Tomb Raiding: My Family's Last Clan Chief is Little Brother

Chapter 343 The Village of the Dead
It's the middle of the afternoon when the sun is shining brightly, and clothes will dry quickly when hung on the hot stones.

Wild fish is so delicious. Just grill it a little and sprinkle some salt on it, and it becomes a feast for the eyes, nose, and taste buds.

After the young man finished meditating in the river, he turned around on the bank and realized that his clothes were missing. He looked around among the pile of clothes on the riverbank but couldn't find them, so he looked at Zhang Wuxun with a questioning look in his eyes.

Zhang Wuxun pointed to a rock not far away and said, "You and Fatty are over there; you'll be dried in a bit."

The young man nodded and whispered his thanks.

Several members of the Huo family assisted in the cooking, and the fish was quickly grilled. The fat man urged the two to hurry up and eat.

After resting, the group put on their clothes, reorganized their equipment, and then walked downstream along the river.

After walking for more than two hours, they finally saw the unique atmosphere of a village. The trees on both sides of the river gradually thinned out, and traces of farmland and ponds appeared.

They walked straight through a bamboo forest, followed a small path paved with pebbles, and arrived at a rice field. Nearby, under a large tree, by a well, several elderly Yao men sat on bamboo reclining chairs, fanning themselves with thin fans to cool off, leisurely smoking their pipes, and chatting casually, looking very relaxed.

The fat man approached them to ask for a sip of well water and to inquire about directions.

The freshly drawn well water is cool and slightly sweet. A sip of it washes away all the heat in your body, refreshing and invigorating, even more thirst-quenching than mung bean soup.

After drinking his fill of water, the fat man handed the gourd ladle to Zhang Wuxun, and then asked the villagers what this place was and how far it was from Agui's and his friends' Banna Yao Village.

Unfortunately, the old men couldn't understand Mandarin very well, and they couldn't speak it either. Only one of them, an old man who looked like a hermit, could speak a few words of Mandarin, but not fluently.

The fat man couldn't communicate clearly with the other person even with gestures, so he helplessly turned around and beckoned Zhang Wuxun to come over and act as his translator.

Zhang Wuxun repeated the fat man's question in Yao language, "Gentlemen, we are tourists who came here. We got lost on the way up the mountain and only found this place by following the river. Could you please give us directions? How do we get to Banna Village?"

The old man sized them up a few times and saw that most of them were young people, without the cunning of poachers in their eyes. He believed them a little and got up to signal them to follow him.

Zhang Wuxun smiled and thanked him, then beckoned the fat man and the others to follow.

As they walked, the old man explained to them that the village was called Kujiao Village, and that it was adjacent to Banna Village, separated by mountains.

Like the Yao village of Banna, the stilted bamboo houses here are also built against the mountain. The village is surrounded by abundant water sources, and the houses are built in a similar style to those in the Yao village, but on a larger scale. Zhang Wuxun and his team had not been to this place before when they were investigating the surrounding area.

The old man led them to a brick house with the words "Village Office" written on the door. He took out a thick book bound with hemp thread, like a complete volume of Water Margin, and asked them to write their names and affix their fingerprints.

The fat man muttered to himself, "What's going on? Is this old broker trying to sell us off because we all look so delicate and fair-skinned?"

The old man was a village official. Seeing that they were all standing still, he flipped the notebook to the cover, pointed to the words on it and showed them to them, explaining, "It's not that we don't trust you, but if you really have no problems, then leave your mark here. If anything happens in the future, we'll have an explanation to give to the people who come to investigate."

Zhang Wuxun glanced at the words on the book: "Registration Book for Outsiders" written in Chinese, with an English translation below. He thought to himself that the village officials here were really thoughtful.

He relayed the old village official's words to everyone, and the fat man curled his lip, "What kind of rule is this? What can we do if we don't write it down?"

"I guess they're afraid we're involved in poaching, so they want to leave evidence for arrests," Zhang Wuxun said calmly.

If they were truly poachers, they certainly wouldn't so readily leave their handprints on paper. Different professions are like different worlds; their familiarity with the mountains and fields is far inferior to that of those who spend their days traversing the mountains tracking prey.

The fat man snorted, "This old man's eyes are too cloudy. He actually doubts someone like me, who is obviously a law-abiding citizen."

Everyone stared at him speechlessly. Fatty, don't you feel guilty saying that?

