Zhenzhen was not in a hurry to go to Bingcheng with the big yellow croaker. She quietly appeared in her own warehouse. While Grandma Li and Wang Sufen were not at home, she quickly opened the old sack in the warehouse, found a set of Mingbei's old and shabby clothes from his childhood, and returned to the mountains quietly.
Standing by the stream in the mountains, Zhenzhen put on old clothes, untied her hair and messed up her hair, grabbed a handful of mud from the waterside, smeared it on her eye sockets and nose, and sprinkled some dirt on her face. After cleaning herself up, Zhenzhen looked at her reflection in the stream. Not only was she dirty all over, but her face was also pitch black, which was simply horrible.
Zhenzhen sat on a rock by the water and first sent her consciousness to Bingcheng to observe the situation at the Meng family. At this time, Mr. Meng had packed up several large boxes of antique calligraphy and paintings. He looked at the empty study reluctantly, his face full of sadness.
"Master!" The butler brought a cup of tea and placed it on the table. Master Meng looked at him with a sigh in his tone: "Old Guan, you have been with me for more than 20 years, right?"
"Yes, Master." Lao Guan said with a bit of nostalgia on his face: "If Master hadn't rescued me from the Japanese devils 20 years ago, I would have been dead long ago."
Master Meng lit a cigar and took a deep puff. The smoke spread as he spoke: "Your wife and children died back then, and you never remarried in these years. After your mother died, you never returned to your hometown. Can you still contact your nephew in your hometown now?"
"We have been in touch and go over the past few years, and I send some money and tickets home every New Year. They have always been counting on me to help them, and they are quite warm to me." Lao Guan replied, "But I didn't tell them what I was doing outside. I sent all the letters to the factory, and I remembered everything the master taught me before."
Mr. Meng nodded, opened the briefcase on the desk, took out a handbag from it and handed it to Lao Guan: "There are 1,000 yuan, a letter of introduction and train tickets, as well as some food coupons, cloth coupons, industrial coupons and other things in it. Keep them."
Lao Guan's expression was frozen on his face, his hands were shaking, and before he could say anything, tears started to fall: "Master, you don't want me anymore?"
"It's not that I don't want you, it's that I really can't take you with me." Master Meng stood up and patted Lao Guan on the shoulder. "We have been master and servant in name for these years, but I have always regarded you as a brother. You followed me when things were good, and you didn't leave me when things were hard, but now we have to separate. Lao Guan, to be honest, I'm not sure if we can get on the boat after we drive to Tianjin. It's better for you to go back home than to follow me."
"Master, you need someone to run errands for you and someone to serve you tea and water. What will I do if I don't follow you?" Lao Guan cried, "I have lived for more than 20 years. Master, I am not afraid of death. Let me follow you."
"Fansheng is not young anymore, it's time for him to handle these things. Lao Guan, my family are all from a capitalist family. Now it seems that there is only one way out, leave this place as soon as possible. You don't have to suffer with us, just go back to your hometown and live your life well." Master Meng stopped talking about this topic, and forcefully stuffed the handbag into his arms, and then hugged him heavily: "You have been with me for so many years, and you know that the most difficult thing to control is people's hearts. The 800 yuan I put in here is the Great Unity, and the remaining 200 yuan was exchanged for notes and change, with 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, and 10 cents, which are enough for daily expenses. When you get home, be sure to hide the money well, and don't leave too much outside, so that you have a way out in case of any problems."
Lao Guan wiped his face, looked at Master Meng with tears in his eyes, and nodded with sobs: "Master, don't worry, I know all this. When I go home, I will still live in my old house. Those nephews can come to my house if they miss me, but I can live on my own if they don't come."
Master Meng nodded and let go of Lao Guan's shoulders: "I have some patched old clothes in the warehouse downstairs. You can change into them before you leave." Lao Guan nodded, looked at Master Meng steadily, knelt down and kowtowed heavily.
