Affected by this incident, the boatman and the middle-aged scholar who were entangled in the bow of the boat subconsciously untied themselves and lay down on the deck to prevent being thrown directly into the water.
This is the survival instinct at work.
Mei Wenxin shouted loudly, but in the end she couldn't make a sound.
He immediately saw the middle-aged scholar who was coughing violently with his hand on his throat. He took out a sharp dagger from somewhere, fit it and threw it, knocking down the boatman.
The dagger must have penetrated.
Mei Wenxin immediately saw the tail of the passenger boat raised high, and then the whole boat was sucked into the turbulence.
After a few more breaths, the vortex formed by the turbulent flow swallowed up a large number of broken wood chips, the largest of which was no bigger than a washbasin.
Now that the passenger boat is destroyed, where are the people?
Mei Wenxin didn't see anyone emerging at the first moment. He only saw large swaths of bright red blood, which dyed the vortex blood red, and then quickly smudged out, turning into a faint pink, and finally couldn't be seen.
After a while, Mei Wenxin saw the middle-aged scholar, full of momentum, struggling to emerge from the water with a book box in his arms, dragging the weeping willow hanging down into the water, and climbed to the shore.
He finally made it to the shore and untied his bookcase from a weeping willow tree. He seemed to want to lean against the tree to rest and catch his breath.
As a result, as soon as he finished the previous action, he covered his heart, fell to the ground, and even pushed down the book box.
The lid of the bookbox was opened, and gold cakes worth at least twenty or thirty dollars rolled out, shining brightly under the moonlight, emitting golden light.
Mei Wenxin was stunned.
Right.
Everything is right.
Just like the picture shown in the bronze mirror.
It's just completely different from what Mei Wenxin thought.
Instead of picking up money, I was clearly witnessing a murder.
Fortunately, Mei Wenxin made some guesses when drawing and analyzing.
After all, how could there be gold lying on the roadside all day without anyone taking it, so that he could run out and pick it up at night?
Not to mention gold, even a bunch of copper coins are enough.
Before Mei Wenxin came back, he guessed that he would see how gold appeared.
Then, he was extremely lucky that he arrived early and saw a layer of blood faintly stained on the gold.
Mei Wenxin's mind was full of distracting thoughts, but the virtue he had cultivated through a lifetime of reading sages' books still made him unable to wait and see and hide, and ran towards the middle-aged scholar in large strides.
After checking under the willow tree, Mei Wenxin shook his head helplessly.
The middle-aged scholar died long ago.
Before he died, he was still glaring and reaching for the book box, as if he was reluctant to part with his gold.
Thinking of gold, Mei Wenxin gathered it together and counted. The total was twenty-eight pieces of red gold that were beaten into the shape of gold cakes and glowed faintly with red light.
This gold is enough for Mei Wenxin's old wife to treat her illness, enough to give her daughter a dowry, and she can marry in glory.
However, this gold carries two human lives.
Mei Wenxin couldn't help but think that this dead middle-aged scholar was most likely not a real scholar, because Mei Wenxin didn't see a pen, a piece of ink, or a book in the book box.
A scholar can't live a day without these things when he is away from home.
There is only gold in the book box.
Mei Wenxin suspected that the middle-aged scholar was a businessman who had made a fortune somewhere, so he hurried back home and hired a foreign passenger boat and boatman overnight.
He was afraid that carrying so much gold would be too conspicuous, so he dressed up like a scholar and carried a book box on his back in a reasonable way, so that he could hide the gold well.
It's just that Xing Shang didn't expect that he was careful and cautious, but he still stumbled and hired something like a water thief...