Infinite Puzzle City

Chapter 254: Dou Ye's Past

While the old man was speaking, his eyes never left the bracelet on Xiao Ran's hand. He definitely wasn't mistaken, this bracelet was exactly the same as the one he wore back then.

Xiao Ran frowned when he heard this.

The purpose of his coming here was just to check the files, to see if he could find out the current whereabouts of the other families, and whether he could restore the truth of that year, so that his grandfather, the bald old man and others could resolve their worries.

But I didn't expect to meet someone here who had seen this bracelet.

"Master, how about we find a place to sit down and talk slowly?"

The old man looked at the time and it was time for dinner. He nodded and said, "If you believe me, come with me. I won't harm you, kid. You can't wear this thing."

How could Xiao Ran not know that this thing cannot be worn? Even Liu Rui said that this thing is a sacrificial vessel and is very evil.

But now it has been put on and cannot be taken off. According to Li Jingqi, it is impossible to take off the bracelet.

But since the old man knew the origin of this thing, Xiao Ran also wanted to listen.

So I followed the old man to the small canteen at the back. This is the employee canteen and is usually not open to the public. The old man took out his meal card and said, "Kid, what do you want to eat? I'll treat you, don't hesitate."

"Uh... How can this be so embarrassing? I should be the one treating you."

"Don't be so polite. You don't have a meal card. Besides, the food in the restaurants around here isn't very good. Although the food here is a bit lighter, it's clean. You just have to make do with it."

"Row."

Seeing the old man say this, Xiao Ran picked up the plate. There were three simple dishes and one soup, one meat and two vegetables. The taste was a bit light, but fortunately the price was very cheap and the ingredients were very fresh, only eight yuan.

The two of them sat in the back corner with their food trays.

The old man took a few bites of food before he said to Xiao Ran, "I'm ashamed to say that my family was in the northeast... we were tomb robbers, and later we were caught and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. I've traveled a lot, and I'm considered an old hand, but the bracelet on your hand is the most weird thing I've ever seen."

It turned out that the old man in front of him was actually a master tomb robber. When he talked about this bracelet, there was a hint of fear in his eyes.

"That happened many years ago. A group of us broke into Changbai Mountain. You know, that place is a holy place. Ordinary people are not allowed to enter since the Qing Dynasty. We found a big tomb in an ancient book..."

As the old man talked about the past, a look of nostalgia could be seen in his eyes.

But immediately after the conversation changed, his expression became serious.

"We originally planned to follow the route recorded in ancient books, but we ran into big trouble that night. I went to bed early that night and was awakened by the urge to urinate in the middle of the night, so I got up to urinate..."

The old man's eyes were vague, as if he had returned to that night.

It was getting dark in the mountains, and it was pitch dark. They hid behind rocks in the leeward area and lit a bonfire.

Even though I was wearing a thick sheepskin jacket, I was still very cold. The campfire was crackling and sparks were coming out from time to time.

"Where's Dashan?" He was awakened by the urge to pee. He got up and looked around, but he didn't see Li Dashan, who was in charge of the night watch. But he didn't care at the time and just thought that the guy went to collect firewood nearby.

He walked aside, unzipped his pants and started peeing.

"Whoosh..."

The old man half-closed his eyes, urinated, and without even bothering to shake himself off, he quickly pulled up his trousers. It was too cold and even this pee made his skin hurt a little.

But just as he put on his trousers, before he even had time to pull up his belt, he suddenly heard someone singing in his ear.

This voice sounds familiar, isn't it Li Dashan?

"Li Dashan, what's wrong with you so much in the middle of the night? Don't let him attract the blind bear."

The old man muttered a few words while cursing, turned around, thought about it, and walked over in the direction of the sound to see what Li Dashan was doing.

They are in a business that involves killing people.

Throughout the dynasties, if caught, beheading was the lightest punishment; beheading or slow slicing were also likely to be the most severe.

In addition, there are always rules for tomb robbing. Uncles must bring their nephews, and grandfathers must bring their grandsons, in order to rob tombs.

Why do you say that neither father nor son can do it? After all, if a son is gone, he can have another one, and if a father is gone, the son can also make a fortune.

This kind of father-son killing each other is not uncommon among tomb robbers.

But which grandfather doesn't love his grandson? Generally speaking, after living to such an old age, the grandfather himself doesn't have any big desires, and he just wants to give his grandson a goal.

As for the uncle taking care of the nephew, it is actually not difficult to understand. If something happens to the nephew, the sister will not be able to get over it.

This Li Dashan is the uncle’s nephew.

Usually he was silent, but suddenly he became abnormal and sang tonight. The old man immediately had a bad feeling. He followed the sound and saw Li Dashan kneeling on the snow slope, facing Changbai Mountain, with his hands raised high. He seemed to be singing something, but he couldn't understand it when he listened carefully.

