The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 17: Seems to be an Old Friend

Seeing her expression, I immediately knew that I must have guessed right. I internally sighed and thought, we've come full circle.

In fact, I had already realized it earlier. The name Huo Ling wasn't very common, but I always thought that Granny Huo's daughter had the same family name as her father. In other words, I thought Granny Huo became the head only because there were no males in her generation, and the next generation of the family would take the husband's surname. Unexpectedly, the Huos were a matriarchal clan.

As soon as she had mentioned that her daughter suddenly disappeared during the archaeological activities, I immediately thought of Uncle Three's Xisha archaeology team. At the same time, I immediately thought of how Granny Huo's surname was Huo, and among the missing people in Xisha, someone was called Huo Ling, a daughter of the Huo family. In addition, Chen Wen-Jin was the leader of the Guangxi archaeology team, so all the various pieces of information pointed to one thing.

In any other circumstances, I may have merely thought it was a coincidence, but in the midst of all these connections, I suddenly realized that there was something wrong. I just wasn't expecting it to be what I thought it was.

The fact that Granny Huo's family was suddenly involved in this matter may have seemed like a coincidence, but it was actually inevitable. However, Granny Huo may not have been involved as deeply as I was.

In this case, Huo Ling was a descendant of the Mystic Nine, just like my Uncle Three. Plus, with Xie Lianhuan [1], that made three of them. What exactly was the composition of the Xisha archaeological team?

As soon as I thought about it, my thoughts diverged even more. I found that not only was Huo Ling a Huo, but Chen Wen-Jin also seemed to have the same surname as Chen Pi Ah Si. Was Chen Pi Ah Si surnamed Chen or was he called that for other reasons (to be honest, I thought his appearance was a bit like a nine-piece tangerine peel)? But he wasn't that old decades ago, so Chen Pi Ah Si must have been related to the Chen family.

Chen Wenjin, Chen Pi Ah Si.

Huo Ling, Granny Huo.

Uncle Three, Old Dog Wu.

Xie Lianhuan, Xie Jiuye.

Was this a coincidence?

Xie Lianhuan and Uncle Three were two people with deep ties that had been in place long before things began, so it wasn't surprising that they had both appeared in the same archaeological team at the same time. During the whole incident, however, I always thought Huo Ling was an outsider, but it actually turned out that she was a descendant of the Mystic Nine. Was it a coincidence?

If she was a descendant of a mountain climber from Shanxi or a mountain hiker from the south of Lingnan, maybe it could have been explained because of archaeology. After all, how many ancestors had some kind of background before they came into contact with this line of work? But she was also part of the Mystic Nine, and a direct descendant of the same family—

There was a problem. There was definitely a problem.

It suddenly occurred to me that Poker-face wasn't someone who was easy to deal with. Out of a team of ten people, five people's backgrounds were a mystery, and it seemed that the remaining members' backgrounds weren't so simple either. When Uncle Three told me that this team had been formed by accident, it didn't appear to be true either.

Several possibilities immediately flashed through my mind: the archaeological research institute of that year might have been owned by the Mystic Nine, and was originally used as a cover for their business. Or, was it that these people's descendants all chose archaeology as their profession, and then happened to meet because of the geographical relationship in Changsha? Or, most likely, was there "some project" that these miraculous underground families were carrying out in the name of archaeology while really committing criminal activities under the official cloak?