Chapter 120: Into The Mountains? No, Better Head Back To The Village..
That night Wu Xie had an exceptionally tough time. Not to mention anything else, he was really sleepy.
Fortunately, although Lao Yang drank a lot, he got up early. He woke up just as dawn was breaking. Wu Xie had no mind to ask him anything and quickly had him take over so he could nap for a bit.
When Lin Yan woke up, what he saw was Lao Yang guarding the just-extinguished bonfire, wearing gloves to observe that bronze tree branch.
He yawned, got up, and stretched lazily. Looking back, he saw Wu Xie still sleeping, so he lowered his voice and asked Lao Yang: “Haven’t you looked at this stick many times already? Why are you still looking?”
Seeing him lean over, Lao Yang looked at him with a subtle expression, focusing especially on his teeth: “Your teeth are okay?”
Lin Yan clacked his upper and lower teeth together a couple times and didn’t feel anything wrong: “What’s up?”
Lao Yang was somewhat surprised: “You forgot?”
“Forgot what?” Lin Yan saw Lao Yang look at him and then at the stick, somewhat confused. What did his teeth have to do with the stick?
Seeing that he really seemed to have forgotten, Lao Yang carefully handed the bronze tree branch toward him, but didn’t dare get too close, keeping about a meter of distance from Lin Yan.
After a rough look, Lin Yan didn’t notice anything. Just as he was about to lean in closer, Lao Yang started backing away. This time Lin Yan wasn’t having it: “Hey, with you holding it that far, who can see anything?”
Lao Yang felt very wronged. If he wasn’t afraid Lin Yan would bite it again, would he do this?
So Lao Yang could only gesture a circle with his hand at one end of the branch: “Here.”
Lin Yan squinted his eyes and looked over, finally seeing a few small shallow pits where his finger was. Associating it with Lao Yang looking at his teeth earlier, he touched his chin, somewhat in disbelief: “No way, don’t tell me I bit it yesterday?”
Lao Yang nodded in a way that was hard to put into words: “Yesterday I was—a bit drunk, and I saw you bite it. Then I heard, heard the sound of the bell, and you, you woke up.”
“What about after that?” Lin Yan pressed. Lao Yang put the branch back in his bag and shook his head: “Then I—I passed out drunk sleeping, I don’t—know.”
Lin Yan was somewhat dazed. He just remembered Wu Xie taking the bronze tree branch to observe it, and him leaning over to look too. Then… then what happened? Why couldn’t he remember anything?
His gaze turned to Wu Xie. It seemed he’d have to wait for Wu Xie to get up to find out. Thinking of this, he suddenly thought of a question.
So yesterday… Wu Xie had taken over guarding the night for him? Calculating from midnight until now, it was about six or seven hours. No wonder Wu Xie was still sleeping. He had probably only napped for over an hour at the beginning last night. He really felt sorry for him.
“Lao Yang, do you actually know the way or not? Can we find that tomb you mentioned today?”
Hearing his question, a strange glint flashed in Lao Yang’s eyes. He looked back at him: “We’ve been circling, circling around here for so long, I don’t know either. But if, if we can see that familiar mountain range, I definitely can find it!”
“So are we just going to keep circling here and rely on luck?” Hearing Lao Yang’s answer, it would be fake to say he wasn’t disappointed. Could they only rely on Wu Xie’s protagonist halo to stumble into the tomb? What if Wu Xie’s protagonist halo wasn’t reliable this time and they went the wrong way? This Lao Yang was always thinking about getting Wu Xie to go in with him, so why was there no way now?
Hearing him say that, Lao Yang suddenly laughed: “Heh heh, you, you wouldn’t really think I have—no way, right?”
“Oh?” Hearing Lao Yang say that, Lin Yan got interested. That little rookie Wu Xie didn’t know how to divide gold and fix positions or anything, could Lao Yang actually know? It had to be said, as expected of someone from the Xie family? No, he remembered the Xie family did business, how would they know how to find tombs?
