“I am your father,” I repeated.
“You are, you are.” The waiter glanced at the money and then looked around, “Are you with Master Black?”
I felt my heart thump. Black Glasses, you really are the type of person to leave intelligence everywhere you go.
“Is there any news?” I asked the waiter softly.
He took another drag of his cigarette and said in my ear, “Master Black asked me to tell you: Live well.”
Then he stepped back and made a gesture of cheering me on. I stared at him blankly for a few seconds and then grabbed his collar, “Just that one sentence?”
The waiter nodded, “Just that one sentence. It seems that you love that woman very much. What happened to you? Although we men might find it emotionally unbearable, you don’t have to kill yourself. Look at you. You’re a nice, mature man. Just start over again. I also plan to go back to Cangzhou and live a good life.”
I thought about it for a moment and then hooked my arm around his shoulders, “It can’t just be that one sentence. You didn’t do anything when you received the money, did you?”
He shook his head and became angry. “Your business is none of my business! Why should I hide it from you?” As he spoke, he took out the money. “If you don’t believe me, just take the money back.”
I looked into his eyes and knew that he wasn’t lying to me. Unless they were an expert liar, ordinary people usually gave away their lies with their eyes. I bit my lower lip and pushed the money back towards him. “I believe you, but can you tell me why he asked you to pass on those words? It has nothing to do with my feelings. I’m just worried about my friend. If he’s sending me this kind of message, doesn’t it seem like he has a problem?”
The waiter paused, thought about it for a moment, and then took a deep breath, “Now that you mention it, I really think that guy was in a bad state when he said this. He was with a group of people. When they came back here, he said those words to me.”
“And then?”
“They disappeared after that. The room rate was deducted from the deposit, so I guess they left without notice,” the waiter said.
I looked at him and suddenly felt a jolt go through my heart. Left without notice…
Why would they leave without notice?
Before, I had countless uneasy thoughts and numerous theories that didn’t pan out. But now I turned around, looked at the distant mountains, and quietly asked, “Do you know which direction they came back from?”
“There.” The waiter pointed to a hill in the distance.
I stood up and ran more than a dozen steps before I had to stop and take a breather. I continued running and stopping to gasp for breath until I finally reached the top of the hill and looked back at the tulou.
My heart was racing, I was sweating all over, and my lungs were spasming as I looked at the tulou from that hillside.
The whole tulou looked exactly the same as that upside-down bell I saw in Yang Daguang’s ancestral tomb.
This tulou was a giant sound-collecting device.
I shouted and smacked my head, feeling that I was really stupid for wasting so much time in the tulou. I should have noticed this when I first saw it from the road.
They didn’t check out, but still left without notice. But instead of leaving the tulou, they had actually entered its depths. The entrance to the calling spring was inside the tulou. That was why Black Glasses left that kind of message for me before returning to his room.
So, Xiao Hua and the others really had stayed behind closed doors on the fifth floor with all the windows covered. I had made so many stupid predictions and thought I was so clever, but it was all wrong.
The entrance of the calling spring was in the tulou. Xiao Hua and the others didn’t have to go out at all! And he didn’t need to be in any kind of conflict with the fourth floor because those people would never guess the truth.
After such a big accident, Uncle Two and the others were injured and must have secretly withdrawn from the tulou. As a result, none of them settled the bill. If they had gotten into trouble in the forest, then they would’ve checked out of their rooms and left the tulou without leaving any messages.
I stood there stunned as I looked at the shape of the tulou. If this was a huge sound-collecting device, then what was under the tulou?
MereBear's Translation 