Chapter 170 The Treasury
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"Ten minutes for reaction time?"
Chen Mo, who had retreated to the edge of the Chinese territory, casually found a rock to sit on and fell into deep thought.
Under the moonlight, the Onmyoji searched in vain and could only leave unwillingly.
The projection of Yamata no Orochi also vanished into nothingness.
Chen Mo walked to a secluded corner, and his facial skin began to wriggle, transforming into the face of another middle-aged man.
He then took out a gray-blue cotton jacket from his pocket, put it on, and strode across the boundary marker.
A policeman rode by on a bicycle across the street, his bicycle bell jingling. He stepped aside to let him pass, and even nodded, like an honest craftsman who instinctively shrank back when he met an official.
The Hou residence was reached quickly.
The fire was mostly extinguished, but it was still smoking.
Two steam fire engines from the fire brigade of the concession arrived.
A dozen or so people dressed in the same gray-blue jackets were walking around the ruins, dragging water hoses.
The air was filled with the smell of burning.
Chen Mo lowered his head, slipped out of the shadow of the fire truck, and blended into the crowd.
Nobody noticed him.
The firefighters were mostly Chinese laborers temporarily recruited from the concession, and most of them did not know each other.
Even if you knew them, you wouldn't recognize them all in such a chaotic scene.
He picked up a shovel from the ground, slung it over his shoulder, and strode into the ruins.
The formation is now broken.
He felt it the moment he stepped into the ruins; the rubble beneath his feet seemed dead, unresponsive.
Chen Mo planted the shovel in the ground and looked around.
The area of the ruins was larger than he had anticipated.
The epicenter of the explosion should be at the rear, and the shockwave also overturned half of the side rooms on the east and west sides.
The main hall had completely collapsed, with beams and pillars lying haphazardly together, forming an irregular triangular space, beneath which lay the remains of furniture and charred fabrics.
There was a faint smell of burnt meat in the air.
A middle-aged man who looked like a leader called out to him.
"Hey, come over here and lend a hand."
Chen Mo stopped, turned around and walked over.
The leader was a fat man in his forties, wearing a dirty white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was holding an iron hook and directing several people to dig through a pile of broken bricks.
Beneath the broken bricks lay a mahogany cabinet, its doors blown off, revealing several stacks of thread-bound books inside. The pages were soaked in water, and the edges were somewhat blackened.
"Come help me lift this beam; it's pressing down on the cabinet, and the books are all soaked and ruined."
The leader pointed with an iron hook to a beam lying across the top of the cabinet.
Chen Mo hesitated for a second, then stuck the shovel into the ground, squatted down, and held one end of the roof beam with both hands.
The roof beams were heavy, made of cedar wood, about seven or eight inches in diameter, and half-burnt, with a damp surface.
"I'll count to three, then everyone push together," the leader said.
"One, two, three, go!"
Chen Mo and the two middle-aged men worked together to lift the roof beam a few inches.
The others quickly dragged the cabinet out, its legs scraping against the broken bricks with a screeching sound.
The books slid out of the cabinet and scattered all over the floor. Several fell into the puddle, their pages quickly becoming wet and the ink spreading like black flowers in bloom.
The leader cursed and squatted down to pick up the book.
Chen Mo loosened the roof beam, took a step back, and while the leader bent down to pick up the book, he quietly slipped into the ruins of the west wing.
The damage to the west wing was less severe than that to the main hall.
At least most of the wall is still standing.
The gable wall is still there, but there are a few more cracks, extending from the base of the wall to the eaves. The widest part can fit a fist.
Half of the roof had collapsed, and the remaining half of the tiles were still hanging on the rafters, teetering on the verge of collapse, creaking loudly in the wind.
Chen Mo stood in the middle of the ruins, holding the shovel upright in front of him, his hands clasped together on the top of the shovel handle, his chin resting on the back of his hands.
