Chapter 13: Windfall
Su Luo's hands were shaking and her heart was trembling. God had not abandoned her. The time traveler was indeed the most powerful!
When he opened the lid of the box, he saw a bright white object inside, reflecting the sunlight in the sky, which burned Su Luo's eyes so much that they hurt.
It was not some rare antique. The box contained the most tacky and affordable gift in the world: silver.
It was not silver ingots, but silver bars, neatly stacked in the box, no more, no less, exactly 100. This was definitely a gift from God, knowing that she was not doing well in this world, so he gave her a golden finger.
Su Luo's face was almost deformed by laughing, and her mouth was still open. She kept digging around the silver box, and when she saw no other boxes, she stopped. But then the question came up again, could her bowl be buried here? Obviously, this box of silver was also buried by someone. It was fine if it was an ancient heritage, but the most worrying thing was that it was the private money of some landlord. He might come to dig it up one day, so he had to be careful.
Having made up her mind, she was no longer in a hurry to bury the bowl. She tied the silver box to her body and carried it to the ground. Su Luo was so tired that she almost vomited blood, but she felt it was worth it!
That day, Su Luo took almost twice as long as usual to carry the silver box from the mountain to her home. She secretly hid the silver box under the bed and then opened her clothes to check her painful shoulders. They were badly swollen and had several abrasions, but she felt it was worth it!
The next morning, Su Luo got up early as usual and went back to the mountain to clean up the traces. She realized that digging a pit was hard work, and filling it was equally hard work. After filling it over and over again, the soil in the pit was always less, so she had to drag a lot of mountain vines and branches to cover it up. It was exhausting, but it was worth it!
On her way home that day, Su Luo first returned the hoe and rattan basket, and then used her personal credit as a guarantee to borrow ten coins from Zhou Si. When she returned home with the pork she had bought, Su Yi was so happy that he almost jumped up to the sky.
The brother and sister enjoyed a delicious meal and conscientiously left some for Zhou Si. Su Luo then closed the door, called Su Yi to her room, and shared the secret that should be shared with family.
"Bring mom back tomorrow." Su Luo instructed her brother who looked a little dazed.
Su Yi's mind had stopped thinking for a long time. He took a silver bar and suddenly took a big bite.
"Sister, don't wake me up." Su Yi's eyes were a little red.
Su Luo pinched his face and twisted it hard, "Does it hurt?"
"It hurts! It hurts!" Su Yi cried out in pain, but a smile finally appeared on his face. "Sister, do we have money?"
Su Luo laughed wildly, but in the blink of an eye she found that Su Yi's tears were falling.
"Mom won't have to work so hard in the future, and my sister will be able to get married."
Su Luo's smile faded a little. These were not things a thirteen-year-old boy should worry about, but Su Yi had taken on the burden of the family too early. Including the time she had been here, it was almost always Su Yi who had taken care of her.
"Xiao Yi, thank you, you are such a man." At this moment, Su Luo learned to cherish and regretted what he had missed, so he should cherish what he had in front of him even more.
That night, Su Luo's cabin was occasionally filled with the brother and sister's deliberately suppressed laughter. Su Luo had finally completely gotten rid of the shadow of her first failed gold rush and saw the bright dawn of her future.
The next morning, Su Yi borrowed a scale from outside and carefully weighed each silver bar, ten taels each, one hundred, and one thousand taels each.
Su Luo immediately took the small stick and started calculating on the ground.
One tael is approximately equal to 650 RMB, one thousand taels is equal to 650,000 RMB.
Su Luo's face was full of smiles. It took her only fifteen days to move from the proletariat to the petty bourgeoisie. The price she paid was only red and swollen shoulders and blisters on her hands.
Su Yi went to return the scale, and when he came back, Zhou Chongwen followed him.
Su Luo felt that things were going to be bad, because Su Yi believed in Zhou Si and respected him as a brother and teacher. So she had reason to believe that Zhou Si already knew about the silver she had dug up.
Sure enough, Zhou Chongwen closed the door with a serious face, turned around and asked to see the silver.
"I dug this up, no illegal means were used." Su Luo emphasized as he dragged the box out from under the bed.
