"By the way, Xiaozhi. I was just going to your house to find you," Liu Xiaohong's mother said. "I was packing up old and tattered things a few days ago and found a stone cat that your mother had kept with me for many years.
Yes, I forgot about it, do you still want it?"
"Stone cat?"
Chen Zhi immediately became sensitive when he heard the mention of his mother, "What kind of stone cat? When did this happen?"
"That was more than 20 years ago, and you were still young at that time!"
Liu Xiaohong’s mother smiled and said, “If you want more, I’ll get it for you.”
After she finished speaking, she turned around and went to the warehouse. After a while, she came back with a black cat-shaped stone sculpture.
"I had forgotten about it. If I hadn't been tidying up the warehouse that night and saw a pair of shining eyes of this black cat, I would have forgotten that there was such a thing."
Mother Hong said and handed the black stone cat to Chen Zhi.
Chen Zhi took the stone cat and looked at it carefully. The cat was not big in size, not much different from a normal tabby cat. It was dark and sticky, like a cat with a black mud body, and its eyes were inlaid with two black stars.
The stone, with a little bit of green in it, looks like worthless glass. But the body shape and posture of this black cat are vividly depicted. It raises one right paw, arches its body forward, and the cat's mouth is slightly grinning, expressing its expression.
It's so real that it doesn't even sound like a meow.
Chen Zhi knew that although the appearance of this cat was crude, the carving was extraordinary and definitely not a common object. He weighed the weight of the cat with his hands, and it was very heavy. The proportion of the entire volume and gravity inferred the density of the material.
It is very large and very different from ordinary stones, but judging from the carving style of this stone cat, this incised carving technique is very ancient, like a product of the official kilns in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
"Aunt Hong, when my mother gave you this black cat, didn't she say what it was?" Chen Zhi asked Liu Xiaohong's mother.
"No, wait~~" Liu Xiaohong's mother seemed to have remembered something,
"I remember that it was raining very heavily that day. The heavy rain was very unusual. There had never been such a heavy rain in Z City. It almost caused floods. The city issued an orange rainstorm alert and all the roads outside were blocked by rainwater.
After living there, no one dared to go out. But your mother sent this stone cat over in the heavy rain that day and told me to keep it for her. She also told her not to give it to anyone else and to wait until she could take it back with her own hands.
.I was still wondering at that time what could make her come here in such weather. After that, your mother seemed to completely forget about it, and I also forgot about it. At that time, this broken cat was soaked by the water from the heavy rain.
I thought she picked up the rags somewhere."
Liu Xiaohong's mother's words immediately aroused Chen Zhi's curiosity. He wrapped the cat in cloth, then said goodbye to Liu Xiaohong and her son, and left their bun shop.
When he reached the door, Gou Shifei had just finished his work. He washed off the black coal on his face and was about to go in to find Chen Zhi.
"Brother, why did you leave so soon? I still want to have a good chat with you!" After Gou Shifei finished talking, he said with a somewhat embarrassed expression, "Well, originally I had been helping you take care of Xiaohong, but later on
It’s been a long time, Xiaohong and I...".
"I have something to do, so I'm going back first."
Chen Zhi stopped Gou Shifei from finishing what he was saying. He patted Gou Shifei on the shoulder and said, "You look like a man now. Your business is doing well, so do your best! If you need anything, call me."
After Chen Zhi finished speaking, he turned around with the stone cat in hand. After walking past the bun shop, Chen Zhi quickly returned home. Fat Wei and his father ran out to play chess with whomever they knew. Ghost Sword had been playing chess since the morning.
There was no trace, and Chen Zhi was the only one left in the house.
Chen Zhi carried the stone cat up to the second floor. He first washed the black cat's body with clean water, and soon discovered that the cat's body was actually covered with a thick layer of light mud, and the cat's
The weight mainly comes from the material inside the body. In other words, the black appearance of the cat is just an illusion. The material itself is very dense and is probably a precious metal.
Chen Zhi took out his dagger and scratched the black cat's body twice. As he expected, after a few scrapes, the black cat's body was revealed to be shiny gold.
"This is actually a cat made of pure gold? No wonder it's so heavy!" Chen Zhi was surprised in his heart.
"If this cat is pure gold, it must not be an ordinary utensil. It cannot be a meaningless act for my mother to entrust someone to keep it. But why did my mother send this cat to Liu Xiaohong's house at that time?
What? Do you know that your home is no longer safe and may be attacked?" When Chen Zhi thought of this, he couldn't help but think of the ghost mother and those terrifying Motu Luo (a kind of demon that can change into human form, once changed
Cheng Chenzhi’s mother).
"After my mother died, the ghost mother who pretended to be her didn't know the existence of this stone cat, so she didn't come to Liu Xiaohong's house to ask for it. It happened that Liu Xiaohong's mother also forgot about it, so this stone cat can be preserved until now.
.If my mother was afraid that this cat would be discovered and deliberately hid it in Liu Xiaohong’s house, then it would prove that this cat hid a very important information. Could it be..."
Chen Zhi once read some ancient information from the Tang Dynasty. Because there were no institutions like banks and bank accounts at that time, many wealthy families stored their belongings in their own homes, so they were often robbed by thieves. In order to prevent theft, people at that time
It is popular among nobles and wealthy people to make a very special kind of storage device.
This kind of storage looks like an ordinary stone sculpture, it may be a stone dog, it may be a jar, but it is empty inside. They softly seal the precious gold and silver inside, and then paint the outside of the vessel black
The mud makes the storage look like an ordinary furnishing. In this way, many ancient treasures have been preserved and are called treasure niches.
If this black cat is a treasure niche, then there must be a hidden secret in its belly.
Chen Zhi picked up the black cat and shook it. Sure enough, he heard some very subtle noises. The black cat's belly must be empty.
Chen Zhi spent about half an hour carefully scraping off all the black mud on the surface of the black cat. The golden cat's true body was revealed, and he soon discovered that he had thought of things too simply.
Well, not only was this golden cat completely unable to speak, but its whole body was also covered with densely packed incantations. This incantation faintly exuded a cold aura and was extremely painful when it touched human skin.
Chen Zhi opened his palm, and it turned out that from just now, the right hand he used to scratch the black cat had started to ooze blood, and it was full of cuts.
Chen Zhi closed his palm and looked at the golden cat covered with incantations again. If he guessed correctly, the incantation on this golden cat was a powerful curse that prohibited human beings from touching it.