Imperial Treasure
Chapter 241 - 176 Strange Tales?

Chapter 241: Chapter 176 Strange Tales?

Sui Yi looked around, the mountain path was not rugged, and the terraced fields opposite had no bamboo to conceal anything. If anyone were running around, they wouldn’t be able to disappear so quickly in such a short time. Mao Ju should have been able to see, or at the very least, hear some noise.

A person, just vanished like that?

A few people started searching the vicinity. Lin Yun, after all a girl with a careful eye, quickly let out a soft "hmm" as she brushed aside the bamboo leaves. She picked up a colorful green marble from the ground and asked, "Is this the marble Xiao Dao usually plays with?"

"Yes, that’s the one, she always treasured it so much! How could it...," Mao Ju began, his face falling, while Mao Gang’s face turned dark as well.

Lin Yun and Li Jingyan exchanged a look,

The child treasured this marble, but still left it behind, and with no sign of her, it almost meant that her disappearance wasn’t under normal circumstances...

The group became as anxious as ants on a hot pan, even Lin Yun became eager to help find the child...

Yet Sui Yi was staring fixedly at that clump of bamboo and took a few steps forward to take a closer look.

After looking for a while, he frowned, turned to Mao Gang and the others, who were about to search elsewhere, and asked, "What’s Xiao Dao’s size like? Can she fit through this clump of bamboo?"

Sui Yi was pointing at the bamboo grove beside him.

The grove was large and dense, covering an area of three to four acres. Inside, the bamboo varied in height, and in the gaps where light seeped through, it created mottled specks of light like shattered blades.

The crowd was astonished by Sui Yi’s question, but Mao Gang still described Xiao Dao’s size—she was about seven or eight years old, not even one meter tall, skinny, and a pretty clever child...

"So, can she fit through gaps like these?" Sui Yi pointed to the gaps in the bamboo next to him.

Mao Ju frowned, "She can, but why would she go into the bamboo grove for no reason... She’s not foolish."

Despite Sui Yi’s calm demeanor, it didn’t sit well with him; it was as if Sui Yi didn’t care at all about his child’s disappearance...

Though this was a family matter.

Sui Yi didn’t mind Mao Ju’s attitude and simply said, "The marble just dropped here, and since she likes it so much, she definitely wouldn’t forget or want to lose it. Therefore, there are only two possibilities: one, she was coerced or taken away by someone, but from what I can tell, there’s only one straight path here. It’s nearly impossible for an adult to carry a child silently past Mr. Mao’s sight without making a sound. That leaves another possibility, that she left on her own without needing to take that straight path..."

"Are you suggesting she ran into the bamboo grove?" Mao Gang stared wide-eyed, incredulous. He rushed forward, almost wanting to force the bamboo apart to see for himself, all the while shouting Xiao Dao’s name...

Yet there were only echoes, no responses.

All eyes turned sharply towards Sui Yi.

Are you leading us into a trap?

Sui Yi found it hard to say that his vision could see through things that ordinary people couldn’t, clearly observing that there was a hole inside the bamboo grove.

After thinking, he could only invent a story, "I’ve heard before that bamboo is a very domineering plant. Where it thrives, other plants hardly survive. However, a bamboo grove shouldn’t be too large; otherwise, the excess yin energy attracts animals that love shade and have a musky smell to dig holes and nest. So, it’s common for animals like foxes to frequent bamboo groves. If there’s a fox den inside, and a fox happened to run out and was seen by Xiao Dao, given a child’s nature, out of curiosity to see, she might have squeezed through the gaps in the bamboo. When going in, she accidentally knocked her marble out, and once inside, it was difficult for her to come back, so she had no choice but to go forward... Perhaps she just thought to take a look and then pick up her marble when coming back out..."

Inside it was too dark to see well, she could only make out some fluffy stuff that seemed to be fur at the entrance, not sure if it was a fox den...

Of course, what made her most certain that something was unusual about this bamboo grove was the odd smell coming from inside.

It was a bit fishy, a bit acrid, a bit foul.

This was too far-fetched, something straight out of a ghost story!

Lin Yun felt as though her boss was weaving tales.

But the expressions on Mao Gang and Mao Ju’s faces kept changing unpredictably. In truth, having grown up in the mountains and unexposed to much materialist education, they were quite susceptible to believing such things--they even related it to the realms of fantasy and ghosts.