"If someone had buried the silver there..."
"Of course someone buried it." Su Luo interrupted him, "It's impossible for a box of silver to appear out of thin air. But who was it? Is there anyone in Baolai Village who can afford to bury such a large sum of money? If it wasn't someone from the village, why would they bury the money near Baolai Village? There's no village or shop in this place, so wouldn't it be too troublesome to retrieve it when I want to?"
Zhou Chongwen looked at Su Luo, "What do you want to say?"
"I didn't want to say anything." Su Luo closed the box, put it back under the bed, and sat on the bed again to show his ownership of the silver.
"You mean to say that this silver is an ownerless thing left by our ancestors?"
"That's what you said." Su Luo swayed his legs idly. "I just heard a storyteller in Zhuxian Town the other day saying that Marshal Yue Fei had defeated Jin Wushu here. It was a chaotic time, so it's not impossible that someone left something behind."
"Does that box look like it's been buried for hundreds of years?" Zhou Chongwen asked with a half-serious face.
Su Luo didn't say anything, but looked around pretending to be busy. Even if she had no knowledge of archaeology, she could tell the age of the box. This box was probably buried for decades, not to mention hundreds of years.
"Then what do you think we should do? Should I go around telling everyone that I found some silver in the mountains and now I'm waiting for the owner to claim it? Or should I hand it over to the government and let them divide the spoils? Or should I just bury it again and wait for someone as lucky as me to dig it out. Then I can watch them improve their lives while I, my mother and my brother, can live a life of contentment, just because I have a noble character?"
This time it was Zhou Chongwen's turn to remain silent. He really didn't have any good solution, nor could he completely reject Su Luo's words. It was just that his gentlemanly nature made him feel uneasy about this unexpected wealth.
Su Luo suddenly came to his senses, jumped off the bed and put his hands on his hips, "You and I are just neighbors, what right do you have to interfere in our family affairs!"
Zhou Chongwen just stared at her, his eyes gradually softening, which made Su Luo feel creepy. Finally, he said, "Maybe I'm thinking too much, but you have to promise me that you won't touch the money within a year, and if no one comes to look for it within a year, the money will be yours."
Su Luo didn't even need to turn his eyes away, he just smiled and said, "Don't worry, no one will come to take it. Why do you think I was able to dig up the silver?"
Zhou Chongwen was puzzled. Su Luo raised her eyebrows and said, "Think about my identity." She was referring to the identity of a "wandering soul". As a wandering soul, it is not surprising that she discovered some things, understood the origins of some things, and knew that the money was ownerless. This explanation seemed acceptable.
Zhou Chongwen probably accepted it, and thought that there were some things that Su Yi couldn't hear, so he sent him out, closed the door and whispered to Su Luo: "I am very relieved that you didn't abandon Xiao Yi after getting the money, but you must not tell Xiao Yi and Aunt Su that you are not Su Luo."
"I don't have the habit of looking for trouble." Su Luo sat back on the bed and said with a smile: "How about it? Can I use this money?"
Even Su Luo couldn't explain why she had so much time to come up with reasons to lie to him. She could have just ignored him.
In fact, Zhou Chongwen didn't really believe her, because she was still quibbling one moment , and the next moment she was confident that the money was ownerless. The reason why Zhou Chongwen stopped insisting was actually just because of Su Luo's words, she said, "What do you have to do with our family affairs?" She regarded this place as her home and the people here as her family. Although Zhou Chongwen was upright, he was not pedantic, so he compromised appropriately.
"Ten months," he said suddenly.
Su Luo turned his head away and said nothing.
Zhou Chongwen took another step back and said, "I won't touch this money for half a year."
"One month." This is Su Luo's limit.
Zhou Chongwen smiled, a gentle smile, with a divine glow emanating from his handsome face. He said in an extremely magnetic voice, "Actually, you don't have to pay attention to me."
Su Luo was also sulking, thinking that he was crazy and that only a madman would respond to his request.
"I find that you are quite suitable to be a priest, and you can tempt people to be good." Su Luo said the last four words while gritting his teeth.
