At 7 oclock, people came out one after another from the opposite side. At this point, it was already late for rural areas to get up. The man in a suit with the surname Qian also changed into casual clothes, wearing camouflage clothing and military boots that were just beginning to become popular at that time. His spirit was completely different from yesterdays.

  At half past seven, at the other partys request, Old Miao led those people into the mountains. The fat man was ultimately rejected, with the other party taking a very tough attitude, citing that this was national topographic mapping and confidential.

  I heard Fatso complaining to Zha Wenbin from afar: "What a secretive ball, which mountain have we not climbed in this place? Just take out the red chapter and come to scare me, who knows when its time to be a radish."

  "Now that Ive got you, I wont let you go, and even if I did, would this big mountain care about us sightseeing?"

  "Right, Little Memory is leaving, the two of us will go hiking, this shouldnt be against the law, theyre heading south, well go too." The fatty pulled my hand and started walking.

  Just as I was about to go out, a person rushed in from outside the house and shouted "Old Man Miao" without even catching his breath. This person I recognized, he used to play with us when we were sent down to the countryside as educated youth, his name is Xi Zi, and hes around the same age as us.

  I saw that his face was somewhat off, with a look of panic in his eyes, and I said to him: "Miao Lao isnt here, hes accompanying the guests from Beijing into the mountains. Whats wrong, Xi Zi, why are you in such a rush?"

  "My dad is lost and cant be found. This is so frustrating, I want Miao Lao to make an announcement on the radio, its driving me crazy, my mom has been crying since morning."

  "Has Uncle Niu gotten lost?" I comforted: "Hes such a big man, how could he get lost? He probably went somewhere for something, dont worry."

  Xi Zi turned around and walked towards the village office on the opposite side: "How can I not be anxious? Something must have happened!"

  I followed them and only then did I understand the situation: The father of Xi Zai went up the mountain to hunt last night, after dinner at around 6 oclock, he entered the mountain and no one has returned until this morning. In the past few years, there have been cases of hunters disappearing in the Wild Mans Village, which were later confirmed to be mostly due to harm from beasts such as bears and tigers in the forest, Xi Zai is worried that his father might have met with an accident too.

  "The gate is locked, dont break it, no one is inside." I said to him: "Youd better mobilize the people in the village, well go from door to door to inform them, and gather at the village entrance later."

  "Alright, lets do it!" Xi Zi wiped away her tears and ran home, and we also started searching for people separately.

  In the countryside, as long as someone has something going on and calls out, everyone will come out to help. Before long, more than 20 young men arrived at the village entrance, along with several hunting dogs. Miao Lans husband was also there; he is the captain of the mountain patrol team.

  The general situation has been said, but there are two more details that have caused concern among the people. Last night when Xi Zis father went into the mountain, he brought hunting dogs with him and said he was going to hunt wild chickens before leaving. The hunters in the village know that the usual time for hunting wild chickens is around 7 or 8 pm, when it gets dark, the wild chickens will fly up to the treetops to sleep, at which point all you need to do is shine a light and shoot, one shot one kill.

  Hunting wild chickens usually doesnt go deep into the mountains, just in the nearby woods. If theres any movement, everyone can hear it, but no one heard the gunshot last night. This is the first point; secondly, the hunting dog that followed Xizis father was found by several women washing clothes in the river on a small dam, and its body was stuck between two rocks. The corpse is now placed right in front of us.

  There were no obvious external injuries on the dogs body, its eyes were open, and its tongue was hanging out. When someone picked it up, the dogs neck was obviously stretched.

  Miao Lans man touched it with his hand and said: "The neck is broken."

  A scream erupted from the scene, directly breaking the neck of a hunting dog. This seemed to be something only a black bear could do. Had Xizis father encountered that thing?

  Beishan, that side produces various fungi and hazelnuts. Women will go to Beishan in groups during this season to pick them. There is a hazelnut forest over there, the hunters in the village say that its the haunt of old wild chickens, that forest has a place name called: Qingzhuan Gang.

  The village is located in a remote area with extremely scarce materials. When people first arrived, most of them chose to build houses with wood and thatch. Before and after liberation, some people found many abandoned bricks on the north mountain, which were uneven in size. As a result, many people carried these bricks back from the north mountain to build houses. These bricks are mostly greenish-blue in color, some are buried one or two meters underground, while others are directly exposed on the surface of the earth, and can be picked up by removing leaves.

  Later, someone said that these bricks might be used on the graves of the dead, and the countryside people were more superstitious, so they stopped going to pick up bricks there and started burning their own kiln bricks.

  Yesterday evening, someone saw Xi Zis father going in that direction. Qing Zhuan Gang is only two miles away from Tunzi. From Tunzi, you can see it, and it can also see Tunzi. After passing through a forest of fallen leaves, there is an open space ahead. This place used to be a cornfield, and behind this cornfield is a hazelnut forest, with a small hill like a steamed bun.

  This is also one of the sources of the river in Tunzi, but unlike Xishan, this rivers tributary is slightly smaller and the water flow is slightly faster. As soon as several hunting dogs arrived here, they started barking non-stop, and our group of people divided into two or three groups to search the mountain in a fan shape. This place is about the size of a football field, and more than 20 people searched from morning till night, but only found half a bun, nothing else was gained.

  Xizi said that when his father left the house, he brought two steamed buns with him. When he saw this thing, he immediately burst into loud wails, insisting that his father must have been bitten by a bear. This forest is not big, and we had searched it back and forth many times, but as night began to fall, we could only head down the mountain first and return to the village. Miao Lao also arrived at the village, and after learning about what happened, he organized another group of people with torches to continue searching in the mountains until late at night, still without any clues. This has caused panic among the villagers, as its been nearly 30 years since anyone was attacked by a bear. If this thing really exists, the surrounding forests will no longer be safe.

