Chapter 38: Hiss, It’s Coming Out?
A car stopped beside them, and upon looking, A Ning was in the driver’s seat.
Wu Xie looked around: “What about that person?”
A Ning glanced at him, her tone icy: “Who?”
“The one who came with you.”
“You mean Zhang Hao?” So his name was Zhang Hao? No idea which Hao it was.
A Ning curved the corner of her mouth slightly: “None of you looked at the business card?”
This time Wu Xie was stunned: “The business card had his name?” He had always thought A Ning was the one in charge of the two, and the business card had A Ning’s name on it.
After they were all in the car, A Ning took out two airplane tickets from the side and gave them to them: “Seats are limited, only two spots left tonight, and you specifically said he can’t be separated from you, so you two will have to go by yourselves. Someone will pick you up at the place and take you to the ship to wait for us.”
A Ning pulled out another business card and gave it to him: “This is his business card, keep it safe. He’s a professional expedition leader, just like me.”
Expedition leader? More like tomb raider leader. Wu Xie sneered inwardly but didn’t point it out to embarrass her.
After this exchange, they didn’t talk the rest of the way. Lin Yan and Wu Xie were still in a mutual dislike situation with A Ning, and besides, A Ning’s side had everything prepared, so there was nothing more to say.
When they arrived at the place, after A Ning parked the car, she spoke again: “Don’t you have any questions?”
Lin Yan rolled his eyes at her: “Haven’t you prepared everything? What’s left to ask?”
A Ning didn’t answer and instead pulled out several forms: “All the equipment is listed here. Any problems?”
Lin Yan glanced at it, not understanding it very well, and handed it directly to Wu Xie. Wu Xie flipped through it and found most of it was in English; his English was okay for daily conversation, but this professional stuff was like reading a book from heaven.
So he looked at it briefly and gave it back to A Ning, figuring that a professional company like theirs should have no issues with the arrangements, unless they wanted to get everyone killed down there.
He asked in return: “What about the blood-infused jade? When do we get it? It’ll be hard to deliver once we’re out at sea.”
A Ning replied to him: “You’ll get it when it’s time, what’s the rush. Also—” She narrowed her eyes, her face full of frost: “I have a name, I’m A Ning. Next time, trouble calling me by my name. I don’t want to hear ‘that woman’ or similar from your mouths.”
Wu Xie didn’t back down, sneering coldly: “Got it, Miss A Ning, see you at Xisha.” With that, he slammed the car door shut with a loud “bang.”
Lin Yan turned and rolled his eyes; A Ning was so hot-tempered, maybe her relatives were visiting? It was her fault in the first place, nearly wiping them all out, and now she wouldn’t even let Wu Xie vent his temper at her? What kind of people are they!
Seeing Wu Xie’s face full of suppressed anger with nowhere to go, Lin Yan patted his shoulder: “Alright, don’t be mad. That’s just her temper. Besides, we still have to cooperate later; if we make the relationship this tense, we might get screwed over and lose big time.”
Wu Xie snorted coldly: “She dares to screw us over? Last time she probably didn’t bring back what their boss wanted, and everyone she took ended up wiped out. If she doesn’t perform well this time, she might even get fired! In her situation, she still dares to screw us?”
Lin Yan laughed inwardly; wasn’t that right, this woman would indeed screw you over the whole way later, not just screw you but even try to kill you! Though she never succeeded.
“Huh? Wait, why do I feel like there’s deeper meaning in what you said?”
Wu Xie suddenly caught on; didn’t Lin Yan say before that A Ning would want to kill him? Connecting it to what Lin Yan just said, his eyes widened as he pulled Lin Yan close and whispered: “What do you mean by that? She’ll screw me over at sea? And you said before she wants to kill me? Why does she want to kill me? I saved her life before!”
Lin Yan was speechless: “You did save her, but did she show us any mercy back at Lu King’s Palace? Didn’t she just take advantage of the chaos and run the fastest? As for why she wants to kill you, I don’t know either; I just saw it, a specific scene, no cause or effect. You ask me, how would I know?” Actually, he had mostly forgotten the original plot and couldn’t remember!
