Cypress Boat Floating

When the two hurried back to the cabin, they found that there was no one in it. Lu Ci Qiu was missing!

Ye Jianqing and Zhang Quansheng stood at the door of the hut and looked at each other. The hut was not big and the end could be seen at a glance, so there was no possibility that Lu Ci Qiu was hiding. Moreover, even Liu Hanyun and Master Liu were missing, and the whole hut was empty.

Ye Jianqing suddenly felt scared, afraid that Lu Ci Qiu was taken away and killed, after all, there were so many people who wanted to kill him. Zhang Quansheng was also scared, because before he left, Lu Zhixing repeatedly told him to take care of and protect Lu Ci Qiu. Now that Lu Ci Qiu was missing, how could he go back to report?

Just as the two were about to go look for it separately, Lu Ci Qiu walked out of the secret room, followed by Liu Hanyun and Master Liu.

"You're back." Lu Ci Qiu was a little surprised to see the two of them standing at the door of the cabin when he came out. He had only been in the secret room for a while, so how come they came back so soon?

"Where have you been?" Ye Jianqing saw that Lu Ci Qiu was fine, and the heart that had been beating in his throat finally settled down. But when he saw that he was fine, with those two people following him and looking as if nothing had happened, he felt a little angry again, and he couldn't help but have a bit of resentment in his tone when he spoke.

Seeing Ye Jianqing angry, Lu Ciqiu didn't know what he had done wrong, so he pointed at the secret passage and said innocently, "I just want to go in and take a look."

"Didn't we agree that you would wait for us to get firewood and go in together? Why did you suddenly go in on your own initiative?" Ye Jianqing asked.

"Then I thought we couldn't waste time here."

"What's the matter with you just sitting here? What will we do if you disappear?"

"Instead of waiting here, why not look around more? Besides, this little house is so small. Where can I go? Who dares to catch me? If I shout, you will hear me."

Seeing that the two people were about to quarrel, Zhang Quansheng quickly stepped in between to stop them.

"Okay, okay, don't be angry, Xiaoqing. Your Highness didn't mean it, and you are so bold to speak to Your Highness in that tone."

"Your Highness, Sister Xiaoqing is just worried about you. Master Liu has been saying that there are wild monsters killing people on this mountain. Sister Xiaoqing came back and couldn't see you, so she is worried about you. Don't take it personally."

Lu Ci Qiu glanced at him sideways and said unhappily, "Who do you call Xiao Qing? Who are you to her? Besides, she can talk to me however she wants. Why do you care so much?"

Zhang Quansheng was speechless and touched his nose awkwardly: How did this involve me? I was just trying to stop a fight.

Ye Jianqing originally wanted to say something, but suddenly glanced at Liu Hanyun and Master Liu and shut up silently. Now that there were other people around her, she didn't want to say too much. It would be bad if they knew too much later.

Seeing that the two had stopped arguing, Zhang Quansheng breathed a sigh of relief. At least they had been persuaded to stop. It didn't matter if he was scolded, as long as he stopped arguing. He was afraid that Ye Jianqing might let something slip while arguing, and what would he do if he was exposed?

"Where's the firewood?" Lu Ci Qiu asked Zhang Quansheng unhappily.

"Here." Zhang Quansheng awkwardly raised the only piece of firewood in his hand. Just now, because they were in a hurry to come back to find Lu Ci Qiu, they didn't look carefully, it just happened that he had a piece of firewood in his hand.

Lu Ci Qiu looked at him, his eyes revealing an indescribable meaning. Zhang Quansheng always felt that Lu Ci Qiu was hostile to him, and now he was even more disgusted with him.

"How about I go out and look for it again?"

"Just one." Lu Ci Qiu didn't force it and accepted it reluctantly.

So Zhang Quansheng used the only match in his hand to make a torch.

Several people walked into the secret passage again.

But this time Zhang Quansheng made adjustments to the team.

Liu Hanyun and Master Liu led the way, followed by Ye Jianqing. Lu Ci Qiu was sandwiched between Ye Jianqing and Zhang Quansheng, and Zhang Quansheng was the last one to leave.

In this way, the two of them can ensure that Lu Ci Qiu is always within their sight, and at the same time, they can also ensure that no one within their range can harm Lu Ci Qiu.

With the presence of torches, the secret passage does not seem so dark, and it is not too scary to walk in it. Moreover, there is an oil lamp hanging on the wall of the secret passage from time to time, so the whole way is bright.