  "A bit suspicious" Wen Bin said, turning over on the bed: "I think Xizis father wasnt killed by a bear. Weve been searching for a whole day and havent seen any bear tracks or feces. And that dog, if it was a wild animal, there would definitely be external injuries. How could its neck be twisted off directly?"

  Pangzi didnt sleep either, and took over Cha Wenbins words: "What does Master Cha mean?"

  Cha Wenbin retorted: "If someone had directly broken that dogs neck, what would you say their motive was?"

  "That must be afraid of being discovered, dogs will bark when they meet people, and one bark will alarm."

  "Whats the big deal? This village has only so many households, and every household knows each others secrets. Whats the need to resort to such drastic measures?"

  "Thats the outsider!" The fatty somewhat understood what Cha Wenbin meant, I was in charge of monitoring the opposite side at that time, and the fatty came to find me: "Xiao Yi, is there any movement on the opposite side?"

  "No, same as yesterday, everything is normal." Ive been staring at the opposite side for almost two hours now. The lights went out after 7 oclock and the gate is still closed, not a single person has come out.

  "Thats not normal." Cha Wenbin came over and said, "From yesterday to now, no one has come out of the opposite house at night. The village public toilet is outside, do they not use the bathroom at night with eight people?"

  "Take a look at the past?" said the fat man with narrowed eyes.

  From here to the village office, its only twenty or thirty meters away. We crouched down and arrived in a flash, this place we are too familiar with, in those years we didnt rarely go in to make trouble. The wall of the village office is two meters high, with broken glass inserted on the wall, which was the most popular anti-theft measure at that time, we still use the old method.

  There is a jujube tree outside the wall, about 10 to 20 meters high, one meter away from the surrounding wall. Climbing up the tree and using a quilt to reach the wall, theres no problem, just jump over.

  "After falling to the ground, he suddenly said: Still the familiar routine..."

  This public house was built in the 1960s, with two floors up and down. The first floor is an office area, and the second floor is a dormitory for those people. Fat man is good at doing this kind of thing. Although he has a large body shape, as long as he takes off his shoes and walks, he cant make half a sound. He attributes this to the thickness of his foot soles.

  The second floor has a total of four rooms, the doors are locked, and newspaper is pasted on the windows, so you cant see whats inside from outside. However, this was not difficult for him, as the old-fashioned lock only required a card to open it, which could be inserted at an angle through the gap in the door frame to push it open.

  With a creak, the fat man slipped in quietly and we saw him come out on the first floor after a while, shaking his head at us, meaning it was empty.

  Then came the second door and the third door. When the fourth door was also pried open by him, he finally felt at ease to shout to us: "No one, not a single person!"

  "Sure enough, theres a problem!" said Zha Wenbin.

  The fatty turned around and thought about going downstairs, but then he stopped and said to us: "However, I think its better if you also come up and take a look. There are many things here that shouldnt be."

  I and Zha Wenbin also rushed up, the fat man led us into the third room, on the ground were many things placed in a messy way: professional ropes, broken Luoyang shovel, and something that Zha Wenbin did not want to see: a handmade grass doll, with two steel needles stuck in its chest. On the back of the grass doll was a note, which clearly wrote Miao Laos name and his birth date.

  "What should we do? Should we set all their stuff on fire first?"

  "No." Zhang Wenbin held the straw man tightly and said, "Now if we move, its like beating the grass to startle the snake. These people are quite ruthless, and if things get out of hand, Im afraid some villagers will be injured or killed. For now, theyre just using some small tricks, and before they tear off this layer of window paper, everyone is holding back."

  Fatso held up the Luoyang shovel and said, "This group of people are grave robbers. It looks like they dug a hole last night, but its not easy to dig, the drill bits are all broken."

  Zha Wenbin asked Pangzi: "I remember one thing, that person said his surname is Qian, right?"

  "He said so."

  "Are you sure hes from Sichuan?" "Definitely, that accent cant be faked."

  "Xiao Yi, you still remember Old Qiu from the village, dont you? The one who raises black cats. He was among the first to come to this village, and the person who brought him here also had the surname Qian!"

  When Wen Bin said that, I also felt a bit suspicious: "I remembered, yes, he said the man was called Qian Shu Ye, he seemed to be the only one who escaped at that time, and he was from Sichuan!"

  "Thats right, that money mouse master spent a lot of effort to find his way here from Sichuan all those years ago, but he ended up with nothing, yet he did see the gold coins. Now that several decades have passed, such a large sum of wealth is still left here, who can guarantee they wont come back?"

  Fatso said: "At that time, as Old Qiu said, Money Mouse was so scared that he peed his pants and ran away with his tail between his legs. How dare he come back?"

  "Hes definitely not here, but his descendants are still around." Zhang Wenbin continued: "Why has no outsider come for so many years? In fact, the people in Sichuan have known about the gold here for a long time. Its just that considering what happened to Qian Shu Ye back then, they didnt have a good solution until now. Now that theyve arrived, they must be well-prepared and have spent years getting ready. I reckon theyve already found a way to crack it."

  "That makes sense! So are we going to follow him tomorrow?"

  "Track it down!" Cha Wenbin said resolutely: "We must, tomorrow morning before dawn well wait at the entrance first. Since someone has paved the way for us, we wont have to wander around ourselves."