Chapter 455: Not Strange at All

Fatty finished speaking and walked back, muttering something as he went, making it look like he and I had had an unpleasant conversation, so I had to cooperate with some helpless expressions.

On the way back, I saw them chatting. Xiuxiu waited for me to sit down and then quietly asked what Fatty and I had been talking about.

I said I'd tell her later, it wasn't convenient, and brushed her off. Pibao's expression also seemed a bit strange, though I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination, so I asked what they were talking about.

Xiuxiu understood my intention and immediately said, "We were talking about the Old Nine Gates. It's said that when the army was in Changsha, the troops had people from all over, including refugees from various places. At that time, many high officials and nobles in the capital could sing a few lines of Beijing opera, so when the army entered Beijing after the founding of New China, they didn't end up playing flower-drum opera all the way. Those old stories come up in casual conversation, but it's a good thing that Second Master's family later declined; otherwise, in this era, I don't know what they would have to pretend to be. Nowadays, people are distant; we guard less against outsiders, but our own people have become a major worry."

Xiuxiu was talking about her two older brothers. From what she said along the way, these two were considered prominent young gentlemen in Beijing, but not particularly outstanding. They had long been dissatisfied with Old Madam Huo's appreciation for Xiao Hua, and Pibao seemed to have a bit of a crush on Xiuxiu. As soon as she spoke, his attention shifted to her.

Their grudges and entanglements had probably been accumulating since childhood. I couldn't interject, so I let her talk more.

Fatty sat down, threw a few bundles of branches into the fire, and said, "I'm not interested in those clichés from 'Jin Fen Shi Jia' or 'Ti Xiao Yin Yuan.' Got any juicy gossip from the Old Nine Gates that we don't know about? I heard that after your Second Master was widowed, he was quite the playboy, frequenting brothels. He had a lover who was as white as a porcelain doll, with blue-and-white porcelain patterns painted on her hands, known as 'Xiao Qinghua.' Is that true?"

"Xiao Qinghua is still around. Do you want to go see her? She's in a nursing home now," Xiuxiu said. "She had those blue-and-white patterns painted on her, and she was just like a blue-and-white porcelain doll, the kind that's cracked."

I took a sip of tea and said, "Show some respect for the deceased and the ancients. Most women in the old society had pitiful fates. Xiao Qinghua might not have chosen that life willingly."

Pibao didn't entirely agree, but he didn't want to continue that thread either, so he said to Fatty, "You want to hear some spicy stuff? How are people like us supposed to tell that? Why don't you tell a few?"

"Nonsense. I promised Yuncai I'd be a proper person now. You guys are so low-class, no wonder you can't find partners." Fatty turned over and covered his face with his hat, saying, "It's getting late. Fat Master's tired, so I'm going to sleep first. You three can keep up your witty banter."

I looked at the moon. The terrain here was too unusual. The crossbeams above blocked most of the moonlight, only letting through faint white patches. If the section of beam overhead hadn't rotted and fallen into the deep trench, probably not a single ray of moonlight would have gotten in.

This secret trench wasn't built by the builders of the Zhang Family Ancient Building back then, but was a relic left by the ancient Yao people in the ancient kingdom of Lingnan. Clearly, this deep mountain had been the site of many mysterious activities a long time ago; I just wondered what the ancient Yao people's purpose was in building this secret trench in the mountains, and whether it had any necessary connection to the Zhang Family Ancient Building choosing this location.

Several people wanted to get some shut-eye, so they each found a spot to lean back. I was about to close my eyes when I suddenly saw Fatty sit up again and go to the pond to urinate. I thought to myself, what a fuss, then I took my hat, flipped it over my face, and soon fell deeply asleep, planning to wake up in an hour.

Here, I had developed a very precise internal clock. As long as I reminded myself before sleeping that it was only a short rest, I could always wake up on time. Sure enough, after a while, I woke up. My face was covered with a hat, and it smelled of shampoo. The water sources in the Guangxi area were abundant, and I was very grateful to still smell this urban scent in the wilderness.

I let out a breath, thinking back to the days when I went to Lu King's Palace and Cloud Summit Palace. Back then, I was always the one who dampened the team's morale, always needing a kick from Panzi to wake up.

But now I didn't have the right to laze around in bed. I was the Third Master now, and everyone was watching me. I quickly grabbed my hat to turn over and get up, but when I grabbed it, I found that the hat covering my face had turned into a wet, greasy mess.

Startled, I immediately slapped the thing away and sat up, instantly realizing something was wrong. In the entire area lit by the campfire, near the edge of the trench, water was dripping down. I thought it was raining, but looking up, I saw that the water wasn't falling from above my head; it was splashing down from the rocks.

I was sitting right next to a rock by the edge of the trench. The surrounding vines had all been cut away. The water was dripping down along the trench wall above and splashing off the rock. Several people around had already been woken up by the water. A few covered their heads and ran out of the splashing area, muttering things like "What's going on?" Fatty immediately made a silencing gesture, and everyone shut up.

We all looked at him, wondering what he had found. He sniffed his water-splashed body. I sniffed my hat as well, and a strong smell of urine immediately made me nauseous to the extreme.

