Chapter 44 Reunion

The moment I recognized the voice, I should’ve felt countless emotions, such as confusion, anger, surprise, doubt, fear, etc., but in fact, my mind was completely blank.

I never expected to hear his voice here, because in my mind, Poker-Face could be anywhere in the world right now, or not in this world at all. But there was absolutely no reason for him to be here.

That’s right! Why is he here? What’s he doing here?

Was he really the one who sent the videotapes? Was he hiding here?

Or, like me, did he follow the clues here?

Countless questions suddenly flooded my mind like the tide, but I couldn’t think at all. At the same time, the image of him entering the bronze door appeared in my mind, and I had the sudden impulse to grab him by the throat, strangle him, and ask him what the hell was going on.

But the reality of the situation was much different—it was his hand covering my mouth, preventing me from speaking, and his arm holding me immobile. He wasn’t loosening his grip at all, which meant that he had no intention of letting me go and was planning on keeping me under control like this. It made me so uncomfortable that I started struggling again, but he gripped me even tighter until I could hardly breathe.

At this time, I heard the wooden door that I had closed just now suddenly make a very harsh creaking sound as something pushed it open.

The creature had come out.

I immediately calmed down and stopped struggling. Then, I took a deep breath and held it as I tried to sense any strange movements in the surrounding darkness.

All of a sudden, the whole room became extremely quiet. Now that I wasn’t distracted by the small sounds I had been making before, I immediately noticed other sounds in the room, such as the faint sound of breathing right beside my head.

It was coming from Poker-Face. Fuck, so he was alive after all. When I saw him enter the bronze door, I thought he had died and gone to the underworld.

Poker-Face, probably sensing that I had calmed down, loosened his grip a little but still didn’t let me go. Soon, our surroundings became so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat.

Like two plaster statues, we stood at a stalemate for an unknown amount of time before I suddenly heard a very strange popping sound coming from the direction of the door.

After a while, the sound disappeared, and the hand finally fell from my mouth. Then, a flash of light appeared in the darkness as a fire stick was lit.

I squinted, my eyes taking a long time to adjust before the clear image of that familiar face finally appeared in front of me.

Poker-Face looked almost the same as when he disappeared a few months ago, the only difference being a trace of stubble on his face. I was surprised at first, but after taking a closer look, I realized that it wasn’t stubble, but dust stuck to his face.

My brain didn’t seem to be working, so I just stared at him stupidly, completely forgetting all the questions I wanted to ask him just a few minutes ago. I stood there speechless for a while, but he didn’t seem to care about me—he just glanced at me with an indifferent look on his face and, without asking anything, cautiously walked to the door, used the fire stick to take a look inside, and then shut it.

After closing the door, he raised the fire stick towards the ceiling, as if he were looking for something. I suddenly felt angry and tried to speak several times, but he motioned for me remain silent.

His movements were so quick that it made me feel like he was in a hurry, but I found his overall behavior very confusing. Not knowing what else to do, I simply looked at the part of the ceiling illuminated by his fire stick.

The light wasn’t very strong, but in such darkness, it was enough to get a general idea of the situation in the room.

When I first came in, I didn’t pay attention to the ceiling at all, but now that I was looking, I saw that it was full of pipes covered in a layer of light gray paint, just like a garage. The place had obviously been renovated several times, as evidenced by the old layers of paint that could be seen beneath the faded top coat. The ceiling itself had been painted with white plaster that had flaked off over the years, exposing the bricks underneath. The Forbidden Woman had probably been crawling along these pipes to get around.

But how could such a thing appear in a place like this? Where the hell did it come from?

Poker-Face turned in a circle as he carefully looked at the pipes overhead. He moved so fast that the fire stick went out halfway, but he quickly lit another one. After confirming that nothing was hiding up there, he walked back towards me.

“It didn’t follow you out,” he said softly, looking at the door.

All of my questions almost exploded out of my mouth, but to my surprise, he suddenly turned to look at me and motioned for me to be as quiet as possible. Then, he asked almost casually, “What are you doing here?”

