The Mao family's house was a three-story Chinese-style villa with a small courtyard.
The courtyard wasn't large, but it was decorated with extreme tranquility and elegance. To the left of the entrance, against the wall, was a pond, level with the ground, paved with clean, gleaming stone slabs. The slabs were currently wet, and on them lay a very large tortoise.
"What a huge tortoise!" the photographer exclaimed.
Mao Dayong glanced at it, said "Oh," and then added, "This is the tortoise my grandfather raised. It's said to have been passed down from my great-grandfather's generation, and it's been kept for hundreds of years!"
Perhaps because Xu Gui's expression of interest was so obvious, Mao Dayong simply led them closer to see it.
As they got closer, the tortoise appeared even larger, and the patterns on its shell became more pronounced, vaguely resembling the Chinese character for "longevity" (寿), which was quite peculiar.
Mao Dayong said somewhat arrogantly, "You don't know, reporters used to come to our house specifically to photograph it, and some people were willing to pay a high price for it, the highest being eight million. But we promised my grandfather we wouldn't sell it, so we firmly refused."
Xu Gui glanced at him, exposing his lie, and said, "Isn't it because your grandfather said that only this turtle knows where his inheritance is, and if you dare to sell the turtle, you'll never find his inheritance?"
Mao Dayong chuckled dryly and said, "That's part of the reason."
But...
"You even know that my grandfather said that?" He looked at Xu Gui in surprise, "Are you really a fortune teller?"
His words made Xu Gui feel a bit resentful, and he said, "If I weren't a fortune teller, why would you invite me here?"
Mao Dayong: "That's true."
He saw Xu Gui squat down and stroke the turtle's shell, and the turtle, which was usually unresponsive, now poked its head out, showing unprecedented liveliness. Mao Dayong suddenly remembered what Xu Gui had said before about being able to talk to turtles.
"You really can understand turtles?" he asked.
Xu Gui: "..."
The paparazzi couldn't help but glance at Mr. Mao: You still remember this?
Xu Gui didn't answer his question, but instead asked, "Your grandfather said that only this turtle knows where his inheritance is, right?"
Mao Dayong's attention was diverted. He nodded and then said, "Do you think my grandfather is crazy? He doesn't tell us about his inheritance, but tells a turtle. This turtle can't even talk, so what's the point of him telling it? Does this turtle really tell us where the inheritance is?"
Xu Gui smiled and said, "This turtle, although it can't tell you where the inheritance is, it can help you find your grandfather's inheritance."
"Really?" Mao Dayong was skeptical.
Just then, a surprised voice came from the doorway: "Dayong, what are you doing here?"
Xu Gui turned around and saw a slightly overweight man standing at the entrance of the Mao family's gate. The man was about fifty years old and looked somewhat old, but his features were somewhat similar to Mao Dayong's.
Upon seeing the other person, Mao Dayong called out, "Dad!"
and asked, "Why are you back? It shouldn't be the weekend, right?"
Mao Dayong's father walked in and said, "Nothing much at the office, so I came back... What are you doing?"
His gaze swept over Xu Gui, who was squatting on the ground scratching at a tortoise, and then glanced at the cameraman carrying a video camera.
"Are these two your friends?" he asked.
Mao Dayong quickly replied, "No, I specially invited them to help find Grandpa's inheritance."
Mao's father looked bewildered: What?
Perhaps because the bewilderment on Mao's father's face was too obvious, Mao Dayong quickly explained, "This is Xu Gui, Master Xu. She's a fortune teller, and she can even talk to tortoises! With her here, we're sure to find Grandpa's inheritance."
Mao's father: "..."
After a few seconds of silence, he looked at his son with the eyes of someone looking at an idiot.
"How could you even think of that!" Mao's father gritted his teeth.
Mao Dayong, however, didn't catch the gritted teeth in his father's voice. He thought the father was praising him, and scratched the back of his head, grinning foolishly, "Dad, you think I'm smart, right? You know, when I saw the master making that tortoise run around in circles, I thought of our old tortoise at home."
He became increasingly convinced of his own cleverness as he spoke: "Grandpa said that only the old tortoise knew about his inheritance. So if we could understand the old tortoise's speech, wouldn't we be able to find Grandpa's inheritance?"
He didn't forget to praise himself afterward, "I'm truly a genius!"
Mao's father... "..."
He didn't talk to this "idiot," but turned his gaze to Xu Gui and the others, saying in a harsh voice, "I don't care how you tricked my son, just get out of here before I call the police! Otherwise, don't blame me for being impolite."
