Chapter 501 Exploring the Grand View Garden
There are five main gates in the Grand View Garden. The top is made of barrel-shaped tiles and loach ridges, and the door rails and window partitions below are all finely carved with new flower patterns, but without any rouge or powder decoration. It can be said to be a model of low-key yet luxurious.
Sun Shaozong was chatting with Jia Baoyu on the white stone steps in front of the door. Seeing Jia Lian coming in hurriedly, he couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed when he thought of his ridiculous behavior last night.
Jia Lian, on the other hand, was very calm. When he got close, he locked his eyes on Sun Shaozong and said with a wink, "Those two little rascals, didn't disappoint Erlang last night?"
"cough……"
Although Sun Shaozong was also a thick-skinned man, he couldn't say something like "Your woman is very smooth", especially in front of Jia Baoyu, so he could only say vaguely: "I appreciate your kindness, second brother."
Jia Baoyu, who was standing beside him, was confused and asked in confusion, "What kind of riddle are you two brothers talking about? Did something strange happen last night?"
Although Jia Lian had already forced his sales pitch yesterday at noon in the Yihong Courtyard, Jia Baoyu was already drunk by then, and Xiren was unwilling to bring up the matter afterwards, so naturally he had no memory of it at all.
Since Jia Lian took the initiative to mention this matter, he had no intention of hiding it from Baoyu. He immediately smiled and said, "Of course it's Ping'er and..."
"cough!"
Sun Shaozong interrupted him with a dry cough, and urged: "Now that everyone is here, let's quickly screen the garden, so as to avoid causing panic in your family."
As he spoke, he took a sheathed single-edged sword from the servant, hung it crookedly around his waist, and led the curious Jia brothers and more than a hundred servants into the Grand View Garden in a mighty procession.
Most of them, under the leadership of managers at all levels, will rush to various parts of the park to conduct carpet screening to confirm that there are no thieves lurking in the park.
A small number of people, led by Sun Shaozong, started the investigation from the bamboo forest where the thieves were first discovered.
The book does not elaborate.
But Sun Shaozong led the team to the bamboo forest beside the Fengyao Bridge. He first ordered the servants to surround the forest. Then he took Jia Baoyu, who was in an excited state, and Jia Lian, who seemed to be unwell and always had a flushed face, and went around in circles in the bamboo forest.
"Second brother."
I thought the first one to lose his patience would be Jia Lian, who had little interest in solving the case. However, when it came to the sixth circle, Jia Lian was still following silently behind him, but Jia Baoyu became a little impatient.
Then he urged, "Brother Sun, didn't you say that the thieves put a map in the bamboo pavilion? If we don't go to the pavilion to see what's going on, what's the point of going around in circles?"
“Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.”
Sun Shaozong said without even turning his head: "But we have to check it out before we know whether it is useful or not."
Jia Lian also chimed in from behind, his eyes fixed on her, "Just follow me obediently, why are you talking so much nonsense ?"
Seeing that both elder brothers had the same attitude, Jia Baoyu had no choice but to stop and imitate Sun Shaozong's behavior, wandering around aimlessly.
They went around and around like this until the ninth round, when they finally arrived at an open space deep in the dense forest.
Seeing the small pavilion looming in the distance, Jia Baoyu stretched his neck anxiously, wishing he could step out of the dense forest in one step so as to see what traces the thief had left in the pavilion.
At this moment, Sun Shaozong suddenly stopped and slowly squatted in front of a bush of weeds.
"What? But what did you find?!"
Baoyu immediately perked up, and squatted shoulder to shoulder with Sun Shaozong in front of the clump of weeds, looking around carefully with his eyes wide open.
“Huh?!”
Soon he exclaimed, pointed at a patch of weeds and said, "This looks like it was cut by a sharp weapon!"
Indeed, some of the weeds had leaves that had obviously been cut off by a sharp blade.
Sun Shaozong picked up two broken leaves from the ground and carefully examined the broken ends. After confirming that they were the traces left yesterday, he stood up and looked around, as if thinking about something.
"Brother Sun."
Jia Baoyu also stood up and asked like a curious baby: "Do these cut weeds have any special meaning?"
Sun Shaozong first shook his head, then nodded. Under Jia Baoyu's puzzled gaze, he untied the single-edged sword from his waist, hunched over, pointed the blade at the weeds, and swept it sideways.
Then he frowned, looked at the swaying grass, and after a while he put the knife in his left hand, and then chopped it diagonally in the same way.
After observing it this time, he finally hung the single-edged sword back on his waist with satisfaction, and explained to Jia Baoyu, who was full of curiosity: "These cuts may not have any special meaning, but as long as you are willing to study them carefully, you can still get a lot of useful information from them."
