The next morning at first light, Qiufeng grabbed a bottle of water and set out for Camel Peak. She'd climbed this area often as a child. The elevation wasn't high- few hundred meters at most, probably around a hundred meters above the foothills. She knew the way well. But she hadn't been here in years, and the trees and brush along the path had grown much thicker than she remembered.



Back then, she'd come to play freely. Now she was here to uncover secrets. Naturally, her state of mind was entirely different. She pondered all the way... Flight from Tianjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the heirloom bronze mirrors, hidden treasure... the antique dealer Chen Wenyuan, Village Director Zhou Dehou.



She was a college graduate who knew her modern history. Guiping, Guangxi, was exactly where the Taiping Rebellion had begun. The third year of Tongzhi was when Tianjing fell鈥攖he final destruction of the Taiping Army. Ancestor Shen Wance, as a Guiping craftsman, had worked with the rebel army. After the defeat, he took his family under assumed names to the remote village of Huaixi and painstakingly built this house full of hidden mechanisms-ll to protect the wealth and secrets he'd carried out of the chaos.



So the Shen family had carried this hidden history for generations.



For twenty years, the villagers had assumed Grandfather Shen Changshan simply got lost somehow, and that her father died of some strange illness. But now, thinking carefully, none of it was accidental. Grandfather had been extremely close to the sent-down youth Chen Youshan, who was originally from Guangdong-n area that overlapped with Taiping remnant activity. The two of them had spent days locked in the side room, probably investigating the family secrets together. When Chen Youshan disappeared on his way back to the city in 1978, and Grandfather vanished soon after, someone must have discovered they'd figured things out and eliminated them.



And now this investor from Guangdong, Chen Wenyuan鈥攐n the surface a tourism developer, but actually following Chen Youshan's trail from years ago. Zhou Dehou, blinded by greed, was in cahoots with Chen Wenyuan, using the hazardous building assessment, demolition, and development as pretexts to pressure them, all aiming for the treasure in the old house and The Skyward Collection.



A chill ran down Shen Qiufeng's spine. All these years, she and her mother had guarded this old house like actors on a stage, completely exposed to an audience holding all the cards. Others had been plotting for years while mother and daughter remained in the dark, never realizing how much danger they were in.



The danger was immediate. She'd found the first volume of The Skyward Collection, but the crucial second volume was still missing. The heirloom bronze mirrors were gone too. Without the complete text, she couldn't find the ancestor's hidden wealth or understand the mirrors' purpose. Mother and daughter would remain helplessly on the defensive.



After about half an hour, she finally reached the giant boulder on the smaller Camel Peak. It looked small from a distance, but up close it was at least four and a half meters tall, pitch-black, standing alone on the ridge. To reach the top, she had to go around to the rear where several stones formed natural steps. Luckily, the area around the boulder was more rock than weeds. She climbed to the top without trouble. The stone was roughly five meters in both length and width. This was now the highest point on this peak.



Directly opposite was the larger Camel Peak, about a few dozen meters higher. The larger peak was on the west side. From this vantage point, its summit was also capped with a large stone. The larger Camel Peak had an oval hole, and at this moment sunlight was shooting through it, vanishing into the blue sky beyond. The hole was only visible from the east and west directions. Looking down and to the left, she could see the village, with a clear outline of her family's old house鈥攕he could even make out the vegetables in the backyard garden.



She looked down at the boulder beneath her feet. The side facing southwest was relatively smooth. On closer inspection, it was pitted with small circular indentations. The depressions varied in depth and were irregularly spaced, as if deliberately carved by hand.



Clearly, the big rock itself wasn't the treasure site. It might be related, but she needed to change her approach. If she didn't solve this mystery quickly, more trouble was sure to come. The thought made her worry about her younger brother, Qiusheng鈥攖hree years younger, now the only man in the Shen family. After failing the college entrance exam, he'd enlisted in the army two years ago, stationed hundreds of kilometers away in Guangdong. He used to play with that bronze mirror when he was little. Maybe Qiusheng knew where it was.



That afternoon, she wrote a letter to Qiusheng. Her wording was serious: if he knew where the mirror was, he must tell her. If not, he should provide any clues to help her search. She also told him about the situation at home and her worries. After writing it, she sealed it with a stamp, planning to mail it from the town post office the next day.



But that night, something happened that caught her completely off guard.