Chapter 121

“How could they be gone?” I looked at Uncle Two coldly. “They’ve been fine for so many years, so how come they get into your hands and you say they’re dead? What did you do? Tell me what’s going on and don’t talk nonsense.”

Uncle Two didn’t speak, but looked down at Kan Jian. I looked around at all the other people. It hadn’t been long since they left me, but Uncle Two was very good at training people, so they wouldn’t dare be presumptuous in front of him. I could only hold onto Kan Jian and ask, “Why are they gone? What happened?”

Kan Jian looked at Uncle Two.

Uncle Two had obviously told them to keep their mouths shut, so no one would talk. I released my hold on Kan Jian and walked over to Uncle Two. He let me into the room and then closed the door smoothly. I looked at him coldly and asked, “If they’re gone, where are their bodies?”

“We couldn’t bring them up.” Uncle Two sat me down and poured me a large glass of white wine. “It’s just a theory right now. We didn’t see it with our own eyes.”

“Then why are you so sure?” I smacked the wine glass away. “If you didn’t see it with your own eyes, then why did you come back? Why didn’t you save them? What was the situation?”

Uncle Two looked at the wine I had just knocked over. “If they could be saved, then I would have saved them.”

I took a deep breath and felt the suffocation from just now ease a little bit. I looked back at the door and said to myself, Kan Jian, I’ll fucking beat you to death. But as I calmed down, I felt another kind of panic surge up in my heart. Kan Jian wasn’t the type of person to raise a fuss. He was honest, and I had also taught him to convey information accurately. His breakdown just now was definitely real.

Was Uncle Two trying to get me to gradually accept the reality that those people were really gone?

When I was learning to drive, my teacher wanted me to calm down and gave me some Vitamin C. He pretended that it was a sedative, but I immediately saw through it. It was difficult to use words to trick me now.

My hands started to tremble and I touched my pockets, but there weren’t any cigarettes. I never thought that something would happen to the two of them. In this business, there shouldn’t be anyone more reliable than the two of them together. After so many years, I really didn’t think that these two people would fail.

I hadn’t been mentally prepared, so all my previous defense mechanisms couldn’t be used here and I couldn’t calm down.

But I couldn’t have an emotional outburst either because I didn’t have enough time to get worked up. I came through that door to hear the news, so my emotions didn’t have time to react at all.

Under the strain of these two states, there was only anger in my heart, like an unnamed evil fire.

I leaned back against the sofa, took a deep breath, and forced a thought through my mind, if I don’t calm down, things will get worse. I need to calm down in order to make things better.

This was what I had told myself countless times every day in that desert. But I never thought that I would have to bring it up again years later.

“Uncle Two, can you tell me in one sentence what happened?” I pinched my brows. “Why are the underlings outside like that, and why can’t you, Wu Erbai, save those two from that place?”

“Saving them will get more people killed.” Uncle Two looked at me. “A place that those two can’t handle is a place that no one in this group can handle. Going to that place to save them is just exchanging people’s lives for theirs. These guys’ lives aren’t mine. I can’t ask them to do such a thing.”

“What was the situation? Was it a landslide or quicksand?” I asked. These were the only things that had the capacity to bury those people.

“Those two went to a place without oxygen. The time they’ve been gone far exceeds the amount of oxygen they carried,” Uncle Two said. “Unless they found a new source of oxygen somewhere, but that’s impossible. If you fall into a lake for two hours and don’t come up, then it’s not a rescue effort, but body retrieval. I can’t sacrifice so many lives just to fish up a corpse.”

“They fell into a lake? You’re telling me that the two most powerful grave robbers in the world fell into a lake and drowned?”

“It’s not an ordinary lake, it’s a calling lake. It’s basically a cavity in an underground river. If a sound is made in that cavity, a large volume of water will flow backwards and submerge the whole cavity. It takes about two months for the water to start receding. The locals call it Yanggong Spring, and the lake is called Yangdu Lake. Those two went in to find an entrance,” Uncle Two said. “I don’t know why, but the river water suddenly started flowing backward in large quantities. The lake is very large, so if you want to dive in to save anyone, you need a professional cave diving team. The river water flowed in and flooded the whole underground lake. We couldn’t rescue them, so we gave up.”

“That’s it? You just left them there?” I looked at Uncle Two’s expression. He didn’t have to lie to me, and I knew he didn’t want the people working under him to die. If he said that, then he must have tried everything. I wouldn’t believe it if anyone else said that there was no way, but Uncle Two said it so bluntly that my back went completely cold.

“Members of the Xie family have already gone. I know you definitely won’t give up, but I’ve seen more dead people than you have. The probability of those two being alive is very low, unless there’s some kind of miracle. But even if they are alive, it’ll take hundreds of people to save them. Our people came back to rest first, so you can ask the Xie family to give you any updates.”

I moved to stand up and Uncle Two immediately said, “You’re not allowed to go. If you go, you’ll die. Don’t even try to think up any hairbrained schemes. Everyone knows your situation. You should just wait here for news.”

“I’m not going.” I nodded and stood up. As I walked out the door, I ran my tongue along my gums and thought to myself, not going, my ass.

I grabbed Kan Jian and said, “I don’t feel good. Help me get back.”

While Kan Jian stood there stunned, I clutched my chest, dragged him into the car, and took a pack of old cigarettes from the console. I knew I couldn’t smoke anymore, but I lit up anyways. I was just about to start talking when Kan Jian suddenly got out of the car, “Little Master Three, I know what you’re going to do, but you can’t go. You can scold me to death and say you don’t need me, but I won’t tell you anything. You can’t go there.”

“I haven’t asked anything yet.” I laughed.

Kan Jian looked at me, “I promised Little Brother and Master Black that you would live. They’ve lived long enough. You still have time.”

<Chapter 120><Table of Contents><Chapter 122>

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This is seriously such a pain combing through episodes, so I hope you all appreciate it lol. Poker-Face’s side of things is loosely based on Season 2 Episode 4 around 10:27-16:33 and 19:34-22:45. I wanted to be productive yesterday but wasn’t in the mood to translate so I spent most of the day putting “The Southern Archives” and “Mystic Nine” into pdfs for you since I felt like they didn’t need any work. If you all don’t like how I do the TN notes as footnotes and want them at the end of the chapters instead, let me know and I’ll do it for any pdfs I make in the future. There’s no way in hell I’m going back and fixing what’s already done (footnotes and formatting are a bitch) but I’ll take suggestions into consideration for future pdfs.