Mao Dayong panicked upon hearing this and called out, "Dad..."
Mao's father rolled his eyes and said, "You idiot, you believed someone saying they could talk to a turtle? Are you stupid? No, even an idiot isn't as easily fooled as you!"
Mao Dayong: ...Was it necessary to insult him like that?
"Dad, the master really is something." Mao Dayong felt he needed to explain himself, lest his father think he was a fool. He said, "The master is truly capable. She just guessed right away, saying that our family didn't sell the big tortoise because Grandpa said that if we dared to sell it, we would never find his inheritance…"
"Tell me, isn't that amazing?"
Mao Dayong felt he hadn't done anything wrong. He said, "Besides, we've been searching for Grandpa's inheritance for seven or eight years. We've practically turned this house upside down. If we don't think of other methods, when will we ever find it?"
In the end, they had searched everywhere they could think of. They had almost turned their house upside down searching for the inheritance. Now, they really couldn't figure out where his grandfather's inheritance was hidden, so they had no choice but to resort to metaphysics.
"Anyway, if they really are frauds and can't find Grandpa's inheritance, then we'll call the police and have them arrested!" Mao Dayong finally convinced his father with this statement.
The person following behind was speechless: "…So this guy isn't a fool, but a cunning old fox?"
Mr. Mao was scrutinizing Xu Gui with a critical eye, still somewhat skeptical, especially since Xu Gui looked far too young and beautiful, almost like a TV star, glamorous and radiant—hardly the image of a master. Mr. Mao pursed his lips
and said, "Since you claim to be a master, then tell us, where exactly is Dayong's grandfather's inheritance?"
Xu Gui glanced at him, reached out to touch the large tortoise beside her, and said, "Actually, the old man's inheritance is in this courtyard."
Hearing this, although still filled with doubt, Mr. Mao straightened up involuntarily and subconsciously glanced around the courtyard.
"Where?" he asked.
Just as Xu Gui was about to speak, the Mao family's door was pushed open again, and several more people rushed in, men and women.
The two people walking in front were a man, around forty years old, not overweight, with crescent-shaped eyes that seemed to smile even when he wasn't. The woman beside him was short and plump, with shrewd eyes and a calculating air.
They looked very much like Mao's father, clearly related by blood. As soon as they entered, they started shouting,
"Brother, we heard your Dayong hired a master to find his grandfather's inheritance. How could you not tell us? We're Dad's son and daughter too; if they find his inheritance, we'll get a share!"
"That's right, brother, you're too kind. If our Minhui hadn't seen the live stream, we wouldn't have known!"
Behind them, when the woman mentioned "Minhui," a young woman inside said proudly—yes, she was the one who saw it. Otherwise, if Mao Dayong's family had found the inheritance, they wouldn't have gotten a share.
The group of people stormed in, rattling off a string of words. When Mr. Mao saw them, his face turned green.
"What are you talking about? If I really found Dad's inheritance, wouldn't I share it with you?" Mr. Mao said unhappily, seemingly sincere, but his words had little effect on the people opposite him.
After all, the three of them were siblings, raised under the same roof; family knows family, and everyone knows each other's character.
"That's hard to say," the middle-aged woman, Mao Dayong's aunt, said with a sneer. "What if you find the inheritance, brother, and secretly hide it away? Then we won't know, right?"
Uncle Mao said, "Little sister, that's going too far. Of course we have to believe what brother says, but we three siblings all have a share in Dad's inheritance. So, we can't expect you to do all the work of finding it."
These close siblings, now vying for their father's inheritance, were revealing their ugly sides, offering each other the most insincere smiles.
Xu Gui watched this scene with a cold expression, gently stroking the large tortoise's shell.
Meanwhile, under the overpass on the other side, at Xu Gui's fortune-telling stall, the crowd that had gathered earlier was still there. Looking at the old man who had spoken to Mao Dayong, they couldn't help but ask, "Young man, did your grandfather really leave behind a hundred-odd kilograms of gold?" With
the value of gold soaring, the worth of a hundred-odd kilograms of gold was truly immeasurable. And who was this old man who could leave behind so much gold?
Could it be that the Mao family were once wealthy landowners?
"...No, that's not it." The old man, clearly knowledgeable about the Mao family, denied everyone's guesses, saying, "It's just that Mao Dayong's grandfather used to be a bandit. If I say his name, many of you should have heard of him."
