NR | Chapter 15

After a night’s rest, Tian Yuqing brought us to a small homestay. At night, everyone gathered around a big round table for dinner. Lu Ayao went to the main table, and He Yu and I had been hiding off to the side, happily picking at the dishes. Then Tian Yuqing sent someone to call us over to the main table too.

I couldn’t really refuse, so I dragged my feet over there. The main table was in a private room. The moment I stepped through the door, I felt a strong, oppressive pressure, and then I saw Tian Xiao, Tian Tinghan, Tian Yuqing, Tan Qiu, and Lu Ayao seated around the huge table, along with two strangers.

How was anyone supposed to eat in this atmosphere?!

Tan Qiu was smoking in the private room, taking slow drags and exhaling clouds of smoke. He sat there with his arms crossed, saying nothing. At first, I really had come in with the intention of eating, but after I took a couple bites of greens, I realized it was completely tasteless. I gave up on the idea of having a proper meal tonight and started quietly observing the people there.

Tian Yuqing sat steadily in the seat of honor, while his younger brother Tian Tinghan sat beside him, not daring to act up in the slightest. That was completely unlike the domineering, arrogant image of Tian Tinghan I had heard about outside, so I decisively concluded that Tian Xiao probably had absolutely nothing to do with the Tian family’s real power.

Lu Ayao had shaved his beard and changed clothes. His white jacket looked pretty warm. Beside him sat two middle-aged men I didn’t know. One wore glasses, had a thin face, but his eyes were firm and strong, and he carried himself with a fairly refined air.

Compared to him, the other one looked a little rough around the edges. Small eyes, thinning hair, and I thought there was a pretty good chance he’d go bald in the future. He was wearing a thin down jacket, and he was the only one at the table eating with relish, completely unaffected by the atmosphere.

He Yu nudged me covertly with his elbow and leaned close to my ear. “See that, see that? Do you know the guy with glasses? Wu Yili, a titan of historiography. He used to be a professor at a 985 university, but he quit that and followed along on several major projects. Crazy impressive.”

I didn’t know any of the archaeology big shots He Yu was talking about, and I wasn’t all that interested in these professors either. My major in college had nothing to do with archaeology, so the chances of me interacting with them might only exist on this one adventure. So no matter how amazing they were, no matter how high their status, to me they were just “scholars” and “baldies.”

He Yu was still trying to introduce them to me when Tian Yuqing coughed a few times. He had obviously overheard our conversation, and He Yu just shrugged, shut his mouth, and even made a zipping gesture across his lips at me.

Tan Qiu, rarely, had his brows tightly furrowed. “The terrain here’s been leveled by damn coal mining. We looked all morning and still couldn’t make heads or tails of it, my eyes are practically going blind. We’ll have to go look again tomorrow. Worst case, we’ll have to use a compass and check each mountain one by one.”

Tian Yuqing took out a notebook and flipped it open. Something had been marked on the pages in pen. The notebook slid past my eyes, and I caught a few quick glimpses. There were a lot of lines and circles drawn on it, chaotic and irregular. I couldn’t tell what any of them meant.

Tian Yuqing said, “Tomorrow morning I’ll take a few people to the Datu River. Look in the direction I’ve set for you, and it shouldn’t be wrong.”

The bald professor finally lifted his head from his plate. Slurping down the glass noodles in his mouth, he said, “This morning when I went out for a walk, I heard a few locals talking about something to do with skeletons and bones. You guys hadn’t arrived yet, and I couldn’t really understand their dialect. If you can’t determine the dragon vein[[1]], asking the locals should be a direction too.”

Tian Yuqing and Tan Qiu both froze. They exchanged a look, and Tian Yuqing immediately signaled to one of the men sitting beside him. But before the man could even leave, Lu Ayao stopped him. “I already asked about this.”

I had been busy unpacking as soon as I got into the hotel, so I hadn’t noticed when Lu Ayao had gone out. According to him, he hadn’t stayed at the hotel for long before he suddenly needed to pee, so he directly walked a kilometer to find a dry toilet on the mountainside.

I really didn’t understand that behavior. There was clearly a bathroom in the room, but he insisted on using the outdoor latrine. I didn’t know if he was just making it up.

Lu Ayao had a special talent for languages. After he finished using the toilet, he started chatting fluently with two or three villagers on the roadside who were herding ducks, and as they talked, they ended up discussing something that had happened in the mountains recently.

There were plenty of coal mines in the mountains here, especially bituminous coal, which was a major source of income. On top of that, because of the early development of the Datu River project, many abandoned tunnels were left behind. According to those locals, it was normal to pull skulls out of those tunnels and coal mines, at least to them. It was nothing unusual anymore.

“The tunnels and the coal mines where human bones were dug up are connected across at least an eight-kilometer radius. There are a few places where the human remains are especially dense. I suggest we check those first.” Lu Ayao pulled a small map out of his pocket. It had been marked up in red.

Tian Yuqing lowered his head and glanced at the map on the table, then said with a smile, “As expected of the Lu family. Looks like this trip will indeed be a lot easier.”

He Yu gave me a look, his eyes full of pride. He didn’t say a word, but I could tell exactly what he was thinking: See? See? I told you that before, didn’t I? His smugness was so intense you’d think he was also a descendant of the Lu family.

