Chapter 290: Subversion

I said: "This... this is what Third Uncle looked like when he was young. I've seen his old black-and-white photos, and this is very similar."

Wenjin laughed and said: "In this world, it's not only photos that can be similar. Two people with blood ties can also look alike."

"Ah?" I was stunned, then suddenly realized something. "Wait, what do you mean? Are you trying to tell me that this person is not my Third Uncle? Then who is he?"

After I finished speaking, I suddenly felt a chill, and scattered fragments from before converged into a face before me.

Blood ties! Similar appearances!

I suddenly had an epiphany: "Impossible, impossible!" I nearly roared. Poker-face immediately held me down. I could no longer control my voice and broke out, "My god, my god, could this person be—Xie Lianhuan?"

Wenjin nodded. I was terrified, every hair on my body standing on end. Countless threads began to connect in my mind. My god, I seemed to understand what was going on.

"The photo resolution isn't high, so it's normal to mistake it, especially given how your Third Uncle described it," Wenjin said. "Anyone would think that."

"Then where is my Third Uncle?"

Wenjin said: "Your Third Uncle was indeed with us at that time, but he is not in this photo. He is outside this photo." She stood the photo up and pointed to the front of it.

Looking at Wenjin's gesture, I suddenly understood. I felt all my blood rushing to my throat. This... this... damn it, what's going on? That's the position of the camera.

That means Third Uncle was taking the picture for them at the time. Then—the eleventh person was not someone else, but Third Uncle himself?

"But that's not right, it doesn't make sense. For a pre-departure group photo like that, why would they let Third Uncle take it? You could have had someone less important take it. For example, Xie Lianhuan was an interloper, yet he stood in such a prominent position, while Third Uncle could only take the photo?" I asked.

Wenjin let out a long sigh: "You still have some insight. You should have felt the problem here. In the version your Third Uncle told you, there are fundamental problems with some things, right from the beginning." She paused. "Let me tell you, actually, at that time, the one who came to me through connections to join the archaeological team was not Xie Lianhuan, but your Third Uncle, Wu Sansheng."

"Ah?" I was momentarily unable to process it.

"Think carefully about the things your Third Uncle told you. Although they seem very smooth, logically they are full of small flaws. How could Jude Kao, an experienced smuggler, choose Xie Lianhuan, who had no underground experience at all, to carry out his plan? At that time in Changsha, the most outstanding person he could find through connections, and the one most interested in overseas smuggling, should have been your Third Uncle. Only your Third Uncle would have the audacity to cooperate with such a dark old fox. Therefore, the person Jude Kao cooperated with was not Xie Lianhuan, but your Third Uncle. And the other advantage of Jude Kao choosing Wu Sansheng was that he and I were dating at the time, so he could easily infiltrate the archaeological team. So this is the most logical explanation."

I nodded, suddenly remembering that Third Uncle had also mentioned something like that. I thought he was just complaining to me at the time, but it turns out he was playing games with me on this point.

"And at that time, Xie Lianhuan was indeed working in my archaeological team. He was a student at the archaeological university. Because of his family connections, his father arranged for him to attend my school. This person was not as useless as your Third Uncle said. Although he had some spoiled tendencies, Xie Lianhuan was extremely talented. The name 'Lianhuan' (linked rings) was given to him by his father when he was three years old because he could already solve the 'Nine Linked Rings' by himself. He was silent and introverted, but very meticulous in his thinking, and his grades were excellent. He entered the university entirely of his own accord." She paused: "You understand now, your Third Uncle reversed everything."

I couldn't process such a complex matter all at once, so I waved my hand and sorted it out in my mind: At that time, Jude Kao found Third Uncle and told him about the Xisha matter. Third Uncle then schemed to join the archaeological team to go to Xisha to find the ancient tomb. Xie Lianhuan had nothing to do with this matter at all.

"But why would he say the opposite? There's no reason for it. I've known he's like this for a long time. Could it be that he deliberately told such a huge lie to maintain his position in my heart? That doesn't fit his personality."

"Why did he do this? You still don't understand? He reversed everything, but the events before the departure to Xisha are not everything. What he really wants to hide are the things that happened afterward."

I carefully recalled the entire process Third Uncle had described, and suddenly felt as if I had fallen into an abyss of ice, all the blood in my body frozen: If everything is reversed, then the most terrifying thing is not these trivial details, but what happened on the night of the incident! So, it wasn't that Xie Lianhuan went into the water and was discovered by Third Uncle, but that Third Uncle secretly went into the water and was discovered by Xie Lianhuan.

