(October 18) countdown to the 73rd day

How can it be?

There is an oil painting carved on the stone table, which is Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"!

Since cracking the code left by her sister and tracing it to Shuimu Town, Yao Xiaoyi has seen this oil painting several times in the hall of the wooden building and in the secret passage of the back mountain, and has carefully studied the various subtleties of this oil painting countless times, she can conclude that this oil painting and the wooden building and the secret passage are all from the same person, and this person is the son of the old man Tang Ji, the person who shouted unjustly and died in that accident after returning from studying oil painting.

It's just that how could this oil painting by the same person appear in Qingfeng Village, which is dozens of kilometers away from the waterway? Could it be that the owner of this Qingfeng Village is the son of the old man Tang Ji? Isn't he dead? I don't know why I hid in this place? Old man Tang Ji just played a joke on himself?

But when I think about it, it's not right, the wife and son of the old man Tang Ji are lying in the sarcophagus, Yao Xiaoyi saw it with his own eyes; There is no need for the old man Tang Ji to make up lies to deceive himself, you must know that when the old man left a suicide note, even he didn't know who the person who could crack the wooden building mechanism would be.

Yao Xiaoyi was stunned for a while, came back to her senses, and did not hesitate to use both hands, and her left and right fingers touched the eyes of the person in the painting at the same time, and pressed it gently.

Click!

The expected sound of metal components colliding sounded, and immediately, a crack about half a meter long slowly appeared in the middle of the room.

The gap widened wider and wider, until a square hole appeared, and the mechanism stopped with another click.

When I looked into it, there was a wooden ladder standing under the entrance of the cave.

Yao Xiaoyi carefully drilled into the hole, went down the stairs to the bottom, and when she looked at it, she was shocked again.

On a wooden chair, leaning on a concrete corpse! The muscles of the dried corpse are still there!

The dry corpse's facial muscles were shriveled, his eyes were hollow, and the white hair on the top of his head and the gray beard on his chin were still attached to the dry muscles. Obviously, this is an old man, and his identity as the son of the old man Tang Ji does not match.

The clothes on the dried corpse were not yet rotten, but as the corpse's muscles atrophied, they appeared empty. There was clearly a hole in the corpse's chest, and the left arm and sleeve were missing, and the break was relatively flat.

Yao Xiaoyi deduced from this that in the final fight that took place in the upstairs hall, the deceased was wounded in the chest and had his left arm cut off. He must have activated the mechanism from the study, escaped to this ground-level secret room, and finally died in a chair. The mechanism can be activated and the secret room can be entered, and it is obvious that the deceased is the owner of the house.

Yao Xiaoyi took a look at the basement of less than 10 square meters, the four walls and the ground are all hard rocks, which should be carved out of the whole rock from the position of the study above, and the amount of work and construction difficulty are huge. The basement was closed and dry, which was supposed to be the reason why the corpses were kept intact.

In front of the chair where the corpse sat was a wooden table. On the table, a pen without a cap pressed a note.

Yao Xiaoyi forcibly suppressed her fear, hurriedly leaned over, and just wanted to pick up the note, but realized that something was wrong. She gently dragged the table so that she didn't have to lean against the corpse to read the handwriting on the note.

The handwriting written with a fountain pen is very messy and scribbled, and it is easy to think that the deceased wrote it with the last of his strength when he was dying—

You're finally here. I think you are the only one in this world who can find this place and enter this secret room.

Born in troubled times, I thought that retreating to this unknown paradise would keep me from disaster. But I was wrong, a group of revolutionary-life-small-generals still found here, armed with machetes and shotguns, and broke into Qingfeng Village, led by a subordinate called Brother Jun. Pity my cottage dozens of people, old and young, all of them were slaughtered. I was also seriously wounded, and I was so discouraged that I would not be sorry to die.

I also have a premonition of today's calamity. That day, when I saw the mountain behind Shuimu Town, I was quite fond of fate, I wanted to talk very happily, I wanted you to introduce Chinese medicine, be kind-hearted, do good deeds, and leave a riddle for you, and I hope you can break through the clues and find here.

There are a number of treasures left in the secret room, which are not ill-gotten gains, and they are specially given to you as a thank you for the exquisite mechanism you have gifted. It's just that I didn't expect that the secret room under this organ would become my last burial place.

I'm dying......

The last four words are written even more crookedly, and the last stroke of the word "矣" marks a long mark on the note, showing that the deceased has spent the last trace of strength, and his hand has slipped, and he can no longer control the tip of the pen.

After reading the content of the note, Yao Xiaoyi sighed, and at the same time knew that the deceased in front of him was the white-haired old man Tang Ji who met by chance in the back mountain, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Shuimu Town, and he knew the art of organs, and it was none other than the old man Tang Ji.

In addition, the time when Qingfeng Village encountered an accident should be during the Cultural Revolution, but earlier than before the Tang Ji old man's family of three encountered a flying disaster. Otherwise, the old man Tang Ji would not have left the words "I went south several times to find it to no avail" in his suicide note. It's just that how could this white-haired wise man have thought that the old Chinese medicine doctor he was looking forward to when he was dying also shouted that he had committed suicide, and he would never have the opportunity to come here and have a long talk with him. And by chance, Yao Xiaoyi became the first person to break into Qingfeng Village by mistake more than 40 years later.

Looking at this secret room again, I found an iron box in a corner. There was a brass lock hanging from the box, but it was not locked. This must be the treasure left by the white-haired old man to the old man Tang Ji, and it is also the treasure that the old man Tang Ji asked Yao Xiaoyi to find.

When she opened the lid, even if she was mentally prepared, Yao Xiaoyi was also taken aback, and a box full of gold bars, jade, pearls, agate and other treasures was stuffed. Yao Xiaoyi wasn't sure how much these treasures were worth, and she wasn't as surprised as she imagined.

She remembered what the old man Tang Ji said to her in his suicide note, "In the opinion of the old body, the wealth is not guilty, and the good is for the benefit, which is a great good, if the benefactor can find the treasure with this map, the old body will also be relieved." In this case, she plans to put away this wealth and spend it in a suitable way and in a suitable place before rushing to the death agreement with her sister.

As for the place where the treasure is stored right now, the safest place is, of course, this secret room, and it is not too late to come and retrieve it after he completes his mission in the future. She also thought that the next time she came, she would have to find a place to let the old man settle down.

She closed the box, went up the wooden ladder to the study, pressed the eye in the painting on the stone desk, and the mechanism activated again, and the hole was sealed. She did a little to cover up the traces left on the ground after opening the mechanism, and then exited the room through the hall.

It was getting late, and she planned to spend another night in Qingfeng Village. There was only one bag of dry food left in the backpack, and I was thinking about finding something to eat at dawn.