The door of the study was closed again. Mr. Meng stood up and walked to the window. After about ten minutes, Lao Guan, dressed like a farmer, came out. He walked out unsteadily carrying a torn sack on his back.
Standing in the yard, Lao Guan turned around and took a look at the house where he had lived for many years, his face full of tears. He touched the lush flowers growing in the yard, raised his head as if he had noticed something, and met the eyes of Mr. Meng standing at the second-floor window. Mr. Meng waved his hand with a cigar between his legs, and Lao Guan raised his arm and wiped his tears with his sleeve, then turned and left. Standing at the window to calm down, Mr. Meng pressed the burnt cigar into the ashtray.
Mrs. Meng was still packing her things. At this time, the master bedroom of Haohua was a mess. The lids of various jewelry boxes were open, and the diamonds, pearls, rubies and jades inside were dazzling. Various exquisite cheongsams, handbags and furs were piled on the bed. Mrs. Meng almost turned out all the treasures at the bottom of the box.
Mr. Meng suppressed his impatience and said in a calm voice, "You can't take these away. Put the jewelry and other valuables in the box and I will sell them together."
Mrs. Meng immediately became anxious: "These jewelry of mine are top-quality in both appearance and size. If I sell them, I may not be able to buy such good goods in the future."
Master Meng rubbed his brows tiredly and said, "We must keep everything simple and leave here quickly. I tell you, even the clothes we bring with us should be as simple as possible. You pack up quickly and put our clothes in a suitcase. I'll go out and ask old friends if there are any willing to buy antiques."
"All the people who take the boat to Hong Kong Island are celebrities from all walks of life. They must take some jewelry with them." Mrs. Meng bit her lip unwillingly.
Mr. Meng took two steps and turned back: "We are going to escape, not to travel. If you can't bear to leave your jewelry and clothes, why don't you stay here."
The emotionless words made Mrs. Meng feel cold in her heart. Seeing Master Meng leaving without looking back, Mrs. Meng did not dare to delay any longer. She hurriedly followed Master Meng's request and stuffed as many things as possible into a suitcase. She dared not look at the dazzling array of jewelry any more. She closed the jewelry boxes one by one with a heavy heartache and put them all into the empty boxes, waiting for Master Meng to deal with them.
Zhenzhen saw Master Meng coming out of the house but didn't show up immediately. She didn't have much idea about the value of gold bars and antiques in this era. She thought Master Meng must be going out to negotiate a deal, but now it seems that not many people dare to buy, so why not follow him to see how much he can get in exchange.
Obviously, Mr. Meng did not have much hope of transferring his antique calligraphy and paintings, but he was reluctant to throw those treasures away. He stood there thinking for a long time, and finally decided to ask his old friends who had a close relationship with his family. As for those partners and friends in the wine and business world, Mr. Meng did not even dare to ask them, for fear that they would be sold as soon as he left.
Mr. Meng did not take the family car, but walked there. Fortunately, the capitalists in Bingcheng lived not far away, and after walking for about ten minutes, he arrived in front of a western-style building.
After ringing the doorbell, the housekeeper came out and looked at Master Meng in shock for a moment, then quickly opened the door and invited him in: "Why is Master Meng going out at this time?"
"I'm here to visit your husband." Mr. Meng walked in quickly, but as soon as he entered the living room, he stopped.
"Why doesn't Mr. Meng go in?" the butler behind asked, and then shouted loudly: "Master, Mr. Meng is here."
A man who was about the same age as Mr. Meng was delighted when he saw Mr. Meng: "Brother Meng, come in quickly. I was planning to visit you tomorrow."
Looking at the boxes and cages scattered all over the floor, Master Meng had a bitter look on his face: "Brother Bai, are you also planning to leave Ice City?"
"What? You too?" The two looked at each other and smiled bitterly.