His eyes were half-closed, and his consciousness spread out from his feet like water.
A distance of three meters is enough to find a possible vault, although he wasn't sure if the Hou family actually had one.
After wandering around the area and being cursed at several times, Chen Mo finally found a place that looked like a cellar.
Directly below the original site of the study, about a foot deep, there is an area of about ten square meters.
It is a vaulted cellar built with blue bricks, with a layer of lime plastered on all four sides for moisture protection, and iron plates embedded in the inner walls.
The vaulted ceiling of the cellar had been cracked by the explosion, with several cracks winding and intersecting, the largest of which almost ran through the entire dome. Several pieces of blue bricks fell down and hit the wooden boxes below.
The cellar didn't contain many items, but they were arranged extremely neatly.
There were twelve camphor wood chests stacked against the east wall, each with a red paper seal on the lid and a number written on it.
Chen Mo scanned the box with his divine sense. Inside were neatly stacked silver dollars, about five hundred in one box, and six thousand in twelve boxes.
Is this all the Hou family has in assets?
He moved his divine sense and continued scanning.
Against the west wall was a three-tiered metal cabinet, like the kind used in banks, but much smaller, only half a person's height, with two levels.
The upper level has two drawers lined with black velvet, on which lie gold bars and large yellow croakers weighing ten taels each.
He counted them with his divine sense; there were twenty in total, arranged in two rows of ten each, pressing heavily on the velvet cloth, leaving dents in the cloth.
The lower level is a cabinet door with a rotary combination lock, but the door is unlocked.
Inside were three sandalwood boxes, each engraved with spirit-suppressing runes to prevent the leakage of spiritual energy.
It might be a rare and precious treasure.
Chen Mo's heart stirred slightly, and he tried to penetrate the sandalwood box with his divine sense, but the inner wall of the box seemed to be protected by a secret technique that could block the probe of his divine sense.
He could only sense a vibrant life force emanating from one of the boxes.
nice one.
But how do I take it?
The ground was full of people.
Firefighters searched through the ruins, Japanese police officers in black patrolled the area, and occasionally a few men in suits pointed and whispered.
They were probably from the Municipal Council of the foreign concessions, or relatives of the Hou family in the concessions.
Thick smoke and ash filled the air overhead, the steam fire engine was still churning out white steam, and the water hose snaked across the rubble like a snake.
Chen Mo pulled the shovel from the ground, held it in his hand, and scanned his surroundings.
He is now a coolie in a gray-blue jacket, with the face of a craftsman in his forties.
The disguise is fine.
The problem is time and method.
The vault was four feet underground, covered by at least three feet of broken bricks and rubble.
Digging a cellar would be quite a commotion and would definitely attract the attention of people nearby.
He needed a reason, a legitimate reason to dig here.
Chen Mo's gaze fell on the ruins of the west wing, and the corners of his mouth curved slightly.
The west wing is the original site of the study.
The wooden shelves in the study had fallen over, with charred calligraphy and paintings and several account books soaked in water scattered on the floor.
These things are of no value to the fire brigade, but they might be different for the Hou family.
He pulled a dirty cotton handkerchief from his pocket, covered his mouth and nose, bent down, and began searching through the ruins.
He flipped through the pages very slowly, as if he was looking for something important.
A young laborer nearby saw this and curiously approached, asking, "Hey bro, what are you looking for?"
"A treasure trove." Chen Mo said in Mandarin with a Shandong accent, "Mr. Liu, who manages the accounts at the Hou family's store, is my cousin. He said there's an account book in the study with many people's debts recorded in it. If it's burned, the debts will never be recovered."
"He told me to look for it, and there would be a reward if I found it."
The young laborer's eyes lit up: "A reward? How much?"
"Let's see if we can find it."
Chen Mo mumbled, his hands moving non-stop as he flipped over a charred wooden board, revealing a stack of mushy papers underneath. "If you find them, maybe you can give me three or five yuan."