Chapter 354 The old house hides secrets
Sunset is approaching.
The taxi slowly drove into an old city that was undergoing renovation, where the Jiang family's old house was located.
This place is close to the Affiliated Hospital of Jinping Medical University, which is where Grandpa Jiang Qian worked during his lifetime. The old house of the Jiang family is the welfare housing assigned to Grandpa Jiang’s workplace.
Although he rarely returns here after moving, Jiang Qian still clearly remembers the location, outline, changes in different periods and many other details of the old house:
There are two houses side by side facing north and south. The old house with two bedrooms and one kitchen on the west side is where grandparents live, and the new three-bedroom house on the east side that has been renovated is where Jiang Qian, his parents, and brother live.
Of the two bedrooms on the west side, one is a bedroom and the other is a study shared by Grandpa Jiang and Grandma, mostly for reading.
In the third bedroom on the east side, one master bedroom is occupied by Jiang Qian’s parents, Jiang Xuesong and Wen Han; the second bedroom is shared by brothers Jiang Qian and Jiang Yang, with bunk beds next to the desk where the brothers do their homework; A room was transformed by Jiang Xuesong into the couple's workshop, where archaeological equipment, painting tools and all kinds of strange sundries were piled up all year round.
Later, there were repeated changes in the family, and her mother Wen Han no longer lived at home, so her aunt and sister took over the house she and Jiang Xuesong shared.
Only grandma insisted on living alone. Even in the years when Grandpa Jiang just left, she never needed anyone to accompany her. She said she was not afraid of silence and would get annoyed when there were too many people.
Many past events were being recalled in my mind, and the car gradually came to a stop.
"Brother, it will be difficult to get around from here. Do you think..."
The road ahead was difficult, so the driver hesitated and turned back to ask the passengers for their opinions.
"Okay, stop here."
The road was indeed a bit deserted. Jiang Qian did not continue to embarrass the driver. He paid the fare and walked towards the old house in his memory.
At the same time, the Beidou button cameras spread out, covering the nearby neighborhoods under Jiang Qian's perspective.
Less than half a street away, he saw the bungalow that was much lower and dilapidated than he remembered. The door was covered with rust, and the red bricks in his memory had faded to white. The whole courtyard looked old and decadent under the afterglow of the setting sun.
Not only Jiang Qian's house, but also other nearby courtyards were already uninhabited.
Jiang Qian took out the key to open the door, entered the yard, glanced at the remaining plants in the yard and the crumbling old warehouse that accompanied his childhood, and walked straight to the house on the east side.
Open the door, light the door, enter.
The movements are clean and neat, without any hesitation or delay.
He found that except for a lot of dust, this room still maintained the appearance of when he lived there inside and out.
Jiang Qian went straight to the topic: heading to his parents' workshop.
Open the door.
There was a "squeak" and dust filled the air.
The room was not big, and Jiang Xuesong's and Wen Han's belongings occupied one side of each other, making them easy to identify. Judging from the distribution of dust, the room had not been visited for a long time.
Of course.
Looking at his father's only remaining relics, Jiang Qian began a "thorough investigation" without even having time to recall the past.
From the workbench, drawers, to cabinets, shelves, and even every crack in the wall tiles and floor, he tried to find out where his father might have left the message.
However, there was no harvest.
Jiang Qian continued to include his mother's things and expanded the scope of the search.
Still unsuccessful.
The only strange thing was a photo of an orphanage that he dug out of his mother's sketchbook.
The photo showed a group of children, both boys and girls, all in their teens. The most eye-catching one is Yu Xuan standing in the corner.
Although she was standing in the corner, no one could block her blooming beauty.
Jiang Qian was sure that he had never seen this photo before, because Yu Xuan in this photo looked different from Yu Xuan in any period in his memory.
There was no smile on her face, she was beautiful and aloof, like an independent iceberg and snow lotus.
This should be the photo taken before taking her home... Jiang Qian was silent and meditating.
In his memory, his sister was taken home from the orphanage in the outer suburbs by Lafayette for the reason: to help an old friend take care of the orphans.
And Jiang Qian also clearly remembered that before his grandfather passed away, there was a young and promising assistant also named Yu.
Dr. Yu went abroad for inspection on the same flight as his grandfather, and he also died in the line of duty.
Jiang Qian put the photos away and silently restored his parents' belongings to their original positions.
His mood became more complicated.
In fact, from the moment Dionysus mentioned his father's name, he had already thought of many possibilities and had imagined all kinds of extreme situations. Because of this, immunity to various possible outcomes is formed.
The mood is complicated, but the method of doing things is orderly and not chaotic at all.
He desperately needed evidence.
Mountains of ironclad evidence were needed to explain the many doubts in his mind.
After locking his parents' workshop again, Jiang Qian went to the west side of the house, opened his grandparents' study, and continued to look for clues.
This room is much neater than Jiang Qian's parents' workroom.
Most of my grandma’s books and periodicals have been moved to their new homes. There are not many things left, and they are all gathering dust.
Jiang Qian carefully and intelligently cleaned and screened until a medical professional book was spread out in front of him. It was a theoretical work on brain science co-authored by Jiang Qian's grandfather Jiang Yuncheng and Yu Xuan's mother Yu Xiaohe.
