Chapter 342 - Leather-bound

The waiting felt like forever. Qing Chen just wanted to step in and just break the whole statue and its stand so they could finally see what was inside the nameplate. His eyes kept on shifting from the process of opening it to the hand of the statue and the marble rose.

This is nuts, he thought to himself. He just wanted to say bad words, or even curse his mother but it was nothing he could convince himself to do.

He took a look from his side and saw that his wife was chewing her lips unconsciously, her eyes never leaving the nameplate as it was being carefully unscrewed. Qing Chen reached for her and nestled her under his arm. 

She did not say anything but wrapped her arm around his waist.

It was like everyone was holding their breaths and only breathe when they heard the satisfying soft clang when the nameplate hit the ground. One of their men used tweezers to snatch it off the ground. They needed it for further investigation. The others were already looking for other possibile secret compartments.

Qing Chen was right, there really was a space inside the stand of the statue. Now that the nameplate was gone, there was a badly sawed hole in the shape of a rectangle. 

"Who's brave enough to fish something there?" Qing Lok asked.

Qing Chen did not hesitate but to kneel down and insert his hand inside the rectangle. He was scared of rats, or anything that could possibly bite him. But it didn't look like there was an animal inside.

He felt around on the ground first, heart running in his chest, ready to be disappointed for nth time in this operation. But then he started feeling the walls and his hand finally touched something.

There was an ugly ripping sound as he pried it from the side. When he pulled out his hand, he found that it was a notebook. Leather-bound with tanned pages. The cover was already cracking and the sides were already falling off. 

He flipped to the first page.

Nothing.

He flipped to the second page.

Also nothing.

"This must be a joke," Wuming said.

Qing Chen thumbed through the pages and found a picture of a rose in the middle of a page. The same one on his back. 

He breathed a sigh of relief. The notebook might be empty, but at least they knew it was his mother's. "It's hers."

"Clearly," muttered Wuming in annoyance.

"Do we have some UV lights?" Qing Lok asked and Qing Chen handed the notebook to his brother. "There must be something written with an invisible ink."

Qing Chen got up, not helping the feeling of hopelessness in his chest. Was this goose chase all for a notebook that was empty?

Feng Xuan hugged his side in comfort. Qing Chen guessed that the sadness might be seeping off his pores. The women just looked pitiful at the brothers.

But thank goodness, everything was not for nothing.

Someone handed a UV light to Qing Lok and he shined it across the pages. There, scribbled in a cursive handwriting were poems. Almost a hundred of them. Each side of the papers were written on. 

"So?" Wuming asked impatiently as Qing Lok flipped to the pages.

"Some are prose. I think Mother wrote them."

"Great," Wuming said sarcastically. "Now we have Mother's little precious notebook. Let me guess, there was a poem about how much she loves her sons."

"I am going to have to inspect this. She might've put something in code here."

Everyone turned to Qing Chen. "What are we going to do tonight?"

Qing Chen surveyed what the others were doing. "Let's stay for the night. I already have supplies coming in. For now, break into groups. Let's try to find something else. It's not like we've got anything else left to lose."

Qing Chen and Feng Xuan went back inside the church-like building, touching most of everything—the lining of the wall, the small borders, every nook and corner. There was nothing. 

"Do you really think this was a place of worship for the devil?" Feng Xuan asked. There was nothing inside the place that could've hinted that. She wondered what lead people into creating that urban legend.

"We never know, people from the past did not really have a lot to do with their lives," Qing Chen said. "But for this place, I don't think so. If anything, the worst thing this place could be was a meeting place for a cult. It would not be entirely impossible. Just look at this place."

It was still a mystery who financed everything for this place to be built. Really right in the middle of nowhere and yet there were statues—made of marble! There was a building. It must've somehow cost a fortune.

It was already too dark when food and supplies finally came. Tents were set up even though they would all be pulling an all nighter. Qing Chen was sure everyone just wanted to get home.

The trucks and equipment came too and started on the statue on the hill. It did not take a lot of time for the statue to be uprooted from its place and for the small hill to be inspected.

Contrary to what they believed, there was nothing on the small hill. They tried removing more nameplates, but there were no more hollowed ones. It was around four in the morning when Qing Chen called the operation a wrap. 

A few hours later, they were all in the plane back to Chengshi. Wuming was snoring loudly from his seat, Addison leaning against his shoulders. Liu Meilien was in the same position but Qing Lok was still awake with dark circles under his eyes, still trying to find something on the notebook.

Feng Xuan was asleep on the couch, her head on Qing Chen's lap and Qing Chen was awake, wondering what their Mother really had for them.