Volume 6 Chapter 28 The 11th Person

I had already noticed what Uncle San said, but I didn’t say anything. On the one hand, the video tape wasn’t clear, and I didn’t know if I was wrong. On the other hand, I believed that he would soon realize it.

Sure enough, Uncle San paused the video and looked at it. I also looked over to see if I could confirm it.

After a few glances, I concluded that there was no doubt that Huo Ling was no more than thirty years old when the tape was shot. It wasn’t that she looked young, but the kind of girlish physique that a woman who is pretending to be young can’t fake. Moreover, I have to say that Huo Ling is really very pretty, no wonder she has bewitched several men in the archaeological team. The black and white screen is much less expressive than color, but her somewhat confused eyes and delicate features still give people a pounding heart. With such a look, she must be very confident. She grew up in the limelight since childhood, and when she encountered a boring guy like Mufeng, who ignored her, her reaction was logical. However, it now seems that these reactions may also be fake. If that is the case, this woman must also be a formidable character.

Uncle San’s face was very ugly. He sat down on the sofa and said, “One is like this, and two are like this. Damn it, are all the missing people like this? What happened to them after that?”

I thought about it and shook my head. I told Uncle San that we couldn’t be so hasty. We didn’t know the exact time when the video was taken. The phone model looked like it was from the 1990s, so it wasn’t that long ago when she disappeared in the underwater tomb. We didn’t know how old Huo Ling was at the time. If she was only 17 or 18, then even if 10 years had passed, she would only be 27 or 28. We couldn’t say for sure that she hadn’t aged.

Uncle San thought for a moment, obviously not too concerned about what I said, but continued to play the video, and we continued to watch.

However, to our surprise, after playing it for only a few minutes, snowflakes suddenly appeared on the screen.

We thought it was a problem with the tape, so we waited for a while, but the snowflakes continued, and Uncle San fast-forwarded it to the end, and it was all snowflakes.

“What’s going on?” Uncle San was a little angry. He wasn’t good at getting along with electrical appliances, and thought the machine was broken, so he wanted to shoot it.

I stopped him, took out the tape, pulled it out and looked at it. I found that the tape was not moldy at all, and I knew what was going on: “It was washed off.”

Judging from the continuity of the picture just now, there should be content in the back, but now it suddenly turned into snowflakes, which was obviously washed off.

The tape had not been touched since it was brought in, and the VCR had just been bought, so it couldn’t have been a mistake. The tape must have been washed before it was sent out. But if it was done on purpose, why not wash the previous part as well, and why leave such an incredible part? Could it be that we can’t see the content of the latter part?

My uncle and I looked at each other, completely at a loss. What did the “muffled oil bottle” mean? Was he playing with us? That was also unlikely, because this guy didn’t seem like such a boring person.

Uncle San thought for a while, and then asked me to put the tape back in and rewind it to see if there was anything we had missed. Because there was a fast-forwarded section at the beginning, we felt a bit guilty if we didn’t take a closer look.

This time we watched it frame by frame, and the room was completely silent. If our eyes had any power, the TV would probably explode. However, after watching it all the way through, our eyes were bloodshot, and we still hadn’t found any clues that would interest us.

We played another tape, but this time it was even more ridiculous. It was completely blank, and all we could see were snowflakes. We watched the snowflakes back and forth twice, and we just felt dizzy.

We were very excited when we first watched the tape, but after watching it, we were very depressed and confused. At first, I even thought I could see what was going on inside the bronze door, but I never thought that it would be such a strange picture.

After turning off the machine, Uncle San and I wondered what was going on. However, after thinking for a long time, the two of us found that there was no way to start.

I told Uncle San that I had found out yesterday that the tape was from Golmud in Qinghai, so it could be assumed that the Mummy had sent us this package from Qinghai. So, he must be in the city of Golmud right now. Could it be that he found these two tapes in Golmud and sent them to us?

This is completely uncertain, but from this tape, we can know one thing, that is, the people who disappeared in the underwater tombs obviously did not die. They were alive in the 1990s, but their behavior was somewhat abnormal. Most of the people in this group should have died in the Yunding Palace. I didn’t tell Uncle San about this, for fear that he would collapse, because there might be Wenjin in it.

Afterwards, I forced myself to watch it a few more times, but I really couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Uncle San wanted to keep watching the tape, so I went back to sleep. Later, Uncle San made a copy of the tape and gave me the original. He said that after a few days of research, Pan Zi heard that Uncle San had woken up and went to Jilin to pick him up.

This time, Uncle San’s business suffered huge losses, and his employees either fled or were arrested. Uncle San’s status in Changsha also plummeted, but Uncle San himself didn’t care. For him, money was just a symbol. Before leaving, Uncle San said to me, “If there is a sequel to this story, I don’t want to know. I was lucky before, and I had a benefactor by my side. There can’t be a third time. God won’t take care of me for so long. It’s true that I should do well in my own shop. Maybe I’ll have to take care of his other businesses in the future.

I nodded, but I thought to myself, ”You’re living the kind of life that I’m afraid I won’t be able to endure. It’s better to stick to my old trade.”

After Uncle San left, I was also preparing to return to Hangzhou, but I didn’t stay in Jilin for long, so I delayed my departure for a few days. I contacted a few friends in the area, partly to relax and partly to catch up.

I had a few college friends in Changchun, so they came over. We walked around, talked about old times, and my mood gradually became more positive. Later, I went to the surrounding cities, visited the antique market, and helped them pick up some antiques.

After going through so many things, I became a bit careless. I used to haggle over prices, but now I just feel that it is simple to hand over the money and receive the goods.

Several friends were surprised by my change. They couldn’t believe that even a “iron cock” would pluck its feathers. They all asked me what had happened to me.

During a meal, I picked out the most interesting ones and told the others about the things I had experienced. I was bragging, and after I finished, none of them believed me. One of them laughed and said, “Are the people you said went to the bottom of the sea the ones in the photo you asked me to check?”

I heard him say that and then remembered that I had found a photo on the Internet with the words “I have the fish” at the bottom. At the time, I had asked this person to help me check it out, but later I only found out that it had been posted on the Internet in Jilin, and then it just disappeared.

Now that I think about it, it is strange. The Internet really developed in these few years. Who posted it?

Since I remembered, I asked the man if he had found out more. The man shook his head, obviously not taking my matter to heart, and said, “Such photos are too common, and the age is too long. The information from that era is not generally available on the Internet. I can only use technical means. That IP address is the only thing that can be checked. I feel that if you really want to check, you might as well go to the National Archives and check which of the eleven-member archaeological team disappeared twenty years ago, and you might know more.

I thought for a moment, and it made sense. Someone else said, “You’re wrong. I’ve seen that photo too. It’s ten people.”

The man shook his head and said, “No, I think it’s eleven people.”

I jumped and asked him, “Why?”

The man smiled and said, “There were ten people in the photo, but wasn’t there also a photographer? Didn’t you think of that?”