Chapter 36 The Mysterious Coffin Carried into the Ancient Building

The atmosphere was completely silent as he looked at me. The tension in my heart became even more intense, and the tendons on my forehead soon began to jump. If it weren’t for the mask, my expression would’ve been terrified.

“I don’t know,” he said after a long silence.

I was both immediately relieved and elated.

This response showed two things: the first was that Leather Bag may have guessed right and the purpose of the real team wasn’t archaeology; the second was that my question didn’t arouse his suspicions, so it would be much safer to ask more questions later.

“You don’t know?” I asked him. “There’s no way you wouldn’t know.”

“We were all deceived,” he said. “There are probably no more than three people who really know. If we had known, maybe I wouldn’t be like this.” He suddenly looked up, “Didn’t this matter come from your ‘Chen Qing’ group? You don’t know?”

“Mmm.” I decided that this person didn’t seem to belong to Uncle Three’s faction. “Chen Qing group” was just a transliteration (1) I had heard. I didn’t know which three words it should be, but it had to be one of them. “We don’t know as much as you do.”

“After all this hassle, nobody even knows what all this is for.”

“I’ll know soon,” I said, wanting to test him to see what he would do to us next.

He made a few noises that could hardly be recognized as laughter. But instead of answering my words, he said, “Did you not join us because you anticipated the result?”

“Does this result need to be predicted?” I asked.

“Then why do you want your people to participate in this matter? You shouldn’t even be here. You said that the higher-ups already ignored you, so you should’ve never come to this place again. It doesn’t make sense.”

“There have been other changes.”

“Is it because of those foreigners?”

I thought about it, but I really couldn’t explain what was going on. I came to Banai to find out about Poker-Face’s origins. I didn’t expect so many things to happen.

“In fact, it’s for one person,” I said. “Zhang Qiling.”

When I said Poker-Face’s name, I watched his reaction. He suddenly laughed, “Impossible, you’re joking.”

“What’s impossible?”

“Did you come back here for me?” He asked. “Quit bullshitting.”

I was stunned for a moment. It suddenly felt as if I had been blindsided and struck by lightning. As I looked at the person in front of me, my first reaction was that I wanted to immediately run out and jump off a cliff.

Under the current circumstances, I felt like I was about to collapse. I suddenly felt as if the whole world was unreal, but fortunately, Fatty patted me in time and said, “Master Three, hold your horses.”

“What?” The other man asked, “Was I wrong?”

“I told Master Three not to joke with you. We can’t afford to joke now.” Fatty took the lead and gave me a hard pat, bringing me back to my senses.

I took a deep breath to hide my shock. I wasn’t sure if I had heard it wrong just now, so I hesitantly said, “You still remember your name. I thought you had already forgotten it.”

“Our names have no meaning. Unlike your ‘Chen Qing’ group, we have no past or future, so I may be better off here. You think I’ve become so miserable, but I think it may be a good thing,” he said. “Tell me, what is it that got you involved in this matter again?”

I took a deep breath and thought, shit, I can’t say anything. I really wanted to rush up, knock his feet out from under him, turn him over, and throw my numerous questions directly into his face. Then I would use tiger bench (1), chili water, and all manner of cruel means to make him tell his secrets.

But there was no way out. Fatty was right: I needed to calm down. Otherwise, I might not get anything like the previous times.

“It really is for Zhang Qiling, but not you,” Fatty said from beside me. “It’s another man named Zhang Qiling.”

Attaboy, Fatty!

I was surprised when Fatty said it, but I immediately found that he went about it the right way. This would throw the problem to Ghost and force him to analyze it. His analysis would certainly include a large amount of information he knew, thus pushing the initiative on him to analyze the problem.

But in an unexpected turn of events, Ghost wasn’t surprised at all and just said, “Oh, have they found another one?”

I kept silent and prayed in my heart, say more, say more, say more!

He paused and continued, “I don’t know what the name means, but they found so many people called Zhang Qiling all over the country. I was the only one who could stay, but it seems like the plan still continued after my ‘death’.”

