Chapter 24 Resurrected From The Dead

My whole body suddenly broke out in goose bumps and I almost took a step back—I didn’t expect Uncle Three to name this person.

It took a while before I was finally able to react, and stammer, “H-how is that possible?”

“How? We were fucking cousins. We were similar in many ways, especially back in those days—everyone practically wore the same clothes and had the same hairstyles. If what you said is true, then he’s the only one who meets all the conditions.”

“But…wasn’t he already dead at that time?” I asked, confused.

Uncle Three took a deep breath, lay back for a moment, and frowned, “Indeed, he must have died at that time. When we found the body, it was already stiff and bloated to the point that it would have been absolutely impossible for it to revive. But apart from this explanation, I can’t think of any other way to prove that Little Brother and I are innocent. There’s also the fact that the boat carrying Xie Lianhuan’s body never made it back to shore. Both he and the fishermen on board were declared missing at sea.” He paused before adding, “Sometimes I wonder if I underestimated Xie Lianhuan too much.”

I suddenly felt a chill come over me, “What do you mean? Are you saying he faked his own death?”

Uncle Three nodded, “I investigated everyone’s background, but didn’t find anything suspicious. And after thinking about it, I’m starting to wonder if Xie Lianhuan wasn’t actually dead at that time. Maybe he snuck back to the boat and partnered up with Huo Ling to orchestrate this plot? If so, then everything that happened has a rational explanation. But I was the one who examined his body at that time, and I remember very clearly that it wasn’t a fake. That was why I later dismissed this possibility. But after hearing what you said just now, I think that if he didn’t die, then everything can be explained.”

I shook my head and said, “Since you’re so sure that he’s dead, let’s not think about this possibility. Xie Lianhuan wasn’t a zombie, so there must be some other explanation.”

Uncle Three sighed and told me to drop the matter for now—we had too little information and Little Brother wasn’t around, so it would be a fruitless discussion. When everyone was together again, we could analyze it from the beginning and maybe figure something out.

I immediately agreed with him. On one side was Uncle Three’s version of events, and on the other side was Poker-Face’s version—both were just subjective accounts. Without an unbiased third version, all of our theories and conclusions might incorrectly be influenced by their versions. So, I told Uncle Three to keep going with his story.

Uncle Three kept it very brief. After he came out of the undersea tomb, he began to investigate the whole thing. Since he had learned of Qiu Dekao’s plan from Xie Lianhuan, he thought that the foreigner might be the key to solving the mystery. So, he focused all of his attention on investigating the man while looking for the whereabouts of the missing archeological team. Afterwards, he contacted Qiu Dekao several times, but the foreigner never disclosed any information. This continued until the Seven Star Lu Palace, where Qiu Dekao encountered yet another failure.

At that time, Qiu Dekao learned that where his entire time was completely annihilated, Uncle Three’s team was able to get away without much loss. That was when he began to realize that maybe his methods were completely wrong. So, he met with Uncle Three and they had a long conversation, the contents of which Uncle Three told me about earlier.

But Uncle Three turned out to be a disaster star for Qiu Dekao. After the two agreed to cooperate, Uncle Three entered the undersea tomb again, this time with the purpose of taking photographs of the murals. But Uncle Three already knew what Qiu Dekao’s immediate goal was, so just as Qiu Dekao betrayed my grandpa in Changsha, Uncle Three betrayed Qiu Dekao—he used the foreigner’s resources to enter the ancient tomb, and then forced his companions to reveal all of their secrets. Using this information, he discovered that their next goal was the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds, so he made arrangements to try and beat them there.

Quite a few things happened during this period of time, but it would be too cumbersome to write everything down, so I’ll just mention them briefly.

A Ning approached me afterwards, but that wasn’t part of Uncle Three’s plan. He said that if I thought about it, I would realize that it was impossible for him to send them my way—at my level, becoming his replacement was essentially asking for death. How could he possibly put me in harm’s way like that? A Ning had clearly deceived me. At that time, they thought that I was also a skilled master since I made it out of the Seven Star Lu Palace, so they decided to use this method to trick me.

Uncle Three said that the reason why he didn’t want to tell me too much at that time was because he was afraid that I would get involved in this matter. Unfortunately, Qiu Dekao knew a lot about what happened in the Seven Star Lu Palace, so he had his people contact everyone who was there. I was brought in by deception, Fatty was bought, and Little Brother probably decided to sneak into the team after learning about the matter.

Everything that happened after that was very clear. After obtaining the pictures of the murals, Uncle Three set off directly for the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds, hoping to reach it before A Ning. But he didn’t feel confident robbing such a big tomb by himself, so he left a message for Pan Zi. He had no intention of letting me participate in the expedition, but apparently that Brother Chu guy leaked the information and told Chen Pi Ah Si about it. The old man forced his way onto the team and told Brother Chu to pull me in as well so that he could use me to coerce Uncle Three into cooperating. At that time, their group was very powerful, so they specially asked a soft-legged shrimp like me to come along as nothing more than a backup option.

Uncle Three shook his head and said, “The guy I worked with for so many years saw that his business was failing and immediately ran over to Chen Pi Ah Si’s side. What a fucking joke. Him getting caught and put in jail is divine retribution.”

Qiu Dekao betrayed Grandpa, Uncle Three betrayed Qiu Dekao, Brother Chu betrayed Uncle Three, and then A Ning betrayed us. Humans were horrible creatures.

Uncle Three’s experience in the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds was also very scary. Traveling alone, he followed the clues in the murals the whole way, but ended up falling into a trap and was eventually saved by us. While all these small details were very interesting, there’s no need to elaborate on them here. At that time, I was already covered in a cold sweat from his previous story, so I didn’t think much about the fact that he breezed through the rest of it. It was only much later when I realized that Uncle Three might have hidden something from me at this time, but the realization only came after a lot of time had passed.

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