Chapter 28 The Eleventh Person

I had already noticed this long ago, but didn’t bothering mentioning it to him. On the one hand, the image wasn’t very clear so I wasn’t sure if I was just mistaken; on the other hand, I figured he’d realize it soon enough.

When Uncle Three paused the video and moved in closer to get a better look, I did this same, wanting to take a closer look to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.

After staring for a while, there was no doubt that the Huo Ling in the video was no more than thirty years old. It wasn’t that she looked young, it was the fact that she still had a girlish figure. That wasn’t the kind of thing an older woman pretending to be younger could pull off. Moreover, I couldn’t help but admit that this Huo Ling was really cute. It wasn’t surprising that most of the men in the archaeological team were crazy about her. Although the quality of this black-and-white screen was much worse than that of a color screen, the slightly confused look in her eyes and her delicate facial features still made my heart race. With an appearance like that, she must’ve been full of self-confidence and always the center of attention growing up. But then she met the stoic Poker-Face, who completely ignored her. Put in this perspective, her reaction in the tomb appeared quite logical, but now it seems that this reaction may have been fake. If that were true, then this woman must be an amazing actress.

Uncle Three’s expression was dark as he settled back on the sofa and clicked his tongue, “We already had one like this, and now there’s another one. Damn it, are all the missing archeological team members like this? What happened to them afterwards?”

I thought about it and then shook my head, telling Uncle Three not to jump to conclusions. We didn’t know the exact year when this video was recorded. While the style of the phone may have come from the ‘90s, that was only a few years after she had disappeared from the undersea tomb. We didn’t know how old Huo Ling was at that time—if she was only seventeen or eighteen, then in ten years’ time, she would still only be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. We couldn’t say with any certainty that she hadn’t aged.

Uncle Three muttered to himself, obviously not paying attention to anything I said. Then he pressed played, and we continued to watch the video.

But to our surprise, within a few minutes, the image disappeared and static filled the screen.

We thought it was a problem with the tape itself, and waited for a while, but the static didn’t go away. Uncle Three fast-forwarded to the end, but it was still the same.

“What’s going on?” He grumbled, raising his hand like he was going to smack the VCR. He was never very good with electronics and must have thought that it was broken.

I quickly stopped him, ejected the tape from the VCR, and examined it to make sure there wasn’t any mildew inside. That was when I realized what was wrong. “It was erased,” I explained to him.

Based on how the video was playing without any interruption just now, there should be something recorded after it, but all we saw was static, which meant that it had been erased.

The tape hadn’t been touched since it was delivered to me, and the VCR had just been bought, so it wasn’t the result of mishandling. This meant that the tape must have been erased before it was sent. But if it was done intentionally, why didn’t they erase what was before instead of leaving such a strange recording? Did they not want us to see what came afterward?

Uncle Three and I looked at each other, completely confused. What did Poker-Face mean by this? Was he just messing with us? No, that was impossible. He wasn’t the type to do such a thing.

Uncle Three thought about it some more before asking me to put the tape back in the VCR. He wanted to rewind it and watch it again to see if there was anything we might have missed just now. After all, we had fast-forwarded through the first part of the video, and didn’t look very carefully.

This time, we watched the whole thing second by second, the room completely silent. If our eyes had any power, the TV might have caught on fire from how hard we were staring at it. But after watching the whole thing with bloodshot eyes, we still didn’t find any clues that could help us.

We decided to try the other tape next, but this one was even weirder—it was completely blank, with nothing but static. We watched the whole thing twice, but only ended up feeling dizzy.

We had initially been very excited to watch the tapes, but now we just felt frustrated and confused. At first, I thought I might be able to see what was behind the bronze door, but it never occurred to me that the tapes would contain such strange content.

After turning the VCR off, Uncle Three and I tried to figure out what was going on. But after thinking about it for a long time, we realized that we didn’t even know where to start.

I told Uncle Three about the information I had found yesterday regarding the package being sent from the city of Golmud in Qinghai Province. From this, we could assume that Poker-Face had sent us this package from Qinghai, and that he might still be in Golmud even now. Maybe he had found these two tapes in Golmud and then sent them to us?

It was impossible to verify, but the first tape did tell us one thing—those people who disappeared from the undersea tomb obviously hadn’t died, and were still alive in the ‘90s. But there was something odd about their behavior. Most of them should have died in the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds, but I didn’t tell Uncle Three that. I was afraid he might have a meltdown since there was a chance that Chen Wen-Jin was among them.

After that, I forced myself to watch the videos several times, but I still couldn’t find anything useful. Uncle Three wanted to keep watching, so I decided to head back to my room to catch up on some sleep. Later, Uncle Three made copies of the tapes and returned the originals to me. A few days later, Pan Zi heard that Uncle Three woke up, so he came to Jilin to pick him up.

This time, Uncle Three’s business had suffered a huge loss—his employees had either been arrested or fled, and his own reputation in Changsha had plummeted. But Uncle Three didn’t care. To him, money was just a symbol. Before he left, he told me to leave this matter alone, even if it looked like there was more to it. I was lucky before, and had people around who were willing to protect me. But I shouldn’t push my luck—God would only watch out for me for so long. I would do well to go back to my shop and focus on that instead. And who knows, maybe I’d be able to take over his business in the future.

I nodded, while thinking to myself, that’s totally fine with me. I don’t think I can live the kind of life you do. My old job is much stabler and calmer.

Not much was said after that. Once Uncle Three left, I also prepared to head back to Hangzhou, but I decided to stay in Jilin for a few more days. I contacted a few friends who lived nearby to see if they wanted to hang out and reminisce about the old days.

Some of my college classmates lived in Changchun, so they stopped by to visit me. As we walked around and talked about the past, I found my mood gradually improving. Later, I showed them around the antique markets in the city and helped them pick out a few things. Little by little, two weeks went by.

After experiencing so much, I no longer cared about the little things. I used to try to barter when shopping around, but now I thought it was easier to simply hand over the money and take the goods. Unfortunately, this meant that I had less and less money each day.

My friends were surprised at my sudden change, finding it hard to believe that a cheapskate like me would be willing to spend money so freely. They all asked me what had brought it about.

During one of our meals, I told them about the exciting things I had experienced (in short, I was bragging) but none of them believed me. One of them smiled and said, “Those people you said went down into the undersea tomb, are they the ones in the photo you asked me to look into?”

When I heard him say that, I suddenly remembered that I had found the photo on the internet with the words “I have the fish” written on it. At that time, I asked this person to help me look for information on it, but all we learned was that it had been posted online in Jilin. After that, the matter was forgotten.

Now that I thought about it, though, the photo’s presence on the internet was pretty strange. The internet had only really developed significantly in recent years, so who exactly had posted the photo?

But since the topic had been brought up, I decided to ask my friend if he had learned anything more about it. He shook his head, obviously not as invested in the matter as I was, before saying, “The photo is too ordinary and too old. Plus, information from that era generally isn’t available online. I could only use my technical skills to identify the IP address that uploaded it. If you really want to find any information, you’ll have to go to the National Archives and find out which archaeological team with eleven people disappeared twenty years ago. That’s probably the only way you’ll find anything.”

I thought it over and realized that he was right. But then another friend, who was sitting next to me, spoke up, “You remembered wrong. I also saw that photo, and there are only ten people in it.”

The first shook his head and said, “No, I think there are eleven people.”

I felt my heart thump as I asked him, “Why?”

He smiled and said, “There are ten people in the photo, but there should have been another person who took the photo. Did you not think of that?”

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