Volume 5 Chapter 22 Buried alive

If I hadn’t been so stunned, I might have said, “Let’s go take a look,” but seeing the deep darkness in the distance, I didn’t say it. The fat guy didn’t sense my cowardice and asked, “You’re right. Where are they going? Let’s go take a look. The river isn’t that long anyway.”

Pan Zi immediately shook his head and disagreed, saying, “We can’t afford to waste time. Little San is injured and if anything else happens, he won’t be able to run. We’d better not waste our experience here. We still don’t know what the words Uncle San gave us mean. Instead of creating more problems, we’d better take this time to think about where the entrance to the underground palace is, and it just so happens that those strange birds don’t seem to be flying down.”

This is exactly what I want to say. I immediately nodded and coughed a few times to indicate that I was seriously injured. Shunzi didn’t say anything, and the fat man looked at us and couldn’t help but be a little angry. He shrugged and said that it was fine.

Shunzi led them to the stone statue ditch, and we returned to the place where I fell. Pan Zi took out a lantern from his backpack and lit it to warm us up. I calculated that I hadn’t eaten for almost a day here, and my stomach was calling out immediately. So the four of us sat down and ate a little dry food.

After opening our luggage, we realized that most of our food was in the bags of Chen Pi A Si’s group. The food we had with us was clearly not enough, especially for the fat guy, who basically had nothing left to eat in his bag after this meal. However, almost all of the equipment was with us, such as ropes, grappling hooks, fire equipment and other necessary expedition supplies.

Pan Zi looked at it and said to us, “It seems that when Chen Pi A Si was distributing our equipment, he had already put in a lot of effort. All the equipment was carried by our people, and the food was carried by their people. In this way, neither side could pull the other down, and neither could run away on their own. I really didn’t notice this trick.”

The fat man sneered, “What the hell did you notice? Fortunately, I didn’t expect you and your third uncle to make a loss every time you met. I expected this day on the train.”

Pan Zi spat and said, ‘You’re not a good person, either. I’m just lucky that you didn’t get us into trouble.’

Shunzi was afraid that they would quarrel, so he said, ”Bosses, if you have the energy to quarrel, why don’t you think about what your third uncle meant?”

I also patted Pan Zi on the back to calm him down. I asked Shunzi, “What was the situation when your third uncle came to see you? If you don’t tell us in detail, that sentence is too general. We haven’t even entered the imperial tomb yet, so I really don’t know what to think.”

As soon as I asked, the fat man and Pan Zi also calmed down and looked at Shunzi together.

Shunzi sat down and frowned, “It was about a month ago. At the time, I was also taking guests up the mountain. Of course, it wasn’t as intense as yours, just walking around and looking at the snow-capped mountains. Your third uncle was among those guests. Later, when we were spending the night on the mountain, he suddenly called me out, acting mysteriously, saying that he was going to go up the snow mountain alone now, and asked me not to tell anyone else. Then he gave me some money and told me to wait at the foot of the mountain at about this time for a man named Wu Xie. Then he would take you into the mountain. As long as he could bring you to him, he would give me a large sum of money. That was the hint he gave me at that time. He emphasized that as long as it was “you,” you would understand it immediately.

“He really said that?” I asked.

Shunzi nodded, his expression very sure.

I felt a little strange. It seemed to emphasize the person who heard it, not the content of the words. As long as it was “me” who heard it, I would understand it immediately. Could it be that I have a different characteristic from the other people?

“Then how did you know to tell us these things after you sent away Chen Pi A Si?” the fat man asked.

Shunzi smiled and revealed a completely different expression, saying, “I’m not stupid. Your third uncle told me the number of people in your group, saying that if the number is wrong, the message can only be passed on to you. As soon as I saw you, I felt that there was something wrong with the atmosphere of your group. It seemed that two different groups of people were mixed together. At that time, I didn’t know what you were doing, so I had to pretend to be stupid and see. After all, I have received money from someone else. If I don’t do it well, it will be bad if I delay your business.”

I looked at Shunzi’s expression and felt a kind of cunning. I had a knot in my heart and thought to myself, “Since the beginning of the journey, has he been pretending to be honest?” That’s right, people can’t be judged by appearances. No wonder the more we walked, the more calm this kid became. It turned out that he was showing his true colors.

Pan Zi was an old hand, so he lowered his face and said, “It’s not that simple. I think you know something else.”

Shunzi smiled faintly: “I was a soldier here before I retired. I have walked a lot in the snow-capped mountains. My parents are native Xianzu people. They escaped from North Korea here during the 718 turmoil and hid in the mountains for several years. There are many ancient legends in these mountains, and we have encountered many strange things. Every year, countless people enter the mountains for all kinds of strange purposes. If you say I don’t know anything, I always know something. So as soon as I saw you heading for this mountain, I guessed what you wanted to do. He paused and looked at me meaningfully. “If it weren’t for your uncle’s instructions, I would never have let you go any further at the place where the avalanche occurred on the mountainside.”

Pan Zi looked at me and then at the fat man, and suddenly couldn’t speak.

After a long pause, Pan Zi took out a cigarette and handed it to him, saying, “Shun Ge, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Now that we’re on the same side, come on, have a smoke.”

Shun Zi didn’t take the cigarette, looking up and saying, “I’m a practical person. Don’t talk nonsense. I’m not helping you because I like you, I’m doing it for money. Your uncle promised me a sum that would last me two lifetimes, so I have to bring you to him no matter what. You’d better figure out what that sentence means quickly.”

Pan Zi made him very embarrassed, so he took the cigarette into his mouth and looked at me with a bitter smile.

I asked Shunzi, ”Then repeat the exact words that your uncle said at the time.”

Shunzi recalled, “At the time, he seemed to have said, ‘When Wu Xie arrives, tell him that the entrance to the underground palace is in the place where the Xuanwu corpse is buried.’ Then I asked him what that meant, and he said that as long as I said that, if it was you, you would definitely know.”

“It’s still the same.” I sighed and thought to myself, the key to the whole sentence is still “me,” but I clearly don’t understand this sentence at all. Where did Uncle San’s mother get this kind of confidence in me? Isn’t this cheating me?

Several people looked at me, their eyes full of earnest expression. I shook my head and sighed.

The fat man looked at me and couldn’t figure it out, so he asked, “Could it be that this hint has something to do with something that happened in your family before? Is it something only the Wu family knows?”

“You can’t put it that way,” I said, “I know my uncle’s personality. He’s not the kind of person who would give us a super complicated code to figure out. Since he’s letting Shunzi pass on the message, the sentence must be very clear.

”But since Uncle San said that it’s a code that you can understand at first listen, not one that we can understand at first listen, it must be a code that has something in common between you.” Pan Zi said, ”Why don’t you think about what you have in common?”

I didn’t think this was very reliable, but there was no other way at the moment, so I started to think about it with my fingers.

There weren’t many things that Pan Zi and I had in common, and they had to be things that Pan Zi and I had in common. If Pan Zi and the others had them too, they had to be excluded. For example, everyone is a man, and Pan Zi is also a man, so that doesn’t count.

Another thing is that he and I both have a bit of a problem with women, but this is a bit vague. He himself would never admit it. Apart from that, the only thing we have in common is that we both live in Hangzhou, and our main living area is Hangzhou.

Wait! When I thought of this, I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine. It was as if something had appeared in my mind. A flash of inspiration suddenly came to me.

“Xuanwu rejects the corpse.” Uncle San’s hint. Hangzhou. “I” must be able to understand.

I suddenly realized that these four words actually meant this!