Max Level Return—I'll Protect That Fragile One

Xu Xingguang pointed to the big tree at the entrance and said, ”This is a chestnut tree. When I came here that year, the chestnuts on it weren’t ripe yet.”

But they came at a lucky time; the chestnuts were almost all ripe. Ye Mingluo said, ”You all look for clues, I’ll go pick chestnuts.”

Huo Wen’an thought this arrangement was quite good. He said, ”Get more, and don’t make trouble.”

Ye Mingluo glared at him, then snatched Huo Wen’an’s cane and climbed up the chestnut tree.

The kitchen of the old house had completely collapsed, opening up the hall, and the locked main door was practically just for show.

The four of them walked from the kitchen into the hall.

The hall floor was covered with a layer of cement, so weeds didn’t grow. But the wooden furniture inside the house had long since rotted, and tables and stools were lying on the ground.

After a simple glance around the hall to confirm there was nothing noteworthy, Xu Xingguang walked to the bedroom door. There was a lock on the bedroom door, the one Xu Xingguang had personally put on.

Xu Xingguang said, ”I put all of Grandpa’s things in the bedroom.”

The key had long been lost, so she easily opened the lock with a piece of wire. Xu Xingguang pushed open the wooden door, and a musty old smell greeted them, causing everyone to cover their noses with their hands.

Once the musty smell had dissipated a bit, they went in.

The bedroom wasn’t very big and was cluttered with so much stuff that the four of them looked cramped standing inside.

There were two beds in the bedroom, one against the wall, 1.2 meters wide. The other was next to the window, 1 meter wide.

Xu Xingguang pointed to the bed by the window and said, ”That’s my bed. My mother sent me here quietly and slipped away. On my first day here, my grandpa didn’t say a word to me. That night, I put a few chairs together and lay on them, fully dressed, and slept. The next morning when I woke up, I saw my grandpa outside sawing wood to make me a bed.”

Although I’ve reincarnated ten times, my memories of the summer vacation when I was 13 are already vague.

But being in this house truly brings back those images of being with Grandpa, replaying them like a movie in Xu Xingguang’s mind.

On the bed lay a moldy cotton quilt. Xu Xingguang lifted it and found a worm-eaten novel inside.

She said, ”This is my mother’s first published work. I accidentally found it on my grandpa’s bed.”

”When I discovered this novel, my grandpa’s face turned red with anger. He tried to take it from me, but I didn’t give it to him.” Xu Xingguang flipped through the pages of the yellowed novel and lamented, ”Actually, my grandpa always cared about my mother. But for some reason, their father-daughter relationship was so poor.”

”Let me see.” Huo Wen’an took the novel from Xu Xingguang and casually flipped through it. He said, ”Your grandpa even wrote notes in it.”

Xu Xingguang smiled and said to Song Chi and the others, ”Let’s move these piles of rubbish out, and search carefully to see if there’s anything suspicious.”

”Okay.”

After Song Chi and Zheng Lie had moved almost all the clutter out of the room, Xu Xingguang carefully checked the floor, the walls, and even the items on the bookshelf.

But found nothing.

”Could our judgment be wrong? Are there really no clues here at Grandpa’s place?”

Ye Mingluo ran in with his coat filled with chestnuts full of spikes. He threw the chestnuts onto the cement floor of the hall and walked into the bedroom, saying, ”There are caterpillars on that tree, so I stopped picking.”

He wiped his neck, complaining disdainfully, ”They all fell onto my neck.”

The squishy things were really disgusting.

Noticing an old pipe on the bookshelf, Ye Mingluo went over to pick it up and asked Xu Xingguang, ”Master, is this your grandpa’s pipe?”

Ye Mingluo had only seen such antiques in museums. He picked up the pipe and tapped it against the bookshelf, laughing, ”This really is an old antique. No wonder it’s shiny from all the use by an old smoker.”

Xu Xingguang said, ”That was my grandpa’s treasure, never leaving his side.”

Song Chi found the noise Ye Mingluo made annoying and directly snatched the pipe away, placing it back up high. ”Don’t mess with the old man’s stuff.”

Ye Mingluo pouted, casually saying, ”If it’s something he couldn’t bear to part with, why didn’t he take it when he went fishing?”

After speaking, Ye Mingluo went to the hall, stepping on the chestnut spikes, twisting around as he tried to crush them to get to the chestnut meat inside.

Meanwhile, the four in the bedroom all stared at Ye Mingluo with strange expressions.

”Ye Mingluo.” Huo Wen’an called out to him.