started to pretend to be arguing with me again, and I could only lower my head and look aggrieved.
Soon, the villager ran over, with a wary look on his face, but when he saw us hiding in the vegetable field arguing, he was obviously relieved.
"Have you found it?" he asked.
"I just found a few!" I spread out my palms and pretended to have a sad face.
"What about you, have you found it?"
"Found it, found them all! Don't worry, the village chief asked us to go back first, it's time to have lunch later!" said the villager.
I sneered in my heart. They didn't know the number of beads, so they said they had found them all. This was obviously lying.
Hu Qiu and I looked at each other. Although we knew he was lying, we could only pretend to be happy and follow the villagers back.
This man walked very quickly and returned to the village chief before us. He reported the situation in a low voice.
When the village chief saw us coming back, he immediately came up to us with a smile, reached out and handed us a few beads, said that we had found everything, and invited us back to the village for dinner.
I counted and there were six.
I didn't pay much attention to this. After expressing my gratitude, we walked together to the village.
But as I walked, I noticed that Hu Qiu's face looked a little ugly.
"What's wrong?" I asked in a low voice.
Hu Qiu glanced at me and handed the string of Buddhist beads in front of me.
Before I could figure out what it meant, Hu Qiu said solemnly:
"There are thirteen beads in total, no more than one!"
“Not a lot?!”
I was stunned for a moment, and then my face changed drastically when I realized what was going on.