Wu Xie thought for a moment: “Can’t you at least tell me the specific scenes?”
Lin Yan thought; how did A Ning screw him over? He didn’t remember much either!
“If I remember right, one was a barrage of arrows, probably a mechanism at the bottom of the tomb, where A Ning directly used you to block them. Another was in a place full of stones; you said something to her, and she said she’d kill you and drink your blood and eat your flesh when necessary?”
Wu Xie shivered: “Is this woman that ruthless? She wouldn’t even leave a whole corpse!”
Lin Yan nodded in agreement: “Exactly, this woman is truly ruthless!”
Wu Xie nodded: “Then we need to stay far away from her. After rescuing Third Uncle this time, we’ll have no more contact with them no matter what. She’s so ruthless, who knows what their company is like. Let me tell you, these marine resource development companies are all about salvaging shipwrecks to get rich, and they always sell stuff abroad. If they weren’t all foreign companies, they’d be prosecuted for trafficking cultural relics!”
Lin Yan watched Wu Xie get more and more indignant and laughed inwardly, thinking your Wu Family made its fortune tomb raiding too, selling who knows how much during the war years… eh, didn’t the Old Nine Gates actually not sell stuff to foreigners? Come to think of it, they were patriotic tomb raiders?
But why did he want to laugh so much?
These past two days they had been taking airplanes nonstop and were exhausted; they slept like logs as soon as they boarded until they woke up upon landing.
Lin Yan was shaken awake by Wu Xie: “What? We there?”
Wu Xie nodded: “Landing now, put up your tray table.”
Lin Yan looked down: “Huh? When did I put it down?”
Wu Xie’s expression changed: “You don’t remember? You put it down yourself. Shortly after takeoff, I got up to use the bathroom and saw you wake up and put it down.”
Lin Yan felt a chill all over: “I have no memory of waking up.”
Wu Xie was silent for a moment, then carefully pointed at his head: “It came out?”
Lin Yan was also silent: “Probably… yeah.”
Recalling the syllables from the sleep-talking last time, he had an ominous premonition; things might be beyond his control, and one pearl per week might not be enough anymore. It had only been four or five days since the last time he ate one, and that thing was already able to use his body to do things.
Thinking of this, he thought of something even stranger and exchanged a look with Wu Xie; both tacitly said nothing.
“How does it know to put down the tray table?”
“Can it understand what we’re saying?”
“Has it woken up but just can’t control my body?”
“Can it see everything we do?”
“Can it read my thoughts?”
“It wouldn’t understand eye contact too, would it?”
“No way, right?”
But thinking that eye contact was a ability after he transmigrated, Lin Yan wasn’t sure: “If it can understand, then not talking won’t help; we’re not going to stop talking altogether, are we?”
Wu Xie was stunned, then agreed: “True, so if we avoid keywords when talking, we’re good?”
Lin Yan nodded: “So what’s the keyword? The only time my head hurt was when we said”
Wu Xie remembered too: “Looks like we can’t say it for a while, but you made those syllables before and didn’t get a headache? Isn’t that related too?”
Lin Yan was confused too: “I don’t know, maybe… at that time, cough, it was already awake, so I didn’t get a headache?”
Wu Xie thought, breaking out in cold sweat: “No way, then haven’t we been right under its nose?” Thinking of how boldly he bought the blood-infused jade right in front of that thing, he felt goosebumps.
Lin Yan was scared too: “Is it because of that, it chose a time when you were awake to take over… as a warning?”
Wu Xie pondered, then nodded: “Probably really is.”
The two exchanged a look, their eyes saying the same thing: “Never say anything about this eye contact again!”
Both nodded solemnly.
After getting off the plane, they smoothly found the person picking them up. When Wu Xie chatted with him, he found the guy didn’t speak Mandarin well, using only simple sentences; when Wu Xie spoke longer, he kept gesturing that he didn’t understand.