Things were settled quickly. The content I was involved in the next morning was pretty limited, because nobody had even come to wake us up. So He Yu and I burrowed under the blankets and slept straight through until noon. It was almost mealtime before the two of us, still bleary-eyed, got up to wash up.

By the time the food was served, the table was cold and quiet. Only He Yu, me, and the two professors were left. Tan Qiu wasn’t there either. That was when we learned Tian Yuqing and the others had set off by car at five in the morning. They were probably already inside a tunnel by the Datu River now, and they had found the location.

This was the first time I had ever experienced an adventure like this. He Yu was as nervous and excited as I was, and the scholars and baldy were probably thinking about the burial site too. So we all ate pretty quickly, and after resting for ten minutes, we got back into the car.

There were many tunnels near the Datu River that had been abandoned when the project was underway back then. These tunnels were scattered through the canyon. There was no way vehicles could get in there, so about two-thirds of this stretch was basically on foot. Walking was extremely boring, so I won’t describe it in much detail here.

When we reached that specific tunnel, I saw that the area around it had already been roped off with large stretches of caution tape. Tan Qiu was arguing with Tian Yuqing at the entrance, and from the looks on their faces, neither of them seemed too happy. I guessed they probably hadn’t reached an agreement on something.

Wu Yili was the first to step across the caution line. He asked Tian Yuqing, “How is it?”

Tian Yuqing pulled over one of the woven plastic sacks stacked at the entrance and opened it for him to look. I happened to be standing behind them, and I caught sight of the white bones inside, already decayed. Many of the bones had turned completely brittle, tinged with yellow.

“These were scattered across the floor and walls inside the tunnel. It was very dark in there. We went in five hundred meters and collected these.”

Tian Yuqing took Wu Yili to the side to talk. I looked around and didn’t see Lu Ayao anywhere. I didn’t know whether he was still in the cave. He Yu stood beside me with a notebook in his arms and began sketching a quick drawing of part of the tunnel in it.

I asked him, “Are records really that useful?”

He Yu looked up at me and said, “You don’t get it. Time erodes a lot of things. Only records can give things meaning for a long time. People in our line of work, these oddball side hustlers, are very fragile. If we’re not careful, we might just disappear.”

I still didn’t understand what he meant. He Yu closed the notebook and put a hand on my shoulder. “To put it in simpler terms, if you died, could my records help someone find your corpse as fast as possible?”

I slapped him across the face and cursed, “So this is you cursing me the whole time, huh? Can’t you say something nicer, you bastard?”

Before He Yu and I could go at it for three hundred rounds, Wu Yili’s voice suddenly rose from afar. It got so loud it startled both of us, making us flinch. He shouted, “You want to go in alone?! Tian Yuqing, listen to the crap coming out of your own mouth!”

“Who the hell do you think you are? On the nice side, you’re just outside consultants. On the bad side, you’re a bunch of thieves who accepted amnesty! You want to take your people down there alone and leave our professional archaeologists on top? You think I don’t know what you’re plotting? What era do you think this is, that you still want to make money this way?!”

Tan Qiu walked over and pulled Tian Yuqing to his side. “Professor Wu, that’s just talking in anger. Let’s discuss this properly if you’ve got something to say, don’t make us into a joke.”

Actually, the moment I heard the commotion, I saw Tan Qiu stride over right away. His expression was clearly a little grim. He was suppressing his anger, but without a doubt, he was standing on Tian Yuqing’s side.

That honestly wasn’t like the Tan Qiu I knew. The hoodlum Tan I knew had a very bad attitude toward the Tian family. Now that Tian Yuqing had offended Wu Yili, by his usual style he should have been happily watching the show, maybe even hoping the two of them would fight more fiercely.

Wu Yili was obviously losing his temper. He snapped, “Did I say something wrong? Aren’t you just fixated on the funerary objects down there? I’m telling you, those are all cultural relics. You won’t get a single piece out of there.”

Tan Qiu turned his face and said something. From the shape of his mouth, it definitely wasn’t anything nice. He lifted the hem of his shirt, and I clearly saw a long row of specially made daggers tied to his belt. He gave Wu Yili a grin and spread his hands.

“Professor Wu, the Five Masters are no longer doing business for the outside line[[2]]. We’re in the legitimate trade of reading feng shui for people. None of the workers here are thieves, and we won’t touch a single thing from down there either. The reason we’re not letting your archaeologists go down is because this tomb is extraordinary. There are traps everywhere below, and we don’t want anyone getting hurt. We’ll send our first group down to clear the obstacles, then you can go in however you want.”

“Since we’re cooperating, shouldn’t there be at least the most basic trust?”

Before he could finish, Wu Yili let out a cold snort. “Clear obstacles? Can your people be more professional than ours? Tian Yuqing, this is classified. You privately let two green kids take part, and we haven’t even settled that score yet!”

The fire in Tan Qiu shot up instantly. The polite facade he had been putting on vanished at once. He casually pulled a knife from the small of his back and was about to charge over. “Hey! Damn it, I’ve figured it out. Why the hell are you so stubborn, you old man?”

“Tan Qiu!”

Tian Yuqing had tremendous strength. He shoved him behind him in one motion, and Tan Qiu stumbled from the push, but the rage in his chest still never came out.

Tian Yuqing said, “Forget what I said before. Once Lu Ayao confirms the location, we’ll all go down together.”