"I got the news that this movement involves a power struggle, and the results of this kind of thing cannot be seen in a day or two. Instead of staying and watching, it is better to evacuate quickly while the situation is not serious." Mr. Bai handed Mr. Meng a cigarette: "How come you have time to come here today?"
Mr. Meng sighed, "That's what I was planning to do, but I can't take the antiques, calligraphy, and jewelry at home with me. I wanted to ask you if you wanted to buy them, but when I saw your attitude..." Mr. Meng shook his head, and then he remembered that Mr. Bai had many connections, and he couldn't help but look at him expectantly, "Brother Bai knows a lot of people in antique collections. Who do you think can sell my antiques? The Qing Dynasty porcelain is fine, but my Yuan blue and white porcelain is a rare treasure, and the calligraphy and paintings..."
Mr. Bai smiled bitterly and shook his head: "Brother, I won't hide it from you. Even I haven't found a way. Antiques in prosperous times are as valuable as gold in troubled times. Let alone your collection, even with all the treasures in my house, I don't know if I can sell three big yellow croakers."
"How come it's so worthless?" Master Meng beat his chest and stamped his feet: "If I wasn't afraid of exposing my whereabouts by carrying too many things, I wouldn't be willing to sell any of them."
"Do you think I'm willing to do this?" Mr. Bai looked at the pile of boxes in the living room with a sad face. "To be honest, brother, I'm leaving early tomorrow morning, and I've asked someone to buy the boat tickets and plane tickets for this journey. There are only a few hours left. If I can't find someone to take over, I can only leave the things here."
Thinking of the rumors these days, Mr. Meng's face turned pale: "If those people broke in, wouldn't these treasures be destroyed by them?"
"What if it's destroyed? You can't risk your life for these dead things." Mr. Bai took the last puff of his cigarette and seriously advised Mr. Meng: "Listen to me, if there is really someone who wants to buy it and there is no bargaining, just sell it after paying the money. Every day you delay is a day more of danger." Mr. Meng left the Bai family's mansion with a heavy heart. Zhenzhen watched Mr. Meng come out and her consciousness quickly returned to her body.
Standing up from the stream, Zhenzhen once again checked her attire in the stream, and her figure flashed and landed on a big tree not far from Master Meng.
Seeing Master Meng coming, Zhen Zhen slid down the tree trunk, holding a dime in one hand and a piece of candy in the other, and ran to Master Meng's side quickly, showing a silly and naive smile: "Master, someone asked me to bring you a message."
Mr. Meng looked at the disheveled little girl in front of him, his eyes flickered to the banknotes and candies in her hands, and he thought Zhenzhen was a random child delivering mail from the roadside. He looked around nervously: "Who asked you to come? What's the matter?"
"Someone asked me to pass a message to you, asking if you would sell those antique paintings, calligraphy and jewelry and the two yellow croakers?" Zhenzhen smiled innocently, but her eyes did not look at Master Meng, but stared straight at the candy in her hand.
"Really?" After talking with Mr. Bai just now, Mr. Meng had already made up his mind to give up those treasures. He didn't expect that there would be a sudden turn of events once he left the house. However, looking at the child in front of him and thinking of the buyer who refused to show up, Mr. Meng immediately became alert after his ecstasy: "Who asked you to take it? How can we trade it?"
Zhen Zhen blinked her eyes, revealing a slightly thoughtful expression. Seeing Master Meng's anxious expression, she suddenly realized something: "Oh, by the way, he said that if you agree, you can pay the gold bars first, and you don't have to worry about antiques, calligraphy and jewelry. You can just leave them at home, and he will go to get them."
Mr. Meng hesitated for a moment, then looked back at the Bai family's western-style building not far away. Zhen Zhen immediately added, "By the way, that person also asked you to ask Mr. Bai if he is willing to give it up, that person is willing to pay three large yellow croakers."
To be fair, even though there are some rare treasures in their collections, they are already considered generous to offer this price at this time. Mr. Meng hurried back to the Bai family's western-style building, and soon, Mr. Bai followed Mr. Meng and hurried out.
