"You brat, shut your mouth right now! What are you yelling about? Go get your old man up here!" Meng Dong almost jumped up and covered his mouth. This brat really had no sense of propriety when it came to his words.
"Wait, Lao Meng, do you smell something really rotten, like meat that's gone bad?" Lu Qingzhu suddenly caught a strange odor in the air and sniffed into the secret room; it was indeed the smell of decay.
"Quick, you brat, go downstairs and call everyone up, especially Wang Dahu." Meng Dong, reminded by him, also smelled the increasingly strong stench of rotting flesh, and the source of the smell was right inside the boxes he was standing on.
"Okay, okay, Lao Meng, wait for me." Lu Qingzhu felt increasingly uneasy; even the way she addressed people was becoming strange.
"Dad, Dad, Dad, hurry, hurry, there's a new discovery! Wang Dahu, Wang Dahu, Lao Meng is looking for you, hurry up!" Lu Qingzhu rushed downstairs in a hurry. Although he was shouting, his voice wasn't very loud. However, the people here were specially trained and could hear what he was saying clearly.
"What's going on, brat? Why are you in such a hurry? Da Hu, come out first." Only two people remained downstairs to guard the main gate, and two people guarded the entrance to the secret room. Everyone else went upstairs.
As soon as they stepped into the dilapidated study, they smelled a foul odor: "This is the smell of rotting corpses. Meng Dong, look around and see if there are any other mechanisms besides this one. Also, think of a way to get these boxes out. There must be rotting corpses in here, otherwise there wouldn't be this smell. And they must have been dead for quite a while. In this kind of weather, corpses don't decompose easily, so they definitely weren't put in recently."
Soon everyone got busy, first carrying down the boxes that were within reach from upstairs. There were no ladders or ropes, so there was no way to do it.
In the end, only twenty boxes were taken out. The rest have been sent back with a truck and some tools to retrieve them.
Wang Dahu quickly unlocked the box with his tools, but he didn't immediately lift the lid. If there really was a rotting corpse, they would have to make some preparations; it would be dangerous to face the rotting corpse directly like this.
The people who went out to get the truck and rope also brought back the hammer. They found the wall downstairs, but they just needed to break it down. They also brought back several sets of protective suits.
After putting on protective clothing, Meng Dong began to open the wooden crates one by one. The first two crates contained large yellow croakers, but when he opened the third crate, a strong stench of decay filled the entire room.
The stench drove away everyone who wasn't wearing protective suits. Lu Qingzhu had no idea it smelled so bad; as soon as the smell came out, he rushed out of the house and leaned against a tree outside, vomiting violently.
The two guards at the door also smelled the stench because the door was open, but they couldn't leave their posts, so they could only slow their breathing to reduce the amount of stench entering their nostrils.
"Ugh, ugh, it's so scary, so scary, ugh..." After vomiting, Lu Qingzhu stood in the yard and let the cold wind blow on her. She didn't dare to go back in. The smell of the living room was just too much to bear.
Although the people inside couldn't bear it either, they still had to continue their work. They could only wear two masks each and continue smashing the wall. It took them half an hour to break through the wall under the study.
After smashing down the wall, everyone saw that the room was full of boxes. However, the smell was quite strong after the wall was broken down, which meant that the boxes inside contained not only gold and silver jewelry, but also rotting corpses.
Soon, all the boxes were cleared out, and the military sent four trucks and a platoon of soldiers to help.
It took a full day and night to organize everything here. Including the two locked boxes in the secret room we found at the beginning, there are a total of 368 locked and sealed boxes like these.
There were only four crates containing weapons, but those four crates contained enough weapons: 408 bombs, six imported high-strength sniper rifles, and about 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
Among those three hundred-plus boxes were ten boxes of books, twenty boxes of calligraphy and paintings, twenty boxes of various carved jade ornaments, twenty boxes of gold and silver jewelry from various time-honored brands, and the rest were all gold bars and silver ingots. Sixty-seven boxes contained corpses, each in a different degree of decomposition, with the bottom ones consisting of nothing but bones.
It took 20 truckloads to move everything out of the house.
All the bodies were sent for examination. Based on the opened box and the number of bombs they cleared out, the explosion at the steel mill a couple of days ago was caused by these bombs. There were probably 410 bombs in these boxes. The two missing ones must have been given to the steel mill during the Chinese New Year.
After Lu Qingzhu vomited that night, she was sent back home. Thinking she had done a great service and wouldn't get beaten, Lu Qingzhu was caught off guard and got a severe beating on the buttocks, a mixed doubles beating by a man and a woman.
Of course, it wasn't his father who hit him; his father was still busy over there. It was his uncle who hit him, because he was too curious and dared to take his sister out for an adventure in the snow.
After beating his mother, his uncle took a feather duster and continued beating her, making her scream in pain. Even He Caiwei didn't dare to plead for her.
As a young man who would turn thirteen after the New Year, he was so ashamed to leave his room for two days because he had lost face in front of his younger sister.
He Caiwei guessed that he had finished being stubborn and fussy, so she brought him a small cake and some food upstairs.
When Lu Qingzhu saw her younger sister, she was pleasantly surprised. Upon seeing the small cake, all her pain disappeared, and she jumped out of bed. However, she accidentally touched her wound and let out a scream, which startled He Caiwei so much that she almost dropped the cake.
"What are you doing? You scared me." He Caiwei rolled her eyes at him, put the things on his desk, pulled out a chair and sat down, looking at the person who was grimacing, and found it a little funny.
"Where did these little cakes come from? Does the supply and marketing cooperative still sell these kinds of cakes during the Chinese New Year?" Lu Qingzhu forgot all her pain when she saw the delicious food. She sat down next to her sister with a smile and looked at the exquisite little cake, wishing she could just take a bite of it.
"Alright, if there's food, then eat it. Don't ask questions or whine. When your aunt comes, you won't get anything to eat, believe it or not. Tell me first, what exactly was in there that day? Your uncle hasn't come back for so many days, so I don't know what was in that place we found that day. Tell me what was in those two boxes." He Caiwei had been extremely curious these past few days, but since her little brother had been beaten up, she could only let him calm down first.
"Didn't I tell you? Little sister, let me tell you, that place was terrifying. There were boxes and boxes full of gold and silver jewelry, as well as many corpses. The smell was unbearable. I threw up outside so many times." Thinking of the smell that day, Lu Qingzhu felt a little nauseous again.
"But there were only six boxes there. How could that hold so many corpses? Did you find anything else in that house?" He Caiwei had only found that one secret room and left in a hurry that day, so she didn't know if there were any other places.
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