Li Cheng wrapped herself in her padded sweatshirt and fell asleep on the root of the tree next to the tree hole.

She slept too deeply, almost consciously, until the dawn on the horizon pierced the sky and the sun shone across her eyelids.

"Ji Yingduo?" Li Cheng seems to have called Ji Yingduo's name for the first time since he was in kindergarten.

Ji Yingduo held the forked gap of the tree roots with his hands, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, as if the low temperature in the morning in the forest did not affect his mood at all: "Yes." “

Li Cheng fell asleep for 2 hours in a completely dreamless state, during which it seemed that a thousand years had passed, so the first thing he did when he opened his eyes and saw Ji Yingduo was to confirm whether she was still alive: "I have never seen you so dirty, covered in dirt all over your body. ”

Ji Yingduo was looking at herself, as if she was calling for her to help, but she couldn't say a word when she was tired.

His sparkling eyes were so bright that people couldn't take their eyes off them.

"Okay. Let me try the last of my powers. ”

The two cut through the layer of soil near the trunk of the third vertical taproot below the spruce.

Here the roots of the tree are marked by a nylon red rope, which is not solid downwards, and the soil layer is obviously a little loose, and there is indeed a circular tree hole.

If it weren't for Wang Yuchen's nylon rope hanging on the root system of the spruce's third longitudinal main fork, Ji Yingduo would not have been so determined to keep digging.

In front of the solid earth and the roots of the pine trees hugging the hollows of the trees, it took even the most skilled workers five days to work with the sharpest shovels and hammers.

And Ji Yingduo, the eldest young master who has never done any hard work since he was a child, actually dug more than 30 meters deep with hand tools without hurting the taproot of the spruce tree.

The gloves were covered in mud, and the fingers were covered with blood.

After working for 38 hours in a row, Ji Yingduo has forgotten what it feels like to be tired, and he doesn't even realize the blood blisters on his hands worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Looking at the large square plastic box in the hollow of the tree, which was tightly fastened with perchloroethylene, he was completely shocked.

The huge plastic gift box also has a cute plastic bow tied with gold ribbon nylon rope, hidden in the hollow of the tree for hundreds of years, and there is not a trace of dust, as if it is still the same as when it was sealed.

Ji Yingduo strained against the nylon rope, thinking that the things in the tree hole could be picked up casually.

But he tried to pull it in the direction of the ribbon, but he did not move, and he fell into the soft mound.

Li Cheng watched Ji Yingduo try his best to pull out the box, so he hurriedly got up from the top of the pit, threw down the basket for unloading soil at the top of the pit, and quickly slid into the bottom of the pit along the zipline on the slope.

"Pluck the carrot...... Pull the turnips! Li Cheng shouted the last pluck of the radish, and the two of them worked together to lean over with their weight to pull out, and then pulled out the treasure box containing the secrets of time and space that was embedded diagonally in the tree hole.

It landed right on top of the soft dirt that had just been lifted.

"Ahh ”

Ji Yingduo wiped a handful of sweat, he was so tired that he even lost his sense of smell.

Without saying much about the others, the shovel in his hand smashed on the gift box, and the outer packaging was instantly torn apart, and the gold jewelry box hidden inside appeared in Li Cheng's field of vision.

"A jewelry box made of pure gold! This box has 10 kg? This treasure is hidden deep enough. Who came up with the idea to bury it in the hollow of the tree at the root of the tree? I promise not to kill him! Li Cheng's tired teeth were chattering.

There is no reason why this golden box can be embedded so deep in the hole at the base of the tree, when Ingdort Ji buried it on Christmas Eve? The box was only inside a shallow layer of soil at a depth of 2 meters.

Time flies? As the years passed, the hollows of the spruce trees kept growing deeper into the soil.

This box extends more than 30 meters underground along with the roots of the tree? The whole gift box is also tightly embedded in the hollow of the tree.

Ji Yingduo and Li Cheng's walkie-talkie has been connected? At this time, the walkie-talkie also ran out of power and no longer made a sizzling noise.

The world is so quiet and quiet, so quiet that you can hear the sound of pine needles falling to the ground.

Ji Yingduo is already not interested in what is in the box? Nor in a hurry to open it, but leaned up on the slope of the pit and closed his eyes.

Li Cheng looked at this small spruce growing on the slope? I can't describe my feelings: "You sleep, right?" Wait until I regain a little strength to see for myself what's inside. “

This particular spruce tree, in fact, is not the most conspicuous height in this forest, and even the height is very ordinary, only less than 10 meters? You can't imagine it at all? A spruce that has been growing for nearly 10,000 years, and that's all it is.

Compared to the 100-meter-tall giant sequoia tree that grows in 3,000 years in the United States, it is simply a small height, otherwise Li Cheng would not be afraid that this tree will fall because of their excavation.

But is it this tree? A tree that looks only 400 years old from the crown to the trunk is called "The elder Spruce" by botanists? It deserves its own name.

Its roots, dating from any time they were discovered, are more than 10,000 years old? If it weren't for its youthful appearance in the cycle of time and space, it would have been easy to be overlooked in the spruce forest.

But this old spruce? If you didn't enter the folded space-time? Born in smooth, linear time? Then it should have been born at the end of the Ice Age.

Now, it was the only plant before humans entered the overlapping plane, and it has never been "rejuvenated".

Ji Yingduo opened his eyes after falling asleep for a long time, the noon sun sparsely hit his eyes through the canopy, and the light was not very strong: "What time is it?" Sasha, you take the carbon 14 pen. ”

"I tested it while you were asleep.

The 30-meter-deep soil layer and the carbonization of the rhizome are about 14,000 years ago.

In other words, 900 years have passed since the last time this box was buried. Li Cheng couldn't believe that the world could be so magical, and a marriage proposal token could be buried here for 9 centuries.

Spruce has the conditions for vegetative reproduction, and in the cold zone, it grows very slowly every year. The proportion of roots to the crown is completely different, and the spruce root system is very developed, and the root system grows at least 30 times more than the canopy.

The reason why it can live so long is that all the plant cells of the tree can clone themselves without damage and do not have to flower and bear fruit, so in the primeval forest that is inaccessible, there are few deep forest fires, and it is cold and dry almost all year round, this spruce can exist quietly for tens of thousands of years.

Ji Yingduo lay back with relief, and muttered in his mouth: "What is in the golden treasure box, do you know now?" ”