Chapter 183

No one was surprised that Li Sanjiang managed to win the prize.

What was surprising was that the prize could actually be redeemed right away.

Of course, it was not as though the prize-drawing team would personally take you on the trip. Instead, they helped arrange things through a state-owned travel agency.

Travel was a lot like construction work. Layer after layer of subcontracting was unavoidable.

But at the very least, they took care of the most basic expenses for transportation, lodging, and meals.

Li Zhuiyuan and the others could certainly have set out for their destination on their own, but this was still one of the clues, and the clearest clue they had, so they had no choice but to follow it first.

The one who came to pick them up was a young man with dark skin that made his bright white teeth stand out all the more.

He was Naxi, cheerful and enthusiastic. He would be their driver and tour guide for the coming days.

And yes, the place they would be staying was also his home, a guesthouse he had converted from his family’s earthen house.

When he got to this part of the introduction, the young man looked especially proud. Although the rise of tourism had brought more and more locals into tourism-related work, not many local people were willing to start a business and become their own boss.

He told everyone to call him Fatty Jin.

Tan Wenbin joked and asked whether the women should then be called Sister Fat Jin.

Fatty Jin replied that was right. The older generation’s tradition held that being plump was beautiful and being dark-skinned was noble, since that meant a person was healthy, capable of labor, and fit for bearing children.

As they drove past a huge construction site, Fatty Jin pointed at it and said,

“Next time you come, you’ll be able to fly straight to Lijiang.”

The beauty of Yunnan carried a purity and ethereal quality all its own.

Even when glimpsed roughly from inside a car, it still felt as though they were traveling through a fairy tale.

Fatty Jin’s home was not in the city and not in any scenic area either. It was in a village, which made it all the more quiet and secluded.

When they parked outside the house, the first to come out and greet them were Fatty Jin’s parents. The elderly couple now helped their son with the business.

There was also a young woman inside. She was neither plump nor dark-skinned, but rather pale and delicate.

Fatty Jin said she was his fiancée. They were already engaged, and the wedding would be held at the end of the year.

Clearly, young people knew how to resist tradition.

The earthen house already had strong ethnic character, and after being repaired and renovated, it had also become very convenient for daily living.

Fatty Jin had originally planned to put Li Zhuiyuan and the others on the second floor, which would make it easy for them to go up to the rooftop terrace and enjoy the view.

Tan Wenbin rejected the suggestion and asked only for three adjoining rooms on the first floor.

At the same time, Tan Wenbin also declined the sightseeing plan Fatty Jin had arranged for them next, saying they wanted to wander around and look for themselves and did not need a guide.

Fatty Jin tried to persuade them a couple of times, but seeing that they insisted, he gave up with a smile.

His guiding work was contracted out anyway. Since they did not need him, he could use the time to take on other jobs.

Dinner was local farmhouse food and very lavish, especially the free-range chicken stewed with mushrooms. When the lid of the clay pot was lifted, a thick layer of oil floated on top.

Everyone sat around the charcoal brazier, warming themselves by the fire while they ate.

Having been informed in advance, Fatty Jin’s parents had steamed a great deal of rice, but they still underestimated the appetites of Runsheng, Lin Shuyou, and Tan Wenbin.

The first two were martial artists and naturally big eaters. Tan Wenbin, meanwhile, ate like a pregnant woman carrying twins.

In the end, Fatty Jin’s parents had no choice but to bring out the family’s dry provisions, something like dried mantou, fry them in oil, and serve them up.

Tan Wenbin wanted to pay extra for the food, but Fatty Jin’s parents refused. The two elders spoke in dialect, and Fatty Jin translated for them, saying that his parents meant: when honored guests come to your home and eat their fill, that is the host family’s good fortune.

After dinner, the five of them went up to the rooftop together and held a small meeting.

They had already held several meetings before coming.

Because this wave was very unusual, there would most likely be many teams or individuals participating. In particular, a brutal struggle over those three jade fragments was unavoidable.

Li Zhuiyuan took out a small black wooden box. Inside lay a fragment of jade.

Ah Li had made the small wooden box for him. The material came from the ancestral spirit tablets of the Qin and Liu families, so it naturally had a suppressive effect.

The array patterns on it had been personally carved and designed by Li Zhuiyuan, and he had poured a great deal of effort into it.

It could be said that in the days before setting out, most of Li Zhuiyuan’s energy had gone into this box.

After repeatedly matching wits with the question-setter, Li Zhuiyuan had become able to try to deduce that person’s behavioral logic.

Under the great banner of safeguarding the righteous path, there were many restrictions and taboos against killing one another.

