Chapter 56 Mischief

I immediately understood what Poker-Face meant, and my thoughts raced.

I couldn’t help but applaud just thinking about it.

We didn’t have scuba diving equipment, so all we could do was watch if they decided to do anything. And by the time I went back for new equipment and returned again, the group might have already reached their goal. If there were any clues under the water, then we had absolutely no way to get the first crack at it.

Indeed, just as Poker-Face had said, this may be our only chance. Our only option was to steal the scuba equipment before they noticed, and then scrap it. Without oxygen tanks, they had no choice but to use compressed air machines.

Taking action when others didn’t expect it was a typical preemptive move.

But I had doubts about whether we could do it under the existing conditions. The scuba tanks were placed on the beach some distance from the lake, so we would have to take them and run. Even if Poker-Face could hit ten at a time, he couldn’t take care of us. Fatty and I would be beaten to death before we could rush into the water.

After thinking for a moment, I said, “You have a point, but it’s not urgent. There are so many people in their team right now that we won’t make it. Wait until evening, and then let’s sneak over and steal it.”

Poker-Face shook his head: “We don’t have any time. Once we settle down for the night, they’ll go into the water immediately. Look.”

He pointed in one direction, where several people had been blowing up inflatable rafts by the lake, and others had entered the water, apparently divers observing the environment.

“Why are they so anxious?” I wondered.

Poker-Face paused, and then said suddenly, “Maybe there’s no time.”

I paused for a moment. This sentence coming from his mouth was very significant, but I didn’t have time to think it over.

I trotted over and called Fatty back. He heard our plan and shook his head. “Shit, I just befriended them, and now we’re going to rob them? It’ll damage my reputation.”

I said: “If there’s something under the water, they’ll get hold of it as soon as they go in. Do you want it, or do you want fame?”

Fatty thought for a moment and said, “It’s really strange, I think your naive words are especially convincing. Then let’s forget about fame. What do you think we should do?”

I thought about it, but couldn’t come up with anything. I asked Fatty to prepare our raft and refill it with stones. We would be rushing into the lake with heavy lead tanks on our backs, so we could only rely on stones. After that, we’d have to think of a way to attract those people’s attention so that we could get their scuba diving equipment quickly.

If we ran at full speed, the distance from the tanks to the shore would only take about thirty seconds. But there were a lot of people busily moving about on this side. As long as we paused for even a second, we would definitely be caught. Stealing in front of so many people required considerable skill and mental fortitude.

I wasn’t very adept at this, and thought it was impossible. And after what Poker-Face had said, I felt extremely nervous, like I had no chance.

It was at this time that Fatty figured out the best way. He looked at the men and the location of the scuba tanks, and suddenly asked, “Can you ride horses?”

“What?” I asked.

He pointed to the mules nearby, and gave us a wink: “Have you ever seen Mongolian riders snatch sheep?”

When I understood what he meant, I frowned and said, “Mules are different from horses, they can’t run.”

“Damn it, we’re not racing. We just need it to run a few dozen meters. This thing is so big, who would dare try to stop it? There’s only one problem: don’t fall off in the middle.”

After thinking about it, I nodded my head. Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Fatty immediately went to prepare. We pushed the raft into the lake first, then came back, found the man watching the mules, took out some money, and said that we wanted to borrow a few mules to carry some things.

The man had seen us in the village before and thought to make some easy money. Fatty asked him, “When do mules run the fastest?”

The man said, “When they’re in heat. You can’t pull them.”

Fatty said, “That’s a bit difficult. Is there anything else we should be cautious about? What are mules most afraid of?”

The three of us took the mules, and slowly walked towards their busy camp to the place where the tanks had been placed. When we looked at each other, I was already sweating with nervousness. Three people holding mules felt silly— just like those Mexican farmers— but it wasn’t so conspicuous, because a lot of things were being unloaded from the mules all around.

The scuba gear was wrapped in large canvas bags, several of which had been linked together. Fatty drove the mule closer, then winked at me and asked me to untie the rope.

