Chapter 208: The True Secret of the Videotape: Invitation from Hell

Louwailou is not far from my shop. I rushed back. Wang Meng gets off work at 5:15 and never stays a half minute longer; he had already locked up. I unlocked the door and went in, entered the inner room. The tapes A Ning brought were taken back by her, so I took out my own tapes. Fatty followed me in and helped me connect the power.

But I didn't plan to watch it again. Instead, I rummaged through a few drawers and found a screwdriver.

Fatty didn't understand and asked me what I was doing. My mind was churning, and I didn't bother to answer him as I started disassembling the tape.

If my idea was right, this matter was damn well extremely simple, so simple I'd even done it many times before.

Two tapes, one of which was blank. That meant the content inside was completely unimportant. The other party wanted to send me the tape itself, not for us to watch the content. So whether it was blank or had images made no difference. Then there was only one reason he sent this tape, a reason so simple it couldn't be simpler. And my hypothesis was very easy to verify.

Back in middle school, I had tinkered with these things quite a bit. Disassembling wasn't hard. In a few quick moves, I separated the tape. Then I carefully picked up one side and shook it. Fatty, who was watching, let out a startled cry.

Inside the tape, on the inner side of one plastic shell, there was indeed a piece of something attached.

"Son of a bitch, how did you think of that?" Fatty exclaimed in surprise.

I grinned, not bothering to laugh, and patted him, saying, "That was your idea." I tore off the thing and looked at it. "Ah," I exclaimed, feeling my heart twist.

It was a sticky note, with over a dozen words scribbled on it very hastily.

No. 349-5, De'er Can Lane, Kunlun Road, Golmud City, Qinghai Province.

Anyone literate would know at a glance that it was an address in Golmud City.

"Damn it," I said, unable to help slipping into a Beijing accent. I wiped the sweat off my head, feeling a kind of joy. I had finally guessed something right. It turned out I had been overthinking things.

This was killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it protected this thing from damage during long-distance transport. On the other, if this item was intercepted, the interceptor wouldn't think of it hiding something inside, especially if the content of the tape was enough to attract the interceptor's attention.

I understood clearly. It was certain that the interceptor the other party was guarding against was my Third Uncle, because only Third Uncle would be shocked by the content. And indeed, he was completely absorbed by the content of the tape.

This was obvious with just a little deduction. If he had directly sent the address, under those circumstances, it would inevitably have fallen into Third Uncle's hands, just like the copy of the Warring States silk manuscript at the very beginning.

Having figured that out, I felt extremely refreshed. I immediately disassembled the other tape. This tape didn't have a slip of paper, but an old brass key, the kind for a 480 lock that was most popular in the 1980s.

Picking it up and looking closely, I could see the key was a bit old, the brass had turned dark. On the back of the key head, there was a piece of tape with a blurry string of numbers: 306.

"Looks like the other party wants to invite you over," Fatty said from the side. "They've even reserved a room for you."