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wed her into the hold, which was also filled with piles of stuff, with almost no room to put my feet. In the middle of the pile sat a short dark-skinned man wearing a greasy camouflage uniform, a bandana on his head, and a pistol belt. I saw that his facial features didn't seem Chinese, maybe from South Vietnam or Southeast Asia. The man didn't even look at me straight in the eye, and was busy polishing the barrel of his gun. I saw that the gun was a little shaky, and the gun body seemed to be a z- mweapons , but the buttstock was replaced with a weird piece of wood, which looked like it had been modified by himself.
I glanced at the materials in the warehouse again. There were a lot of diving equipment, instruments of unknown purpose, food, and many ropes. What surprised me most was that there was a complete set of shovels on the table. I picked them up and took a look. There were hook shovels, crescent shovels, needle shovels, heavy shovels, almost all kinds. With such a set of things in hand, any tomb in China can be explored. This thing is not something that ordinary people have. Even the more powerful amateur tomb robbers cannot have such a complete set. I couldn't help but wonder, could these people be my colleagues?
She asked me to sit down and brought me a towel. I wanted to wipe the sea water off my head, but it didn't work. The fishing boat was very broken and water leaked from the hold from time to time, so it would get wet again even if it dried. Then I understood why the short person wrapped the headscarf on her head.
The woman moved some goods away, made a seat for me, handed me a glass of water, and then sat down opposite me.
I was thirsty, so I took the drink and thought about who these people were. They didn't look like they were kidnapping me for money, otherwise they wouldn't have taken me to the sea. Looking at the equipment, it was probably related to the sea tug-of-war, but I couldn't figure out why they kidnapped me.
I drank a few sips of water and saw the woman staring at me, as if she wanted to see through me. I felt very uncomfortable being stared at by her. The water was too little, and it was gone after two sips. It was embarrassing to pretend with an empty bowl. When I didn't know what to do, the woman suddenly said, "Mr. Wu, are you really a tomb robber?"
I choked on the water I drank, looked at her in confusion, and asked, "Why, don't I look like her?"
She nodded and said, "I've seen many tomb-robbing craftsmen, all kinds of them, but I've never seen one as elegant as you. Besides, isn't it better to be as small as possible when robbing tombs? With your size, it seems a bit..."
I thought about it and it seemed that there was nothing particularly inconvenient in the Lu Palace. I smiled and imitated Uncle San's tone and said, "Small people have their own way of falling, and big people have their own way of falling. These are my business, but you, I don't know you, what is your purpose in tying me up?"
She took out a photo from her pocket and handed it to me. I looked at it and saw that it was the Hydra cypress. "This is the photo sent back by our previous expedition team. They entered the palace of King Lu earlier than you did. Unfortunately, none of them came back." She looked at me and said, "The ancient tombs in China are too mysterious. If you are not a professional tomb robber, it is really difficult to get out of it unscathed. So this time we decided to find an experienced Chinese tomb robber to be our guide."
I was stunned, thinking, so those Americans are also in the same group as you. It seems that although you are well-equipped, your ability is not that great. At this time, I remembered the brand name, and I touched my pocket and found it was still there. I took it out and said, "A gentleman asked me to bring this out. Since you are from the same unit, I will give it to you. I hope you can return it to his family."
When she saw the name tag, she was stunned. I saw her hands were shaking when she took it. I wondered if she knew the owner of this thing. She glanced at me and asked softly, "Did this gentleman say anything to you?"
I thought of the body in the tree hole, and thought if he had said something to me, I would not be standing here now. But looking at the woman 's expression, she seemed to be expecting something, and suddenly I felt a little soft-hearted, thinking: Judging from this situation, it could be her husband or boyfriend. If he has decayed to the state of giantism by the time I find him, I wonder how she will react. I can't guarantee that she won't strangle me to death, so it's better to be safe. I thought about it for a while, and the ambiguous words were more appropriate, so I said: "He only said one sentence, he said he was sorry."
As soon as I said this, the woman started to cry. She stood up, walked to the side, held onto the window, and sobbed. The short man looked at her in surprise, then at me, as if he couldn't understand how a hostage could make the kidnapper cry.
I don't know how to comfort people, and I don't know what to say. Besides, as a hostage, I have no obligation to comfort the kidnapper. But seeing her crying so sadly, I was also moved. I whispered, "Don't be sad. He passed away peacefully, just like he was sleeping."
She nodded and cried a few more times, as if she had vented her emotions, and then returned to her original cold, coquettish expression. However, I saw that her eyes were obviously a little different towards me. She hung the name tag around her neck, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm sorry, that's my brother. I had already prepared myself mentally, but when I knew he was really dead, I still couldn't control myself."
I was a little surprised and asked, "Maybe I shouldn't ask, but is your brother white?"
She shook her head and said, "My mother is Cambodian, my father is Italian, and my brother looks more like my father." She was silent for a while, and then said, "I'm so sorry, you didn't even know my brother, and you helped bring his relics to me, but we treated you like this."
I saw that her expression was quite sincere, but I didn't know if she was sincere or not. I still felt a little uncomfortable, so I asked, "So who did you ask me to come to overthrow?"
