Chapter 219: Snake Swamp Ghost City (Part 2) Reunion

The moment I recognized that voice, I should have had countless reactions—confusion, anger, surprise, doubt, terror, and so on—but in truth, my mind went completely blank.

Hearing his voice here was utterly beyond my expectations. In my mind, Poker-face could be anywhere in the world right now, or even not of this world, but there was absolutely no reason for him to be here.

Indeed! How could he be here? What was he doing here? Was the person who sent the videotapes really him? Was he hiding here? Or, like me, had he followed some clue and tracked it here? After my mind went blank, countless questions surged like a tide, and I couldn't think at all. At the same time, the scene of him walking into the bronze door reappeared in my mind. A sudden impulse rose up, and I wanted to grab him, choke him, and demand to know what the hell he was up to.

But in reality, he had his hand over my mouth. In the dark, I couldn't make a sound, couldn't move, and I could clearly feel that his strength was continuous. He had no intention of letting go—he planned to keep me pinned like this. That made me very uncomfortable. I struggled harder, but he pressed down even more, almost making it impossible for me to breathe.

Then I heard the wooden door I had just closed make a very harsh creaking sound as something pushed it open.

That thing came out. I took a deep breath and immediately went silent, holding my breath, no longer struggling, and focused intently on sensing any movement in the darkness.

Instantly, the entire room fell into absolute silence. Without the interference of my own voice, I immediately heard more sounds—extremely faint breathing, almost right next to my head.

It was Poker-face's breathing. Damn it, he was alive. When I saw him walk through that door earlier, I thought for sure he was done for, that he had walked into hell.

Poker-face must have sensed that I had quieted down. The hand pressing on me loosened slightly, but he still didn't let go. The surroundings quickly became so quiet that I could even hear my own heartbeat.

We remained frozen like statues for who knows how long, until I heard a very strange "puffing" sound coming from the direction of the door.

After another moment, all sounds stopped. The hand covering my mouth finally let go completely. Suddenly, a fire starter was lit, and my eyes were momentarily dazzled.

It took me a while to adjust. Squinting, I saw that familiar face clearly appear before me.

Poker-face looked almost exactly the same as when he disappeared a few months ago. The only difference was that he had some stubble on his face, which surprised me. But on closer inspection, I realized it wasn't stubble—it was dust stuck to his skin.

My mind was completely frozen. I just stared at him stupidly, forgetting all the questions I had thought of earlier. For a moment, I had nothing to say. But he seemed indifferent to me, just glancing at me casually without asking anything, then carefully crouched and moved to the door, shining the fire starter inside, and then actually closed the door.

After closing the door, he stood up directly, raised the fire starter to illuminate the ceiling, and began searching for something. I was furious. Several times I wanted to blurt out questions, but he stopped me with gestures.

His movements were very quick and forceful, making me feel pressed for time. His behavior baffled me, and my gaze followed the light of his fire.

The fire starter's light wasn't strong, but in such darkness, combined with my own imagination, I quickly understood the state of the room.

When I came in, I hadn't noticed the basement ceiling. Now looking up, I saw it was covered with pipes, just like a modern garage. The pipes were coated with a layer of whitish paint, and you could tell they had been renovated several times, with old paint still showing through. The ceiling was whitewashed, but most of the plaster had peeled off, exposing sections of brick. It seemed that the Corpse Lady had been crawling along that.

But how could such a thing be here? What the hell was going on?

Poker-face looked around carefully but quickly. The fire starter went out midway, and he quickly lit another one. Confirming that nothing was hidden there, he came back to me.

"It didn't follow out," he said quietly, looking at the door.

All my questions were about to explode from my mouth. But unexpectedly, he turned to me, made a gesture for me to be quiet, and then asked lightly, "What are you doing here?"

My blood instantly rushed to my head. I wanted to jump up and strangle him. I thought, "Your grandfather's turtle-feather club! You ask me? I haven't even asked you yet! Did I want to come here myself? If it weren't for those videotapes, I would never have come here even if I died!"

I gritted my teeth and wanted to curse, but looking at his face, I couldn't let loose like I could with Fatty. The curse wouldn't come out, which almost gave me internal injuries. I gritted my teeth and endured for a long time before answering, "It's a long story. You… how are you here? What the hell is this place? You, you, you… back then, didn't you go through that door? What the hell is going on here?"

These questions were hard to articulate. My mind was already in a mess, and I didn't know how to phrase them to make sense.

"It's a long story," Poker-face said, whether he simply didn't want to answer or was avoiding it. While I was asking, his attention was focused on the huge stone outer coffin. I looked—yes, the lid of the stone outer coffin had been pushed aside, revealing a large gap. But inside it was pitch black, and I couldn't see anything.

I hated it when he was like this. I remembered that every time I asked about key issues, he almost always gave me this reaction. I wanted to ask again immediately. But before I could open my mouth, Poker-face waved his hand at me, signaling me to be quiet again, and looked into the coffin.

I was too familiar with that gesture. Though I didn't know what was happening, I reflexively shut my mouth and also leaned in to look inside the coffin. As Poker-face extended the fire starter, I saw that the coffin was actually empty. I could see a clean stone bottom, as if nothing had ever been placed there. But strangely, there was a hole in the bottom of the coffin.

I was curious, and then I heard faint sounds coming from that hole. I listened carefully, but couldn't make them out. After a moment, suddenly a hand reached out from the hole. A person crawled out of the narrow opening like an eel, then flipped over through the gap in the coffin lid and landed lightly in front of us.

