The Lost Tomb : Restart (The Sound Of Providence)

Chapter 132: Arrived

Three days later, Fatty and I got on the highway to Fujian. During those three days, I slept for eight hours each day and took my medicine on time. The rest of the time, I quietly visited those whom I thought might let me borrow some money. While I was begging one of those people, Fatty stole his antique in the toilet and got thirty thousand yuan for it. Other than that, we didn't get anything else.

We couldn't get a million yuan, so Hong Ding Shuixian returned the two hundred thousand to Fatty. Bai Haotian had sold about two hundred thousand yuan of goods, so she returned from the village. We took the seven hundred thousand yuan and hired three people.

As Kan Jian had said, I didn't have a chance in the Nine Gates. As a result, I used other methods to hire these three people. They weren't insiders and had never been underground, but they all needed money. I found them through mutual acquaintances and clues from anecdotes I had collected before. These three people were all ex-prisoners, and almost all of the seven hundred thousand yuan was given to them.

Of course, these people weren't ordinary, but they'll be introduced later. Right now, all I can say is that the oldest one was called Jia Kezi. He had a stammer and used to be a railway maintenance worker. He was very silent and stuttered when he became anxious. There was also a young man in his early thirties who sold fried dough sticks. His nickname was You Erque. The youngest one was called Xiang Dun. He was a nineteen-year-old fat guy who stole memory cards from internet cafes.

During those three days, I didn't waste a single minute on fear, self-pity, feelings, or indecisions. Instead, I focused my attention on the task of making precise calculations.

This was the best situation I could achieve. Three days was the longest I could afford to wait.

Our equipment was taken from Pan Zi's batch in Warehouse Eleven. Only the necessary and damaged parts were supplemented with other equipment, but the rest were all sets Pan Zi had used before. As our group crowded into my car, Fatty started driving. He looked at the group of dozing people in the back seat with a pale face. Bai Haotian was sandwiched between them, looking very small and pitiful.

Because they were ex-convicts, all three people had a special temperament: silence. They were probably accustomed to social pressure and no longer felt uncomfortable in strange environments.

Fatty kept wanting to discuss things with me in detail, but I only told him that I knew what I was doing.

Our destination was a tulou [1] in Fujian that had been converted into a homestay run by the village. All of the clues seemed to indicate that this had been Uncle Two's first stop after the South Sea King's tomb.

I was particularly surprised to find that his second destination was also in Fujian. In other words, the clues about Uncle Three listening to thunder came from Fujian.

After driving for nearly twenty hours—many of Fujian's national highways had a very low speed limit—we entered the county seat, changed to a local car, and then drove into the mountains. We went all the way until we arrived outside of the village where the tulou was located. The village had built a dirt parking lot outside, which was full of cars from Beijing.

They belonged to Xiao Hua's rescue team. I had called ahead and found that this tulou had several floors that had already been booked. Now there were just a few tourist rooms left.

It was already evening when we arrived. Based on Xiao Hua's usual habit, someone was probably keeping watch nearby. Most of his men knew me, so I put on glasses, looked in the mirror, and made myself slouch until my posture looked different from usual. I then took Bai Haotian and went to check in first.

Fatty was wearing local clothes and mixed in with a few other people before checking in. The three of us got two private rooms on the third floor.

Except for the fifth floor, the entire tulou was quiet and scary, and almost no one spoke. Fatty carefully looked through the gaps in the bedframe during the night. I had already informed the group of tomorrow's affairs, so I quickly fell asleep.

When I thought about it, it was very simple. Tomorrow morning, we would wait for Xiang Dun to go out and socialize. Once we knew what the general situation of this tulou was, we could start planning.

In my sleep, I once again dreamed of someone knocking on the door. In my dream, I looked at the door calmly. No matter what was outside, I had already accepted it. 

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Note:

[1] Traditional Hakka communal residence in Fujian, typically a large multi-story circular structure built around a central shrine. The Hakka are Han Chinese people whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan and Guizhou.