The notebook contained the names of many people, densely packed together, and had accumulated into a very thick stack.

This thing is very well preserved, comparable to an ancient county gazetteer. There are obvious signs of repair and reinforcement on it. The ones at the back should be newly added in recent years, because the paper color is different.

Zhang Wuxun flipped through the pages, casually glancing at the names, when he suddenly paused just as he was about to turn the page.

He was aware of his state; when he glanced at her just now, his attention hadn't noticed anything, but his subconscious had detected something amiss.

He immediately turned around and stared at the names on that page, reading them one by one from beginning to end. His gaze finally stopped near the cover, where there was a three-character name that seemed very strange.

Looking at those three words, he suddenly felt a familiar stirring within him, a sense of "this is it" that he had been searching for.

Zhang Mengyu, Zhang Mengyu—Zhang Wuxun's heart trembled violently, and his eyes suddenly felt hot. This was not a sign that he wanted to cry, but rather that emotions that had been suppressed for a long time suddenly surged up, and this feeling made him feel a little at a loss.

It has to be said that they are of the same lineage. The brushstrokes of these three characters are very similar to his, but compared to the unrestrained and casual style he developed after practicing cursive script, these three characters have a touch of composure in their flowing strokes, yet they do not appear rigid.

He immediately looked at the date in the header of this page: September 12, 1975. This date was before the archaeological funeral procession in Banna, which means that Zhang Menyu had already visited Zhangjia Ancient Building before that.

Combined with the mark he left outside the third sealing stone, he was quite certain that it was Zhang Menyu's mark.

However, Zhang Menyu also stayed in this place called Kujiao Village, leaving behind a fake name that seemed very original. Does this mean that Zhang Menyu also received the wrong password in Siguniang Mountain for some unknown reason?

More likely, he is now repeating the path that Zhang Menyu walked back then.

A mix of emotions welled up inside him, as if everything had been preordained. His arrival, the black gold sphere he had obtained from all the ancient tombs he had visited, the altar beneath the sacred tree in the Qinling Mountains, the Qilin carving inlaid with Tibetan Sheba beads in the underwater Yao village, the bronze mechanism, the fire-patterned mark—all of this seemed to indicate that his arrival was not a stroke of luck, but rather a preordained plan, guiding him step by step forward.

I couldn't help but feel a little annoyed. Were all these old guys from the same training class? Why do they all seem to enjoy digging holes for their descendants?

Suddenly, someone pinched his shoulder. Zhang Wuxun turned around and saw the young man standing beside him, his eyes also fixed on that name, with a hint of doubt in his eyes.

Zhang Wuxun took a deep breath, collected his thoughts, grabbed a pen from the pen holder on the table, wrote the two characters "Yu Mu" on the last page, and while the old village cadre turned around to pour water, he quickly grabbed Huo Xiaoli's hand, pressed it into the red inkpad, and then poked it into the blank space after the name.

Then, as he handed the notebook to the deliveryman, he subtly moved his left hand, coughed lightly to cover the sound of the paper tearing, and quickly crumpled the paper in his palm and stuffed it into his pocket.

The old village cadre carried the teapot to a cabinet to look for tea leaves. The young man quickly grabbed Huo Xiaoli's arm, stuck his thumb, still covered in red ink, onto the notebook, and then quickly wrote two words: "Dong Nuo".

Huo Xiaoli's eyes widened in disbelief. "?"

Seeing the old village cadre humming a little tune as he was about to return, Huo Xiaoli hurriedly made up a name and stamped it with a different finger.

Seeing this, others followed suit, covering their faces and making a mix of finger marks.

Seeing how cooperative they were, the old village official smiled, poured tea for them, and explained the reason for doing so.

It turns out that when the previous village chief was still alive, a group of people impersonated an archaeological team and worked on the mountain for a long time. In the end, they disappeared without a trace. When the villagers realized something was wrong and went up the mountain to check, the mountain was full of charred trees and traps for wild animals, a complete mess.

They then realized that the group was actually poachers in disguise. After catching enough prey, they had smuggled the animal pelts across the Vietnamese border through another channel they had discovered in the mountains.

The village chief was filled with regret and beat his chest in despair, but it was too late. Even after reporting the case, those people had already vanished without a trace, and the police had no idea where to find them.

