Chapter 273 Xiao's Library
The journey was incredibly smooth, without any incidents. Rong Yuan had already discovered that if the Book of Merits brought him such an accident-prone constitution, if it caused minor disasters, they would continue to occur one after another, and even escalate; but if a major disaster occurred at once, there would be a window period of time, and the specific length of time was directly related to the severity of the disaster.
Rong Yuan did not tell anyone except Jin Yang about his impending departure from Earth, but the people around him seemed to have a vague sense of it. For example, Rong Jing and Fat Cat, they might not know his plan, but they revealed a kind of uneasiness that they themselves were not aware of. They joked and made fun of each other in the carriage, but there was still an unignorable tension in the air.
Rong Yuan had heard of the Xiao family's library in E County for a long time, but he had never seen it in person. The image in his mind should be a few wooden buildings with ancient carvings and painted rafters, hundreds of years of collections, perhaps forming a group of buildings, standing tall and majestic from afar; or perhaps a high-rise building full of modern atmosphere like the National Library, where valuable books were stored with high-tech means, and infrared pressure sensors were indispensable.
However, when he actually saw it, the appearance of the library was beyond his expectations.
There are two bronze doors that are two meters and five inches high. The four door pins above are painted with plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum respectively. In the middle is a beast face holding a ring, but the beast face is not the common tiger, lion, dragon or phoenix. Instead, it has two legs on its head and a long beard underneath. At first glance, it looks like a goat, but behind the beast face there are simple and rough strokes outlining a lion's body.
That is Bai Ze, a mythical beast that is said to know everything about astronomy and geography, as well as trivial matters, and can know the past and the future.
Behind the bronze door is not a building, but a mountain!
The Xiao family's library was actually built by hollowing out half of a mountain!
This library is not open to the public, and not even a photo of it can be found on the Internet. So although Jin Yang and others had heard of it, it was the first time they saw it with their own eyes, and they all showed expressions of shock and surprise.
Rong Yuan calmed himself and walked to the door. The people Jin Nan had assigned to be on duty here had obviously received orders long ago. They pushed the door open together, and a group of people walked in, looking up and around.
The library has nine floors, nearly thirty or forty meters high. It is dark from a distance, and it is hard to tell how spacious it is. All you can see are densely packed bookshelves in front of you. There are only two sets of desks and stools for reading, and a simple wooden bed for temporary rest, but it doesn't look comfortable at all. It is obvious that the people who built this library only hope that their descendants can concentrate on reading here, and all other enjoyments are omitted.
The walls of the library still have traces of repeated renovations and expansions, as if they were deliberately preserved as a memory. Initially, it was a simple earth, stone and wood structure; later, large pieces of bluestone were dug, cut and polished, and pieced together to form walls and floors; later, perhaps because the Xiao family was well-managed and rich enough to rival a country, a layer of real gold was pasted on the walls. It is impossible to tell how much wealth they hid here, but now most of the gold has been pried away. Judging from the traces, this may be what Xiao Qingcheng did a hundred years ago.
Today, the walls of the library have been replaced with concrete and steel structures, and a layer of milky white protective paint has been applied. The bookshelves have also been replaced with cold-rolled steel plates commonly used in libraries, and are closed on both sides with glass sliding doors, but they are not locked, and there are sliding rollers underneath. Above the head is an incandescent lamp with very comfortable light, bright but not dazzling, and the switch uses an infrared sensor system.
From the message left by Yan Ce, Rong Yuan knew that what he was looking for was on the top floor. He said something to Jin Yang and walked up the stairs alone.
The lights turned on and off one by one. When Rong Yuan reached the third floor, he suddenly heard faint breathing sounds in front of him. He paused, then walked up without changing his expression.
He walked up the stairs and turned the corner. In the bright light, he saw a graceful figure standing with a book in her arms.
She has long, slightly curly hair, is tall and thin, and has a natural baby face that obscures her age, but her eyes, as pure as autumn water, carry a feeling of a peaceful life, as if they have the charm of freezing time.
This is Shao Baoer. Although she is an orphan adopted by the Xiao family, she has her own life after adulthood, and will only be called back when Xiao Xiao needs her - in fact, except for a few elderly people who have served the Xiao family for generations, most of the children adopted by the Xiao family in peacetime follow this path.
Shao Baoer was originally a special talent in the national security department, but after Xiao Xiao's death and Yan Ce's disappearance, she chose to resign from all her positions and return here to manage the library. Several other people also made the same choice as her. After Rong Yuan heard about it, he also agreed.
Although both of them had anticipated this meeting, they were still slightly stunned when they looked at each other face to face and fell silent.
Conventionally, one should ask "How are you?", but they actually know each other very well, so such polite words are obviously unnecessary; as for the joy of meeting again after a long separation, their relationship is not that close; and saying "Goodbye" seems too cold.
After a moment of stalemate, Shao Baoer suddenly laughed, showing the same cute and innocent smile as before. Now she looked just like a teenage girl. She smiled and sighed softly, and it was unknown what she was thinking about. There was a bit of nostalgia and tenderness in her eyes, but she said nothing, bowed slightly, and turned away.
Rong Yuan watched her leave and stood still for a while before continuing to walk upstairs.