I was startled. The person landed, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, glanced at Poker-face, then raised something in his hand and said softly, "Got it."

The latter seemed to have been waiting for this moment. He slapped me on the back and said quietly, "Let's go!" I followed them, carefully tiptoeing back the way we came. But after only two or three steps, I heard the door to the corridor behind us creak open.

The person in front cursed and started running. I immediately followed, sprinting wildly, stumbling and scrambling back out. We didn't stop until we had rushed back through the yard and over the wall.

I was exhausted, panting heavily, but the two of them showed no sign of stopping. After jumping over the wall, they ran outward, ignoring me. I thought, "There's no way I'm letting you get away this time," and chased after them.

We ran desperately again, all the way out of the old city. Suddenly, a minibus burst out of the darkness. The door swung open, and the two of them rushed over and jumped in. The van had no intention of waiting for me; the door began to close immediately. Someone must have held it for me, or I wouldn't have made it in.

I was gasping for breath. That run was utterly chaotic. As soon as I got on the bus, I collapsed, closing my eyes and sucking in several breaths before recovering.

I immediately looked around. I was stunned—the van was full of people, all looking at me with knowing smirks. And what surprised me most was that I recognized many of them. I saw several particularly familiar faces.

Heaven! It was the entire surviving team from A Ning's group, the mixed Chinese and foreign crew I'd spent a lot of time with in Jilin.

Seeing my shocked expression, a few who knew me well laughed. A Caucasian said to me in broken Chinese, "Super Wu (the nickname A Ning gave me), fate brings us together across great distances." Then I saw A Ning's head pop out from behind a seat, looking at me with great surprise.

I looked at Poker-face, then at the guy who had climbed out of the stone coffin—a stranger in sunglasses. Neither of them was even out of breath, and they both stared at me. Suddenly, I felt extremely confused and demanded, "You bunch of asses, can anyone tell me what the hell is going on?"

A Ning said, "Shouldn't I be asking you that? How did you end up in that basement?"

The Iveco sped along, directly exiting Golmud's urban area and charging into the Gobi Desert. Inside the vehicle, the window showed only darkness, and I knew nothing of this.

Along the way, I had a long talk with A Ning, exchanging everything about our respective sides.

It turned out that A Ning had also found the address and key in the videotape. Apparently, among the "three people" mentioned in Wenjin's notes, one was her. After discovering this secret, she immediately split the work in two directions: sending people to look for the address here, and personally coming to Hangzhou to test me. She wanted to know if I was aware of the contents of the videotape.

However, she didn't expect that I had also received such a tape, and that after she came to find me, I set off for Golmud as quickly as possible, arriving at that ghost building almost at the same time as they did.

(It was a good thing my actions this time were so fast and precise, without too much hesitation; otherwise, I definitely wouldn't have seen that notebook. The thought still scares me, but at the same time I felt a little happy. I touched the notebook in my pocket—this was the first time I'd achieved such a big result acting on my own. It seems Grandfather was right: it's better to be proactive when doing things.) After that, I asked A Ning about Poker-face and how they ended up together.

A Ning laughed and said, "What? If your Third Uncle can afford them, why can't we? These two have a fixed price. Right now, they're our consultants."

As she said that, the black-glasses guy grinned and waved at me.

"Consultants?" Mentioning consultants reminded me of Fatty, and I thought to myself that A Ning had learned her lesson and hired someone reliable this time. But it felt strange that Poker-face would become A Ning's consultant—I had a slight sense of betrayal.

At that moment, the Caucasian beside me spoke up: "Don't listen to her nonsense. These two are now our partners, directly assigned by our boss. Ning is just a deputy now. From now on, they'll be in charge of the main operations; we're only handling intelligence and backup. It's safer that way. The boss said, let professionals handle professional matters."

"That must be because too many people died at Cloud Summit," I thought, recalling the situation then. I asked, "So what's the whole story about? The content of the videotapes, and the corpse woman inside—do you have any leads?"

These people all shook their heads, and their gazes turned to Poker-face and the black-glasses guy. A Ning glared at them, then gave me a wink and said, "We don't know the specifics either. Probably about the same as what you know. We're all acting according to what they say now. These two friends are hard to communicate with."

After hearing all this, I turned to Poker-face, unable to hold back any longer. I had to ask him clearly and make him tell me what was really going on.

But before I could get ready, a sudden stir broke out in the car. The Tibetan driver shouted, and everyone started grabbing their luggage.

Then the car slowly came to a stop. The door was flung open, and outside I could already see a sliver of dawn light. A cold wind from the Gobi rushed in fiercely.

I was shoved out of the car, and then I saw a sight that left me dumbfounded: more than a dozen Land Rovers were lined up in the Gobi, a huge pile of supplies stacked on the ground, campfires one after another. Everywhere I looked there were people in windbreakers, some lying in sleeping bags, and giant satellite dishes and gas lamps set up on one side.

At first glance it looked like a gathering place for self-driving road trip enthusiasts, but a closer look revealed it wasn't—every vehicle had the same paint job, and on each door was a softly rotating staghorn coral logo, clearly the property of A Ning's company.

When they saw us getting off, many people crowded around. A Ning said something to them, and a lot of them cheered.

The scene shocked me. I grabbed the Caucasian, who was high-fiving someone next to me, and asked him what was going on. The Caucasian patted me and said, "Buddy, we're heading to 'Tamutuo.'"