Looking at the child who looked like a little beggar in front of him, Mr. Bai was stunned. He looked at Mr. Meng and asked in disbelief, "Are you talking about her?"
"I guess he's here to pass on a message." Mr. Meng replied, then squatted down and asked Zhenzhen, "If we agree, where can we get the big yellow croaker?"
Zhenzhen was eating candy with gusto. When she heard Mr. Meng's question, she handed over a paper bag that had appeared in her hand. Mr. Meng and Mr. Bai looked at each other, took it hastily, looked around to see if anyone was coming, and carefully opened a corner, revealing a touch of gold.
Mr. Meng quickly wrapped the paper. Mr. Bai didn't mind Zhen Zhen's dirtiness. He took her hand and said softly, "Let's talk at home. There are lots of candies there."
Some people nearby were already walking towards this side, and Zhenzhen nodded quickly. When they arrived at Mr. Bai's western-style building, Mr. Meng couldn't wait to put the paper package on the coffee table, and roughly tore off the outer paper. Five large yellow croakers neatly arranged together appeared in front of everyone.
Mr. Meng and Mr. Bai have both been immersed in the business field for decades and have handled many gold bars. They can tell whether a gold bar is real or fake by shaking it and looking at its quality.
Mr. Bai looked at Jin Zi and smiled kindly: "Little friend, what did the person who asked you to pass on the message say?"
Zhenzhen repeated what she said again, and then emphasized: "When the person gave me this package, he said that you must leave early tomorrow morning, lock the door, and just leave the things in the house."
"Then how does he pick up the goods?" Mr. Meng asked, and Zhenzhen answered her with a confused look, as if she didn't understand what he meant.
Mr. Bai waved to Mr. Meng, and told the servants to bring two packets of biscuits and a packet of candy to Zhenzhen, and patted her head with a friendly expression: "Little friend, thank you very much."
Zhenzhen ran away in a hurry with the things in her arms. Mr. Meng asked Mr. Bai hesitantly, "Brother Bai, who do you think was responsible for this?"
Mr. Bai shook his head: "Maybe it's the government or some senior official. No matter which force it is, it must be someone who is very familiar with us, otherwise he wouldn't be able to estimate the value of the item so accurately without seeing it. Fortunately, he has no ill will towards us, otherwise he wouldn't have given the yellow croaker first. Just for this, our donations to them for road construction and school building over the years have not been in vain." Mr. Meng nodded, stood up and picked up the two yellow croakers that belonged to him: "Since this matter is settled, I'll take my leave."
"Goodbye!" Mr. Bai bowed.
Zhenzhen watched Master Meng leave, and then she returned to Beicha in a flash, not worrying that the antique treasures she bought with five yellow croakers would be taken away. Mr. Bai and Master Meng have always been Confucian businessmen with a very good reputation in Bingcheng, and have done a lot of good things. Based on their character and previous principles, Zhenzhen did not bargain, but generously paid the yellow croaker according to their psychological expectations.
Back in the mountains, Zhenzhen took off her tattered clothes and threw them aside. The stream water was warm after being exposed to the sun all day, so Zhenzhen simply went into the water, played with the fishes, and washed her body and face before going home.
After a comfortable and sound sleep, Zhenzhen didn't even have time to eat breakfast when she got up in the morning. She picked up a piece of pancake and rushed out of the house like the wind. Old Mrs. Li shook her head and said, "Why is it that you are busier during the holidays than at school? I don't know what you are busy with in the mountains all day." Zhenzhen was only thinking about her antiques. She took two bites of the pancake and seeing that there was no one around, she disappeared behind a big tree on the roadside without waiting to reach the mountains.