Xie Lianhuan might have threatened Third Uncle to take him into the ancient tomb, or else he would tell Wenjin everything. Third Uncle then took him into the tomb, and then Xie Lianhuan triggered a trap inside the tomb.

Everything became perfectly reasonable without any flaws. All events began to align with the characters' backgrounds and personalities.

At the final moment, the version Third Uncle told me was that he left Xie Lianhuan in the tomb and escaped. Then the most unimaginable situation arose.

If it were completely the opposite, and for everything to continue logically, then the one who came out of the tomb should be Xie Lianhuan, and Third Uncle was knocked unconscious and left in the tomb. Then, the one who died at the bottom of the sea was Third Uncle himself! Then who is my current Third Uncle? My god, I dare not imagine further.

Wenjin looked at my expression and then said: "Now you finally understand. The so-called Third Uncle of yours is not Wu Sansheng at all. That is also the reason why your Third Uncle would never tell you the truth, because from the very beginning, everything was wrong. He was swapped with someone else at the bottom of the sea."

"But, but how is that possible? Why didn't anyone in my family notice?"

"That's because your Third Uncle was eccentric in nature. He left home and lived alone when he was in his teens, rarely seeing your family. With just a little makeup and some understanding of your Third Uncle's character, he could muddle through. I think you've also felt it—the current Third Uncle is completely different from the Third Uncle in your childhood memories."

My clothes were completely soaked. When someone disappears for five or six years and then suddenly reappears, people can accept changes in their temperament or appearance. I also felt that the current Third Uncle was much milder in nature than the previous one. When he was young, he was utterly lawless.

After Wenjin finished speaking, I was completely unable to think, or rather, with so many puzzles and speculations in my mind, I suddenly had to reconsider everything. It was too chaotic.

"But why did Third... Xie Lianhuan do that? Why did he swap identities with my Third Uncle?"

"This is an extremely complex situation. First, it might be due to the files. After he returned from the underwater tomb, all of us had disappeared. If he appeared normally at his workplace, his problems would be very serious. Others would investigate him. His background in Changsha was too special, and an investigation would implicate too many people, potentially causing huge trouble. At that time, Wu Sansheng was not officially listed, so his name wasn't in the files, and nobody knew he was connected to this matter. The Xie family weighed the pros and cons and might have chosen this approach. At the same time, he could take over all of Wu Sansheng's assets, which was a great benefit for the declining Xie family. But once this act was put on, it could not end. You know your Second Uncle; in his childhood in Changsha, he was famously a thorny character, absolutely not to be provoked. If he discovered that his younger brother had been killed and replaced, he would surely come after the Xie family. Given the power of Wu Gouye and your grandmother's family, it would be a bloody storm." Wenjin continued, "I have been secretly watching this matter, trying to find a way to inform your family. However, the ability Xie Lianhuan showed afterward made me extremely afraid. He was so meticulous that I felt if I rashly came forward to say this, I might end up being bitten back. So I had no choice but to stay in hiding." I covered my face, feeling resistance in my heart. I felt this couldn't be true, and said, "Then what exactly happened at the bottom of the Xisha sea? Why did you all suddenly disappear? And why were there blood words on the ceiling of the tomb saying 'Wu Sansheng harmed me'? If Xie Lianhuan harmed Third Uncle, then it should have said the opposite! No, no, that doesn't make sense. You must be lying to me too!"

Wenjin looked at me, seeming a bit sad as she grabbed my hand and said softly, "Xiao Xie, you've lived with him for so many years. I know you can't believe this, so I thought about not revealing it. But you are too persistent about this mystery. Even if I don't speak now, I don't think he can keep it hidden much longer. Things have reached this point, and there are too many loopholes. Apart from constantly lying to you, he has no way to get through this. For you to choose not to believe now is already too late."

I thought to myself, it's not that I don't believe, it's that I already believe, otherwise I wouldn't feel so uncomfortable. I calmed down and asked, "I know. Go on. I'm just venting. This is a bit hard to take."

Wenjin placed my hand on her small palm and patted it. I immediately felt a warmth pass through. She continued, "What comes next, you might find even harder to believe."

