Chapter Thirty-Four: Cockroaches in the Back

  "Is it a dead person or is it still alive?" Jin Gang's mouth was open wide enough to swallow a frog.

  "I'm just guessing too. How would I know? Hurry up and eat, let's finish eating and go to bed early, we can go out and buy some stuff tomorrow afternoon." I said while rinsing my mouth.

  "What are you buying?" Jin Gang Pao wiped his mouth with his sleeve, making me frown.

  "Buy silk stockings!" I recalled old times and joked about it.

  "Waiter, change my room!" I put on my clothes and went out of the room. It's been three or four years, this guy's snoring has become louder and louder, shaking me awake for half the night.

  I shouted for a long time, but the waiter didn't come up. I didn't dare to shout again, or the people in the next room would probably come out and scold me. I grumbled and put on my clothes and went downstairs to the lobby on the first floor. The waiter was busy handling procedures for a group of people, so I sat down on the sofa next to them and lit a cigarette while waiting for them to finish their business.

  "Goodbye everyone, welcome back next time." The young waiter bid farewell politely.

  I looked up at the hall clock, which was half past twelve. How come these guys checked out so late? I couldn't help but be curious and took a few more glances at them. There were six people in total, dressed normally, carrying big bags and small bags. With their ferocious expressions, they didn't look like good people at all. One of them even had a cigar in his mouth, and when he saw me staring at them, he stared back at me with a fierce gaze.

  Forget it, one less trouble is better than one more. I lowered my head and waited for them to walk far away before going to the front desk to ask the staff to change rooms for me.

  "Old Yu, Old Yu......" I was woken up early by Jin Gang Pao's loud voice. He can wake me up even from four or five rooms away. His voice is not to be trifled with. "I'm here!" I opened the door and shouted back before continuing to sleep. Seeing that I was fine, he too went back to bed, relieved.

  Woke up again and it was almost 11 o'clock. Had breakfast and lunch together, then asked him to drive to the sundry goods market directly after finishing.

  Two iron shovels, two large-capacity mining lamps, two aluminum water bottles, and a big bag of miscellaneous things. "Old Yu, what are you buying these for?" Jin Gang Pao stared at me.

  "Dig up the five ancient tombs surrounded by python energy to dissipate its yang and evil energy. There's no other way." I paid the bill, and the boss looked at me with an expression as if he was looking at a mental patient who had escaped from the hospital.

  "How deep are we going to dig? Why did you bring dry rations?" Jin Gang Pao was carrying a large pile of things behind me.

  "You ask me, who should I ask? Let's go take a look and find a good spot to start digging." Different soil types have different auras. Stones are blue, mud is its original color, and sand has no color because it leaks the earth's energy. However, it's highly unlikely that there would be sand in a tomb, which is considered a big taboo. It's said that when Emperor Yongzheng was selecting his burial site for the first time, he dug into sand, but fortunately, it was his 13th brother, Yinxian, who was in charge at the time. If it were someone else, they would have probably been beheaded by now. (It is absolutely impossible for there to be sand or sandy mechanisms in a tomb; the above account is based on historical records.)

  "Alright, I'm listening." Jin Gang Pao said as he opened the trunk and took out a bottle of mineral water to fill up the thermos.

  "What are you pouring that stuff for? Go buy some, and also buy a few more packs of cigarettes." I sat in the car fiddling with the headlamp.

  "Ah, Old Yu, our two water bottles are now worth 200 yuan!" Jin Gang Pao ran back with the two water bottles, his mouth twisted in distress.

  "This stuff is absolutely effective. Do you still remember that year I took Nalru to transport ammunition? After drinking two cans, I didn't sleep all night." I shifted to the driver's seat and also wanted to try the feeling of driving a small sedan.

  Jin Gang sat in the passenger seat, and I started the car, speeding towards Yu Qing Garden.

  I parked the car near the cemetery and, with Jin Gang Pao carrying a large bag on his back, we traversed mountains and valleys to rush to the gathering place of the Five Snakes at the top of a not very high hill.

  More than three hours later, just as they were approaching their destination, an unexpected situation arose. "Lao Yu, look." Jin Gang pointed to a drink bottle in the midst of the weeds.

  I picked it up, the bottle had no cap, I brought my nose closer and smelled a strong fragrance, it should have been thrown away not long ago. Yesterday afternoon on the mountain top, I had already observed the surrounding situation from a high vantage point, within the visible range of sight, no village was found. How could such a thing suddenly appear in this wilderness?

  "There should be someone in front." We didn't meet anyone on our way here, so naturally this person drinking water is ahead of us.

  I exchanged a glance with Jin Gang Cannon and stopped chatting, also deliberately lightening our footsteps as we moved forward.

  Soon, we discovered the wild grass trampled by pedestrians; broken branches and two relics: an apple core and a cigar stub with half left. I picked up the cigar, why did it look so familiar?

  It's not even the season for apples to be ripe, and the apples in the cold storage are now so expensive that ordinary people can't afford to buy them. Cigars are even more out of reach for ordinary people. This person actually threw away half of it after smoking only half, which suggests that this person is very wealthy. Moreover, the fact that the apple core and cigar butt were found just a few steps apart suggests that they were not discarded by the same person.

  What is someone with such economic conditions doing in this desolate place? I explained my inference to Jin Gang Pao with a serious expression, and he actually said: "Is it about falling in love?"

  It took you more than three hours to get here from your home, just to talk about love?

  "Lao Yu, look! There's someone!" The cannonball-like Jin Gang crouched down quickly, pointing at the opposite hill.