Looking at the curious onlookers, the old man revealed Mao Dayong's grandfather's name: Mao Taiping.
"Mao Taiping?"
Upon hearing this name, the young people in the crowd looked somewhat bewildered, but a few of the older ones showed surprise and asked in astonishment, "That notorious bandit Mao Taiping?"
The old man nodded, "That's right, it's Mao Taiping."
Seeing that they all seemed to know him, the younger ones couldn't help but ask, "Who exactly is Mao Taiping?"
Before the old man could answer, those who knew the name started talking one after another.
"Mao Taiping? He was quite famous around here in the 1950s and 60s!"
At that time, their area was still very isolated. Mao Taiping was a bandit king, leading a motley crew of outlaws who robbed countless caravans. He was both a tyrant and a wealthy man. However, around the 1970s, the army came to suppress the bandits, and after that, we never heard from him again.
"If it's Mao Taiping, he might actually have a hundred or so pounds of gold..." someone muttered.
The person next to him asked why, and the man replied, "Because the mountain that Mao Taiping occupied was previously occupied by invaders from our area. Later, Mao Taiping drove them away, and that mountain became Mao Taiping's bandit mountain... It's said, it's said!! Those invaders looted the wealth of several surrounding towns, and who knows how much money they hid on that mountain."
"Everyone says that Mao Taiping occupied that mountain and also robbed all that wealth. I heard there are several caves full of gold and antiques!"
Throughout history, such "rumors" have always been the most interesting. The people around listened intently, and after the man finished speaking, they subconsciously asked, "And then what happened?"
The man replied, "And then? Then the army came and wiped out the bandits, and we never heard from Mao Taiping again. We all thought he was dead."
Unexpectedly, this man was still alive, and even married and had children, with descendants? If that's the case, this man might really have left behind a huge inheritance. No wonder the Mao family was so eager to know about him.
The old man who knew the Mao family said, "Actually, we don't even know if there's any inheritance."
The others asked, "Why do you say that? Since it was Mao Taiping, surely he left something behind?"
The old man had his reasons. He said, "You don't know, the Mao family was quite impoverished before. Mao Taiping seemed dirt poor, unable to even afford a wife. We all guessed that his property on the mountain might have been confiscated, which is why he was so destitute."
The old man was much younger than Mao Taiping; he was already a teenager when Mao Taiping returned home, so he was quite aware of these things.
After Mao Taiping came down the mountain, he was already in his thirties. By the time he married and had his first child, he was almost forty. Later, he had a son and a daughter, making three children in total.
For many years, the family lived in poverty. It was only after the area was developed and demolished that the Mao family's life improved.
The Mao family used to live in their ancestral home, a large area that became wealthy after the demolition. However, perhaps Mao Taiping himself committed many sins in his youth, damaging his karma, because his three children were all heartless and unfilial.
Mao Taiping was already in his seventies or eighties, yet none of his three children were willing to support him. After he fell ill, they simply abandoned him in a dilapidated house, leaving him to fend for himself.
The Chinese people value filial piety highly, and upon hearing this, they couldn't help but say, "Outrageous! Mao Taiping's three children are so unfilial!"
"Those three children don't think they're unfilial grandchildren," the old man said disdainfully. "According to them, they're acting on behalf of Heaven, upholding justice even at the cost of family ties. Mao Taiping was a bandit, so they don't acknowledge him as their father!"
Of course, if these three siblings could consistently live up to their words, others would at most murmur a few words, but they wouldn't look down on them. However, the way these three siblings behaved was truly appalling.
"After they drove Mao Taiping out, only a beggar was taking care of him. Mao Taiping gave this beggar a gold cake..."
A gold cake, as the name suggests, is a large cake made of gold. When this news spread, not only others, but Mao Taiping's three children couldn't sit still. Those three, who had previously been heartless and ungrateful, now knelt and begged Mao Taiping to come back.
At that moment, they all forgot what they had done to Mao Taiping before, and all became filial sons and grandsons. Mao Taiping instantly became their good father, their good dad. The three of them even fought over Mao Taiping's right to support him.
When this story got out, it was utterly absurd and laughable, and it also evoked extreme contempt for the three Mao siblings.
Because of this incident, the three Mao siblings became completely obedient to Mao Taiping, daring not to show any filial piety whatsoever. After all, whenever they had any doubts, Mao Taiping would produce a large piece of gold.
With this offering as bait, how could the three Mao siblings dare to show the slightest disrespect?