If he were the question-setter, he would first have to remove that difficulty for everyone and create an environment more suitable for slaughter and fighting.

If arrangements were made from any other angle, then first, it would be too abrupt and would ruin the question-setter’s sense of aesthetics. Second, it would not sufficiently arouse subjective initiative. No one here was stupid. Without enough benefit to drive them, very few people would be willing to fight other teams blade to blade.

So the most suitable thing to tamper with, the thing most likely to ignite this chance for bloodshed, was this jade fragment.

The game of searching for jade fragments was too dull and boring. Before this wave began, either they would have been handed out directly, or other teams would already have gotten them in earlier waves.

In short, there should be three teams carrying three jade fragments, and they would all come to Lijiang.

And those three teams holding jade fragments would become the center of the coming struggle and scramble.

Right now, the jade fragment was in your hand. But when the time really came to open the door and pay a call, whether you would still be the one carrying it to the doorstep was another matter entirely. Everyone would have to rely on their own ability.

And that was indeed the case.

Before they had even entered Lijiang proper, just as they drew near, the jade fragment had already turned black and begun to faintly emit Corpse aura.

This Corpse aura was very unusual. It was not something the jade fragment itself possessed. Rather, it absorbed the surrounding aura and then exhaled it again. Once it clung to someone, it lingered for a very long time.

Ordinary sealing measures were completely ineffective against it.

Even though Li Zhuiyuan had made plenty of targeted preparations beforehand, just before entering Lijiang he had still deliberately stopped once and reinforced another layer of array based on its reaction.

Yuxuzi’s centuries of painstaking work, building a temple within a snail shell inside that array, had been a great help to Li Zhuiyuan here.

At this moment, the jade fragment inside the wooden box had already turned black, and one could vaguely see it flowing dynamically, yet it still could not be triggered.

And because of that, Li Zhuiyuan and the others, who should have been standing out in the open, were now in the shadows.

If anyone showed up carrying that aura on their body, it would be like a zombie hopping about in broad daylight. No one capable of participating in this wave would be worthless. They would definitely notice it.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Our next task has two parts, divided into an open line and a hidden line.”

Under the night sky, everyone listened seriously.

“On the open line, even though we have one jade fragment in hand, we must act as though we do not. We will still search for the other two teams carrying jade fragments and seriously prepare to seize them.

“On the hidden line, we need to probe the place where we are supposed to pay the visit. I suspect that, in order to leave us plenty of time to kill one another first, the banquet has probably not begun yet.

“But if we can uncover some background clues before the banquet starts, that will also be beneficial. After all, the real main event is definitely still to come.

“Starting tomorrow morning, we move as a team. No one is to be alone.”

“Understood!”

“Understood.”

The meeting ended. Runsheng stayed on the rooftop for the first watch of the night, while the others went back downstairs to rest in their rooms.

Though this bit of travel fatigue was nothing to them, whenever a wave was underway, everyone would instinctively seize every chance to get themselves back into peak condition.

Li Zhuiyuan and Tan Wenbin shared a room, just like back in their college dorm days.

Lying on the bed, Tan Wenbin said with a smile, “The scenery here is really beautiful. I’d love to actually enjoy myself here for once.”

Li Zhuiyuan pulled up the blanket, lay down, and said, “When the River Walk is over, you can bring Zhou Yunyun and revisit every place we’ve been.”

“Heh.” Tan Wenbin instinctively reached for the cigarettes on the bedside table, then hesitated.

Li Zhuiyuan had already closed his eyes, but he still said, “Go ahead.”

Tan Wenbin’s body had now recovered through careful recuperation, but those two children had “grown,” and were pressing on his mind every second of every day.

Tan Wenbin lit the cigarette and exhaled a ring of smoke. “That’d be nice.”

That was his response to Little Yuanhou’s earlier suggestion.

Perhaps by then, it would not just be Zhou Yunyun by his side. There might also be his own children.

All of a sudden, Tan Wenbin shook his head hard.

Having watched plenty of movies, he immediately realized that thinking like this right now was terribly inauspicious.

He stubbed out the cigarette, lay down, wrapped himself up in the blanket, and went to sleep.

Early the next morning, everyone got up, had a simple breakfast, and went out to investigate.

Calling it an investigation, however, was not all that different from sightseeing.

After all, the clue openly and plainly contained the five words “Treasure of the Mu Prince’s Mansion.”

If one insisted on finding a difference, it would probably be that their group... toured far more seriously than ordinary tourists.

Most tourists only skimmed the surface, but the five of them examined things with painstaking care.