"Ah..." Suddenly, Master Liu, who was walking in the front, screamed and fell to the ground.

"What's wrong?" Several people behind him asked hurriedly.

Master Liu pointed at the ground in front of him, stammering without being able to finish a sentence: "Bones...bones...there are bones in front!!!"

After hearing what Master Liu said, Zhang Quansheng and Ye Jianqing looked at each other. They both already knew about this matter, so they were not that surprised.

On the other hand, after Lu Ci Qiu heard about the corpse, he quickly pushed away the two people in front of him and walked forward to observe carefully.

"These are human bones. It seems that a murder has occurred here." Lu Ci Qiu said, frowning as he looked at the bones on the ground.

Zhang Quansheng walked up and squatted beside Lu Ci Qiu, studying the bones together.

The body had completely decomposed and turned into a pile of bones. The body was in a prone position. A dagger had penetrated from the back of the body and was stuck in the chest. The left hand bone of the body had cracked marks, which meant that the left hand had blocked something before death. The right knee bone had fracture marks, which meant that someone had hit the knee with a heavy object before death. According to the condition of the body, this person must have had a fight with someone before death, but was defeated and was stabbed to death from behind. There was no sign of a fight at the scene. This should be the place where the body was dumped, not the first scene.

Zhang Quansheng told Lu Ci Qiu the information he observed so that Lu Ci Qiu could make the difference.

There was a large platform not far in front of where the corpse was found, which was the deepest part of the secret room. The people could not figure out who the corpse was, so they had to put it down temporarily and continue to move forward to see what else was in the secret room besides the corpse.

Walking to the deepest part, it was filled with boxes. From the first corpse to the deepest part of the secret room, there were corpses all the way. In total, there were about ten people. The causes of death of these people were different, but after Zhang Quansheng's observation, he found that these dead people had basically fought before they died.

There was nothing else in the secret room except the boxes, so Zhang Quansheng walked to one of the boxes and opened it.

A dazzling light shone out, forcing Zhang Quansheng and others to close their eyes. When he opened his eyes and saw what was in front of him, he was shocked.

This box is full of gold.

Zhang Quansheng then opened all the other boxes.

Everyone present was stunned.

These boxes contained either gold or silver, and also a lot of jewels.

"This...gold..." Master Liu was so surprised by the box of gold that he was speechless.

He went forward and picked up a piece to look at. When he saw the bottom of the gold, his eyes instantly turned into fear. He quickly threw the gold in his hand down, muttering in a mysterious way: "Ghost, this is a ghost, you can't touch it, you can't touch it."

Zhang Quansheng had long been annoyed by Master Liu's weird behavior. Seeing him like this again, he was so angry that he yelled at him, "Shut up, General. Stop talking about weird things. Come on, tell me what the hell is this."

"This...this..." Master Liu was frightened by Zhang Quansheng and quickly hid behind Lu Ci Qiu.

"Master Liu, tell me, what's going on?" Lu Ci Qiu pulled him in front of him and asked him to explain it clearly. He was annoyed by Master Liu's weird look all the way.

Master Liu looked at Lu Ci Qiu in embarrassment, then at Zhang Quansheng, and finally sighed and said, "Your Highness, General Zhang, it's not that I want to scare you two, it's mainly because this mountain is weird."

"In the past, Sannan Mountain was an important commercial route for the people of Nancheng and Fengcheng, in addition to the Sannan River. There was a fee for going to the dock by water, so many merchants wanted to save money and went a little further, through Sannan Mountain. But, five years ago, something happened in Sannan Mountain.

First, a commoner came to the house to chop wood, but he didn't return home at night. His family went out to look for him anxiously, but they couldn't find him. The next day, they found the man's axe and firewood on the hillside, but the axe and firewood were covered with blood, but the body was not found, so everyone said that the man was eaten by a wild beast.

Since then, people have often died in the Sannan Mountains. A month later, a businessman came from Fengcheng to Nancheng by the same mountain road, but later people found their bodies on the mountain, and all their belongings were gone. The government also suspected that someone had deliberately injured people in the name of wild animals, but at that time, neither Fengcheng nor Nancheng could find the murderer, so the matter was dropped.