"Mountain!!"

The old man shouted, and seeing that he didn't move, he pulled out the axe from his waist and approached carefully. However, he had just taken two steps when Li Dashan in front of him suddenly raised his knife and chopped off his head alive.

Then he raised his head with both hands, sang and twisted his body.

At that moment, the old man felt his blood run cold and he screamed, which woke up his other companions. They all picked up their weapons and rushed over to take a look.

Like the old man, they were all frightened out of their wits.

Li Dashan put his head on the ground, knelt down three times and kowtowed nine times in the direction of Changbai Mountain, then he ran away holding his head.

"We were all so scared at the time. The more we thought about it, the more we felt that this place was very weird. We simply left as soon as possible, but we didn't expect to encounter a heavy snowstorm and found another robbery hole in a daze."

The old man took out a pack of cigarettes from his arms, took out two from it, and handed one to Xiao Ran.

"I can't smoke."

Seeing that Xiao Ran didn't know how to smoke, the old man put the cigarette back into his pocket. However, he didn't put the cigarette he had just taken out back into the cigarette box. Instead, he put it in his pocket next to the cigarette box.

"Crack..."

“Hiss~Puff…”

A puff of green smoke swirled around the old man's cheeks. He continued, "I have been learning how to dig holes from my master since I was a child. I am considered a master in the Northern School. With a shovel, I can dig a 20-meter-deep tunnel for you in an hour. But the tunnel we encountered that day was very strange..."

"Look, there's something wrong with this tunnel."

Several people looked at the tomb-dug hole in front of them with serious expressions. The tomb-dug hole was in the shape of a slope going all the way downwards. At first glance, it looked like a very ordinary tomb-dug hole, but a closer look revealed how skilled the person who dug this tomb-dug hole was.

There were hard stones all around, but the other party cut the stones open with great force, and the walls of the tunnel were smooth and bright. It was impossible for an ordinary person to dig such a tunnel.

"This..." The old man carefully observed the surroundings of the stolen hole, squinted his eyes and said, "This thing looks like it was dug out by a pangolin."

He had heard a long time ago that among the masters of moving mountains and hills, there were some old veterans who specialized in raising and taming a kind of pangolin called the linglijia. By feeding it fine food and medicinal materials, they made the pangolin grow to an extremely large size, and its claws were sharper than knives.

But this is just a legend. He himself doesn't know how it was done, and even thinks it's all false information.

Now that I see this tomb-robbing hole, I finally understand that there are actually people who use pangolins to rob tombs.

It's really an eye-opener.

"Then have we come here for nothing?"

The brothers who came with them couldn't help but complain. After all, the hole had been dug and the treasures inside might have been taken away.

The old man waved his hand and said, "Not necessarily. There are rules in our business. We can only take three things. We have to leave something for the owner and his descendants."

Tomb robbers are not petty thieves. Thieves believe in not leaving empty-handed. If your home has no money, they will still steal something, even if it is just your iron pot.

But it’s not the same when robbing a tomb. You can only take three things away, more than that is not allowed.

This is the rule of the older generation, and in fact no one has been following it for a long time. However, seeing that the tunnel is quite old, it must have been left behind by the masters of the older generation, so there might still be treasures inside.

After hearing what he said, everyone immediately understood.

Since they were already here, they couldn't go back empty-handed, so several people went down to the tomb one after another.

In the cafeteria, the old man held a cigarette in one hand and said, "The tunnel was very deep. I was at the back and kept going down for more than an hour before I reached the end. I didn't expect that there was an underground river underneath."

"I was the last one to go down slowly. The others had already gone down. They were also surprised that there was such a large space down there. I was lying at the hole above, thinking that it would be difficult to get up from there, so I prepared to drill a few nails to fix the ropes again."

When he said this, the old man had finished smoking the cigarette in his hand, but his eyes were fixed on the bracelet on Xiao Ran's hand, and fear appeared in his eyes.

The screams of several brothers in the cave that day seemed to reappear in my ears.

It was too long ago, and there were only a few lit torches in the cave at the time, so he might not remember many details clearly, but among those monsters, he actually saw his nephew, Li Dashan.

There is no head, but the body is still alive.

"I saw with my own eyes that the monsters put a bracelet on my nephew's body, and then..."

The corners of the old man's lips twitched a few times, and he stretched out his finger and pointed at the bracelet on Xiao Ran's wrist: "Then, a lot of whiskers grew out of his body, and a head appeared out of thin air. That was definitely not his head, it was more like another person's head. Yes, that bracelet is exactly the same as the one on your hand!!"

(End of this chapter)