Third Uncle suddenly drowned. When he was found, his hand was clutching the snake-browed bronze fish, clearly indicating he had ulterior motives and was punished by his own actions. Wenjin was grief-stricken, but the situation was urgent, and she had to continue leading the team and go down to the bottom of the sea.

The process after that was basically consistent with what "Third Uncle", that is, Xie Lianhuan, later told me. Probably because he was afraid that the real Third Uncle might have left some clue about him in the underwater tomb, he pretended to be unwell. After they began surveying the tomb, he secretly followed behind, and ended up being blocked outside the Eight Gates of Mystic Array.

For him, Wenjin and the others seemed to vanish into the ancient tomb from that point on, never to reappear. That was why he conceived the idea of impersonating Third Uncle and swapping identities. After being rescued, when people asked his name, he gave the fisherman who saved him the name Wu Sansheng. Otherwise, it would definitely have aroused suspicion later. This was clearly carefully thought out; Wenjin said that Xie Lianhuan was meticulous, and it was indeed true.

As for Wenjin and the others, they advanced deeper until they reached the hall containing the Cloud Summit Palace model, but they were drugged unconscious by someone who closely resembled Third Uncle. How could that be? Wenjin said, "If I tell you, you might find it even harder to believe." I thought to myself that at this point, belief didn't really matter anymore, so I told her not to worry about my feelings.

Wenjin then said, "The person who drugged us unconscious at that time was not someone who resembled your Third Uncle; he was precisely your Third Uncle."

With all this talk of one Third Uncle here and another there, I was getting confused about the real and fake Third Uncle. So I said to her, "Let's use their real names. You mean the one who drugged you was indeed Wu Sansheng. But wasn't his corpse found?"

"We made a mistake. The corpse we found in the sea was not Wu Sansheng. It should have been one of Jude Kao's first batch of hires. That group failed, but they brought out a detailed map of the ancient tomb, which is why Jude Kao was able to provide such good information. The corpse's face had been smashed by rocks and was swollen, and the diving suit on him was identical to the one Wu Sansheng had gotten from Jude Kao, so we concluded he was Wu Sansheng. Actually, I had some doubts at the time, but I had no experience identifying corpses like that, and the diving suit was a unique style—it was too convincing."

"Then, according to what the young man recalled later, when you first saw him, he first pretended to be a woman, then hid from you, escaped into the cave behind the mirror, and drugged you all. Why did he do that?"

"Because he thought Xie Lianhuan had already told me everything," Wenjin said. "He thought I came in to confront him. It might have been manageable if it were just me, but the entire archaeological team came down. Obviously, he believed his actions were completely exposed, which at the time was an extremely serious crime. As the team leader, I couldn't favor him in front of so many people. He had to take measures on his own without implicating me, so he decided to drug us unconscious and then figure out the next step."

"So that's how the final scene happened," I continued. "That does make sense. But what about those blood-written characters?"

"Those blood characters are your problem—you misunderstood them yourself," Wenjin said. "Think about it. How were those characters actually arranged?"

I thought to myself, how could it be misunderstood? It was so clear. I dipped my finger in the water from my flask and wrote down those characters on the stone wall beside me from memory.

Wu Hai Xie

San Wo Lian

Sheng Si Huan

Bu

Ming

Mu

As soon as I looked, I was stunned and suddenly understood what was going on: "Oh my god, I got the order reversed!"

I had been doing rubbings for too long; everything on a rubbing is reversed. I had been reading all vertical texts in reverse, accustomed to reading from left to right, but this could be read either way, and the meanings were completely opposite.

"Damn it," I cursed. I thought to myself, Third Uncle's education level was indeed not high; he was well-versed in hypocritical learning and unorthodox methods, but when writing, he didn't use his brain at all. This bloody message was enough to make one spit blood.

"You're not skeptical anymore, are you?" Wenjin said.

I nodded awkwardly: "What happened next?"

Her expression then changed, and she said, "As for what happened after that, I still can't understand it to this day. Because when we woke up, we were no longer in the underwater tomb, but in a basement. A very old basement, like the civil defense tunnels from the 1950s and 1960s. Inside was a black stone coffin. We could see the exit of the basement, but it was sealed shut, and no matter what we did, we couldn't open it. Moreover, looking at the date on our watches, it was already more than a week after we had fallen unconscious."

"Was that in the sanatorium in Golmud?" I asked.

She nodded, paused, and said, "We were missing a few people. Qiling was already gone, and the others were trapped there. Moreover, we discovered that we were being watched."