I thought for a moment and felt my heart drop. It appeared that things weren’t what I had originally thought. Based on what he said, their organization had conducted an investigation and searched all over the country for a person named Zhang Qiling. And it seemed like they had gathered this group of people and conducted tests until finally, only the person in front of us was left.

I suddenly realized that in this period of history, there wasn’t only one person named Zhang Qiling. Could this be the reason why the information I had found was so messy and useless? Did I find the history of two completely different people that happened to be interspersed with each other?

But if so, what was that organization for? Was it to win a prize?

“Maybe it’s because you’re dead that they think you’re not the one they’re looking for,” Fatty said. “I’ll be blunt. The Zhang Qiling we’re looking for now is unlikely to make such a virtue of himself.”

Ghost ignored him and merely motioned for me to continue talking.

I conceived a small story in my mind and told him that this Zhang Qiling was very special. I said a lot about his amazing deeds and told him that this Zhang Qiling made the older generation of the Mystic Nine very inviolable. As a result, they asked me to help him find things related to the past.

Ghost didn’t speak for a long time before he eventually said, “Where is he now?”

I pointed to my feet, “He’s among the dead team you mentioned. He’s now in the mountains. Fatty said he’s… in a mirror.”

“You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life,” he suddenly said.

“What?”

“You’ll soon lose the key to unlocking all of these secrets,” he said. “The only key.”

“Why are you so sure they’ll die?”

“In short, it’s already been determined that they’ll die. If I tell you the reason, you’ll surely feel that there’s still a chance, which will only add to your troubles.” He paused and then added, “Unfortunately, I never thought that this secret had a chance of being revealed.”

“What if you go and save them?” Fatty asked him.

“I’d be a little better off than you two, but I won’t go in. I can take you in, however. Let’s go.”

“Do you understand our determination?” I was a little surprised.

“No, it’s because I don’t want to kill you myself,” he said. “You know, I won’t let anyone know I’m still alive. I didn’t expect to meet you here and have been thinking about what to do with you just now. Now it seems that it’s most appropriate to let you die.”

He stood up and took us to the middle of the mortar shell pile. After removing some of the boxes, some long dark green boxes were revealed. He picked up a stone from the ground, knocked off the iron lock on the box, and kicked the lid off.

“You’ll need these.”

The inside was full of submachine guns wrapped in blackened oil paper. There were even copper bullets underneath that were still orange and shiny. There were about a hundred rounds in total.

“Are they still usable? Won’t they backfire?”

“You’d better hope they still work.”

“Just give me back my Doraemon.” Fatty said. “These old guns shoot too slow.”

“Your gun has twenty rounds at most. The number of rounds you need is twenty followed by two zeros,” Ghost said. “Take them.” He picked up two and tossed them to us.

We put the guns over our shoulders and Fatty began removing the ammo from the oil paper. As he put them into the magazine, he asked, “Where can you take us? It seems very difficult to enter that building.”

“It’s not as complicated as you think. I’ll tell you, but it’s no use saying it now.” Ghost found a few bags from his belongings, put all of the bullets in them, and tossed them to Fatty. “Do it after you go in. There’s no time. Dawn is about to break.”

Ghost quickly left and Fatty and I looked at each other. “Don’t ask, just watch,” Fatty said to me.

I nodded. When we followed Ghost out, we heard him whistle in the night. We were just wondering what he was doing when we saw movement in the grass and then several lynx jumped out.

He made some strange noises and then the lynx immediately turned and walked forward. Ghost made a gesture for us to follow.

<Chapter 35> <Table of Contents><Chapter 37>

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TN Notes:

(1) Transliteration is rendering phonetic value (e.g. of English words in Chinese characters) / characters giving phonetic value of Chinese word or name (when the correct characters may be unknown)

(2) Tiger bench is a torture method in which the victim sits with legs extended horizontally along a bench, upper legs held down with straps while bricks are inserted under the feet, forcing the knee joint to bend in reverse. Pretty fucked up

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Updated 2/21/2021