Chapter 156: A Dark and Windy Night

Naturally, Uncle Fu followed up by asking Zhang Pu what he had been up to earlier.

Zhang Pu didn't hide anything from him and told the truth. Zhang Pu told Uncle Fu that he had gone to gather the six hundred thousand yuan for contracting the mountainous forest, and the money was already in hand.

Zhang Pu stated that tomorrow he would notify Director Zhang from the township, along with the village party secretary and the village chief, to come collect the money and handle the paperwork.

Normally, for matters like this, people would have to bring the money themselves to the village and township to get the stamps, but Zhang Pu bluntly told Uncle Fu: those people are greedy for the money themselves; if they don't come, we'll just squat right here on this mountain.

Uncle Fu secretly gave Zhang Pu a thumbs-up in his heart, thinking: This kid, the more I look at him, the more formidable he is compared to his old man, Zhang Ting. I really misjudged him; I'm old and useless. Back then, I thought someone returning from Qingwu City would absolute be a bookish nerd, and so young at that—how could he possibly adapt to life in this mountain village? I figured I'd just let the township and village handle him however they pleased. I never expected that he would end up playing the township and village officials right in the palm of his hand.

He even dared to mess with the masked men, the bandits in the mountains, and even the big shots from the provincial capital...

Later, Uncle Fu seemed to sink into a deep contemplation, especially after Zhang Pu instructed Ye Hui to show him the six hundred thousand yuan to prove beyond a doubt that he wasn't lying and that the money was real.

Zhang Pu saw Uncle Fu's contemplation, but remained calm and composed.

In fact, Zhang Pu had long known that Uncle Fu himself had some issues.

With Uncle Fu's little tricks of caution, he might fool ordinary people, but trying to pull the wool over Zhang Pu's eyes was simply a joke.

After turning around, Zhang Pu thought it was about time to dig into Uncle Fu's background.

Perhaps the disappearance of his parents was as complex and labyrinthine as the cases in *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*. Why was he always casting his gaze far away into the distance to investigate, while failing to dig up the vegetable patch right in front of his own doorstep?

Zhang Pu let Ye Hui and the other two stay here temporarily. There were plenty of empty rooms anyway, and a simple tidy-up would make them quite comfortable to live in. Ye Hui and his companions weren't delicate or pampered to begin with.

Having mixed with Duan Jinhuan and that crowd from the Three Halls Association, Ye Hui himself could pretty much be considered a bandit.

Yet in Zhang Pu's eyes, Ye Hui possessed a rather stylish and charismatic presence, causing Zhang Pu to feel a certain favoritism toward him.

After all, Uncle Fu had decades of life experience. With robbers suddenly coming to live in his house, he managed to recover from the abruptness and return to normal in no time, treating Ye Hui and the others simply as friends of Zhang Pu.

However, Zhang Pu, this kid, was weighing on Uncle Fu's mind more and more like some kind of insoluble puzzle.

Weren't these robbers and bandits brought here by Zhang Pu himself?

And this sum of six hundred thousand yuan had definitely been extracted by Zhang Pu from those bandits.

Uncle Fu initially thought of it as a loan, but for Zhang Pu to be able to borrow six hundred thousand yuan from such people was already quite extraordinary. At any rate, Uncle Fu thought to himself: Zhang Ting would have absolutely no way of pulling this off.

For the time being, everything was peaceful here. Ye Hui, being a middle-aged man, had a strong psychological adaptability and quickly managed to get along with Uncle Fu as if they were family. As for the two men under Ye Hui, they naturally followed Ye Hui's lead in everything.

While Zhang Pu wanted to dig into Uncle Fu's background, little did he know that Uncle Fu, seemingly inadvertently, had already begun making moves to deal with him.

Soon, night fell.

That night was starless and moonless—a classic case of what people call a pitch-black, windy night.

Usually, on pitch-black and windy nights, things tend to be out of the ordinary.

Since people had nothing much to do in the evening, nights on a mountain like this had even fewer forms of entertainment. At most, everyone would just return to their rooms to play on their smartphones and browse the internet, much like how mountain villagers simply worked at sunrise and rested at sunset.

Yet, a pitch-black and windy night was precisely the prime time for thieves and robbers to prowl and commit crimes. However, given the current era of peace and prosperity, bandits no longer operated with such blatant audacity.

As for this faction of masked men belonging to the branch of the Three Halls Association, even Uncle Fu had never known of them before. Ye Hui and his men wouldn't normally commit robberies and loot around here either; it was as if they had suddenly popped up out of nowhere only after Zhang Ting and his wife disappeared and Zhang Pu arrived in these mountains.

Uncle Fu himself harbored deep doubts in his heart.

Unlike the mountain villagers who worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, Uncle Fu did not go to bed early. He, too, played on his smartphone and surfed the internet at night.

Naturally, Uncle Fu chatted via WeChat with that mysterious someone about the events of the day.

He specifically reported on the matter of the "six hundred thousand yuan."

The person on the other end fell silent for a long time.

Ever since Zhang Pu returned completely unscathed after being abducted by the masked men, followed by his bold and imposing handling of the broken engagement the next day—showing not a shred of fear toward the masked robbers, the rural officials, or the powerful big shots from the provincial capital, and handling everything with effortless ease—Uncle Fu had long since looked at him in a completely new light.

And now, Zhang Pu had resolved the issue of the "six hundred thousand yuan" with such absolute ease that even the person behind Uncle Fu could no longer sit still.

After a long while, the person behind Uncle Fu sent him this single sentence: Come over and see me immediately!

That simple, terse sentence made Uncle Fu's heart leap wildly in his chest.

That person wanted to come in person?! He had never even imagined such a possibility.

Very well! Uncle Fu figured that some chapter of history around here was about to be rewritten.

Zhang Pu had explicitly told him that tomorrow he would notify the people from the township and the village to come collect the money and get things done, but tonight...

The lights in Uncle Fu's room had been turned off long ago. In fact, he did this precisely to make Zhang Pu think that he had already gone to sleep.

Later on, Uncle Fu had secretly observed the rooms of Zhang Pu and the three men who came with him. Their lights were still on, which he could understand: after all, they were young people! It was impossible for them to go to sleep as early as old folks, and some young people even stayed up all night surfing the internet. He, an old man, knew all about that.

Uncle Fu went to bed first.

He knew that when the person in contact with him arrived, there would be a special method to wake him up.

Eventually, the lights in Zhang Pu's room went out. The lights in the rooms of Ye Hui and his two subordinates went out as well.

In the quiet night, it seemed that only the howling of the fierce wind remained.

The howling wind of this particular night was the most violent Zhang Pu had encountered ever since he came here.

Yet there was no sign of rain. Heavy clouds constantly blanketed the sky, but no rain fell, nor was there any thunder or lightning.

Around midnight, a sense of nightmare seemed to quietly creep closer to this place.

Uncle Fu was suddenly jolted awake from whatever dream he was having.

With utmost stealth, Uncle Fu got out of bed and silently opened his bedroom door.

Seeing that the rooms of Zhang Pu and Ye Hui were completely dark, he appeared satisfied.

Having lived in a place like this for so long—so familiar that he could recognize the very smell of the soil—Uncle Fu could probably walk his way out with complete ease even with his eyes closed.