The Lost Tomb : Ten Years Later

Extra Story: The Daily Life of the Iron Triangle in Rain Village

Goes right before Extra 6 (The 2017 New Years Special), so definitely after "Ten Years Later"

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1.

Zhang Haike and his party were traveling to Fujian and stopped by to visit the patriarch. Their arrival made me a little uncomfortable, although they followed tradition and brought many gifts for their elder.

There were all kinds of medicinal liquor and caterpillar fungus from Hong Kong, and even melatonin [1]. I wanted to make a joke at the time that melatonin by itself wasn't good for their patriarch's brain and now he'd have to wear Zhengyang green ice jade to get better [2].

They stayed in the village for two days. Fatty really liked Zhang Haike and asked him for all the gossip while several others arranged a genealogical chart. In addition to hearing the appalling stories of the old Nine Gates and Crescent Hotel's real background, I also learned some sporadic clues about my Uncle Three. But since it had been such a long time, it was impossible to string them all together now.

Over the past few days, Fujian was absolutely freezing. My HVAC didn't work right, so even though the heat would come on, the moisture wouldn't be pumped out. Fatty totaled the gifts up and said to me, "There are so many people here. We can't just make them leave after receiving their gifts, right? We at least need to be friends with them. There are so few people left in their family, and the widows and orphans also need a chance to relax. Widow Li has stopped by several times already. It's going to arouse suspicion if all the relatives have long fingers and eight-packs. It's better to organize some activities."

I looked at Fatty with narrowed eyes and asked, "What do you want to do?"

I shouldn't have bothered asking. Fatty shoved everything off on me little by little. On the third day, I drove them to a hot spring hotel in Liancheng County, Longyan. With all the men lined up for the hot springs, it was like an engineering group's annual party.

I was a little nervous when I was with this group of people since we had an unpleasant history, and I knew that they would never show mercy if we had a falling out. We could be considered as friends right now because of our relationship with Poker-Face, but the Zhang family was too eccentric. I didn't want to get to know them any more than I already had.

With the exception of Zhang Haike, hardly anyone spoke.

Almost everyone's tattoos showed up since we were in the hot spring, which made the atmosphere really awkward. I was alone in the corner, debating on whether I should run away or not.

But I also made some new discoveries. I found that the overseas Zhangs' tattoos were quite different from Poker-Face's. When I asked Zhang Haike, he told me that the overseas Zhangs' traditional tattoos would make it inconvenient to move around, so they had more freedom. He just had a translated Sanskrit poem tattooed around his neck: "Wutong trees and midnight rain. They know not the grief right now at parting. Leaf by leaf, sound by sound, they drop on empty stairs until the morn [3]."

You act like you're so artistic with words, I said to myself. Fortunately, however, it couldn't be seen at ordinary times. Considering we looked the fucking same, I didn't want to carry around that kind of black mark [4].

In the evening, various group activities such as karaoke and mahjong were arranged. I glanced at Poker-Face to see what his reaction was, but he was still looking at the genealogical chart on his phone with a thoughtful look on his face.

2. Old IOUs

After soaking in the hot spring, our group met back up in the lounge. It was still too early to separate for activities. I was dizzy and unwittingly followed Fatty and his group to the hot spring hotel. There was a karaoke room decorated in gold and a large number of champagne mirrors. It had been decorated a long time ago, so many old stains could be seen, and there were a lot of cracks on the sofa. There were some gaps between the gold-colored floor tiles that were greasy and black. A mixed smell of disinfectant and detergent seemed to be coming from the middle of it.