  I took a few steps forward. Indeed there were people, more than one. I stretched out my thumb to measure, and the straight-line distance from us was less than a kilometer.

  I made a covert gesture with my hand and hid behind a boulder with Jin Gang Cannon.

  The golden cannon stretched out three fingers indicating there were three people. I shook my head and whispered, "Four, one is on the hill."

  "What are they doing?" Jin Gang Pao asked me in a low voice.

  I poked my head out: "The person on the hill is sitting under a tree, with something hanging from his neck that looks like binoculars, I couldn't see very clearly. The three below, one is sitting drinking something, and the other two are shaking something, it looks like the pulley we used to fetch water from the well in our old days..."

  "Grave robbers!" "Tomb raiders!" We exclaimed in unison.

  "Call the police!" Jin Gang Pao said as he took out his mobile phone.

  "Damn it!" I grabbed his phone and knocked out the battery. "Take a look again."

  I poked my head out again, pinching the observation technique "The one above with a hat on his head is about thirty years old, and there's a telescope hanging from his neck. The one sitting below has a small beard and is around fifty years old, wearing a white jacket. Those two rowing... Ah, I'm going to die, I saw them last night!" I pulled my head back behind the rock. One of those two rowers was the same guy who glared at me with a cigar in his mouth last night!

  If I'm not mistaken, there should be six of them, and two more should be digging below. Six people walking in the wilderness leaving only one footprint is obviously because they're walking in a line. The division of labor is so clear. This level of skill must not be their first time doing this. I paused for a moment, turned my head and laughed at Jin Gang Cannon, "You almost got rid of our workers!"

  "What worker?" Jin Gang was confused by what I said.

  "Let the grave diggers do it for us, once they've dug it open and released the evil spirits, we'll report to the police." I said with a smug face.

  "Is the position they dug correct?" Jin Gang Pao asked anxiously.

  "It's slightly off, but it should also be heading towards the main tomb chamber." Since I couldn't recite the incantation out loud, I didn't get a very clear look. Although the grave was deeply buried in the earth, on the outside, it would still reveal an aura similar to the underground main body. However, since the layout of ancient tombs varied greatly throughout history, I also didn't dare confirm whether the largest space they were digging towards was indeed the main tomb chamber.

  "You mean we just wait and eat what's already available?" Jin Gang Pao suddenly realized.

  "Hmm, if you're not going to go, I'll just go over and lend a hand." I sat back on the rock, laughing and scolding, lit a cigarette, and at this distance, the smoke from the burning cigarette was not enough to be detected.

  "Haha, Old Yu, isn't this the 'oriole catching cicada, with a praying mantis behind' from the book?" Jin Gang said, quoting the classic phrase in a muddled way.

  "The grass is the mantis behind, no, not that one, the mantis should be in the middle..." I don't know how to correct this sentence from Jin Gang Pao, it's short but has many mistakes.

  "Caw, caw..." A crow landed on a big tree several steps away from us, letting out a strange cry that startled both of us.

  "Girl, why does this thing sound so unpleasant when it's called?" Jin Gang Pao started looking for stones everywhere.

  "Don't move, be careful of exposing your target." One of the suspicious phenomena that instructors taught during outdoor search training was the sudden flight of birds from the woods.

  This is getting ridiculous, we're not even hitting it and it still won't budge. From 4 pm to 7 or 8 pm in the evening, this crow brother just wouldn't move an inch. Occasionally, it would let out a couple of caws, scaring both me and Jin Gang Cannon half to death. In my heart, I've already cursed its ancestors for generations to come. "I know you have another nickname 'Soul Summoner', but injustice has its mastermind, debt has its owner. Those few people over there are doing something that's greatly damaging their yin virtue, why don't you go cry out on top of their heads? Why stick around and bother us?"

  But it's also strange, habits become natural, later on when others stopped calling out, the two of us still couldn't get used to it, always perking up our ears waiting for someone to call out.

  Night fell, and the mosquitoes in this small hill were particularly numerous, biting us all over with big blisters. "Damn it, I knew I should have brought a few sheets of mosquito netting." I muttered, grabbing my backpack and pulling out a can of insecticide, spraying it around.

  "Lao Yu, you're really amazing! You can even tell that there are a lot of mosquitoes here and brought mosquito repellent." Jin Gang Pao flattered.

  I'm too lazy to explain to him that these cans of insecticide are actually prepared for emergency use as flamethrowers, although the distance is a bit short, but the instantaneous explosion of yang energy brought by the half-meter-long flame tongue can be the nemesis of those yin and ghostly things.

  By nightfall, we could smoke freely, but we didn't dare light up. This was really frustrating for both of us. Having a cigarette in our mouths without lighting it was almost as bad as not having one at all.

  I stuck my head out and took another look, those guys were still digging, really diligent. It seems that nothing is easy to do. People outside only know that these people spend a lot of money, but who knows they are working overtime in the wilderness on a tight deadline? It's really just watching the thief eat meat without knowing the thief gets beaten up.

  "Lao Yu, what's up?" asked Jin Gang Pao while munching on beef jerky.

  "They're still digging, the ones on top have gone down." I stood up and stretched my limbs. Those grave robbers had better not be equipped with infrared binoculars, thinking of this made me hastily sit back down again.

  "Old Yu, what's going on?"

  "Still digging."

  "Old Yu, what's going on?"

  "I've been watching for a whole day, can't you just figure it out yourself?"

  "Old cow, what's going on?"

  Digging.

  "Old cow, what's going on?"

  "Old cow? Old cow? Ah grass, I let you sleep, I let you sleep, ...... "