Fiction: Group 3
The Treasure
Ying Wa College, Lam, Yik Ki - 12, Fiction: Group 3
he sleepiness in their eyes made them look awkward.
Mark flickered his eyes. He knew that no matter what, he was still slightly hungry. For ten hours,
his team has not eaten anything, because he used every nickel he had for winning the ultimate prize
of a treasure hunt named “The Adventure of The Pearl River Delta”, which was a race that scattered clues
across the Pearl River Delta, waiting for the competitors to find them. The value of the prize is three times
his Mum and Dad’s inheritance.
For two months they have been hitchhiking around Guangzhou, Huizhou, Dongguan…You name a place
around the Pearl River Delta, and they have been there. They were at their last destination: Hong Kong.
Mark grunted, and slithered towards the window. He was at Ngong Ping Village, the upper part of the
Ngong Ping 360. He opened his bulged bag and fished out the clue he recently received in Zhuhai.
Written in ink, it read, “NgoPi x 2. No 43. Go with the green one.”
In the end, he worked it out. ‘Ngo’ was half of ‘Ngong’, and ‘Pi’ was half of ‘Ping’. ‘No 43’ stood for ‘Car
number 43’. As for ‘the green one’, he guessed it might be something green with a set of controls.
“Hey,” Fred tapped his shoulder. “It’s time to go. The cable service will start soon.”
“Do a cars count, Fred and Kathy,” Mark told them while looking into their half-opened eyes. “We need
to go into car number 43.”
“Aye aye, Mark,” Fred started to walk away as the sound of the conductor reverberated the whole place,
announcing, “The cable car service will start soon.” Hearing the call, Mark sprinted towards the ticket
counter, where a lot of people were lining up to buy their tickets. Mark waited for about five minutes.
“How many people?” the conductor inside the ticket counter asked. “Six people,” Mark looked sadly at his
wallet. His team was made up of four people, but the capacity of the cable car was six passengers. He could
not risk letting other people get the two remaining seats. No one else should know about the clue.
“Tell the worker there you will occupy the whole cable car,” the conductor said, handing out a ticket for
six passengers.
Clutching the ticket like a priceless treasure, he looked towards the queue for boarding the cable cars, where
Kathy and Fred were counting the number of cars. This was important because two partners could assure
that they could get into cable car number 43. Mark walked up to them.
“Are you counting?” Mark asked them, waving the ticket.
“Yeah,” Kathy replied, faster than Fred did.
“How many, Kathy?” he eyed her suspiciously.
Kathy opened her mouth, but stopped and looked at the queue. Then she turned back. “Lost count,” she
answered sheepishly. Mark gave her a threatening look.
Suddenly, the last member Joanne ran up to them. “Guys, cable car number 43 is arriving,” she spit out the
words.
Mark sighed heavily. “I am going to regret this,” he said, then knocked out the worker serving the
passengers. The four of them jumped into the cable car number 43 that was just departing. The worker
looked up in surprise, gasped, then stood up and ran for the alarm button.
“Quick! Search the car!” Mark ordered, and looked under his seat. Sure enough, he found a set of controls
under his seat, with red and green buttons, but everyone else had similar sets of controls. The colors of the
buttons looked like what Mark has seen in the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees when he was in
Guangzhou. Suddenly, without any further notice, Joanne got up and pressed the green button under Fred’s
seat.
“Hey…” Mark looked at Joanne astonishingly as she snatched a paper inside a container that appeared
suddenly after the button was pressed. The clue was written on that piece of paper. Immediately after that,
every cable car under the same cableway was stopped.
Kathy leaned over. “What does the clue say?” she asked curiously.
Joanne looked at the piece of paper. Mark, who was reading the back of the paper, sighed. “It tells us to
jump off the cable car when it meets the first electrical tower.”
Fred followed Mark’s view. “Oh,” he exclaimed. “I have not noticed there is something written at the
back!”
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