I was approached by a cat-eared girl.

Unfortunately, his stockpile of chapters is running low, and today is the last day of his scheduled posting. If he doesn't leave soon, he'll have to stop updating.

They waved goodbye to the tall elm trees, the river, and the butterflies flitting among the flowers in the valley, and then left with their bags on their backs.

Leftover mineral water bottles and food packaging bags are also packed in the bag, ready to be taken out and thrown away later. This kind of garbage that is difficult to decompose will only damage the ecology if left in the valley.

After exiting through the cave they had come in through, Chen Shuo couldn't help but look back one last time, wondering if he should block up the cave to prevent others from discovering and occupying the valley inside.

Although the probability is very small and few people go into the mountains, there's always a chance of something going wrong. What if someone finds out?

Moreover, this place has a different meaning; it belongs to Xiao A Miao's maternal home. He plans to come at least once a year, and even thought about bringing a chainsaw next time he comes, and building a small house inside, so that he can stay for a longer period of time each time he comes.

Seeing Chen Shuo stop and look back, Bai Xiaoqi also turned around and asked, "What are you looking at?"

"I'm wondering if I should find a rock to block up this hole."

"Should we block it?" Bai Xiaoqi asked, somewhat eager, and began looking for large rocks around her.

"It would be great if we could block it, but I'm afraid the two of us won't be able to move such a big rock."

The mountains have no shortage of stones, so Chen Shuo wasn't worried at all about finding suitable ones.

He stepped forward and measured the opening of the cave with his hands.

"Look, the hole is a little over a meter high and about seventy centimeters wide. That means the stone we're looking for needs to be about the same size, though it has to be a little smaller, otherwise it won't fit."

“A rock this size would be very heavy, at least a thousand pounds. Even though you are strong, you certainly don’t have that much weight. So let’s try to find a rock that we can roll, that should make things easier.”

Actually, we don't need to use stones to block it. The bushes here are tall and lush; we can use them..."

As they were talking, Chen Shuo suddenly realized that he had been talking for a long time, but no one had replied to him at all. He turned around and found that there was no one beside him. Bai Xiaoqi had disappeared without a trace.

He was deep in the mountains, and the layers of trees obscured his view. He looked around but couldn't find it.

He thought about going to look for her, but he was worried that she wouldn't be able to find him when she came back. Besides, the mountains were deep and the forests were dense, and without her guidance as the mountain god of Cat Mountain, he would only get lost.

After standing there for about twenty minutes, Chen Shuo heard rustling sounds not far ahead. He threw his bag aside, stepped through the weeds and bushes, and followed the sound. He soon saw Bai Xiaoqi.

She was pushing a rather large rock, an irregular oval shape, about the same size as the opening of the hole.

Bai Xiaoqi wiped the fine sweat from her forehead. "What do you think of this stone I found?"

"Why didn't you tell me before you went to look for it?"

Seeing this, Chen Shuo quickly went over to help her push. After pushing for a while, he found that although it was a bit difficult, it was not as heavy as he had imagined. He felt that he could push it by himself.

Judging from this, the sweat on her forehead was from the heat, not from being tired.

I want to give you a surprise.

"?"

Chen Shuo looked at her with an inscrutable expression. "Why are you so silly? What's the surprise in something like this?"

"You're the stupid one."

The two fools pushed the stone to the entrance of the cave, and then pushed it in, but only a small part of it went in, with most of the stone still sticking out.

Taking a few steps back, Chen Shuo observed for a while, then turned his head and asked, "Don't you think it's very conspicuous?"

"Yes, this rock is so visible that others will find the cave entrance much more easily."

"really."

Chen Shuo nodded in agreement. The cave entrance was surrounded by a lot of bushes, making it impossible to spot at first glance. But as the two of them pushed the stone over, the bushes were flattened wherever they went.

Then the two of them exposed the entrance to the cave.

Feeling like he'd shot himself in the foot, Chen Shuo realized that he and his companion were truly fools.

"After a while, the bushes around the cave entrance will grow back and cover the rocks, making them very difficult to find."

"is it?"

"Yes."

Chen Shuo put the backpack he had just thrown on the ground back on his back, picked up the portable bag containing the tent, and then took her small hand.

"Let's go home."

.........

After leaving the mountains and reaching the foot of the mountain, we had only walked along the river for a few minutes when a series of clanging and vibrating sounds started up and wouldn't stop.

Chen Shuo took out his phone from his pocket. Now that they had come out of the mountains, the phone signal had been restored, and one text message after another came in, mostly missed call notifications. Bai Xiaoqi also had some, but not as many as him.

The phone rang for several dozen seconds before finally stopping. Chen Shuo looked through the messages one by one; there were dozens of missed calls, and more than half of them were from his mother.

Before coming, I talked to the elderly couple about our past camping trips in the mountains, and mentioned that there might be no signal in the mountains, or there might be.

It's obvious that Wu Yulan didn't hear the part about no signal and automatically ignored the word "maybe," so what she heard was probably something like this.

[Dad, Mom, Qiqi and I are going camping in the mountains. There's a cell phone signal there.]

