Volume 1 Chapter 29: The Purple Box

I was confused and didn’t know what was going on outside. I wanted to ask my uncle, but I found him dozing on the stool next to me, sleeping even more soundly than I was. I ran outside the clinic and saw people from the village pulling carts and mules, all rushing into the mountains. A mountain boy was running and shouting, “No good, no good, there’s a forest fire on the mountain.”

I was I was shocked and thought to myself, “Did we just set the forest on fire? When I think back to when we were burning the cave, we didn’t really do anything to prevent it from spreading. If the fire spreads and burns the forest, that would be really bad.

I was a little panicked. If the mountain fire spreads, it’s not just a matter of one or two people dying. We city people don’t have any awareness of forest fire prevention, and now we’ve caused a big disaster.

I ran I ran in and hurriedly woke up Uncle San. The two of us moved two urinals from the hospital. We couldn’t find anything else, so we made do with what we had. We followed the main group and ran into the mountains. At this time, Fatso came running over on a donkey cart, holding a basin in his hand and yelling, “We’re in trouble! Come on up! Hurry and put out the fire!” We all jumped on together, and the donkey cart staggered out of the village. We saw a large area of black smoke on the distant mountains, and it looked like it was burning very badly. Uncle San was dumbfounded and whispered, “Look at the direction, it really was the fire we set.”

I quickly covered his mouth. A village cadre-like figure was running back, yelling, “Call the army! The mountain in front has collapsed!”

I I knew that the cave might have collapsed due to the fire. I was worried that if the corpses came rushing out of the cave, it would be a problem. We quickly ran to the mound of earth and rocks that had been washed away by the mudslide. The fat man was really ruthless, beating the donkey until its buttocks were swollen.

The villagers The villagers had all experienced training in forest fire prevention. Some of them were clearing a path through the forest, while others were using basins to carry water to the fire. I looked at the basins and pots, and realized that it would take at least two hours to get water to the fire. It was simply too far away to quench the fire. I hurriedly called out, “Don’t bother to carry water, folks. This water can’t put out the fire. Don’t make unnecessary sacrifices. Just wait for the troops to arrive!”

Those people looked at me like I was crazy. One older man said, “Young man, this water is for drinking. If there is no water to drink in the fire, you will soon die of thirst. We need to cut a firebreak on the edge, so that when the fire reaches there and there is nothing left to burn, it will extinguish itself. If you don’t understand, don’t meddle here.” He looked at the toilet in our hands and shook his head.

I was They looked at me and my face turned red. I thought to myself, “I’ve lost face. I’ll never dare to speak out of turn again.” I quickly lowered my head and followed the rest of the group into the woods. The trees on the road had all been cut down, so it was much faster to walk. After about an hour, we could already feel the temperature rising. The sky was filled with black smoke.

The villagers took out their masks, dipped them in the water, and put them on their faces. I looked at the fat guy, who already had very little fabric on his clothes, and saw that he seemed to have made up his mind. He took out the gold-embroidered silk and dipped it in the water, tied it to his face, picked up a shovel, and learned from the villagers how to dig fire ditches.

Wildfires They spread very quickly and are extremely dangerous. Large-scale forest fires must be controlled by aircraft. The so-called control is to let it burn itself out. It is impossible to put out a forest fire like a city fire. It takes twenty years for this tree to grow into timber, but a forest fire can burn it all in ten minutes, which is extremely destructive. Moreover The area of a wildfire is very large. If you only put out the fire at one point, it will soon go around to the back of you from the edge you can’t see. By the time you realize it, you’ll already be in the middle of the fire zone, and you’ll only be waiting to die.

I remember an American movie about a group of firefighters who were surrounded by fire and had nowhere to turn for help, and the story of their last moments of life. Of course, this kind of situation is definitely impossible for us. The area of the fire is not very large now, and the firebreaks are being dug very quickly.

We We worked there until after 2:00 p.m. Then a forest ranger helicopter appeared in the sky, and soon many troops gathered in the woods to replace us. I was especially worried that someone would die because of the fire. Fortunately, when we finally counted the number of people, only a few people were slightly injured.

We returned to the village, almost in shock. I was so hungry that I asked a child to get me two biscuits. I ate one bite at a time, and it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. Tears came down my face. The village the village party secretary praised us, saying that it was rare for people from the city to have such a high level of consciousness.

I thought to myself, don’t praise us, I’ll feel bad if you do. You have to know that I’m the arsonist, you have to strangle me.

The nurse The nurse changed Pan Zi’s bandages and washed his wounds. His breathing had slowed down significantly, but he was still unconscious. The doctor said to me, “Don’t worry, he’s not in danger yet. If there are any more injured people, we’ll take Pan Zi to the big city hospital together.” I felt a little relieved.