It was urine. Someone was urinating right above our heads.

"Your mother!" Pibao cursed softly, gagging and spitting, clearly having gotten some of the urine in his mouth.

Fatty gestured for us to keep quiet. Everyone was disgusted and at a loss, except for Fatty, who stepped forward and started climbing the rocks by the trench. I didn't know what he was doing, but I gritted my teeth and followed him. I grabbed onto the vines and climbed all the way up to the crossbeams, where I immediately heard voices above. It was English, and I instantly understood: it was Jude Kao's team.

More urine dripped down, landing on Fatty's face, but he ignored it. He couldn't understand what was being said up there, so he gestured for me to listen.

Suppressing my intense nausea, I pricked up my ears. There were definitely a lot of people up there. Clearly, they were at a higher elevation and had completely failed to notice that there was a layer of crossbeams beneath the trench, and under those beams, such a hidden passage existed.

And Jude Kao's people shouldn't have been here.

I couldn't make out the specifics of the foreigners' conversation, so I shook my head at Fatty. He wanted my phone, to use the recording function. Just then, I heard a Chinese voice say, "Let's move out; no time to rest." Then someone translated it into English.

I was stunned by the voice. It sounded very familiar. I tried to hear more, but the people above made sounds of getting ready to leave.

Fatty and I climbed back down. He spit a few times and, after the sounds had faded, said, "Damn foreigners, they sure have hot tempers, and their urine stinks strong. Girl, come listen to what they said."

Thinking that the Chinese voice had also been recorded, I immediately moved closer, but saw that Xiuxiu was completely ignoring us, just taking off her clothes and washing up by the pond. "Hey, girl, don't wash yet. I've peed in that pond too; won't it be the same afterward?" Fatty said.

Xiuxiu and Pibao, who was also washing nearby, froze. Pibao immediately jumped up: "Which one haven't you peed in?"

"I've peed in all of them. I was bored last night, so I took a few pees in every pond," Fatty said. "Don't wash yet; come listen to the recording."

"No way!" Xiuxiu said. "I'd rather die than stand this smell."

I was also finding it unbearably foul. Fatty had no choice but to point to a distant pond and say, "That one's clean."

We immediately went over and washed our hair and clothes, scrubbing again and again until the smell of urine faded to imperceptible.

"You're not afraid of dead people but you're afraid of piss? Let me tell you, according to scientific research, the stuff that rots off a corpse is definitely dirtier than urine. Drinking urine won't even kill you," Fatty said.

Xiuxiu scooped up a helmet full of water from the pond and said, "Then you drink it!"

"Drinking it won't kill you, but that doesn't mean it tastes good," Fatty said. "Hurry up and finish; we can't let them catch up to us."

"Don't worry. They're walking mountain trails up there; there's no way they can catch us. This group must have set out before we did in Banai, been walking in the mountains for a few days now, and we've caught up to them."

"What's this about a new guide they found?" Fatty said. "How could there be a guide out here?"

I shook my head, still thinking about that dialect phrase I had just heard. Who was that speaker? Why did it sound so familiar to me?

Fatty saw that I was preoccupied and asked me what was wrong. I told him about it, but he had no memory of it. Obviously he hadn't noticed that issue. Xiuxiu said, "Regardless, Jude Kao dispatched a team before we arrived. I heard him say something different to Third Master; clearly he's hiding something from us."

Given Jude Kao's personality, if he continued to send out exploration teams, it certainly wasn't random. He must have obtained new information, and that new guide might be the key.

"But then, what do we do? Ignore them and keep going?"

Fatty thought for a moment and looked at me. I was too wary of that voice; an extremely bad premonition surged in my heart. I said to Fatty, "We have to climb up and take a look."

Using a machete, we chopped through the most severely rotted crossbeam, and Fatty and I crawled out. Outside, there was moonlight. There were no big trees here. I climbed slowly along the slope and heard the sound of people carried by the wind. The team was marching through the night; they had already covered some distance, but the slope was particularly difficult to traverse, so they hadn't gotten far. I could see the flames ahead.

Fatty and I quickened our pace to catch up a few steps. Fatty grabbed me and pulled me into the grass, shaking his head at me. I looked where he was pointing and saw a spark of fire up ahead at a high point. Someone was there.

"A sentry! We can't follow any further." As Fatty said this, he handed me a scope.

"Where did you get that?"

"I took it off the gun," said Fatty.

I picked it up and looked at the team ahead. A group of foreigners was climbing a shrub-covered slope. They weren't using flashlights but torches, because on a mountain without paths, flashlights make it too easy to get lost.

There were about fifteen people. To me, all foreigners looked the same, so I couldn't tell if they were the same group from the shore. I moved the telescope to look for the guide.

Soon I spotted a Chinese person. He had his back to me and was chatting with another foreigner. The moment I saw his back, I shuddered, and a very strange feeling came over me.

Then, that person suddenly turned his head and looked back. His face flashed briefly.

I was stunned for a moment, and then I felt like I'd been injected with adrenaline—every pore on my body stood on end. Because in that instant, I suddenly couldn't tell if I had really seen that face.

It was my face.

I saw myself. I saw a Wu Xie.