Wei Ran, who stayed in the room, stared at the tattoo on the tiger's mouth and suddenly became entangled. It stands to reason that as long as he sells those gold sands, he will earn enough money in less than a month to go back to his hometown and make a down payment to marry a wife.
But what happens after that?
Should I find a job and live a normal life? Or should I continue to make money by digging through historical archives in Professor Alexei's studio? If there is a big job that makes money, should I use the help of that notebook?
After thinking about it, if I want to continue to use the help of that cowhide book to return to the battlefield of World War II, and if I want to come back alive as much as possible, this money seems to have to be spent.
"It's all for nothing, just spend it!"
Wei Ran gritted his teeth and comforted himself, and painfully took out the small but extremely heavy glass can from his pocket. Since he got this windfall, he had already kept it warm.
, but before I had time to open it, I didn’t expect that it would no longer belong to me so soon.
After a lot of mental preparation, Wei Ran took out his cell phone tremblingly and dialed Culp's number again.
Before the call was answered, the latter had already opened the door and came in, even holding a yellow document bag in his hand.
"Have you thought about it?" Culp asked without raising his head while sitting on a dirty chair and taking out a few pieces of paper from his document bag.
"I've thought about it." Wei Ran reluctantly put the cans and bottles on the table, "But, can I use gold to pay for the tuition?"
Looking up in surprise at the young man standing across the table, Culp picked up the glass can and bottle, weighed it, and said unhurriedly, "Yes, yes, but this little gold doesn't seem to be worth 9 million rubles.
"
"How many years will I study here?" Wei Ran asked, skipping the topic.
Culp put down the cans and bottles, "It will take at least three years."
Wei Ran pretended to be calm and said, "Since it's three years, how about paying the tuition once a year?"
"Of course! Of course! If you pay your tuition with gold in the future, I can even give you another 10% off." Culp agreed to Wei Ran's request very happily this time.
"Thank you so much! It would be nice if it could be cheaper."
Wei Ran almost gritted his teeth and said that he was not worried about the other party making money and running away. After all, a monk could run away but not the temple. If the other party really tried to trick him, his aunt with a legal background would definitely be able to sue the other party to the point where he wouldn't even be able to keep his pants.
"The price is now the lowest. Okay, let's fill out these forms first and write in the places circled by pencil."
After Culp handed the thick stack of forms in his hand to Wei Ran, he pointed to the gold sand still on the table, "You take these things first, and I will take you to melt them later."
"Enrollment Agreement?" Wei Ran glanced at the form in his hand, "Is there also an Enrollment Agreement?"
"Of course, this is a regular school here, and you are the first male student besides that little bastard Jima." After saying this, Culp knocked on the table and urged, "If there is no problem, hurry up and sign.
."
"But how can you ensure the teaching effect?" Wei Ran asked cautiously, "It's not worth spending so much money just to reach the level of a hunter like Ji Ma."
"Jima didn't pay a single ruble for tuition, and he just learned some simple self-defense skills for women for the purpose of profiting."
Culp knocked on the glass can and said in a very bachelor manner, "If you have any doubts about the teaching effect, you can leave with your gold at any time before signing. No one will stop you here."
Wei Ran, who was speechless, hesitated again and again, and finally decided to take the risk and trust Nicholas once. After reading the enrollment agreement carefully, he suddenly felt that the money spent might not be a waste.
Not to mention anything else, while studying here, I not only had a single dormitory, a car of my own, and high accident insurance. What is even more exaggerated is that during the three-year study process, I even had
It is possible to get a scholarship!
Wei Ran glanced at the smiling Culp across the table with a strange expression, and Wei Ran honestly signed his name in the corresponding position on each page.
Culp stamped each of the two copies of the enrollment agreement, put one in a document bag and handed it to Wei Ran, then threw the other into a drawer and said, "School starts on October 1st, you have
It will take about a week to prepare. Starting from October 1st, you need to come back here to complete at least 15 days of study every month. The specific course schedule will be sent to you when I am ready."
"Is there anything I need to pay extra attention to?" Wei Ran put away the document bag and asked expectantly.
"Don't be like that bastard Jima who always wants to sleep with the female students here. If you find out, you will be expelled immediately and you will not be refunded a ruble of tuition."
After Culp finished speaking, without waiting for Wei Ran to say anything else, he stood up and was the first to leave the dilapidated office, "Take your gold and come downstairs with me. We'll find a place to melt it and see how much it's worth.
"
They followed Culp down from the top floor. After the two left the main building, they took a golf cart through the two-story building with the "Consultation Center" sign and arrived at a single-family five-story building farthest from the main sickle building.