In addition to the mayor of Nancheng, there was also a wealthy man in our Nancheng, named Shi Wenjie. Boss Shi was a good man, often doing good deeds and doing a good business. He was a famous wealthy man at that time and the richest man in Nancheng. Four years ago, he didn't believe in evil and insisted on taking the mountain road to deliver goods. As a result, people in Fengcheng never waited for him, and his family in Nancheng couldn't wait for any news from him. In the end, Boss Shi disappeared completely. No one knew where he went. Everyone said that he was eaten by a wild beast in Sannan Mountain. After that, there were often rumors of ghosts in Sannan Mountain, and some people said that they saw Boss Shi's ghost in Sannan Mountain.

In the end, there was no other choice, so both Nancheng and Fengcheng sealed off the mountain and stopped allowing people to go up there."

"Then why did you react so strongly when you saw the gold just now?" Lu Ci Qiu asked.

"Look, the word 'Shi' is engraved on the bottom of this gold. These are the treasures that Boss Shi escorted that year." Master Liu picked up a piece of gold and turned it over to show Lu Ci Qiu the bottom.

Lu Ci Qiu gave Zhang Quansheng a look, and Zhang Quansheng immediately knew what was going on. He turned over all the boxes of gold and found that except for the innermost box which had no name, the rest had the gold.

"It seems that all the treasures that Boss Shi lost back then are here," said Zhang Quansheng.

Ye Jianqing looked at the secret room and the corpses on the ground. Being a materialist, she did not believe that ghosts really existed in this world. At most, they were people pretending to be ghosts, so there must be something wrong with the death of Boss Shi at that time.

Maybe it has something to do with the corpses on the ground.

Ye Jianqing walked to the front and asked, "Master Liu, let me ask you, who proposed to charge money for the dock, and who received the money?"

"This..." Master Liu didn't dare to answer, but just moved his gaze to another person. Everyone followed his gaze and found that the person he was looking at was the always silent Liu Hanyun.

When Liu Hanyun saw him looking over, he was so scared that he quickly waved his hands: "It's not me, it's not me, this has nothing to do with me. The waterway is under the charge of Nancheng Lord. After Boss Shi dies, the one who will benefit the most is Nancheng Yi, Nancheng Lord, not us."

"Tell me in detail." Ye Jianqing put his hands in his pockets and looked at Liu Hanyun.

"Well... the wharf on the waterway originally belonged to the Lord of the South City, so anyone who wanted to dock at the wharf to unload goods or do anything else had to pay him. After the mountain road was closed, everyone could only take the waterway, so naturally they had to pay the Lord of the South City obediently."

Lu Ci Qiu listened to what they said quietly. There must be something fishy about this matter, but it was obviously unrealistic to judge who the murderer was based on who got into trouble and who benefited. Evidence was still needed to catch the murderer, and there was no evidence to prove that the cabin belonged to Nan Chengyi.

Lu Ci Qiu made a summary based on his discoveries along the way: "If that's the case, then this hut is integrated with the maze outside. It knocks people unconscious, then strangles them when they're not prepared, and finally collects all their treasures here."

"That should be the case. So now we have to find out who owns this little house. We can't let these people die for no reason." Ye Jianqing agreed with his idea.

"Let's go out first. This secret room is not safe." Zhang Quansheng also agreed with their idea, but his sixth sense told him that it was not safe here.

Several people agreed, so they turned around and prepared to go back, but at this moment, a rumbling sound was heard from the door of the secret room. Zhang Quansheng frowned and hurried over to check.

"The door is closed." Zhang Quansheng walked back with a sad face.

"Who is it?" Lu Ci Qiu frowned.

"I didn't see it." Zhang Quansheng shook his head.

"It should be the owner of the cabin who discovered that we had discovered the secret room, so he came over and closed the door, trying to trap us inside."

"What should we do now?" Master Liu asked fearfully.

Ye Jianqing always felt that Master Liu gave her a strange feeling, and couldn't help but observe him for a while.

Zhang Quansheng walked around the secret room several times, focusing on the walls. "Just now, I could feel the wind at the door of the secret room. There should be another exit in this secret room, not just that one. So let's look for another way."

Hearing that there was another way out, everyone quickly moved and began to feel around the surrounding walls, looking for various mechanisms.

At this time, Ye Jianqing quietly walked to Zhang Quansheng's side, took Zhang Quansheng's hand, opened his palm, wrote a word on his hand, and then walked to Lu Ciqiu's side and wrote the same word on his hand. Both of them looked at Ye Jianqing in surprise, and Ye Jianqing nodded to them.