Chapter 1781 - 2083: Qiu Nanshan (1)
Soon, the hotel owner poured a glass of liquor for each of them, and after a few drinks, his tongue loosened. The people who came to the hotel were usually outsiders, and as the owner, dealing with them all the time, he naturally knew a lot. The group started chatting about everything under the sun. Chewing on peanuts, Ling Chen raised his glass and asked, "Boss, does your town have anything special about it?"
"Special?" The hotel owner thought for a moment, then said, "There didn’t use to be, but now there is. After you leave the town and walk a few kilometers to the north, there’s a mountain called Qiu Nanshan. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it."
Qiu Nanshan... Hearing that name, Ling Chen couldn’t help but feel a jolt in his heart. A few days ago, when he was idly playing on his phone, he had come across a news report that was precisely related to Qiu Nanshan. While he was thinking this, he heard the hotel owner continue, "Qiu Nanshan is over four thousand meters above sea level, the highest peak within several hundred li around. Though Qiu Nanshan is fairly well-known, our place is rather remote, so it hasn’t attracted many tourists. That was until recently, when the city government began vigorously developing tourism and made Qiu Nanshan a key project. I heard that, in order to build an international tourist destination, the city government brought in quite a few companies and invested several billion yuan, planning to build a tourist village at the foot of Qiu Nanshan. Right now the project is halfway done. If nothing unexpected happens, in at most two or three years, the tourist village will be open to the public."
Ling Chen nodded and said, "That’s a good thing for you."
"Of course!" the hotel owner said excitedly. "Once the Qiu Nanshan scenic area opens, our town will benefit the most. I’ve already made plans to expand the hotel properly next year; I’m sure I’ll be making a fortune in the future."
"Then let me congratulate you in advance." Ling Chen paused, then shifted the topic and asked, "Boss, I saw a news report a few days ago saying there was some strange explosion on Qiu Nanshan."
"You saw that? Let me tell you, that business is anything but ordinary. Qiu Nanshan is rather steep. With equipment, ordinary people can only climb four or five hundred meters up at most. Also, the cableway on Qiu Nanshan is still under construction and hasn’t been put into use. But the explosion happened on the summit of Qiu Nanshan—no one knows what happened. I heard that because of the explosion, a lot of rocks fell from the summit and damaged many of the buildings in the tourist village. Over this matter, the government even formed a special investigation team, but they haven’t found a single lead."
So that’s how it is! Ling Chen nodded inwardly. If his guess was right, that sudden explosion was very likely related to He Honggang.
"Right, there’s another very strange thing—do you want to hear it?" The hotel owner seemed to think of something and spoke in a mysterious tone.
Playing along, Ling Chen asked with a curious expression, "What is it?"
"Ever since construction on the tourist village started, problems have been cropping up nonstop. Every few days, either building materials would get stolen, or a freshly completed structure would suddenly collapse. In short, weird things keep happening in that tourist village. Because of this, the construction progress has been stalled from the start. A lot of workers quit because there were just too many strange incidents on the site. Tell me, isn’t that bizarre?"
After listening to the hotel owner, Ling Chen asked with genuine interest, "So is it all just coincidence, or is someone doing it on purpose?"
"Who knows." The hotel owner said, "At the time, the investors believed someone was deliberately sabotaging the project to block the progress, so they hired a professional security team to handle the site’s safety. But even after that security team showed up, strange things kept happening every few days. Not only that, members of the security team themselves started having accidents now and then. Some were hit by falling stones on the site while on duty, and others went to sleep in their dorms only to wake up the next day and find themselves lying outside the construction area. Because of all this, people started saying the tourist village was haunted. Otherwise, how could there be so many bizarre incidents?"
"Later, because the workers went on strike, the investors and the government ordered a thorough investigation, but nothing turned up. To avoid delaying the project too much, the investors had no choice but to spend a lot of money to hire another batch of workers and push the construction forward. But a month ago, a newly completed high-rise in the tourist village suddenly collapsed. Fortunately, it happened at night and no workers were injured. Because of this, the tourist village project had to be suspended, and now there are only a dozen or so workers still on the site."
Tsk, tsk! Ling Chen found it privately strange. If things were really as the hotel owner described, then this business was truly odd. He certainly didn’t believe in ghosts; there had to be someone behind it. But the development of tourism on Qiu Nanshan only benefited the local residents—who would want to stop this tourism project?
After getting a sense of the situation around the town, and seeing that it was getting late, Ling Chen returned to their room with Ling Gengqiu and Chen Junfeng.
The night passed.
The next morning, just before seven, a knocking sound—thump, thump, thump—came from outside their room. Ling Chen called out in response, then got up and opened the door, to see a middle-aged man standing in the hallway with a blank expression. "Mr. He asked me to inform you that we leave in half an hour," he said. With that, he turned around and walked away.
Closing the door, Ling Chen yawned. It was just after six—this early? But since He Honggang had set the time, they couldn’t very well delay. After a quick wash, the three of them went straight down to the first floor of the hotel. By then, the hotel owner had already prepared breakfast. It wasn’t anything fancy—fried dough sticks and steamed buns bought from a breakfast stall outside, and the taste was average.
They ate a little casually, and when the time was almost up, He Honggang and Chen Younian came down the stairs, each leading their own people.
"If everyone’s ready, let’s head out."
They got into the business van, and the convoy set out again. As Ling Chen had more or less guessed, after the three vans drove a few kilometers, they reached their destination. Through the car window, Ling Chen could see the famous local mountain—Qiu Nanshan. Looking up, he saw clouds and mist curling around its summit, fog billowing, and snow blanketing everything.
After getting out of the car, He Honggang ordered his two subordinates to unload all the crates from the back of the vans and stack them to one side.
Once everyone had rested for a short while, He Honggang clapped his hands and gathered them all together.
"Everyone, this is our destination for this trip—Qiu Nanshan. As you can see, this peak is extremely rugged. There’s no road that goes straight to the summit; we can only climb up with the help of equipment." At this point, He Honggang pointed at the stacked crates beside them and said, "All the gear is in there. Pick what you need yourselves. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask me."