Quietly landing on a tree near the Meng family, Zhenzhen used her consciousness to scan the Meng family's western-style building, and found that it was already empty. Zhenzhen's figure disappeared from the tree and appeared in the living room of the Meng family. There were more than a dozen boxes more than one meter high neatly arranged in the living room. Zhenzhen opened one of them, and there were boxes of different sizes inside. She picked up the largest box on the top, and saw that the bottom and the sides were padded with sponges and soft cloths. A beautiful porcelain was firmly fixed to the box with a rope. Zhenzhen didn't know much about antiques, so she could only turn over the bottom of the bottle to look at the inscription below, which read "Made in the Yongzheng Period of the Qing Dynasty".
There was no time to look at them one by one. It was not safe to leave the things here. No one knew when the pink guards would rush in. Zhenzhen hugged a box and came to the depths of the Beicha primeval forest with the box in a flash of consciousness. After a busy morning, Zhenzhen not only brought back the antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and jewelry from the Meng and Bai families, but also moved back the books, desks, and chairs in the study. It was not that she was plucking feathers from the past, but mainly because the two study rooms were decorated with Ming Dynasty Huanghuali furniture, which was also very valuable.
All the previous things were moved back, and Zhenzhen didn't want to miss the remaining bits and pieces. The two families left in a hurry and didn't take much with them.
Zhenzhen found a place where trees were not too dense, and a piece of mountain without tree roots, and let the boxes sink one by one. The boxes were buried in the soil, but Zhenzhen was worried about this pile of Ming Dynasty furniture. If they were left in the open air, they would definitely be destroyed by the strong winds and rains on the mountain in a short time. But Zhenzhen felt that putting them in the soil was not a good way to preserve them.
After walking around these Ming Dynasty furniture twice, Zhenzhen finally set her sights on the lush trees nearby. As Zhenzhen's sight moved, trees rose from the ground one by one, their roots intertwined, and the trunks tightly attached and firmly grew together. Soon, Zhenzhen was surrounded by towering trees with an area of more than 200 square meters. Only the lower side was missing two trees, as if a door was left there on purpose. Having a wooden wall was not enough, the roof was the most critical. Zhenzhen looked up at the top of the tree and gently made a pulling gesture. The branches on the wooden wall suddenly all hung down in the middle, intertwined with each other, and built a sloping roof.
Because everything was controlled by Zhenzhen, the branches kept growing or shrinking during the construction process until they were completely tightly together. Zhenzhen quickly ran outside through the left door and admired the wooden house she had built with her supernatural powers.
Because there were tree roots underground, Zhenzhen was not worried about the firmness at all. The only thing she was afraid of was that the tiny gaps between the connections would leak. She waved her hand, and leaves spread out from the roof and walls, one on top of another, and from a distance it looked like a green house.
Zhen Zhen excitedly moved all the furniture into the tree house, and then returned to Ice City to move back the beds, quilts, sofas, coffee tables, and even the kitchen. Families like the Meng and Bai families no longer use stoves to cook, and the row of brand new liquefied gas tanks made her eyes light up. She was worried that many things would be difficult to bring home, and with this thing, she could cook in the mountains.
Zhenzhen moved back the gas tanks, pots and stoves. In addition to the rice and noodles in the cupboard, she also brought back delicacies such as bird's nests, shark fins, sea cucumbers, fish maws and scallops. After a busy day, Zhenzhen finally moved all the things back to Beicha. Looking around, the house that was luxurious and wealthy a day ago was now left with only bare walls.
Zhenzhen clapped her hands, smiled with satisfaction, and was about to leave when suddenly a loud noise came from outside. Looking out the window, she saw a group of pink guards wearing pink armbands climbing over the wall and jumping into the yard. Zhenzhen smiled mischievously and then disappeared into the house.
The author has something to say: Yes, you read that right, gas tanks appeared in 1965.
Because our work is a fictional one and we want to touch on some political elements, some words have been changed. Just let everyone know.
Many readers gave good suggestions for this chapter. The red envelopes from the previous two days will be sent out tomorrow morning. The red envelopes for this chapter will still be there. Long comments are easy to be seen.