My Uncle San and I returned to the guesthouse and took a good shower. I didn’t know until I took off all my clothes that almost every part of my body was bruised or broken. I didn’t feel it when I was running for my life, but now they were all reminding me. When I came out of the bathroom, I could hardly move my legs.

I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately. I slept until noon the next day. When I got up, I saw Fat Man and Uncle San lying in their beds, snoring like thunder.

I went went down to have breakfast and asked the waiter. The fire had already gone out. It was only a small fire on this scale, and the army had already withdrawn. I felt a little more at ease after hearing this, and asked the people at the clinic. Pan Zi had already been taken to Qianfoshan Hospital in Jinan. I thanked them and felt that I could not stay in this place for long, so I was ready to go back.

I won’t talk about I won’t go into too much detail, but a few days later we returned to Jinan. My third uncle and I went to the hospital where Pan Zi was being treated to check in. He was still in a coma and was not out of danger yet, so my third uncle and I decided to stay here for a few days. As soon as the fat guy left the mountain, he hurriedly parted ways with us, leaving only a phone number to contact later. He gave the gold-embroidered silk book to my uncle to deal with. That day, I called the hospital. Pan Zi had not yet woken up. I sighed involuntarily. At this time, my uncle walked in with a gloomy face and said, “I’m so angry. I was actually set up!”

I was I was surprised and thought he had been cheated in the antique market. I said, “Uncle San, if you were cheated despite your qualifications, it means that the imitation is very good. You can definitely sell it again.”

Uncle San took out the silk with gold thread and said to me, “Sell it? What the hell! I’m not talking about the antique, I’m talking about this thing!”

I almost fell off the bed and yelled, “What! That’s impossible!”

Uncle San said, “It’s true. The gold content in this thing is so high that I sent it for testing. It’s impossible to refine it in that era. This is a nearly perfect fake!”

I couldn’t believe it. Uncle San sighed, “I’ve been suspicious for a long time. That young man could have defeated the blood corpse, but why did he keep running away at first and only killed the blood corpse at the end? He must have wanted to get rid of us and do something on his own.”

I was shocked I was shocked. “Could it be that during the time he was separated from us, he had already gone to the cave, opened the coffin of King Lu Shang, and put this fake gold-embroidered silk in? How could this be possible? How could one person do this? And the tree hole was torn open by those chains. If it had been opened, we would definitely have seen traces.”

Uncle San said, “Have you ever seen the back of the coffin? He was a grave robber. He probably dug a hole behind the tree and removed the gold-embroidered silk from the back of the coffin!” He sighed, “I’ve been in the field for more than ten years, but I still didn’t see it. This person is really unfathomable. I originally thought he was just a descendant of the Fengqiu Zhonglang, but it seems that his background is probably much more complicated than that.”

I don’t very much do not understand, said: “Is it that the things recorded above are all false?”

Uncle San nodded and said, “These Shan Hai Jing-like stories don’t sound very believable in the first place, but at the time we were infected by the mysterious atmosphere of that ancient tomb and actually believed it. Now that I think about it, there are too many flaws, and if you think about it, at your level, why can you only understand the two most important paragraphs? You don’t understand the others very well, which means that he made a special effort with these two paragraphs.”

I opened opened my mouth wide, and Uncle San sighed heavily: “It seems that only he knows the secret of the Lu Palace. Now that the tomb has collapsed, it is impossible to go in again.”

At this time, I had a flash of inspiration and said, “That’s right, that’s right, I almost forgot, it’s not completely hopeless. I brought something out of the hole!” He said, and went to frantically rummage through my backpack, praying that I hadn’t lost it. Fortunately, the purple box was still there, so I took it out and said, “This is it. I took it off the fox corpse.”

Uncle San looked at it and said, “This is a maze box. The main space inside is used to hold the lock. It can’t hold much. This box is very difficult to open. Look.” He unscrewed the top of the box, and the four corners of the bottom of the box unfolded together, revealing a turntable with eight holes on it. Each hole had a number on it, much like the dial of an old-fashioned telephone. “This is the oldest type of combination lock. You need to know the combination to open it. Wait a minute. Go to the garage and borrow a blowtorch. Cut it open and take a look.”

Uncle San ran out in a hurry. I didn’t even have time to call him. I thought to myself, could the eight-digit code be 02200059? How could that be? This number was printed on an American’s belt buckle. I tried dialing it, 0-2-2-0-0-0-5-9, and it clicked. I was stunned. The box made a sound like a clockwork, and the lid automatically flipped up.