.
The situation here is not much better than that of the main building. The first floor is a huge swimming pool that has long dried up and even the tiles have fallen off. The corridors on the second floor are covered with various propaganda posters from the Soviet era. Several of the rooms have open doors.
You can also see dilapidated saunas and various clinics filled with strange medical equipment.
As Culp walked into a not-so-large room on the second floor, the handsome old man opened the cabinet, took out bottles of chemicals, and commanded Wei Ran to hold the bottom-level financial furnace without any hesitation.
came out.
"Karp, what is this place?" Wei Ran asked while the other party was using chemicals to dissolve the gold sand.
"The medical room has been abandoned for a long time." Culp replied without raising his head.
"No, no, no, I mean this whole building, including the one we just visited."
"This was a high-end sanatorium in Soviet times."
While stirring the solution in the glass beaker, Culp explained, "At that time, those who were eligible to come here for recuperation were all the big shots in Kazan. During the most tense years of the Cold War, this place briefly served as the headquarters of Kazan.
It was responsible for serving as a backup wartime command center. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, this place gradually became deserted, and finally I bought it together with the surrounding forest at a low price."
"Then you keep panicking like this?" Wei Ran asked in confusion.
“It’s just a lack of funds for renovation and maintenance.”
Culp said matter-of-factly, "Besides, there aren't many people here at all, so we don't need too many rooms at all, and even if we clean it, it will be the same as it is sooner or later, so just make sure it doesn't leak."
"No wonder the tuition is so expensive," Wei Ran muttered to himself, and honestly closed his mouth and watched the other party's operations.
Under Culp's busy work, the small can of gold sand was quickly cast into a small, slender gold bar after chemical purification and heating and smelting in a gold melting furnace.
After the melting furnace, crucible and mold were all cooled down, Culp asked Wei Ran to take the gold bars and go downstairs with him and leave, walking to the consultation center not far away.
He asked the aunt at the front desk to pull out an electronic scale, and after using unopened mineral water to prove the accuracy of the electronic scale, Wei Ran put the gold bars on.
"A total of 974 grams. According to today's gold price, these golds are worth 3.05 million rubles."
Culp threw the calculator to Wei Ran, and after he checked it against the gold price he found on his mobile phone, the old handsome guy stretched out his hand towards Wei Ran shamelessly, "But because the origin of your gold is unknown, and I still have
I helped you complete the purification and casting, so you still have to give me 100,000 rubles."
"Why don't you go and grab it?!" Wei Ran, who was originally planning to give him 50,000 rubles, suddenly widened his eyes. How could this person be more shameless than Professor Alexei?
"Aren't I just robbing him?" Culp raised his fingers again as a matter of course, his handsome old face that was well maintained looked particularly arrogant.
"Invoice!"
Wei Ran, who has been working in his aunt's travel agency all year round, knew exactly what the other party was doing with just one sentence. Taxes would have to be paid when issuing invoices. The other party was so willing to accept gold, so he must be trying to evade taxes.
"Forget it, I'll give you a discount of 100,000 rubles."
Karp said reluctantly, but he knew that the extra 100,000 rubles would be waived, but Weiran would not be able to get the extra 50,000 rubles back.
"I really appreciate your eight generations of ancestors!" Wei Ran said through gritted teeth.
"Don't think I don't understand Chinese," Culp responded abruptly in jerky Chinese.
"I know more than you think." Culp tossed the gold bars in his hand and reminded with a threatening tone, "I will report here at nine o'clock in the morning on October 1st. You'd better not be late."
Before Wei Ran could say anything else, the handsome old man walked out of the consultation center humming an unknown tune, and drove the golf cart out of sight.
Reluctantly, he took out his cell phone and made a call to Ji Ma. Then Wei Ran found Ji Ma peeping at a beautiful woman outside a dance studio on the first floor of the main building.
"Victor, am I right!" Jima raised her chin towards the beautiful girls in the classroom who were stretching in tight yoga clothes, winking obscenely and said, "Heaven, this is a man's paradise!"
"Let's get back to reality first."
Wei Ran pushed Jima's shoulder and walked out, "You have to take me to Kazan Airport first. I have something to go back to Volgograd."
"We have just arrived." Ji Ma's eyes did not leave the classroom full of girls. "Aren't you going to hunt? Why did you just come and leave?"
"There will be plenty of opportunities for hunting in the future." Wei Ran was not going to tell Jima that he would spend three years studying here, "Anyway, send me to Kazan first!"
"Okay, Kazan, I'll take you back now." Ji Ma reluctantly followed Wei Ran out of the lobby on the first floor, "When will you come to Kazan again? Mr. Nikolai's birthday will be here soon."