At that moment, it felt like all my blood rushed to my head, and I wanted to jump up and strangle him. You boring ass stump! I thought to myself. How dare you ask me a question before I ask you one of mine! Do you think I wanted to come here by myself?! If it weren’t for those videotapes, I wouldn’t have come here even upon threat of death!

I clenched my teeth, wanting to go off on a rant, but then I looked at his face and found myself unable to let loose like I did with Fatty. Holding back those harsh words had me feeling like I had suffered an internal injury. After taking a few moments to rein my temper in, I replied, “It’s a long story. You…why are you here? What the hell is this place? Y-y-you…didn’t you enter the bronze door at that time? What the hell is going on?”

The questions popped out randomly, my mind such a mess that I couldn’t figure out how to organize them properly.

“Like you said, it’s a long story,” Poker-Face replied. I didn’t know whether he was being intentionally evasive or just didn’t want to answer, but he quickly turned his attention to the huge sarcophagus. I also looked at it and found that the lid really had been pushed open, revealing a large gap that was too dark to see inside.

I hated when he acted like this. Any time I asked him important questions, he would always do this. I wanted to keeping questioning him, but before I could open my mouth, he motioned for me to be quiet and then looked into the coffin.

I was very familiar with this action, so even though I didn’t know what was going on, I reflexively closed my mouth and leaned over to look inside the coffin. Under the light of Poker-Face’s fire stick, I was able to see that the coffin was actually clean and empty, as if nothing had ever been in there. But what surprised me the most was that there was a hole in the bottom of the coffin.

Just as my curiosity was piqued, I suddenly heard a faint sound coming from the hole. I listened carefully, but couldn’t tell what it was. A few seconds later, a hand suddenly stretched out of the hole, and a person crawled out from the narrow opening like a pond loach.⁽¹⁾ He then slipped out of the gap between the coffin and the lid and landed gracefully on his feet in front of us.

I stared at him in shock as he wiped the sweat from his brow, glanced at Poker-Face, raised something in his hand, and whispered, “Got it.”

Poker-Face seemed to have been waiting for this, because he pushed my shoulder and said quietly, “Let’s go!”

I followed after them, carefully retracing the path I had taken before. But I had only made it two or three steps up the staircase when I suddenly heard the door leading to the corridor creak open behind me.

The man leading the way cursed and started running. I immediately rushed after him, running all the way up the stairs and out of the building until we reached the courtyard. But it wasn’t until we climbed over the fence that I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

I was panting from exhaustion, but the two men had no intention of stopping—after climbing over the fence, they kept running without waiting to see if I was following them. I told myself I wouldn’t let them run away this time and quickly chased after them.

I ran as fast as I could, following them out of the old part of the city, when an Iveco van suddenly appeared out of the darkness up ahead. The door flew open and the two men rushed over and jumped in. They obviously didn’t plan to wait for me, because the door was just about to close, but someone must have held it open long enough for me to jump in.

I was so out of breath and exhausted after running so hard that I ended up collapsing as soon as I got in the van. I closed my eyes and took a few moments to catch my breath.

When I finally managed to recover, I looked around and was shocked by what I found—the van was full of people, all of whom were looking at me with polite smiles on their faces. But the most shocking thing was that I actually recognized many of them.

They were all members of A Ning’s team who had survived the adventure to the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds. I had spent a lot of time with this mixed group of Chinese and foreigners when we were in Jilin.

Seeing my surprised face, several of those who were familiar with me started laughing, and one of the Caucasian men said in broken Chinese, “Super Wu (this was a nickname A Ning had given me), it seems we’re destined to meet no matter how far apart we are.” Then I saw A Ning’s face appear from behind one of the seats and look at me in surprise.

I glanced at Poker-Face and then at the man who had climbed out of coffin just now—he was a strange young man who was wearing sunglasses. They both looked at me, neither one out of breath. Suddenly feeling very confused, I asked them, “Which one of you assholes can tell me what’s going on?”

“I should be asking you the same,” A Ning said. “Why were you in that basement?”

