Chapter 133

I woke up early and found that Jia Kezi had brought everyone’s breakfast back from the dining room. There was steaming misua paste, popiah, man jian gao, peanut soup, beef soup, bowl cakes, and sesame balls (1). The lobby and dining room were located in the tulou’s courtyard. I had heard that many tourists would stay and volunteer for a period of time after they came, so the dishes here were very rich.

The others hadn’t woken up yet and Jia Kezi was staring at the table blankly as he ate silently.

My father was also a quiet person. Every time I ate at home when I was a child, my father would stare at the table and eat silently, almost as if his mind was full of thoughts. As a result, I was very familiar with this kind of atmosphere.

I sat down in front of Jia Kezi and he pushed a pot of misua paste towards me. “You Zhejiang people (2) should love this.”

I took a bite. I had been very familiar with Fujian breakfast food for a long time now. I didn’t like or dislike it, but I was too lazy to explain it to him. I looked at my cell phone and realized that it would take another hour for the others to wake up. As Jia Kezi continued to mindlessly eat his breakfast, I looked at him without asking any questions.

When I thought about it, ordinary people’s suffering was probably far inferior when compared to my misery. But suffering could only truly be perceived by the individual, so I couldn’t look down on anyone else’s hardships. People’s hearts were different, and every person had their own way of suffering.

After eating for a while, he suddenly looked up at me and asked, “Do you play chess?”

I shook my head. If it had been before, I would’ve been curious about this proposal, but now I simply refused to do what I didn’t want to do.

Jia Kezi started shaving his beard silently. He didn’t stutter in the morning and spoke very slowly. He’s the one who accepted everything, I thought to myself. When he promised to come, he had just sent his old father off. The father and son had been working on the railway their whole lives. The two of them had good ears and listened to the track, looking for breakpoints on the railway and determining the trains’ situations. As a result, Jia Kezi’s nickname was 1435, and even his WeChat username was 1435. (3)

Two tracks could always see each other, but couldn’t touch. They would always be together, but not.

Jia Kezi deliberately hurt people and went to jail. I didn’t know what had happened, but I usually stayed away from people who had stories. My own story hadn’t yet ended after all.

The others gradually woke up one right after another. Xiang Dun went out and wandered around. When he came back, he told us that the building was actually taller than when we came in last night. We had originally thought that the fourth floor was the fifth floor.

There was an inaccessible half-storey between the fourth and fifth floors, but I didn’t know whether it was a structural problem or merely decoration.

It was easy to infer that the earliest people to arrive were on the fifth floor. In other words, Xiao Hua’s entire rescue team was on the fifth floor. But according to the waiter, the team never left after entering the tulou and even the lights in their rooms hadn’t been turned on. That was why we thought the fourth floor was the fifth floor yesterday.

Based on my understanding, Xiao Hua was in the habit of covering all of the windows with black cloth and had even been nicknamed Black Lantern when he was younger. That way, it was impossible for others to know what he was doing.

The fourth floor was completely different in that people came and went every day. It seemed that there was another group of people living there. They didn’t go up to the fifth floor, but it was obvious that they weren’t ordinary tourists based on their appearances. Xiang Dun showed me some photos he took with his cell phone. After looking at them, I knew that it was a big grave-robbing team full of experts from all fields. There appeared to be a big boss living on the fourth floor.

At this time, I saw a photo of a person in the crowd. He had apparently seen Xiang Dun taking a sneak shot. He was an extremely handsome young man in his twenties who looked very familiar. I enlarged the photo—cell phone cameras were really powerful now—and saw a copper coin necklace around the young man’s neck. (4)

“You’ve been discovered. Little Bai, it’s your turn.” I handed the photo to Bai Haotian, “Pay attention to this person and go to the fourth floor to see who recruited these grave robbers and why they’re here.”

<Chapter 132><Table of Contents><Chapter 134> 

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TN Notes:

(1) Misua paste is a noodle dish. Pic and info here. Popiah is basically a spring roll. Pic and info here. Manjiangao is basically a pancake with brown sugar, sesame seeds, and crushed peanuts. Pick and info here. Bowl cakes are made by grinding rice into rice syrup, then adding white or brown sugar and yeast, stirring, fermenting, and finally steaming in a bowl. I found a 40 second video here. Sesame balls are pastries coated with sesame seeds. Pic and info here.

(2) Zhejiang province (Chekiang) in east China. Hangzhou is the capital.

(3) The standard railway track gauge is 1435 mm (4 ft 8 ½ in).

(4) Something like this (reminds me of Ah Ning’s bracelet in “Ultimate Note” and Chapter 26 of “Deadly Desert Winds”):