Chapter 50: Stilt House
The security guy leaned back and said, "Anyway, I'm not leaving. I think this place is pretty good."
As he spoke, he pulled out a messy hollow sculpture and placed it on the small wooden table.
This statue is exactly the same as the one the village chief placed outside.
Lu Jiamu noticed it and asked, "What is this?"
The security guy rubbed it for a moment in confusion and said, "This is something I found outside. I felt it had a strange beauty, so I brought it back."
Xiao Liang didn't pay attention to the security guy picking up things randomly and turned his attention to other people.
The cameraman hesitated for a moment and said, "There may be wild animals in the mountains. It's not safe for us to walk alone."
Xiao Liang gradually calmed down and suppressed the fear in his heart: "Then let's go and explain to the village chief. Just say that we are very scared when we see this kind of thing. I think the village chief still trusts us now."
The girl in the scene said, “I’ll follow you.”
Seeing this, the photographer also expressed his intention to leave.
Xiao Liang turned his inquiring gaze towards the other people.
Wang Biao shook his head: "I won't leave."
Lu Jiamu said: "I think it's more dangerous outside, and this is different from the plan we agreed upon when we came here."
Kou Man and Wei Xiaoyan also shook their heads.
Xiao Liang did not force them. He started to prepare to leave and soon left with the photographer and the girl.
The security guy lay back on the bed and started to catch up on his sleep, and soon he was snoring loudly.
After sitting in the room for a while, several people stood up at the same time in tacit understanding, avoiding the security guard and quietly walked out of the room.
This time, without much routine opening remarks, Wang Biao said directly: "There must be something wrong with this village."
On this day, the village exuded a sense of weirdness from inside to outside. They were not fools, and they all had some ideas of their own in their hearts.
After Wang Biao finished speaking, he turned around and glanced at the door. A hint of ferocity appeared on his already tough face: "He is probably no longer alive. Should we strike first or wait a little longer?"
Coleman said, "It's better to wait. If we act now, we might alarm this strange village. We should first understand how the old lady died."
Although the stupid man in the village and the well ghost seemed to know something now, one of them could only keep shouting "there is a ghost" and the other couldn't even speak. If you want to take action against them in a short period of time, it would probably be a futile effort.
"Fire. See if it will burn again tonight." Lu Jiamu said, "And we should get to know the villagers better."
"Indeed, we should. But now that the old lady is dead, there won't be anyone willing to lead the way for us today, right?"
Lu Jiamu replied: "Let the village chief help us. As long as I walk once, I will remember it."
After a few people discussed it and finalized the details, they went to see the village chief.
After hearing their request and knowing that they were actually trying to solve the case, the village chief thought for a moment and called a little boy over.
The little boy was extremely reluctant, but after the village chief gave him a candy, the little boy reluctantly accepted the task of leading them.
The little boy introduced the population of the village as they walked. Although he was not as good at chatting as the old lady, he was still conscientious in leading the way.
The group walked around the mountain path, visiting every house, and then they could vaguely see a shabby and inconspicuous little stilt house in the distance.
The little boy obviously had no intention of taking them there, and when he saw the stilt house from afar, he planned to return the same way.
"Hey." Lu Jiamu grabbed him and smiled sincerely, "Who lives in the house in front?"
The little boy was a little confused: "No one lives in the front. The building has been abandoned for a long time."
"Really? Then can you introduce us to who lived here before?"
"I'm young, so I'm not very clear. You'll have to ask the village chief for details." The little boy thought for a moment and said, "But it seems that there was a grandmother living here before. After she died without any children, the house became abandoned. Later, strangers and people from other villages occasionally came here, and the village chief let them live here."
"Strangers?" Lu Jiamu looked at the dilapidated building. "When was the last time a stranger came here?"
The little boy pouted: "I'm only ten years old, how can I remember so many things? Anyway, it seems that there is no such thing this year."
"I want to go over and take a look."
"What's so interesting about such a shabby house?" The little boy wanted to call out to him, but the group had already started walking, so he had no choice but to jog to catch up.
As we got closer, the small stilt house built against the mountain looked even more dilapidated, and the wooden part had already begun to rot.
The doors and windows of the stilt house had been nailed shut with several layers of wooden strips, and there was a big lock hanging on the door.
Lu Jiamu saw something unusual in this situation.
If this really was just an ordinary, ownerless, dilapidated wooden building that was only occasionally used to entertain outsiders, the villagers could have simply ignored it instead of going to the trouble of sealing it off from the outside.
What on earth is inside this place that could make the villagers treat it like this?
Lu Jiamu turned his gaze to Kouman and stepped back.
Coleman understood what he meant. He nodded, took a step forward, and punched the blocked wooden door.