The van sped out of Golmud and headed directly into the Gobi Desert, but the view outside the window was so dark that I didn’t know where we were headed.

Along the way, A Ning and I had a long chat about what we’d been doing since we last saw each other.

As it turned out, she had also found the address and key in the videotapes she had received. Apparently, she was one of the “three people” Chen Wen-Jin had mentioned in her notebook. After discovering the secret, A Ning immediately came up with a two-part plan: she asked some people to come here to find the address while she personally went to Hangzhou to see if I knew anything about the videotapes.

But she didn’t expect that I had received two tapes of my own, and that after her visit, I would rush off to Golmud at full speed and find the haunted building at the same time as them.

(It was a good thing I acted quickly this time and didn’t hesitate too much. Otherwise, I definitely wouldn’t have seen the notebook. Thinking about it left me feeling anxious, but at the same time, I was also a little happy. I touched the notebook in my pocket, relishing the fact that this was the first time I had achieved such great results when acting on my own. It seemed that what Grandpa said was right—it really was better to take the initiative when doing things.)

After that, I asked A Ning what she was doing with Poker-Face and how they teamed up.

A Ning smiled and said, “What? You think that just because your Uncle Three can afford him, we can’t? These two stated their price, and now they’re our consultants.”

When she said that, the guy wearing sunglasses grinned and waved at me.

“Consultants?” The word suddenly made me think of Fatty. It seemed that A Ning had learned her lesson and hired someone reliable this time. But it was strange to think of Poker-Face becoming a consultant for A Ning. I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed.

At this time, the Caucasian next to me said, “Don’t listen to her nonsense. These two were directly appointed by our boss, so they’re our partners now. A Ning is just a deputy. While they’re responsible for the main operation, we only provide information and support. It’s much safer this way. The boss said that in the future, we should leave the professional work to the professionals.”

This was probably because too many people had died in the Heavenly Palace. Remembering what happened at that time, I asked, “So what’s going on here? Do you guys know anything about the contents of the videotapes or why the Forbidden Woman was in that basement?”

They all shook their heads and turned their gazes toward Poker-Face and sunglasses guy. A Ning glared at them and then gave me a meaningful look before saying, “We don’t know the specifics. I’d say we probably know about as much as you do. We’re following their orders, but these two aren’t very good at communicating.”

After hearing this, I couldn’t hold it in any longer—I turned to Poker-Face, intending to demand answers from him, but before I could open my mouth, there was a sudden commotion in the vehicle. The Tibetan driver shouted something, and then everyone started gathering their things.

Then, the van slowly came to a stop and the door was flung open. A ray of early morning sunshine could already be seen on the horizon, and a cold wind blew in from the Gobi Desert.

I climbed out of the van and was stunned by the scene before me—more than a dozen Land Rovers were lined up in the sand, a bunch of equipment was piled up on the ground, numerous bonfires were burning, and people in windbreakers were milling around. In addition to the many people lying in sleeping bags, I could also see a huge satellite dish and gas lamps standing off to one side.

It looked like the distribution center where those who wanted to go on self-driving tours could rent vehicles, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that something was different—all the vehicles here were painted the same color and had an acropora⁽²⁾ logo on the door. I could tell at a glance that they all belonged to A Ning’s company.

As we emerged from the van, a bunch of people gathered around. A Ning said something to them, and then everyone started cheering.

The scene left me feeling so confused that I grabbed the Caucasian man who was high-fiving and celebrating with the others and asked him what was going on.

He patted me and said, “Friend, we’re going to Tamu-Tuo.”

<Chapter 43><Table of Contents><Chapter 45>

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TN Notes:

(1) The pond loach is a freshwater fish with a slender, eel-like body.

(2) Acropora is a type of coral that’s sometimes called elkhorn coral or staghorn coral.

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I am SO SORRY. This has been one hell of a week and it’s only Wednesday. But on the bright side, the “Post Restart Sequels” epub/pdf has been updated to include all the chapters up to Chapter 71. And we got our first Black Glasses sighting!! Darkpower, you totally called it last chapter ☆⌒(≧▽​° )