Lao Yang gave him a mysterious look and pointed in a direction. This direction was east?
“You know the direction now? Didn’t you just say you didn’t know?”
Lao Yang laughed even more happily: “I, I don’t know, but someone does!”
This… was he talking about that group with Uncle Tai that they were tracking? Lin Yan probed: “Uncle Tai and them?”
Lao Yang shook his head: “They might not be going to the same tomb as us, but… in the village there aren’t—aren’t just them!”
Lin Yan was shocked: “What the heck? You mean that village is a tomb raider village, the whole village does tomb raiding? Good grief, no wonder the cops came in several waves, maybe they’re investigating them!”
Lao Yang gave him a look like he was hopeless, anxious about his intelligence: “Go—go go, what are you thinking? I’m talking about the old folks in the village! They, they lead people all year round, I, I just mention the place in the mountains, they definitely know!”
Lin Yan patted his chest: “You scared me to death! If the whole village really did that kind of thing, wouldn’t we be walking into the tiger’s mouth?”
Lao Yang shook his head: “No, not that bad! Those villagers will, will do anything for money, but actually killing? Not necessarily! Maybe twenty or thirty years ago there might have been, but now the old, old generation doesn’t work and just enjoys retirement, the young generation has, has had a few days of schooling, you, you say one or two crooked double-cross robbers on the road I might believe, but the whole village being, being like that, even ghosts wouldn’t believe it!”
Lin Yan suddenly remembered the reason Lao Yang gave yesterday for not letting them enter the village: “Then why did you say that old lady wanted to rob us yesterday?”
Lao Yang chuckled: “That, that’s true too, I—I have run into it before! But I, I really didn’t expect that walking along we’d encounter this little hut!”
Lin Yan remembered Lao Yang had come back from here back then: “You’ve been here before, you don’t remember the rest of the way?”
Lao Yang regretfully shook his head: “We went, went in and came out at different places. When coming out my cousin was already a bit crazy, we took a lot of detours to get out! I, I don’t even remember exactly which way we went, getting lost would be game over! So, so it’s still reliable to go back and find a tour guide! We, we found a tour guide to go in back then too, just, just don’t know if it was the same village!”
This was too useless. With Lao Yang’s way of giving directions, he and Wu Xie might as well have found a tour guide from the start to get there faster! He didn’t know if that black-hearted tour guide they ran into back then was cheap? That was still the county town, prices shouldn’t be high there, right? This village was almost into the mountain belly, what if they jacked up the price?
Thinking about it, Lin Yan irritably rolled his eyes at Lao Yang. All he knew was how to spend money, didn’t he know their finances were tight now?
Finally waiting for Wu Xie to wake up, the sun was already high in the sky.
Wu Xie didn’t sleep peacefully this time either. After just a few hours, barely catching up on some sleep, he woke up. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw a white thing in front of him.
“Holy crap!”
He did a carp leap off the ground and retreated backward, leaving the little white zombie on the ground looking baffled: “Ying ying ying?” Why was he suddenly so afraid of me? What happened?
The Wu Xie who had just jumped up felt the world go dark, and it took several seconds to recover. Only then did he clearly see that what had scared him was that white ball that only knew ying ying ying. “Ow, that gave me a scare.” After saying that, he went to hug it, but the little white zombie hopped back to dodge, then charged with force into Lin Yan’s arms.
“Ying ying ying!”
Alright, this was him hurt by Wu Xie’s reaction and coming for comfort.
Lin Yan stroked the white ball, sympathetically looking at Wu Xie whose face was weird from being rejected by the little white zombie. It seemed until the little white zombie calmed down, Wu Xie had no ball to pet.
Wu Xie gave a wry smile, took inventory of the equipment, and asked Lao Yang: “So how are we going today? Still continuing into the mountains?”
Lao Yang shook his head: “No, we’re going back to the village!”
Wu Xie was stunned for a moment. Lin Yan seemed to see a big question mark over his head, so he schadenfreude-fully blurted out: “Because he doesn’t know the way!”
PS: One more update at midnight