Mao Taiping lived a long life, passing away eight years ago at the age of ninety-three, a truly long life. Moreover, he died without any pain; according to the Mao family, he died of a sudden illness.
A sudden illness, indeed, it was a sudden death, with virtually no pain.
"You tell me, this man's life was truly good," the old man couldn't help but sigh. "He spent the first half of his life as a bandit, killing countless people, yet in his later years he not only died peacefully in his sleep, but also without suffering much."
Although he encountered some minor setbacks, compared to the blessings he enjoyed, what were those setbacks?
"The old man's inheritance?"
"Inheritance? When Mao Taiping was alive, he always talked about his inheritance. It was because of this inheritance that his three children didn't dare to treat him badly, for fear of not getting a penny of his money... But this inheritance, Mao Taiping didn't tell anyone while he was alive. He kept it a secret, so after he died, no one knew where it was."
When Mao Taiping died, his three siblings almost turned their house upside down looking for this inheritance, but they found nothing. Seven or eight years have passed, and the inheritance is still nowhere to be seen. Now, many people are starting to have doubts.
"Everyone suspects that Mao Taiping didn't actually have any inheritance at all. The inheritance he talked about was just to make his three children filial to him."
Especially now that the internet is so developed, there are so many jokes online. The story of that old lady who pretended to be rich to make her children filial is also widely circulated online. So everyone is wondering, is Mao Taiping another "old lady"?
The Mao family probably shared this suspicion, but they were likely unwilling to accept it. After all, they had been providing Mao Taiping with good food and drink for the sake of this inheritance; otherwise, they would have kicked him out long ago. Therefore, accepting a complete loss was too difficult for them.
Thus, for the past seven or eight years, the Mao family hadn't given up searching for the inheritance.
An old man secretly revealed some information: "Right after Mao Taiping died, quite a few thieves visited the Mao family, hoping to steal his inheritance, but unfortunately, they found nothing."
To this day, whether Mao Taiping actually inherited anything remains a mystery.
*
The Mao family was certain that the hundred-odd kilograms of gold in the inheritance did exist; otherwise, where did the gold amulets on Mao Dayong and the others come from?
However, before the inheritance was found, conflicts arose within the Mao family over how to divide it.
Fortunately, they remembered that the distribution of benefits could only begin after the inheritance was found. So, after a subtly nuanced and scheming conversation, they turned their attention back to Xu Gui.
"Is this the master?" Aunt Mao asked, looking at Xu Gui with great curiosity. She added with a smile, "He's so young! No wonder they say heroes emerge from among the young."
Behind her, a young woman approached—it was Min Hui. She exclaimed, "Mom, I searched online, and this person really is a master! She can really tell fortunes!"
The two consecutive "wow"s perfectly revealed Kong Huimin's amazement.
"...She's been setting up her fortune-telling stall at the overpass for quite some time now, and she hasn't made a single mistake. She's been right about everyone!" Kong Min Hui said excitedly, "This time, maybe we really can find Grandpa's inheritance."
It was quite a coincidence. Kong Min Hui had a habit of watching live streams. She had scrolled to Xu Gui's stream and was about to scroll away when she spotted her cousin in the crowd, and her finger paused.
It was this pause that led to the current situation; otherwise, her family wouldn't have known that Mao Dayong and his family had actually hired a fortune teller to find her grandfather's inheritance.
Hearing her daughter's words, Aunt Mao's eyes involuntarily darted around, and her gaze towards Xu Gui became even more affectionate.
Uncle Mao said somewhat urgently, "Then what are we waiting for, Master? Please help us calculate where my father hid his inheritance!"
His long-cherished wish might be fulfilled today. Everyone present stared intently at Xu Gui, even the resentful father couldn't help but look at her expectantly, hoping she could give a satisfactory answer.
Xu Gui, under everyone's gaze, was already sitting on a rock by the pond, gently stroking the shell of the large tortoise beside her.
"I can find the inheritance, but the money I had before isn't enough," Xu Gui said, making his stance clear: "You need to pay more!"
Hearing this, Mao Dayong became anxious, saying, "Didn't I already give you five hundred? Why do I need more?"
Xu Gui raised an eyebrow, saying, "That was your share, but the others didn't pay… Otherwise, come here, and I'll secretly tell you the location of your grandfather's inheritance, without telling anyone else." Hearing
this, Mao Dayong and his son's eyes lit up, but the rest of the Mao family couldn't remain calm.
"No way!"