"October 1st, I will definitely come by then." Weiran responded vaguely.
"That's good, we'll be able to catch Mr. Nikolai's birthday party by then." Jima breathed a sigh of relief, opened the door of the van, and stepped on the accelerator as soon as Weiran got into the car.
It wasn't until the car entered the road in the forest that Wei Ran asked, "Jima, tell us about Principal Culp. How much do you know about him?"
"So you came to see Mr. Culp?"
Jima suddenly understood, and said like pouring beans from the bamboo tube, "Mr. Culp used to be our math teacher. After the school closed, he bought the Hongqi Forest Farm. From then on, he lived here until about
It was only ten years ago that the current Hongqi Women’s Safety Training School was opened.”
During the chat with Ji Ma, Wei Ran also got a general understanding of Culp. It was hard to imagine that this old handsome guy was still a handsome old bachelor, and the so-called school behind him only had less than 20 students at most.
A student.
As for the teachers, except for Culp who teaches most of the courses himself, most of the others are part-time teachers hired from outside. This configuration is somewhat similar to Pheasant University.
Chatting about the forest behind them, the van drove smoothly to Kazan Airport. The two of them found a place to have a meal nearby, and Weiran immediately took the nearest flight back to Volgograd.
Returning to the studio where he had been away for many days, Professor Alexey was browsing the information on the computer screen with squinted eyes. Behind him, there was a bronze statue of Marshal Zhukov about one and a half meters high.
"You bastard, you finally came back. How was your outing?" Professor Alexey said very happily.
"I almost froze to death," Wei Ran said vaguely, then changed the subject and asked, "Where did this bronze statue come from?"
"I went to Moscow with your aunt a few days ago, and I bought it when I passed by Bryansk when I came back." Professor Alexei said proudly, "This statue may be the work of a master sculptor. When I find out, it may be
Sold for ten times the price.”
"I hope so." Wei Ran looked up at the electronic watch hanging on the wall, "You didn't go to school today to teach?"
When talking about this issue, Professor Alexei's expression changed slightly. After hesitating for a long time, he said, "Victor, I am ready to work for Mr. Alexander. He made an offer that neither your aunt nor I can refuse."
."
"That museum that hasn't been completed yet?" Wei Ran asked anxiously. This news directly disrupted his plan. If Professor Alexey went to work for Alexander, wouldn't the studio stop?
Professor Alexei obviously saw Wei Ran's worries, "Victor, if you want to work in Mr. Alexander's museum, the technical consultant job is still yours. If you don't want to, you can also go to school to study for graduate school."
, or continue working in this studio.”
"Continue working in this studio?"
Seeing Wei Ran looking at him in confusion, Professor Alexey said treacherously, "This studio legally belongs to your aunt, so you can continue to work here."
"What about you?" Wei Ran asked.
"I don't work for Mr. Alexander 24 hours a day, and he's not the only client we have. It's just that you will have to bear more work in the future."
Having said this, the old man took out a few printed photos from the workbench and handed them to Wei Ran, "And now there is an opportunity for you to get used to it first."
After taking the photos and looking at them, I saw that the first two photos were taken of a corpse with remnants of a German uniform and a BMW sidecar motorcycle with the front wheel falling off.
The next few black-and-white photos have mottled spots as if they were used on expired film, but even so they can barely be seen clearly. The content of the photos are basically all war-torn battlefields, from bombed tanks to
From the German half-track armor that was stuck in the mud with only its head left, to the German soldiers in the trenches, it can be described as everything.
"This is?"
"A body dug up by a few lucky rookie diggers in the forest outside Bryansk"
Professor Alexey took the photo and flipped it through, pointing to the bones in the color photo and said, "This was taken at the excavation site. In addition to the BMW motorcycle, there were also
A glove box.”
"Tell me the key points, professor, tell me the key points." Wei Ran urged.
"The key point is that they found two film seals and a badly rusted camera in that box. These things were given to me as gifts for the statue of Marshal Zhukov. And these black and white photos were taken from the film seals.
A few of the negatives that came out were successfully developed.”
Having said this, Professor Alexei pointed to one of the photos in which only the front of the car was exposed outside the swamp, and said whimsically, "So Victor, although it will be a little more difficult this time, if we can find out
Where this photo was taken, just the clue that it is possible to dig up a half-track armored vehicle can be sold for a high price in the digger circle! The most important thing is that we can sell such information more than once!"
Compared with Professor Alexei who was still chattering about drawing pie, Wei Ran fell into a sluggish state. He suddenly realized that he seemed to have used that magical cowhide notebook in the wrong place!