Driven by curiosity, he casually browsed through the catalog, but in the extended section, he saw bold conjectures about the energy sources to be developed in the human brain.
Jiang Qian went straight to the text of this conjecture and read the key points. The more he read, the more he felt a strange sense of familiarity:
To put it simply, the two are trying to prove the "terrifying potential" of the brain.
He also conducted a series of controlled experiments within the scope of the law using common animals as an analogy to explore many "divine" contents that go beyond basic science.
This kind of concept is already quite advanced even today.
In the era when the work was published, Jiang Qian doubted how they passed the review and obtained the ISBN... Of course, Jiang Qian did not understand publishing.
Among the limited medical professional books he has read, there is only one that can be "comparable" to it, and it is "The Miracle of Genes" written by Dr. Kate in the copy of "The End of the Hungry Ghost".
There are interesting coincidences between the real world and the replica world.
Jiang Qian's brain speed slowed down for a moment, but it was only for a moment.
Just like these two books, they only have similar angles in exploring the issues.
"It's really a mess of flowers that gradually becomes charming..."
Closing the old book, Jiang Qian dusted himself off and backed out of the abandoned study.
Admittedly, the information he wanted was not found here.
He looked down at his watch.
Well, the bloodthirsty elder pigeon was very thorough, which is awesome.
Jiang Qian continued to expand the search scope. He searched the rooms in the east and west rooms carpet by room, filtering out objects one by one. He was busy from the evening until midnight.
But still no gain.
Jiang Qian stood in the abandoned courtyard and sighed silently.
He originally thought that by "going home" this time, he might be able to get some information related to the missing Jiang Yang and his suspicious sister, but now it seems that he was too optimistic.
Looking up at the crescent moon looming in the clouds, Jiang Qian fell into doubts about this trip plan: Is the hint of Dionysus credible?
If those two words "go home" didn't mean anything, why did he tell me his father Jiang Xuesong's name? During the first meeting, he deliberately avoided being observed by official Lu Fanni...
Jiang Qian withdrew his gaze, cleared his mind, and walked towards the old warehouse where he often hid his personal "works".
Simply, he also got the key to the warehouse.
Opening the door to the warehouse, memories of the past quickly flooded into my mind, noisily recalled.
Most of the not-so-good memories are related to Jiang Yang.
But Jiang Qian will no longer be angry about this: who would compete with a "missing person"?
Anyway, he doesn't know how to do it, and he doesn't have time.
So Jiang Qian started searching the dusty old warehouse again, until he had played with all the scraps and scraps of metal in the warehouse, not even the walls and the brick floor. Discover valuable legacy information.
So...
Want to try your authority?
Jiang Qian hesitated.
The power of his "Soaring Snake" card is "Lingxi", which can be called a way to break the situation in a critical moment, but the premise is that there is a "crisis", that is, it is automatically triggered when the body is threatened by life or has suffered serious injury.
It is obviously inconsistent with the current situation.
And if we do not insist on stimulating Lingxi in times of crisis, we will suffer backlash, leading to unpredictable consequences.
Although the images returned by the Beidou button camera showed that there were no safety risks in the surrounding area, Jiang Qian still did not intend to take the risk.
What does it matter if this trip has little effect?
The most he can do is lose the face of the bloody elder...
Jiang Qian calmly organized his thoughts:
"Suppose I were Jiang Xuesong, where would I hide my secret so that no one except my closest relatives would think of it and would not be able to get it?"
With this question, Jiang Qian's eyes refocused on the old things abandoned by his family.
Especially those worn-out picture frames inlaid with physical photos. Some of the edges of those picture frames were rotten, but they were later recycled by him and used as specimen frames to frame his countless personal "works."
He walked over and took the dilapidated photo frames in his hands one by one, and looked at them carefully again, including the degree of damage and the weight of the photo frames, so as not to miss any clues.
This approach worked.
When picking up a brown wooden specimen frame, Jiang Qian stopped.
He deftly dismantled the photo frame, and at this moment, a strange quadrilateral "drawing" of non-standard size fell out from the interlayer of the back cover board. The drawing was marked with an "unexplained" red dot...
"What is this?"
Jiang Qian muttered something silently, and his eyes suddenly lit up!
This drawing is a miniature version of the warehouse's floor space.
Then the red dot marks on the drawing are self-evident.
With the target area, spatial "search" becomes extremely simple for Jiang Qian.
He concentrated his spiritual vision and quickly scanned the area marked by the red dot on the drawing. Finally, under the thick dust, he found a "suspicious" brick that was slightly different from other floor tiles.
Jiang Qian walked over without hesitation and swept away the thick dust accumulated on the ground, revealing the brick floor.
After getting closer and groping, I discovered: This brick is an imitation!
Jiang Qian carefully separated the "brick" and looked at it carefully.
Only then did they discover that the hidden part of this "floor tile" actually contained a hidden box.
While his fingers were groping for the mechanism on the back, the secret box suddenly opened!
A stack of densely drawn drawings was immediately scattered on the ground.
Jiang Qian squatted down and unfolded the drawings one by one. After looking at them one by one, he found that they were all hand-drawn address prospecting maps...
And this thick stack is obviously another cut-up picture from "the same area".
……
(End of chapter)