Yet after looking around and around, they found nothing special.

That made Li Zhuiyuan suspect that “Treasure of the Mu Prince’s Mansion” might simply be providing a coordinate for Lijiang and held no deeper meaning, perhaps even having little to do with the Mu Prince’s Mansion itself.

Or perhaps the true secret would only be watered into bloom once enough blood had been spilled in the struggle.

But at the moment, there was nothing else they could do, so they could only keep sightseeing and looking around. Since they were already here, they might as well.

Near dusk, they returned to Fatty Jin’s house.

With last night’s experience in mind, Fatty Jin’s parents had prepared plenty of rice today.

After every dish was brought to the table, Yin Meng would wave her hand over it, using the motion as cover while her Gu child crawled across the food.

The Gu child itself carried highly lethal poison, but only if it secreted it on purpose. Most of the time, it was no different from an ordinary insect.

Whether it was innate or something it had developed through training under Yin Meng, in any case, this Gu child was extremely sensitive to toxins.

Ever since entering Lijiang, everything they ate or drank had to be checked by this insect first.

Since this was a struggle between people, no degree of caution was excessive.

Fatty Jin was not there, and neither was his car. His fiancée said he had gone to pick someone up.

After dinner, Lin Shuyou went up to the rooftop alone to stand watch.

In the courtyard, Tan Wenbin sat chatting with Fatty Jin’s parents, while Fatty Jin’s fiancée translated for them.

Even though they did not share a language, Tan Wenbin still managed to chat happily with the two elders.

And through the conversation, he also managed to draw out some unusual local customs and eerie legends.

Li Zhuiyuan sat in the room reinforcing the seal on the box.

The Corpse aura inside the jade fragment kept battering the restraints. If left alone, it would definitely break through within two days, so to be safe, Li Zhuiyuan added another layer of sealing to it every day.

That was also because Li Zhuiyuan’s original foundational sealing logic had been designed so well that it left room to keep stacking more layers on top.

If it were someone else, merely suppressing it in the early stage would already have been extremely difficult. They would have had no spare capacity to think about what came after.

A disturbance came from the rooftop. Li Zhuiyuan put away the box and walked out of the room.

Runsheng and Yin Meng also came out of their rooms. Lin Shuyou leaned out from the rooftop and pointed outside.

Something was happening.

Fatty Jin had returned, and he had brought back a new group of guests, four people in all.

At the front was a woman, very young, only a little over twenty, dressed in white casual clothes with a ponytail. She looked crisp and capable.

As she passed in front of Li Zhuiyuan while being shown to her room, she deliberately stared at him for a moment and smiled.

“There’s actually such a cute little brother here.”

Behind her were three men. One wore short sleeves, one wore a padded winter coat, and the other looked quite old in the face but was very short, only a bit taller than an average dwarf.

The man in short sleeves walked with a slightly awkward gait, as though his body were taut and stiff.

The man in the padded coat had both hands tucked into his sleeves. He really did seem to be cold; even the breath he exhaled came out as faint white mist.

Aside from being short, the third man looked much more normal.

When he entered, he first gave Fatty Jin’s fiancée a measuring, suggestive look. Then when he saw Yin Meng, he stared at her while licking his lips.

The woman walking in front turned around and grabbed the short man by the ear. “You want to die?”

The short man cried out in pain as he was dragged upstairs.

Li Zhuiyuan returned to his room and pasted two talismans on the door and window respectively for soundproofing.

Tan Wenbin pushed the door open and came in, carefully shutting it behind him.

“No need to keep watch tonight. Inform the others. Be careful in ordinary conversation.”

“Understood.”

At a time like this, any team that suddenly appeared before their eyes could not be treated lightly, much less one with such a peculiar appearance.

It was not too surprising that they had also ended up staying here. Fatty Jin was a key part of the clue, but that did not mean the clue was for their use alone.

After Tan Wenbin went out to pass on the message, he walked back to the door of the room. Just as he was about to push it open, he saw another guest come in.

This guest was a woman, about thirty years old, pulling a suitcase.

She had come by herself and had not had Fatty Jin pick her up.

Her room was on the first floor, and she went in by herself.

At first, Tan Wenbin noticed nothing unusual about her. It was only when he saw the two white wheel marks the suitcase left on the ground after it passed that he realized something was wrong.

The courtyard ground was inlaid with cobblestones. How heavy would that suitcase have to be to leave tracks like that? And the material of the wheels was also highly unusual.

The room door opened from the inside. Li Zhuiyuan stood in the doorway and glanced at the room across the courtyard.

That was where the woman had moved in.