"For example, we can at least confirm that one of the three thieves is left-handed. In addition, he was in a state of emotional turmoil, so he used these weeds to vent his anger, and he chopped three times in a row."
Jia Baoyu suddenly realized: "No wonder my second brother wants to hold the knife with his left hand!"
Sun Shaozong said seriously again, "But this information is not important. What is really important is that they are not here to explore the way, but have some special purpose."
"Where did this come from?"
Jia Baoyu wondered, "Could it be that he saw it from these weeds?"
"That's right."
Sun Shaozong explained: "This place is relatively close to the Bee Waist Bridge. Whether they were chasing you or escaping afterwards, they would not choose to leave from this direction - that is to say, these traces should have been left before they were alarmed by you."
"If you were a thief who was after money, and you went all the way to the vicinity of Yihong Courtyard, and found that such a large garden was unguarded, and was filled with valuable treasures and beautiful young women - would you have the leisure to vent your anger in the woods with these weeds?"
Jia Baoyu thought about it carefully and shook his head vigorously.
"So, I guess they sneaked into the garden with other purposes, but ended up finding this place after many twists and turns, and still failed to achieve their goal, so one of the thieves lost control of his emotions for a while."
When Jia Baoyu heard this, his eyes were full of admiration, and he couldn't help asking again: "What is their purpose? "
"Do you think I'm a god ?"
Sun Shaozong reached out and punched him on the shoulder, saying unhappily, "How can I possibly analyze what their purpose is based on just this little bit of evidence?"
After saying that, he turned around and started walking again, saying, "Let's go and see if there are any other discoveries."
Jia Baoyu responded crisply and followed hurriedly. This time he did not grope around blindly, but searched for evidence seriously - but he did not see the flash of understanding in Sun Shaozong's eyes when he set out again.
Although Jia Baoyu was motivated, he did not find any clues in the next two rounds.
Fortunately, they were about to reach the highlight of the pavilion, so Jia Baoyu was not too depressed. Instead, he excitedly jumped to the front of the bamboo pavilion, as if he had found a treasure, and looked at the mud and stones that looked like a map over and over again.
This time, Sun Shaozong did not follow him. Instead, he waited until Baoyu had seen enough before he stepped forward and asked, "How is it? Are these things piled according to your garden?"
Although he had been to this garden more than once, in terms of familiarity, how could Sun Shaozong compare to Jia Baoyu who wandered around there all day long?
"Um……"
Jia Baoyu squatted in front of the 'map' hesitantly, stretched out his fingers to pick up some of the stones, temporarily put them aside, pointed to the remaining stones and said: "If you only look at this part, it is similar to the layout near Qiu Shuang Zhai, Nuan Xiang Wu, and Dao Xiang Village, but there is no Ou Xiang She in the middle."
Sun Shaozong immediately asked: "Then according to the layout above, where should the Ouxiang Pavilion be located?"
Jia Baoyu ran his finger back and forth between the stones twice, pointed to an empty space with certainty, and said, "According to the spacing of the pattern, it should be around here!"
Without saying a word, Sun Shaozong immediately crawled to the ground, put his eyes closely to the open space, checked it over and over again for a long time, and finally found two scratches thinner than a hair.
He used a stone to outline the two scratches, and then drew a vague circle. He found that the range was not far from the place Jia Baoyu had just pointed out. Then he got up from the ground, patted the dust off his body, and said, "It seems that there should have been a stone here, but I accidentally - or those thieves deliberately messed it up."
As he was speaking, two more hands suddenly appeared in front of him. It was Jia Lian who came up and diligently helped to brush off the dust.
Although Sun Shaozong felt a little awkward, he was embarrassed to reject Jia Lian's kindness - especially since he needed Jia Lian's help right now.
Jia Baoyu frowned and said, "Looking at the number of stones on the ground, the thieves must have already figured out the terrain of the garden."
"this……"
"Second Master, Second Master Lian!"
Just as Sun Shaozong was about to respond, a servant rushed in from outside and said in a panic, "This is terrible! The old ancestor said he would take Granny Liu to visit the garden, and now he has led people to the Grand View Garden. Second Madam and the ladies can't stop him. What do you think we should do?!"
Jia Lian had just reluctantly retracted his hand, but upon hearing this, his face suddenly changed color and he stamped his feet anxiously, saying, "How can we do this? We are searching all over the mountains and plains now. If the old lady sees this, how can we keep it a secret?"
Because Lady Jia was frightened when she saw the stable on fire yesterday, no one dared to mention the incident of the thief in the Grand View Garden at night to her.
Seeing Jia Lian's panic, Sun Shaozong patted Jia Baoyu on the shoulder helplessly and said, "It seems that it is your turn to take action again. No matter if you act cute or silly or act pitiful, you must hold the old lady back first, at least until the whole garden is searched, and then let the maids and old women go back to their homes."
