The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 171: Grave Relocation

On the way back to my classmate's place, I gave him a rough analysis of my thoughts. He thought I was being a little too subjective and too particular, and said he didn't feel any difference in the other party's attitude or emotions.

I told him this may be the result of how I had conducted business during this period of time, and that human nature was really a very strange thing. The lecturer kept looking for help because of his guilty conscience, needing to do this to make everyone think that he was still anxious about this matter, and still found it very strange. In fact, no one in this society would be interested in such a thing for so long. Even if he decided not to mention this incident again, the others wouldn't pursue it for too long. But he couldn't help it. He had to behave like this in order to make himself feel comfortable.

So he asked my classmate to see if I would help. But it wasn't to solve the problem itself, because he had already determined that people like us wouldn't be able to help solve this kind of thing.

What he wanted was proof, so that when he discussed it with others, he could say: "Oh, I talked with XX. He helped me find a very good person to come over and help, but they couldn't figure it out. If you don't believe me, you can ask XX."

After that, my classmate and I made an appointment to hunt rabbits, and we roasted them that night by the campfire with his colleagues. We didn't actually exert too much effort, because they had more than twenty dogs. They had originally planned to eat dog meat hotpot during the winter, but the dogs learned about it, and desperately hunted rabbits for them to eat. Now the dogs had obtained human rights.

We had been in a field where there was no service, so after returning to my classmate's place, his cell-phone received more than a dozen alerts in a row. He turned it on and found that they were all missed calls from the lecturer.

My classmate called back, but it was the old lady who answered the phone. She was hoping to see me again.

At that time, it was already very late. We had drunk beer and ate our fill of dry-roasted rabbit, so all the blood in our brains was in our stomachs. It didn't seem very suitable to see them again, but the old lady insisted on seeing us immediately, begging on behalf of her grandma and grandpa. I also had a grandma back home, and couldn't bear it anymore, so I took a shower and set off in the middle of the night.

I dozed all the way to the lecturer's home. The cement building in the small town didn't have much lighting, only a small white incandescent lamp on the stairs that made me feel a little strange.

Maybe my previous description was a bit hasty. In fact, the house they lived in was an old backlit one-bedroom apartment that was decorated with pasted on newspapers from the 1980s. This was actually where the old lady lived. The lecturer's situation was very common. Before he started working at the university, he was a primary school teacher in the county. After graduating from university, he taught in the county, and took the graduate student exam while teaching. After becoming a graduate student, he went to the city, and stayed at the school.

As a result, he had his own residence in the city, and was just staying with the old lady now because her mood was unstable after moving the grave.

Two people living in such a small, dark house... in fact, I also had this same kind of experience. In those days, one-bedrooms were actually considered good housing. Even today, there were still many such living structures in Shanghai and other places, with more than two people living in one room.

The problem was that the remains of his sister were on the shelf in the cramped bedroom. I felt that for those who strived for even the barest hint of cleanliness in their lives, this arrangement was too strange.

Already suffering from depression, they would become even more depressed like this. But since they didn't seem to have any feelings regarding it, I felt that was a good indicator that their normal state was probably very abnormal.

Coupled with the strange state of the bleak county town in the middle of the night, and the incandescent lamp, I suddenly worried that the old lady and the lecturer would kill me right after I entered.

If there was a conspiracy here, what I said before might have led them to misunderstand, and think that I knew their secret. It was very likely that such abnormal living conditions would lead them to get rid of me without second thought.

So I told my classmate to wait for me outside, turned on my cell-phone, and went upstairs by myself.

This move later proved to be lucky. The scene inside wasn't really as I had suspected, but my arriving alone dispelled their worries. I would certainly come alone if I really knew something, because what they wanted to say to me really wasn't suitable for more people to know.

The first time I saw the old lady, she was a lot different from what I had imagined. She was hardy, big-footed, her eyes were cloudy, and she smoked a kind of local grass that was stronger than Fatty's. I had to admit that the smoke had quite an effect on me, and I felt my head ache for the first few minutes.

My first impression of her was completely different from the pleading woman I had heard on the phone, and it was clear this old woman wasn't a pushover. I paid attention to these kinds of aspects, and didn't take the offered pipe. In the past, I would take a puff because I either didn't want to lose face, or was curious, but I often made a fool of myself.

I had thought it was ok to make a fool of myself as long as others still thought I was funny, since it was just like putting on a show. Later, I realized that Little Master Three could do such a thing only because Master Three was there. They all felt that I was kind, but kindness wasn't the core. It was Uncle Three making them feel reliable and secure that was the core.

These are the things society first takes a fancy to, followed by humor, and then loveliness. In the end, it took me a long time to change this habit.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the old lady apologized to me and scolded her son. I knew there was nothing to scold him for, but I wanted to see how the topic developed. Sure enough, after scolding him two or three times, the old lady asked me in her half-baked local dialect that sounded similar to standard Chinese: "What do you do, Boss?"

I was actually under a lot of pressure, because I didn't know anything about the bones. I was afraid she would get straight to the point, but I was able to answer if she asked these kinds of questions. I thought for a moment, and then said to her, "I look at feng shui."

The old lady's hand trembled, and she furiously glanced at the lecturer before saying to me, "I knew it." I took the opportunity to ask, "Ma'am, if you knew, why didn't you—" I deliberately stopped talking.

The old lady scolded the lecturer very viciously in the local language. I could understand the general meaning, which was: "It's all your fault. I said we shouldn't bury her in that graveyard, but you didn't listen. You just couldn't bear to give up the money. You're so despicable, you ought to be ashamed. When you first moved the grave, the feng shui master said there was something wrong, but you still refused to listen, saying it was all superstitious nonsense."

As the lecturer remained expressionless, bowed his head, and stood there being scolded, I heard something of interest.

It wasn't the first time they had moved the grave. In other words, this was the second time they had to move the grave, and there had already been a problem when they first moved it.

The old lady was still scolding, so I tried to get in a few words, but she began crying and asked, "What can I do? Master, you need to help." With that said, she continued crying and scolding the lecturer at the same time.

I was trying to figure out how to speak up when, without warning, the lecturer suddenly flipped the table over, causing ash to fly into my face. Then he rushed into the room, grabbed the box, and walked out.