When I turned on mobile data again, my phone was bombarded with messages, almost making me drop it. WeChat messages kept popping up.

Wu Yulan's score was already showing 99+ in red.

No signal in the mountains?

I saw the reply message.

Have you two come out yet?

Is everything alright?

Once you're out of the mountains, make a quick call back.

.......

The WeChat messages also included voice messages, and among the pure text messages, the above few sentences appeared the most frequently, with each message having seven or eight identical messages.

After reading the message, Chen Shuo dialed Wu Yulan's number. He felt that this time he would probably be nagged for a long time.

As it turned out, his feeling was right. As soon as the call connected, Wu Yulan on the other end of the line started nagging.

It all started when you finally found out and started talking about calling the police. You even said you'd have to pay a search and rescue team to come and search the mountain, but then you found out it was too expensive and didn't bother.

During the conversation, he also talked for a while about news about wild beasts appearing in the deep mountains and forests. In a certain place, a certain person went to the mountains for tourism and encountered tigers and black bears.

"Have you bought the tickets?"

"not yet."

Why not buy it?

"Because I'm on the phone with you." Chen Shuo rubbed his temples and continued, "Okay, Mom, I need to buy tickets. I'll hang up now, my phone will run out of battery soon."

Chapter 182 You should go to the hospital to get checked out.

In the afternoon, the two boarded the train home. Bai Xiaoqi was as excited as ever, peering out the window.

When she arrived in Yangcheng, she got out of the train station and took a taxi. Looking out the window, the closer she got to home, the more familiar the scenery became, and the more excited she became.

I'm home.

The house had been uninhabited for over ten days, with all the doors and windows tightly shut. It was also the height of summer, so the house was bound to be stuffy and hot.

In addition, it also had a unique smell that comes from being vacant. The first thing the two of them did when they got home was to open the windows for ventilation, opening all the windows that could be opened.

Then turn on the electric and water valves. Let the water sit for a while first. If it hasn't been used for many days, a lot of rust and sediment will accumulate inside, and the water that flows out will appear murky.

Once the water that had flowed out became clear, Bai Xiaoqi took out the dirty clothes she had accumulated over the past few days from her backpack and threw them into the washing machine to wash. Chen Shuo then went to pack up his backpack, put the things inside away, and returned the cutting board and dishes to the kitchen.

She took the wooden box out, placed it on the coffee table, and opened it. All sorts of odds and ends were still inside—bottle caps, round stones, and so on. She hadn't thrown them away; after all, they were her old treasures and held sentimental value.

"..."

After Bai Xiaoqi came out, she frowned slightly when she saw what was inside the wooden box, but then casually looked away.

She was originally going to throw it away, but Chen Shuo wouldn't let her, saying it had sentimental value. But she always felt that this guy had ulterior motives.

For example, I would often take these things out to laugh at myself, especially the bottle caps. Just seeing them made me feel ashamed. I was so stupid to have treated these bottle caps like treasures.

"I think this thing might be a good thing."

Chen Shuo took the hollowed-out sphere out of the box, weighed it in his palm, and felt a sense of weight in it; it was quite heavy.

"This weight suggests it's not made of iron, and the patterns on it are quite intricate."

Chen Shuo held the sphere and turned it over to examine it. The openwork pattern seemed to depict some kind of bird, or perhaps two birds, their beaks facing each other symmetrically.

There's a ring around the center of the sphere, with a hook switch on it. Push the hook outwards and the sphere will open. "See, this thing can be opened."

Bai Xiaoqi was about to go to the bedroom to tidy up when she heard this and turned around to look at her. "I already knew."

"Really? You're that amazing."

"Yes."

The sound drifted from the bedroom.

Chen Shuo continued to sit on the sofa and observe the sphere in his hand. Inside the sphere were several rings combined together. The way they were combined reminded him of the armillary sphere he had seen in his textbooks when he was a child.

But that's definitely not the case. The armillary sphere was used in ancient times to demonstrate celestial phenomena; what could this sphere possibly demonstrate?

However, let's call it a celestial globe for now, as there is a small bowl in the middle of the celestial globe.

He poked around in the bowl with his hand, then looked at the structure of the armillary sphere. He got up and went to the corner of the living room to open the large cardboard box containing his childhood memories. He took out a marble, put it in the bowl, and then closed the box.

Hold the ball in your hand and shake it a few times. Then look through the perforated gaps. The ball is about two sizes smaller than the bowl, but it is still perfectly fine inside the bowl and has not fallen out at all.

Sure enough, what's inside is a gyroscope, not a celestial globe.

For some reason, Chen Shuo felt that he had seen something similar to this hollowed-out sphere somewhere before, but he couldn't remember where he had seen it. He took out his phone from his pocket, took a picture, and sent it to Chen Jianwen.

I also took a picture of the wooden box. [Dad, can you help me identify this wooden box and this round ball?]

Less than two minutes after the message was sent, the phone suddenly rang.

It was the old man calling. As soon as Chen Shuo answered, the first thing he asked was, "Where are you right now?!"

Chen Shuo scratched his head. "At home."

"I'm coming right away, don't go anywhere."

"You need to go..."