They had depended on each other for life and death and fled together; she had risked her life to save him, and her soft body gradually stopped breathing in his arms; she had been the opportunity and motivation for him to become a contractor of the "Book of Merits".
However, after he embarked on this journey, the two of them almost never met again. Now when they meet again, they just smile at each other and go their separate ways.
It’s hard to tell whether it’s melancholy or sadness. The faint emotion floats through my heart like a wisp of mist and soon disappears.
The distance from the third floor to the ninth floor was only a short one, and it soon reached the end. Rong Yuan successfully found what Xiao Xiao had left behind - on the only desk on this floor, there was a completely sealed metal box, with no patterns on the four sides, and no keyhole. On the top of the box, in a beautiful handwriting, was engraved "Merit Record Notes" and a brief explanation, which roughly said that the things in the box could only be obtained by those who were destined to have them, and warned future generations not to open the box violently, otherwise the mechanism inside would destroy all the items.
Rong Yuan could tell at a glance that this metal box was not an exchange item from the Merit Mall, but was artificially cast. There were still traces of the maker's poor craftsmanship on the surface of the box. The box itself did not have any mechanism to open it. As for the inside... Rong Yuan used string force to explore it and found that in addition to a paper manual, there was also a large amount of powder and flocculent matter. As long as there was a spark or a strong impact, the manual would be burned to ashes immediately.
This design is not very sophisticated. In modern society, there are actually countless ways to take out the contents. But the thick metal shell blocks almost all detection methods. Without really understanding the internal design, no one would dare to open it rashly.
But this was not a problem for Rong Yuan . He shook his hands slightly, and a gap thinner than a hair suddenly appeared in the middle of the metal box. It was invisible to the naked eye without a magnifying glass. Rong Yuan pushed lightly, and the box split into two halves. White silk-like things came out, revealing the corner of a book.
Rong Yuan took out the last copy of "Merit Record Notes", shook off the debris on it, sat down at the table, calmed himself, and then opened it.
This notebook records the first period of time when Xiao Xiao became a contractor of the Book of Merits. At that time, she was still called Xiao Qingcheng. She was only in her teens, but she was able to support the army of the Tang Kingdom with all her family wealth during the war, and she also generously rescued many people. Once, the Tang army lost in the defense of an important hub city, and the city fell. The enemy army was going to launch a large-scale massacre of the soldiers and civilians who had laid down their arms in the city, and even the surrounding villages and towns. However, early in the morning of the second day after the enemy's crazy massacre, Xiao Qingcheng suddenly appeared miraculously under the city, and with her appeared dozens of boxes of gold and silver treasures. The lids were all opened, and the piles of pure gold jewelry even overflowed from the edges of the boxes, flashing a dazzling golden light in the rising sun that was enough to make anyone lose their minds.
She bought everyone's life with money.
The enemy originally only wanted to take away the treasures and do something bad to Xiao Qingcheng, but Xiao Qingcheng promised that as long as the other party kept her promise, she would give them twice as much jewelry later; secondly, although the girl was not aggressive, her eyes were clear and calm, her tone was firm and penetrating, and her elegance and grace shocked the enemy who had almost lost their minds from killing people, and no one dared to hurt her. The enemy commander was always very respectful and polite to her, and with twice as much treasure hanging in front of him, the massacre was stopped abruptly just as it started, and Xiao Qingcheng bought half a month for the sugar army's counterattack.
Half a month later, as soon as the people escorting the "treasure" entered the city, they broke the boxes, pulled out weapons from under the gold and silver jewelry, and used the troops ambushed outside to seize the city gate. After a day and a night of fighting, the enemy had to abandon the city and flee eastward. Before leaving, they set a fire, but a heavy rain fell and extinguished the fire in just a few minutes.
This legendary story is still circulating in Tangguo, but Xiao Qingcheng's name has been hidden in the story. The second half of the legend is that the enemy did not forget to take the dozens of boxes of treasures with them when they fled, and many people died for it. When they finally found a large army to settle down after fleeing hundreds of miles, their superiors asked about what happened and opened the boxes, only to find that they were all stones, not the huge wealth they had imagined.
But the box was intact, even the seal was intact, and the soldier guarding the treasure box swore that no one had touched it. The treasure of inestimable value just disappeared into thin air.
The story is bizarre, but there were many eyewitnesses at the time, so its authenticity is beyond doubt. It is said that the enemy commander was tried as a war criminal decades later, and before he died, he still missed the girl at that time. When interviewed by reporters, his only request was to know who she was. This story has been almost unrecognizable until now, and has been adapted into the climax of various anti-Japanese war dramas. The girl has also been given various identities, such as a righteous, brave and beautiful soldier of the Sugar Country, the illegitimate daughter of a senior member of the Sugar Army, an aristocratic girl who returned from studying abroad, a mysterious hermit family, an actor dressed as a woman, a cultivator who mastered immortal arts, a patriot among the lowest class with first-class deception skills, and so on.
Rong Yuan knew that it was not difficult to do this with the help of the Merit Book. The point was that after this incident, Xiao Qingcheng's merits reached one million, and a new rule emerged.
And this rule is something Rong Yuan will never be able to see.
Because there are two conditions for it to appear: first, the initial merit of the contractor must be positive; second, the million merits must all be obtained through good deeds. If anyone is actively killed during this period - even if the person is a villain with astronomical negative merits, this rule will not appear.
