"Why are you still digging? You guys are driving me crazy." Zhao Guihua had originally planned to go home for lunch, but because Zhou Erfu and Zhou Sifu ran away, she and her three sons have been digging chrysanthemum seedlings ever since.
Looking up, she saw that the sun was already setting in the west. It would be dark in two hours. She and her five boys could go hungry for a meal, but she couldn't let her precious daughter go hungry.
"Mom, it was Xingxing who insisted that we dig it." Zhou Erfu said vaguely. He didn't say that if they hadn't dug the place Xingxing specified, it would have been over long ago. How could it have dragged on until now?
Zhao Guihua looked at Xingxing, who smiled at her and whispered mysteriously, "There are lots of things down there."
"What is this?" Zhao Guihua's heart skipped a beat. Could it be that there was silver buried down there? Her feelings were a mix of joy and nervousness, a very complicated mix.
Silver is a good thing, but this is a mass grave. The silver buried in the ground could very well be someone's burial goods. It's hard to be sure about using the money of the dead.
Zhao Guihua was absent-minded, her mind wandering, her thoughts in complete disarray.
A short while later, Zhou Erfu suddenly frowned and exclaimed, "Hey, what's this thing? It looks like a box?"
"Second brother, why does this thing look so much like a coffin? Oh my god, are we really going to dig up someone's grave?" Zhou Sifu jumped several meters away in fright.
"What are we going to do? You've caused a huge disaster! Quickly help them fill the soil back in!" Zhao Guihua exclaimed. "Thank God, my Erfu and Sifu are just children, they didn't mean to offend anyone..."
"Hurry up and dig! Dig out the coffin!" Xingxing said in a clear voice.
Because she didn't know what a coffin was, she was just following the clues in her mind to dig something up here, and she had no idea what was underneath.
"Little ancestor, can you please calm down? You can't dig up someone's coffin!" Zhao Guihua was so frightened she almost suffocated.
Zhou Erfu thought that since he had already dug, he didn't care if it was a coffin or something else. He had already offended all the gods and ghosts he was going to offend, so he might as well dig it thoroughly and see what kind of person was in the coffin and what kind of funerary objects were buried with him.
As a man of action, Zhou Erfu quickly continued digging down another meter, and the object that looked like a coffin lid was finally revealed to be just a vermilion carved wooden box, not a coffin.
This wooden box is quite large, about the same size as the wardrobe in Old Master Zhou's house, and it looks like it was used to store money.
As long as it wasn't a coffin, Zhao Guihua and the others breathed a sigh of relief, and their courage grew.
"Wow, we dug up a big box! We can take it home and use it as a wardrobe!" Xingxing patted her chubby little hands and giggled carefree.
Zhao Guihua clutched her chest, feeling a dull ache there. Her precious daughter was too fierce; she couldn't quite handle it.
Finally, Zhou Erfu carefully opened the wooden box, and all he saw were bamboo slips. Zhou Erfu picked one up and saw that there were words written on it, but he had never been to school, so he didn't recognize a single word.
Of the seven people present, none of them were literate; they were all completely illiterate and had absolutely no interest in bamboo slips.
Although Zhao Guihua had never been to school, she knew that bamboo slips were only used in the dynasties before those of the previous dynasty. Since then, paper books had replaced bamboo slips. Bamboo slips were bulky and difficult to carry, and people had long since stopped using them.
"These are things left behind by people from what dynasty? They must be at least several hundred years old. These bamboo slips are quite durable; they haven't been eaten by insects." Zhao Guihua exclaimed in amazement.
Zhou Erfu stared at the bamboo slips with a sense of annoyance. What useless stuff was this? He thought there was money in it, but it turned out to be nothing.
So he used both his hands and feet to throw all the bamboo slips out of the wooden box, until he saw several pieces of green jade at the bottom, and next to them were more than a dozen gold bars as thick as an adult's finger.
"Hiss, gold is definitely useful, but he doesn't know much about jade. He reached out and rummaged around for a bit and found some silver underneath the gold bars."
"We're rich, Mom! Our family is rich!" Zhou Erfu laughed loudly three times, holding several gold bars.
"Shh, shut up, don't attract outsiders." Zhao Guihua poked his head, he's already getting carried away. We've only been here a short while, and he's already so smug.
After thinking for a moment, Zhao Guihua instructed the children to put all the gold bars and silver in the bottom of the basket and cover it with chrysanthemum seedlings.
"Mother, what should we do with these bamboo slips?" Zhou Erfu asked.
"Put it back in the box and then bury it again." They couldn't understand it anyway, and it was useless to keep it, so they buried it back first to avoid being discovered.
At this time, no one noticed that Zhou Sanfu had secretly hidden two bamboo slips in his basket. Zhou Dafu also hid one when he saw this. The two brothers were rather quiet and longed to study, but their family's circumstances and the world did not allow it.
But when I see a book, I want to take it home and keep it safe.
After a period of chaos and confusion, they finally managed to hide the items and put the wooden box back into the pit. Then, the five brothers began to fill the pit with soil.
Zhou Erfu accidentally poked his hoe into a hole next to the pit wall. He crouched down and looked inside. "I knew it! Oh my god, the python was sleeping in this hole. Xingxing was right, there really is a python here. I'll dig it out."
"Stop digging! Don't dig anymore. Fill the hole right now and go back. Don't cause any more trouble," Zhao Guihua said sternly.
Zhou Sifu also couldn't understand his second brother's thought process. They already had gold, silver, and jade. If they wanted to eat meat, why couldn't they buy it? Why did they have to dig for snakes? Didn't they get tired?
After all that trouble, it was already late afternoon when they got home. Zhao Guizhi took the cold food and heated it up, then served it to them.
"Why didn't you come back for lunch? I've been waiting for you until almost noon. You guys are really something. If you don't finish digging up the vines on the mountain today, will they grow legs and run away tomorrow? Why do you have to be so determined to finish it all in one day?" Zhao Guizhi rolled her eyes at Zhao Guihua, her tone reproachful.
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