“Please enlighten me!”

“It's simple.  The Zhang family is a large family and must live outside Banai. It's likely they're from other provinces. If someone in their family dies, then the funeral custom is to bring them to Banai, and hence outsiders appear. There are then two possibilities here: one is that the number of outsiders is very small, and the bodies are secretly wrapped; the other is that the coffins or bodies are very heavy, and the number of outsiders is relatively large, enough for a funeral procession." I lit a cigarette. “The former isn't very likely since it takes a lot of equipment to go back and forth in this remote mountain, and it's unrealistic for two or three people to carry a corpse up here. All the characteristics of the second possibility are too similar to the appearance of the archaeological team.”

Pan Zi also understood and slapped his thigh.

“s.h.i.+t, you mean to say it's not an archaeological team at all!  f.u.c.k me. The archaeological team from that year was the Zhang family who came to the ancient building to pay their respects.”

I nodded: “Calling it an 'archaeological team' created a preconceived notion in our minds and we always thought that they were here to dig something up.  But maybe they didn't come here to dig anything up at all. “

Xiao Hua nodded: “They were holding a funeral.”

“But Huo Ling was among them.”  I said, “Was she a family member?”

“No, no, no, no, we need to think of it from the beginning and combine all the information.”  Xiao Hua said, “We know that the archaeological team had very high credentials and was even received by a national leader.”

I said: “Someone told me that the incident that year had a strong political atmosphere with a very deep background, and even reached the sky.”

Xiao Hua continued: “We all thought at the beginning that they were looking for the Zhang Jialou and took something from it. The only clue was the iron pieces. “

I said: “Now we all know that they may not have wanted to take things out, but to put something in.  They were taking part in the funeral, and among the funeral procession was Huo Ling, whose surname isn't Zhang. However, there are many people with different surnames in large families.”

Xiao Hua and I were silent at the same time and my mind suddenly became a little stiff. It wasn't confusion, but extreme clarity.

After a long time, Pan Zi said, “f.u.c.k their grandma, I'm not interested in all this. I just want to know, if your conjecture is true, who did they send in?”

I hid my surprise, shook my head, and asked Xiao Hua, “Zhang is one of the most common surnames, is it Zhang Fo Ye?”

“You can't use this as an inference.  At that time, it was too easy to change one's name. Everyone in The Mystic Nine had at least a dozen aliases.  The last names were hardly their original names." Xiao Hua said, “In addition, there's also a very big possibility that this is a 'dove occupies the magpie's nest' situation. The owner who was sent in was probably not the descendant of the Zhang family. Maybe Zhang Jialou has some strange function we don't know about so they sent in the body, which could also explain Master Three's question just now from a different aspect. “

“You mean, why was Huo Ling in the funeral procession?”

“It may be more difficult to send a corpse in than to take something out from an ancient tomb.  a.s.suming that the behind-the-scenes forces of The Mystic Nine were the same ones behind the archaeological team in those days, it was probably this force that made Huo Ling's archaeological team send the bodies to Zhang Jialou.  One is an act of pure destruction, while the other is like building a dojo in a snail sh.e.l.l, which demands more from the team. It wouldn't be unusual for Huo Ling to appear here. “

I wiped the sweat from my head and said that this was really a situation I had not expected at all.

“Of course, we're only speculating about the truth now. We have to go inside to determine if we're right.”  Xiao Hua said, “No matter what the truth is, it obviously has something to do with the previous generation.  I suddenly have a little understanding why so many of my predecessors suddenly wanted to wash their hands and give up such a big industry. They would rather let their children run small businesses than let them get involved in this industry again.  The water is too deep. “

I know he's talking about me and the others in The Mystic Nine.  I said, “But, aren't there still many families that have pa.s.sed on the business?”

“All the families that have done so have very high-level backgrounds, and probably can't help themselves.” Xiao Hua said, “Compared with those of us who are trapped in this circle and can't extricate ourselves, Master Wu was really an extraordinary person to be able to arrange such a plan to wash you clean. Although my grandfather Jie Jiuye was always recognized as a genius in The Mystic Nine with regards to intelligence, he was not as good as Old Dog Wu's bravery.”

Was this really the case?  When I heard Xiao Hua say this, suddenly a flash of inspiration pa.s.sed through my mind.

There were a lot of things I didn't tell Xiao Hua, including all the things that had happened between Jie Lianhuan and my Uncle Three.  Xiao Hua said that my grandfather had washed his hands of the business on purpose, and I always thought it was a very easy process. But when he said this, I suddenly realized that maybe I thought too simply.

First of all, judging from the whole situation with my family, my father was one of three brothers, completely clean. My Uncle Two has one foot in and one foot out, and Uncle Three had inherited everything from my grandfather, but he was self-taught, and my grandfather didn't teach him too much.

Was this structure really formed naturally?  It occurred to me that neither Uncle Three nor Uncle Two had children, and only my father, who was completely clean, gave birth to me.  If things were really what Xiao Hua said, then this was a “silent agreement”—Uncle Three entered the business as a person who would bear everything,  Uncle Two weighed in as a secret alternative, and my dad quit completely.  In this way, with Uncle Three's generation, the mysterious force may not have as great an influence. In the next generation, neither Uncle Three nor Uncle Two would have children, and the relations.h.i.+p between the Wu family and this mysterious force would be completely broken.

To think of it like this, such a scheme was also quite possible.  I took a hard drag of my cigarette and thought, “Uncle Three, I've hurt you, although you've been replaced.”

Yunyun came with Agui to greet us for dinner and Xiao Hua said to me, “No more talking, everything will be ready in a few hours. If it fails, then you'll have to directly ask our elders what's going on.”

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