Chapter 138

Xiang Dun and I went to the dining room, which was a chic, canteen-like restaurant located in the middle of the tulou. If you didn’t order room service for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then this was the only place to get food. Xiang Dun handed me a cigarette, which I took out of reflex. The waiter standing off to the side immediately came up and told us that this was a protected building and smoking wasn’t allowed. I raised my hand to apologize, threw the cigarette into the trash can, and then looked around the tulou from my position on the patio.

It really was big. I could only look around secretly before, since I didn’t dare make it obvious what I was doing. But now that I could get a full view of it, it was beyond my imagination.

The huge circular sky was like an eye, so when you looked up, it almost felt as if you were being stared it. It was a little dizzying.

At this time, I saw the young man who looked like A Ning leaning against the railing on the east side of the fourth floor, smoking.

When I looked at him, he also looked down at me expressionlessly. I silently lowered my head and asked the waiter, “How come the people above get to smoke?”

“I can’t afford to provoke those people. They’re on a different level.” The waiter obviously wasn’t a local and was probably a poor traveler who had stayed behind to work. I noticed that he had a Qinhuangdao accent. When I looked at the menu, I found that they were all familiar dishes, but there were also some northern dishes for tourists. I ordered a pot of daffodil tea and jiumentou (1). The waiter placed the order and then told me to find a seat. I asked him if the front desk could send express delivery.

He nodded, so I told Xiang Dun to sit down while I wandered over to the front desk and asked them for four express envelopes. Then, I stuffed a piece of cotton soaked in red syrup up my nose and squeezed it hard until it looked like I had a nose bleed. I sighed as the front desk attendant immediately panicked and took a step back.

“Tissue, give me some tissues.” I put too much syrup in it, so now it looked like I was bleeding all over the place when I squeezed it. As the young woman frantically went into the small preparation room behind the front desk, I instantly took out my phone and turned on the video app. I placed it on top of the big decorative cabinet behind the front desk with the camera exposed.

Almost a second later, the young woman came out and gave me a tissue. I took it and went to the bathroom, winking at Xiang Dun as I passed by.

Xiang Dun immediately stood up. I went to the toilet and cleaned myself up, knowing that Xiang Dun was asking the woman to check Uncle Two’s name in their system. They must have also stayed here, so if we could find their names, we would also know which rooms they had stayed in. There was a chance they had left some clues behind.

These kinds of places had confidentiality clauses, so the attendant wouldn’t be able to tell us anything. But she would still check the name, so any information that popped up would be captured on my phone camera.

I headed back out and saw that Xiang Dun had already sat back down. As I passed by him again, he made a subtle “done” gesture.

I took the courier envelopes back to the front desk and thanked the young woman. When I asked her for some more tissues, she smiled at me. I figured my disguise must be much uglier than before since her smile was so fake. I thought about it and realized that my face may have helped me a lot in the past, but I just hadn’t paid much attention to it before.

I grabbed my cell phone the moment she went in to get the tissues. She came out and gave me a whole pack of them. I didn’t know why, but I felt as if she looked a bit disgusted.

I stuffed the tissues into the express envelope and then turned on my phone. I enlarged the video and immediately saw that Uncle Two had been in Room 219 on the third floor, which was empty now. I quickly wrote the tulou’s address and this room number down on the express envelope and then went back to my seat. I asked Xiang Dun for his phone, checked to see that it still had eighty percent battery power left, and then put it into the envelope. I stated on the express delivery slip that it had to be signed for by hand and then sent it directly to the front desk.

Xiang Dun collapsed back into his chair, “Big brother, I have a lot of selfies on that.”

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like you rely on this to make money anyways.” I lowered my head and started eating while giving him a pat, “I’ll buy you an iPhone X if you lose it.”

“What are you doing?” He didn’t understand.

“Just wait until tomorrow,” I said.

At that moment, four or five people came in and sat down beside us. They were all from the fourth floor and gave us curious looks. I immediately recognized one of them as Hong Ding Shuixian.

He was squinting at me, so I spoke to Xiang Dun in the Longyan dialect. It wasn’t standard, but outsiders really couldn’t understand it. At the same time, I noticed that a person behind Hong Ding Shuixian was also looking at me. It was a woman with short hair and a contemptuous look on her face.

<Chapter 137><Table of Contents><Chapter 139> 

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TN Notes:

(1) It’s a Fujian dish that’s basically meat from 9 parts of a cow. I found some info here.