Later, the village established a rule that all outsiders who came to Kujiao Village must register.

Zhang Wuxun expressed his understanding and echoed the old village cadre's scathing condemnation of those damned poachers.

The old village officials even took them to the village office for a meal, filled their water bags with well water, and then found a kind-looking young man from the village named Lan Baihong to guide Zhang Wu and the others to Banna.

There is actually a fairly large mountain between Kujiao Village and Banna. If you travel by land, you would have to go through most of the mountain, which would take at least a day and a night to get there. But the villagers usually travel by water, rowing boats across the mountain and arriving in the evening.

Zhang Wuxun took out three red bills, two as payment for Lan Baihong's hard work, and the remaining one to ask him to hire another person, because there were too many of them to fit on one bamboo raft.

Lan Baihong was overjoyed and thanked them repeatedly. She asked Zhang Wuxun and the others to wait a moment, accepted only two bills as a deposit, and kept the remaining bill as the final payment upon arrival at their destination. Then she ran back to find them like a gust of wind.

The fat man sat on the rock, watching Lan Baihong's figure run away into the distance, and sighed, "What a simple and honest kid. To be honest, I feel a little ashamed of my previous behavior."

Huo Xiaoli nodded in agreement. The name he had written in his notebook before was Wang Ermao, but it was still not as bad as the fat man's Li Dadu.

"This can actually be considered a white lie, right?" Zhang Wuxun picked up a stone and skipped it across the water. He watched as the stone skipped across the surface of the water more than twenty times before being swallowed whole by a fish that mistook it for food.

"People like us should have as little contact with them as possible. It's better to be strangers who meet by chance, leave a false name, and know nothing at all than to be implicated."

A moment of silence fell over everyone. For people like them who often live with their lives on the line, it's best to keep their relationships with ordinary people as casual as possible—it's good for themselves and for others.

Lan Baihong soon brought over a young man wearing a mandarin jacket, with tanned skin. He was slightly older than Lan Baihong and named Amian. He looked simple and honest. When he saw Zhang Wuxun and the others, he didn't know what to say and just grinned.

Lan Baihong quickly smoothed things over, saying, "Gentlemen, Brother A-Mian is the best swimmer among the younger generation in our village, and he's also a great rower. With him around, we guarantee you'll get to your destination safely."

Zhang Wuxun looked A-Mian up and down, noticing his muscular physique honed from physical labor, and nodded, saying, "He's the one. Let's hurry, we need to get to our destination before dark."

Lan Baihong readily agreed and beckoned everyone to board the boat.

Zhang Wuxun and his two companions, along with Huo Xiaoli, were on the first bamboo raft, while the rest of the Huo family members were on the rafts behind them, spaced three or four meters apart.

The current is not rapid, and the rower only needs to control the direction, and the boat will naturally drift downstream with the current.

The fat man, always quick to speak, was curious about why Lan Baihong's name contained so many colors, so he asked him, "Why did you choose such a colorful name?"

Lan Baihong explained that this was just a Chinese name he chose for convenience when he was in school. His real name was Panshi Ergui, which sounded a bit like a simple name. Later, when he entered junior high school, his family gave him another name, Lan, which was his mother's surname. Baihong was the name he wanted to use because he thought the four characters "Baihong Guanri" in "Tang Ju Bu Ru Shi Hui" were particularly cool.

In the Yao people's marriage customs, there is a custom called "carrying the groom to the door," which means that the girl does not marry, but instead the boy is carried to the groom's home to get married. The first child born after the marriage takes the mother's surname, the second child usually takes the father's surname, the third child continues to take the mother's surname, and so on.

Some Yao people are quite casual about naming their children, naming them according to their birth order. For example, if the first child is a daughter, she is called Yi Mei (一妹). Er Gui (二贵) is the name of the second child, a son. Lan Bai Hong (蓝白虹) means the second child in the family. A Mian (阿勉) is the child of his uncle's family.

We chatted all the way, enjoying the cool breeze, and felt quite relaxed.

A lone crow flies alongside the setting sun, and clear waves blend seamlessly with the evening mountains.

In the hazy twilight not far away, twinkling lights and wisps of smoke rose from chimneys as a small boat slowly sailed towards the bustling scene.

Thank you to the generous donors [年少时最是天真], [大理陈], [不念], [WY], and others for their generous donations! Sending love...*
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(End of this chapter)