After probing a bit, Wu Xie gave up. He had wanted to learn about A Ning’s background from this guy; according to Lin Yan, he and A Ning would likely cross paths more than just this time, and knowing your enemy ensures victory.
Unfortunately, this guy didn’t seem Chinese, so if he couldn’t understand, nothing to be done.
Hmm? Couldn’t understand? Wu Xie’s eyes lit up; he tugged Lin Yan’s arm, signaling him to look at himself.
Lin Yan was inexplicably called out, somewhat confused: “What?”
Wu Xie whispered: “The words you said last time were from the Ancient Shu Kingdom, right?”
Lin Yan nodded: “Yeah.”
Wu Xie slapped his thigh: “That’s it! It probably can’t understand our Mandarin at all! Sichuan dialect and Mandarin are completely different language systems—one Shu Region language, the other based on northern dialect!”
Lin Yan thought: “But aren’t languages interconnected? At least understand half?”
Wu Xie shook his head: “You’re wrong there, totally different! Listen to this sentence, can you understand?”
He rattled off a string of Hangzhou dialect; as expected, Lin Yan was full of question marks: “This? Alien language? Can’t understand a word.”
Wu Xie nodded: “Exactly! See, you can’t understand my Hangzhou dialect at all. Same logic, it definitely can’t understand our Mandarin! Not to mention different language families, it’s separated by three to five thousand years—with language evolution speed, it’d be weird if it could understand!”
Lin Yan nodded in agreement: “Then why did it come out before?”
Wu Xie said: “Probably saw through your eyes or sensed the blood-infused jade aura! So next time, close your eyes when you eat?”
Lin Yan: “…Eating with eyes closed? But seems fine! Alright, alright, next time I’ll try with eyes closed.”
Wu Xie nodded: “If even closing eyes doesn’t work, then definitely something about the blood-infused jade aura woke it! Then I can’t help.”
Lin Yan gave him a resentful look: So it’s not your body on the line? It’s just a control experiment, fine, do it, what else can we do!
The car picking them up took them straight from the airport to the port; the man got out and vanished, leaving them disheveled in the wind.
Lin Yan incredulous: “No way, where’d he go? Vanished in the time it took to grab luggage? Which ship do we board? Not waiting here, right?”
Wu Xie looked around; indeed no one. Was this human speed? Gone in a blink, like a ghost?
“Yeah, where is he? So many ships here, which one?”
After waiting about five or six minutes, the pickup guy finally showed up, said nothing, just waved for them to follow.
Lin Yan grumbled while walking: “Why not come earlier? This wind’s freezing me to death!”
Wu Xie glanced; he was wearing that ancient costume with no jacket over: “Coastal area, big day-night temp difference, normal to be cold. Who told you not to wear thicker?”
Lin Yan pouted: “I’ve never been here; back in Beijing I never went out.”
Wu Xie’s look was odd; he saw Lin Yan at the roast duck shop acting like it was his first time, always feeling he wasn’t telling the truth.
If Lin Yan knew, he’d complain: No kidding! Before transmigrating, it was a tourist spot for out-of-towners; locals hate going! Same for Forbidden City! Long walk in the sun, no shelter in rain; how did ancients endure such thick clothes!
Wu Xie thought: “Maybe at sea you can wear my jacket first; I brought an extra in my suitcase, perfect for you.”
Lin Yan regretted too; used to these clothes, why didn’t he think of a jacket!
Once on the ship, the guy darted behind someone who looked like the ship captain. Someone stepped out beside him, chattered to the ship captain, who then signaled his people to scatter, probably to prepare for departure.
After their exchange, the guy came to them: “Hello, you must be Mr. Wu Xie and Mr. Lin Yan? I’m Wu Yong, engineer at the Marine Resource Development Company, handling computers. The one I was talking to is the ship captain, Cai Wenji, local guy, over ten years at sea, very experienced. We also have Professor Gu for artifact appraisal, Mu Ziqi for equipment, and a medic; find him for any discomfort—not too serious, as long as we have meds, he can treat it.”
Wu Xie shook his hand: “Hello, I’m Wu Xie, the consultant your company invited.”
