There were piles of old wooden boxes, several of which had been opened. There was a lot of straw in them, all rotten and blackened and there were piles of mortar sh.e.l.ls in them. Any oil paper that was broken was completely rusted.
On the other side, I could see several mortars and shotguns that were neatly placed.
It looks like this was the guy who blasted us.
“A lot of them are useless.” The guy suddenly said this as he watched me looking at everything. His voice was very vague, and I still couldn"t tell if he was a man or a woman.
I turned to him and he handed me a military porcelain cup with boiled water inside. I was surprised that he could speak. If he only made some strange sounds, I could accept it, but now he was making such easy-to-understand sounds. Then I realized that he was, after all, a human being, and it was common for him to have a physical disability and not have a bad voice.
“You…” I don"t know how to speak.
“Wu Sanxing, you got old too.” He looked at me and seemed to be smiling, but on his face, any expression seemed very strange. “However, no matter how old you are, there is always someone who will recognize you, unlike me.”
I paused and suddenly realized that I was wearing the mask of “Uncle Three”. What surprised me was that he could call out Uncle Three"s name, so this guy actually knows him.
“Do you know me?”
“Well, after 30 years, you probably didn"t think I was still alive.”
“Who are you?” It suddenly dawned on me why he brought me here. If he knew Uncle Three, he would be surprised to see him suddenly in the wild mountains.
I reflexively stared at his face, wanting to recognize who he was, but I was Wu Xie and had none of Uncle Three"s memories. I soon realized that this was futile.
“I never expected to meet you again in such a place.” His p.r.o.nunciation was very strange, with a strong dialect that wasn"t Guangxi, but I couldn"t recognize where it was from. “You certainly don"t recognize me.” His misshapen hand was flipping in the debris pile on one side and I saw his nails were yellow and very thick.
This was the man who tried to steal the box from me in Poker-Face"s “former residence.”
Now I get it.
He dug for a while, took something out from the debris pile, and tossed it to me.
I barely caught it and found it was a small object folded with a thin coin. I couldn"t see what it was but it appeared to be a five-pointed star.
In the past, when aluminum coins were put on the railway, the train would press them into aluminum foil, which could be folded into various small things. When my father took me to see the train when I was young, he often pressed several for me. However, the coins were still valuable at that time, and this kind of thing was generally only done by people with relatively rich families.
He gave me this thing. Would Uncle Three remember who the other person was when he sees this? It seemed that the other party had some kind of close relationship with Uncle Three.
My mind was spinning fast, and all the information jumbled together many stories in my mind. Who was this person?
He knew Uncle Three and partic.i.p.ated in the archaeological team so was he also a descendant of the older generation and Uncle Three"s peer? A scene occurred in my mind: a young man took part in an archaeological team, and after entering the mountain, he was caught in a trap, his body festered all over. Others thought he was dead, but he survived and was rescued by young hunters from a nearby village. He was treated with herbs and then recovered, but became disabled and lived in seclusion in the mountains, continuing to survive. In order to protect others from such harm, he played tricks in the mountains and scared many people away. However, the legend of treasure attracted more and more bad people, and the heir of the archaeological team finally appeared. He watched all the way and waited for the opportunity to show his ident.i.ty. At the same time, he was also very conflicted, because he had now become a monster. While threatening the team and trying to scare them off, he suddenly ran into his good friend x.x.x, who grew up with him. Now they had recognized each other and were ready to start mutually complaining…
What would happen next? He may persuade me that there was danger in it and that turning back was the only way. If I listened, I would go back immediately, but how is that possible? I"m sure I wouldn"t listen, and then he could turn against me and eventually kill me, or just watch me take risks and let me die. If it was a sad ending, he may reluctantly become my guide, and we would enter Zhang Jialou together, and finally he would die to save me. Before he died, he would tell me, you see, I told you so long ago. You must get out alive!
I shook my head and got rid of these cliché drama ideas. Of course, such a thing wouldn"t happen in real life, and I figured he didn"t plan on seeing me at all and was at a loss as to what to do. Maybe he just wanted to catch up with me.
But this man used mortars to attack us and I wasn"t sure if he knew I was on the team. However, judging from the things this man had done without mercy, he wasn"t afraid to hurt others, and had no qualms about killing someone.
Then I couldn"t relax too much. I knew too little about him. In case he and I had been enemies for a long time, and now I hadn"t said a word, I would probably be killed. His trousers were bulging so I knew there must be a guy in them.
I pretended to think, then made a slightly shocked expression: “Is that you?” I sank my expression, “How did you become like this?”
“Can"t you guess?” He took a sip of water and suddenly asked, “Which side are you on now?”
What? What does this sentence mean?
I just want to slap my own mouth, and suddenly I felt a lot of pressure. This kind of dialogue was too jumpy and contained too much information. Only people with a very tacit understanding of the situation could continue the dialogue. I didn"t even know what kind of question he was asking. If it went on like this, I would definitely reveal the truth.
“On your side.” I thought for a while, and figured this would be the safest answer.
