Chapter 65: A Letter from Home Is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold
Because the house has been in arrears on electricity for too long, the wires have been cut off. It will take at least tomorrow to reconnect them.
But Xu Youyou was afraid that the night would be too long and she didn't dare to wait any longer.
The room was filled with miscellaneous items, most of which were waste that the Xie family had thrown in there and were inconvenient to dispose of.
Holding the flashlight on her cell phone, Xu Youyou walked into the kitchen, followed the system's prompts, and stopped behind the stove.
The house is a bit old and uses an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. Even Xie Datou's family doesn't use wood anymore.
It is also for this reason that behind the stove there is not only a small stool with a missing leg, but also a pile of messy firewood as high as Xu Youyou's knees.
A thick layer of dust had accumulated on the firewood.
Xu Youyou placed her cell phone with the flashlight turned on on the dirty stove, with the light shining directly on the messy firewood on the ground.
She hesitated for a long time, but finally decided to do it herself. She put on a pair of work gloves she bought on the road and moved the firewood aside with swift movements.
After working for nearly half an hour, Xu Youyou finally emptied the pile of firewood, leaving only the dirty ground.
This old-style bungalow doesn't even have a cement floor, the ground is just compacted yellow dirt.
The system instructions poked straight into the ground.
"Everything we dig out of the ground belongs to the country," said Xu Youyou.
The system slowly explained: [It is clear where the origin is, and items that are inherited from a family are not considered to belong to the country.]
Xu Youyou was stunned when she heard this, and understood the system's hint, but the ground had been compacted over a long period of time and had become extremely hard. It was obviously not something she could dig with her hands.
The door of the dilapidated bungalow was opened, and Xu Youyou walked out covered in dust.
"Boss?" Xu Fang came forward with a surprised look on her face, brushing off the dust on Xu Youyou's body. Looking at Xu Youyou's current condition, she couldn't help but wonder if the boss had rolled on the ground several times. She then said, "You can just let us help you clean up, why do you have to do it yourself?"
Xu Youyou shook his head and said to the bodyguard who was nearby: "Go buy some farm tools like shovels and hoes, and also buy a few barrels of mineral water."
The bodyguard didn't ask any more questions, turned around and drove away from the alley.
It is now late at night, but Xu Youyou has no intention of leaving, so the others can only stay here. Anyway, Xu Youyou will pay high overtime pay in this situation.
Half an hour later, the bodyguard returned with a complete set of farm tools, including shovels and hoes.
Xu Youyou didn't let anyone else do it, and walked in personally carrying the farm tools and several buckets of water.
The soil on the ground was too hard, so Xu Youyou simply poured two buckets of water down it.
The sufficiently moist ground became much softer, and when Xu Youyou swung the hoe down, she did not encounter much resistance.
When Xu Youyou was in the orphanage, she only picked up some garbage. She had never done direct farm work like she did today. After a while, she was so tired that her back and waist ached.
After digging for more than half an hour, her hoe finally touched something.
Xu Youyou perked up, and immediately dug the thing out of the soil. It was a box the size of a takeout box.
The box was wrapped in three layers of sackcloth, but due to the erosion of time, the outer layer had rotted beyond recognition.
Xu Youyou untied the sacks and threw them aside. She shook the wooden box but heard no sound, so the things inside should not be heavy. She saw the copper lock hanging on the black wooden box, hesitated for a moment and decided to smash the lock open.
[You are not afraid that the truly valuable things are the boxes and locks.] The system suddenly spoke.
Xu Youyou's heart skipped a beat, but she had learned something during this period of time, so she said, "This box is just made by an ordinary carpenter. It's painted on the outside and doesn't even have any carvings. How can it be valuable? The same goes for this copper lock."
The system stopped talking.
After Xu Youyou opened the box, she found it was also wrapped in layers. After finally removing the protective materials, only two things were exposed. She changed into a pair of clean gloves before she dared to touch them.
The first one is the family tree.
"Genealogy of Zeng Family". After Xu Youyou opened it, she saw that the first name on the genealogy was Zeng Wendigong, followed by an introduction to his life, also written in classical Chinese. However, Xu Youyou immediately knew who this person was.
"Zeng Gong! One of the Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties!"
She carefully picked up another thing, which was only a single page of paper, but had been well kept.
"This looks like a letter." Xu Youyou said.
The handwriting on the paper was clear. It took Xu Youyou a while to read before she understood that this letter was written by Zeng Gong to his younger brother Zeng Bu. The letter was full of earnest words, advising his younger brother to be an official with diligence. It didn't seem like he was teaching his younger brother, but more like he was teaching his son.
Xu Youyou checked the two people again. Zeng Gong was seventeen years older than his younger brother. Zeng Gong lost his father at the age of eighteen. At that time, his younger brother was only one year old. It is not an exaggeration to say that the elder brother is like a father.
Xu Youyou was a layman, and she immediately looked up the value of Zeng Gong's letters on the Internet.
"So valuable?" Xu Youyou searched for "The Bureau Post" and the first one that popped up, she rubbed her hands excitedly.
"Jushi Tie" is the only calligraphy work handed down from Zeng Gong. It is also a letter. It has been auctioned several times. The last auction was in 2016, and the price was as high as 200 million yuan. It is truly a book worth ten thousand gold.
Xu Youyou carefully put away the piece of paper and kept it close to her body. She turned around and stuffed the box back into the ground, then filled the box with soil and even put the firewood back into place.
It was already three in the morning when she finished all this.
The people waiting outside were already drowsy.
The sound of Xu Youyou opening the door scared them so much that they almost jumped up.
"Let's go back to the hotel." Xu Youyou said.
In the eyes of several people, Xu Youyou looked like she had just come back from mining. Her head and face were all dirty, and her brand-name bag worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was also extremely dirty. She was holding a book (family tree) in her arms, but her eyes were surprisingly bright.
Xu Youyou asked someone to lock the door of the old bungalow before returning to the hotel.
She slept until noon.
After lunch, she idly flipped through her family tree which was in a book-like state.
Although this is the genealogy of Zeng Gong, it was actually recorded by the descendants of Zeng Bu.
"Wang Shengli mentioned earlier, what was the surname of the original owner of that house?" Xu Youyou asked Xu Fang.
Xu Fang hesitated for a moment before saying, "The surname is Zeng. It's not a very common surname."
Xu Fang thought to herself that she would get a small notebook next time and write down everything she heard, so that she could answer Xu Youyou's questions at the last minute.
Xu Youyou immediately pieced together the legal path by which she obtained this thing. Qian Datou inherited the Zeng family's house as a relative, and then sold the house to Xu Youyou. Xu Youyou unexpectedly found priceless letters from Zeng Gong in the house.
There is a real estate sales contract, written in black and white, which shows that everything in the house belongs to Xu Youyou, so even if Qian Datou wants to make a fuss, he can't.
Besides, Xu Youyou will take the things away in two days. A collection of this level must be handed over to a big auction house for auction.
(End of this chapter)
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