Chapter 6.1 Tick Tick Tick Tick (Extra)

It was six o’clock on a foggy evening in Beijing. Fatty and I stood opposite the Pangu Plaza as we kept pressing the taxi app because we’d heard that Black Glasses was working nearby.

I felt a tickle in my throat and lit a cigarette. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see the smoke clearly and I wondered how Black Glasses could even see the road. After pressing the app thirteen or fourteen more times, it locked. It seemed to be able to detect malicious intent.

“What kind of chance encounter is this?” Fatty asked angrily. “I’ll send him a WeChat message directly.”

Twenty minutes later, Black Glasses’ car finally arrived. As we quickly got in, I saw that he was wearing a suit. He turned and asked me, “Where to, sir?” He started laughing as soon as he looked at me.

Fatty leaned his head forward from the back seat and pointed a finger at his nose. “How can a blind man drive? Can you even see? How did you pass the test?”

Black Glasses lit a cigarette and smiled. “With the fog like this, would it make any difference if I’m blind or not?”

“Shit, are you that poor?” I asked him. “Come on, you can borrow almost two million from anyone, and it won’t be as bad as this.”

“There haven’t been any grave robbing jobs recently.” Black Glasses tapped his phone. “This is a good job with two hundred thousand a month. And I heard that Shenzhen is better, so I plan to go there next month.”

“Two hundred thousand? Who are you kidding? You’re a fucking DiDi driver (1). Are you really a DiDi drug dealer or something?” Fatty asked. He took a cigarette that Black Glasses passed to him and then lit it. “Tell me, there must be something wrong with you. Are you doing a big job? Don’t keep it to yourself, share it.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m so poor, yet you two are still fucking acting like this. Do you have a conscience?” Black Glasses revealed an expression that seemed to say, “You’re so shameless that it’s like you’re my own sons.”

Fatty grabbed Black Glasses’ phone, rolled down the window, and then threw it out. “If you’re really that poor, then come on. Let’s go to my shop and have a drink. You don’t have a job, but I do. This fat master will support you.”

Black Glasses looked at the phone outside and gave a tut, but still started the car anyways. But instead of going to Fatty’s house, he drove around in circles and said, “Do you even have a job now that you’re retired?”

“We have lots of jobs.” I took a puff of my e-cigarette. Based on his attitude towards his phone just now, I had basically determined that he definitely wasn’t just working here. “What the hell are you doing? Is there a tomb around here? But that’s impossible. It’s all buildings. If there was a tall building hiding a tomb here, it would’ve been found long ago.”

Black Glasses drove five hundred meters forward and then pointed to a place with his chin. “Look at that.”

I squinted and looked through the haze outside the window. There was a group of workers conducting maintenance on the central green belt (2). It looked like they were working on the vegetation. “Do you think those people look like workers who work on green belts?” Black Glasses asked.

As I watched silently, I noticed that the people who were bent over had particularly well-developed lower limbs and shoulders and seemed to be working absent-mindedly. They were surrounded by a plastic barrier that was used to enclose the area around the green belt.

“Damn it, can they even do that?” Fatty asked happily. “This is fucking high-level gameplay. They’re so casual even when they’re doing it in plain sight.”

“It’s not a tomb down below,” Black Glasses said. “But there is something very interesting down there. Right now, others in the business are looking for it everywhere. I’ve been watching it for almost three months. These two roads here are the right spot.”

“What is it?” Fatty became curious.

“It’s a special concrete block.” Black Glasses said.

<Extra 5.28> <Table of Contents><Extra 6.2>

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TN Notes:

(1) DiDi is an app-based transportation company. Think of like Uber or Lyft. The chapter title “滴滴答滴答” was actually a pun on DiDi and the sound of a ticking clock. Dī​dī= 滴滴 (means the DiDi app obviously) and Dī​dā= 滴答(means ticking of a clock or dripping sound of water or a pattering sound). The “Dī​= 滴” is like the dripping sound of water and the “dā= 答” means to answer/respond.

(2) It’s that strip of grass, trees, and/or bushes you see on the median when you’re driving down a road or highway.

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Black Glasses!! We’ve missed you!!!