Unexpectedly, as soon as I finished speaking, he began to laugh strangely: “Wu Sanxing, will you be on my side? What happened outside to make you like this? “
At this point, I was already throwing caution to the wind, drinking water and saying, “Times have changed.”
“Then you also agree now that all these things should not be known to the world?”
“No.” I said.
He didn"t continue to speak, and the atmosphere fell into a deep silence.
“What exactly happened to you then?” I asked tentatively.
I had been thinking about this sentence for a long time, because judging from his att.i.tude, Uncle Three certainly didn"t partic.i.p.ate in the activities here. This person"s appearance must have been caused by entering the Zhang Jia ancient building, so it was possible that Uncle Three didn"t know the details of what happened here. As a result, it was safer for me to ask this question.
“They gave up.” He said, “They gave up on me, but they certainly didn"t expect that I would survive.”
“You"ve been in this mountain for so many years?”
“Where else could I go?” He said.
I looked at the debris around him, noticing a lot of modern supplies that must not have been left by them at that time. “I"m very familiar with these mountains and there"s a village outside if I"m hungry. And I still have these things." He pointed behind him. “When they left, they dropped everything here in order to carry the dismembered bodies. I use mortars as traps and can hit a lot of good things.”
“Have you ever thought of going out to find us?”
“In this mountain, I"m safe. I can"t walk out of this village alive." He said this and stood up, “Come with me.”
He took out a burning branch from the bonfire and walked into the cave. It was more than ten meters deep and when I walked close to the bottom, I found a big pit with a diameter of three or four meters that emitted a strange smell.
He threw the branch into the pit and the bottom lit up, showing piles of bones, all of which were yellow and mixed with the mud at the bottom. I didn"t know how many there were.
“These people have been looking for that place for decades. They must not realize that they"ll die by my hands.”
I was shocked: “Did you kill all these people?”
“They"re dead anyway when they enter the building, so rather than die in that demonic place, they can die by my hands. There can be no more dead people in that building. If there are more dead people, there will be enough food. “
I looked at the pit and then at the fire outside. The two places were only a few meters apart but the bodies were thrown into the pit. Wasn"t he afraid of the rotting and stinking smell? At least they should be buried. This man was really crazy, did he like to watch the corpses rot?
He kept a certain distance from me, and now he had become a ghost in the back light. He repeated, “There is nothing anyone can do if he is full.”
I didn"t quite understand. I was about to ask questions when suddenly I heard a strange sound coming from the bottom of the pit, as if there was something else at the bottom.
What? Are there wild animals in it? These bodies didn"t rot to the bone, but were eaten?
The burning branch at the bottom of the pit grew darker and darker, and several skulls rolled out of the darkness.
“What"s in there?” I finally asked.
Before I could finish asking, something in the dark rolled out, and I couldn"t help feeling dumbfounded.
It was Fatty. He was stripped naked, his hands and feet were tied very firmly, his mouth was tied with a cloth, and he rolled in the mud like a pig at the slaughter.
“Why is he here?”
“I saw it in the village. He"s your man, so I didn"t do it." The man said, “He was looking for you around here during the day.”
“Quick, let him go.” I said.
Ghost pulled out a knife from his waist and threw it into the pit. Fatty immediately rolled over and grabbed the knife against his body. Then he quickly cut the rope, tore off the cloth strips on his mouth, shook all his fat, and rushed toward the side of the pit: “I"ll kill you!”
He had hardly rushed up when Ghost turned his hand and pulled out Fatty"s “Doraemon” from behind and pointed it at Fatty. I immediately made up my mind: “One of my own, one of my own.”
“One of your own?” Fatty looked at me and said, “Master Three, you have too many contacts. You also have business dealings with aliens?”
“It"s a long story. It"s a long story.” I immediately said, and immediately winked at Fatty.
Fatty"s heart was obviously very angry. Whoever was stripped and thrown into the mud would definitely not feel comfortable. He scolded more than a dozen times before he calmed down and shouted to Ghost, “Where are my clothes, you son of a b.i.t.c.h?”
Ghost walked back and found some clothes in the mess and threw them to Fatty. He grabbed me and asked, “What"s going on?”
I told him with my mouth: “I don"t know, don"t ask.”
Fatty scolded Ghost: “Monster, I was walking well on the road when you got me with your f.u.c.king sneak attack. Hope you have the f.u.c.king nerve to practice with me alone.”
Ghost ignored him and asked me, “Since you are on my side, why are you here?”
I sat down and ran through the whole story in my head a little. Then I told him a rough idea that my nephew"s friend was trapped in Zhang Jialou and I had to save him.
“Is that group of people… are they related to you?” He bowed his head.
“Have you seen them?”
“One of them was a young man with a sword.” Ghost said.
I nodded immediately: “Yes.”
“They"re dead.” He said, “They entered the building and are no longer in this world.”
I took one look at Fatty who was rubbing the mud off, but he wasn"t listening at all, just swearing.
“Impossible.” I said, “He"s seen them before, they are still alive, and…”
"You don"t believe it?” Ghost drank some water, "You two come with me, I"ll show you the truth of this place.”
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