I looked around and saw that no one had noticed us. I was just about to start when I heard someone shouting behind me: “Hello! What are you doing?”

I reflexively looked back, and saw a woman coming towards us. A line of people who had been enjoying the shade under the trees also stood up at this time. I immediately panicked and wondered what to do since I had been discovered. At that moment, Fatty rushed at me like an arrow, grabbed the scuba equipment, and shouted, “Get on the mule!”

I also grabbed the scuba equipment, and the three of us immediately got on our mules. Fatty gave his mule a hard spanking and shouted, “This mule is crazy! Get out of the way!”

The frightened mule spread its hooves and ran.

Although mules walked slowly at ordinary times, I almost couldn’t stay seated when it ran so suddenly. Besides, my scuba equipment was linked together with Fatty’s, so the two of us pulled each other like acrobats, which was very dangerous.

We attracted everyone’s attention, and the woman behind us responded quickly and shouted, “Stop them!”

Fatty didn’t estimate wrong at all. The mules ran with astonishing momentum, and wildly rushed forward, scaring two men who had been building awnings. They immediately got out of the way, and even fell to the ground. Fatty was still shouting: “Get out of the way! Be careful!”

The three of us rushed to the lake, and the woman’s cry behind us was completely drowned out by all the screaming. In this kind of situation, who would dare step up? Being stepped on by a mule was a bone-breaking experience.

Chaos erupted around the lake.

Before I could react, the mules had rushed towards the lake. But they were afraid of the water, and a sharp turn threw us all down.

I hit my forehead on a rock, but Fatty lifted me up as the mules continued running wildly. When I looked back, the woman was rushing towards us with several people in tow. We immediately turned and ran into the lake.

Once we got to the water, we had the advantage. The water level of the lake had dropped so fast that we ran until our feet couldn’t touch the ground, dragging our scuba tanks behind us into the deep water.

After swimming a dozen meters, I looked back and saw that the men were also in the water, and swimming towards us. We swam to the raft, picked up the stones, and Fatty shouted, “Sink!”

The three of us jumped into the water one by one and sank quickly. From underneath the water’s surface, I saw a few people above already swimming towards us, and some of them almost grabbed me. Several people dove down to try and entrap us, but they soon floated back up.

We calmly put on the scuba equipment and diving goggles.

In the end, it was professional equipment, so it started working right away. By the time I used my nose to drain half of the water from the diving goggles, and put on the scuba tank and flippers, the other two were already outfitted.

Qiu Dekao’s equipment was truly high quality. There was also a tool belt, which contained a LedLenser’s diving flashlight, a diving dagger, and a small oxygen tank (one could last for three minutes).

It took a lot of connections to transport this kind of stuff to the mountains, which indicated that Qiu Dekao had a deep background.

By the time all the tests were completed, I had sunk to the bottom of the lake. With the scuba diving equipment, I could dive to a depth of two to three hundred meters, but I didn’t care about the depth at all right now. The key was that our opponent didn’t have any oxygen tanks, so there was absolutely no need to worry about someone going into the water to drive us out.

Fatty gestured at us and pointed up ahead. We were still some distance from where we had launched before, and the water depth was relatively shallow. The area in front of us was deep, and the ancient village was just ahead, which was where we would leave from. The lake wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small, either. As long as we swam away, and came ashore in another place, they could only stare.

So I turned on my flashlight, followed Fatty, and started moving forward. We reached the top of the ancient village, sank the lead oxygen tanks, watched them fall into the middle of the village, and then swam all the way to the other side of the lake. When we snuck ashore, we saw a group of frustrated people across the lake.

Agui and Yun Cai met us later in the mountains, and we all laughed before we went back into hiding.

<Chapter 55 Uninvited Guests> <Table of Contents> <Daomu Biji Vol. 7 Chapter 1>

****

TN Note: I know nobody’s gonna read this but who cares! I did it!!! Yay!!!! My first novel translated! (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶ I know it wasn’t the best, but I’m sure it wasn’t the worst either so I’m counting it as a win and basking in the glory! Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ

Now on to Volume 7…..

****

Updated 9/3/2020