Actually, I had a rough idea in my mind. We were in the sea now and had diving equipment with us. We must be going to empty the sea bucket. The sea bucket nearby might be the one that Uncle San had empty. I analyzed it in my mind. These people must have looked down on Chinese ancient tombs at the beginning. They thought they could dig randomly like they did in Egypt. They didn't expect that all the people in the team died. Now they have learned their lesson and want to find a Chinese tomb robber to lead them. But they never expected that the experienced tomb robber they kidnapped was actually just an apprentice tomb robber who couldn't even empty the dry bucket properly.
The woman sighed, "We haven't found it yet, but we have basically located a few coordinates. We can be sure that the underwater tomb is within these coordinates. We are about to go to the next location. I believe we will find it soon."
I tried to appear calm and asked, "It's not like we can't talk about this properly. Why did you guys—" I made a gesture of hitting someone with a club "—get me here like this?"
She smiled apologetically and said, "There's really no other way. We can't let you know the location of this ancient tomb, and people of your status, I'm afraid you will definitely not agree to help us unless we tell you the whole situation, so we have no choice but to resort to this last resort. Besides, we don't have much time left, so we can't spend a lot of time trying to convince you."
I nodded. Although this explanation was far-fetched, it was not important. The woman continued, "I just hope that you can lead us into the sea bucket this time and find the coffin. We can handle the rest ourselves. We mainly want to learn from your experience in tomb robbing and don't want tragedy to happen again. After the matter is done, we have prepared a generous reward for you and will definitely not let you down. However, I also hope that you will not ask about our purpose, so that we can get along better."
I looked at the gun in the short man's hand and spread my hands, saying, "I don't have a choice. Since I have money and a gun, what else can I say? But you have to tell me, how many people are going to go down?"
The woman said: "There are seven of us, but only Naiming and I are going down the cave, and the others are on the surface to provide support."
I was delighted. There were only two people going down with me. Even if they wanted to plot against me in the ancient tomb, it wouldn't be that easy. I nodded and said, "Okay, but I have a condition."
The woman looked at me curiously, probably wanting to hear what I, a tomb raider, had to say. I said to her, "After entering the tomb, I hope you will listen to me. You can only touch things when I say so. Otherwise, I will not be responsible for the consequences."
She was a little embarrassed. The short man suddenly snorted and said something in broken Chinese: "Don't play tricks!"
The woman waved at him, turned to me and said, "Okay, but let's be frank first. Thank you very much for bringing me James 's relics, but if you try to do anything underwater, Naiming is a man with a very bad temper, and he might be rude to you." As she said that, the short man pulled the bolt hard.
I saw that she was so pitiful just now, but suddenly she threw such harsh words at me. I suddenly lost my favor for her. I asked about her parents in my heart, but I didn't show it on the surface. I thought to myself, "Your shorty can't bring a gun when he goes into the water. Let's see how this five-inch nail can deal with me."
Seeing that there was nothing to say, the woman let me take a rest and walked out. The short Naiming glared at me and walked out too. I breathed a sigh of relief and got through this hurdle for the time being. Although the woman was very beautiful, she also had some South Asian blood and looked a bit wild. Naiming was a typical Southeast Asian pirate, and even if he wasn't, he was probably involved.
As I was thinking, the boat shook, and the fishing boss behind me raised the anchor and set sail. The boat began to shake violently. Because it was an old boat, it not only shook left and right, but also swayed irregularly back and forth, which was very uncomfortable. I didn't even last 10 minutes before I ran out and lay on the side of the boat to vomit. At this time, I found that in just a few minutes, the weather had changed. The sun in the sky had disappeared, the wind began to blow, and the sea water seemed to turn dark green all of a sudden. The most amazing thing was that because of the waves, when we were in the trough, the sea water was above the side of the boat, as if we were about to be drowned, which was very scary.
I stood on the deck, not quite able to stand steadily, feeling a little dangerous, but vomiting in the hold would be too undignified. At least I was kidnapped and mistaken for a tomb robber, so I had to act like an expert. I hugged a protruding iron ring, at this time, I vaguely saw that there seemed to be something behind the high waves on the left side of the ship.
Because it was far away, I couldn't see it clearly. I just thought it was a ship, but it didn't look like one. At this time, the woman walked past me. I grabbed her, pointed at that place and said loudly: "Look what that is!"
Her hair was wet and was blown around by the wind. She brushed it aside and said, "It looks like a ship." She turned around and called the captain over. The captain took one look and said in broken Mandarin, "That ship seems to have had an accident. Look, the light on it is asking for help ." He looked at the woman, as if asking for her opinion.
The woman asked several other people in a language she couldn't understand, then frowned and thought for a while before asking the captain, "When will this storm pass?"
The captain shook his head and said, "Not necessarily. Look at the clouds in the sky. The clouds at the back are thicker. I'm afraid it's not the time for really strong winds and waves yet."
The woman looked at me and said, "Then let's go over and take a look?"
The captain looked up at the sky, nodded, and quickly gave a series of instructions to his men in the local dialect. Immediately, the boat turned the rudder and headed towards the ship.
We rushed towards the waves, and the bumps were even more severe, but although the boat was broken, it was surprisingly strong. We rolled over two waves in a row and finally could see the general outline of the boat clearly. It didn't matter that I saw it, but I immediately started to panic. How come this boat looked like it was fished out of the sea and was so rusty?
At this moment, I heard the captain scream in fear. The woman grabbed my hand, turned my head to the other side, and said tremblingly: "It's a ghost ship, don't look at it!"