Impatience flashed across the little boy's face, and he wanted to step forward to stop it. However, when he saw Coleman punch a hole in the wooden board with several consecutive punches, the expression on his face turned into admiration for strength.
Coleman violently opened a hole, pried it open with his bare hands, and crawled in.
Others followed suit and went in.
The little boy didn't try to stop it this time. His eyes sparkled and he said, "Wow."
The dilapidated house that had been sealed for a long time was finally opened again, and the moldy and smelly air began to circulate weakly.
There were some basic furniture in the shabby house. There were no human remains on the old bed, but there were quite a few yellowed bandages.
There are dark marks on it, which should be dried blood stains. An injured person once lived here, and judging by the amount of blood loss, the injury was serious.
Several people immediately started searching the house.
Wang Biao found several pieces of clothes piled up in the closet.
Lu Jiamu found a discarded bloodstained small backpack from under the bed.
He reached into the bag and soon felt something soft.
Lu Jiamu took it out and flipped it over. He saw the following words written on it:
Super deep sleep 420
Ultra-thin.
It turned out to be a sanitary napkin.
The length is also super thin, so we should be able to determine the gender of the backpack's owner.
Otherwise, whether you want to use insoles or prevent your pants from pulling, you should not choose this variety.
Lu Jiamu took a look at it and put it back, then took out a tube of lipstick, a tube of hand oil, some expired compressed food and a wallet from his bag, but there was no useful personal information.
These don't look like things that villagers in an isolated village would use. They must have been left behind by the previous group of outsiders.
Coleman found a thick leather notebook on the desk next to the sunny window.
She looked around and frowned. "I don't understand the language. It seems to be French."
Lu Jiamu had already put the things in his backpack back. He had learned a minor language before, so he went behind Kou Man to read the book.
The contents of the book were indeed written in French, but only part of it was understandable, and the rest seemed to be encrypted in code. If you couldn't find the wordbook, even if you knew every word, you wouldn't be able to understand it when they were put together.
Double encryption, really safe.
Coleman asked, "French expedition?"
Lu Jiamu shook his head to indicate that he didn't understand. He ran his fingertips over the words, squinted his eyes and read out the part he could understand.
There were eight outsiders in total, and they came as a team by parachuting from a plane.
They worked for some alliance organization and were ordered to go into the mountains to explore something, moving along the primitive villages scattered in the mountains.
The only comprehensible records in the entire notebook probably express this information, and the rest are code words.
Yu Leng searched the room again but still couldn't find the deciphered version.
Since they are from the same organization, they have memorized the secret codes, so it is normal that they don't need to compare and identify them. Maybe they didn't bring them with them.
At the end of the book, the last recorder simply stated that all his companions had died, and only the recorder himself came back alive, but was injured.
And warned anyone who had the chance to see this book: the depths of the mountains are already very dangerous, so do not explore.
The recorder also stated that he had already blown up the mountain when he was about to come out.
Several people gathered together to listen to Lu Jiamu's recitation. Kou Man thought for a moment and asked, "Is it that idiot?"
Lu Jiamu shook his head and took out the Super Sleeper 420 from his backpack: "It's a woman."
"Well ghost?"
“Not like that. It didn’t have many clothes on, and I didn’t see any major wounds the few times it crawled out.”
Yu Leng was puzzled: "If only one person survived and it was a woman, who was that idiot? Another group of outsiders?"
Lu Jiamu glanced at the little boy who was still standing in the room and didn't continue: "Go back and ask and you'll know."
The little boy's eyes rolled around cleverly, sparkling: "I heard you are investigators? What are you investigating?"
Lu Jiamu smiled and said, "We are investigating wild animals."
The little boy curled his lips: "You are investigating who killed the old lady."
Lu Jiamu didn't comment and picked up the thick leather notebook: "Let's go back."
When coming out of the stilt house on the slope, Lu Jiamu stood on a high place and looked at the back of the mountain. He saw the entire forest that had been burned, which the program crew had complained about before.
**
Xiao Liang found the village chief and sincerely explained that she was frightened by the tragedy in the village and wanted to leave quickly. The village chief did not make things difficult for her.
The village chief may have thought that a few newcomers with delicate skin and flesh could not break into the villagers' homes and murder them in such a short time. If they did not leave after such a thing happened, they would soon be drowned in spit in this place of right and wrong.
So he discussed it with several elderly people in the village and asked the old man driving the ox cart to take them out.
Sitting on the ox cart, Xiao Liang felt a little more at ease, and felt that the old village chief was unexpectedly easy to talk to.
The old man in front of us drove the cattle and said, "Our village chief really likes you city people."
Xiao Liang asked absentmindedly: "Why?"
The old man smacked his lips and said, "He didn't like you city people before, thinking you city people are flashy and cunning. But later his son didn't want to stay in the mountains anymore, so he went out and every time he came back he would bring some good things, so he started to like you."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
