Three days later, Fatty and I got on the highway to Fujian. During those three days, I slept for eight hours each day and took my dicine on ti. The rest of the ti, I quietly visited those whom I thought might let borrow so money. While I was begging one of those people, Fatty stole his antique in the toilet and got thirty thousand yuan for it. Other than that, we didnt get anything else.
We couldnt get a million yuan, so Hong Ding Shuixian returned the two hundred thousand to Fatty. Bai Haotian had sold about two hundred thousand yuan of goods, so she returned from the village. We took the seven hundred thousand yuan and hired three people.
As Kan Jian had said, I didn't have a chance in the Nine Gates. As a result, I used other thods to hire these three people. They werent insiders and had never been underground, but they all needed money. I found them through mutual acquaintances and clues from anecdotes I had collected before. These three people were all ex-prisoners, and almost all of the seven hundred thousand yuan was given to them.
Of course, these people werent ordinary, but theyll be introduced later. Right now, all I can say is that the oldest one was called Jia Kezi. He had a stamr and used to be a railway maintenance worker. He was very silent and stuttered when he beca anxious. There was also a young man in his early thirties who sold fried dough sticks. His nickna was You Erque. The youngest one was called Xiang Dun. He was a nineteen-year-old fat guy who stole mory cards from internet cafes.
During those three days, I didn't waste a single minute on fear, self-pity, feelings, or indecisions. Instead, I focused my attention on the task of making precise calculations.
This was the best situation I could achieve. Three days was the longest I could afford to wait.
Our equipnt was taken from Pan Zis batch in Warehouse Eleven. Only the necessary and damaged parts were supplented with other equipnt, but the rest were all sets Pan Zi had used before. As our group crowded into my car, Fatty started driving. He looked at the group of dozing people in the back seat with a pale face. Bai Haotian was sandwiched between them, looking very small and pitiful.
Because they were ex-convicts, all three people had a special temperant: silence. They were probably accustod to social pressure and no longer felt uncomfortable in strange environnts.
Fatty kept wanting to discuss things with in detail, but I only told him that I knew what I was doing.
Our destination was a tulou (1) in Fujian that had been converted into a hostay run by the village. All of the clues seed to indicate that this had been Uncle Twos first stop after the South Sea Kings tomb.
I was particularly surprised to find that his second destination was also in Fujian. In other words, the clues about Uncle Three listening to thunder ca from Fujian.
After driving for nearly twenty hoursmany of Fujians national highways had a very low speed limitwe entered the county seat, changed to a local car, and then drove into the mountains. We went all the way until we arrived outside of the village where the tulou was located. The village had built a dirt parking lot outside, which was full of cars from Beijing.
They belonged to Xiao Hua's rescue team. I had called ahead and found that this tulou had several floors that had already been booked. Now there were just a few tourist rooms left.
It was already evening when we arrived. Based on Xiao Huas usual habit, soone was probably keeping watch nearby. Most of his n knew , so I put on glasses, looked in the mirror, and made myself slouch until my posture looked different from usual. I then took Bai Haotian and went to check in first.
Fatty was wearing local clothes and mixed in with a few other people before checking in. The three of us got two private rooms on the third floor.
Except for the fifth floor, the entire tulou was quiet and scary, and almost no one spoke. Fatty carefully looked through the gaps in the bedfra during the night. I had already inford the group of tomorrow's affairs, so I quickly fell asleep.
When I thought about it, it was very simple. Tomorrow morning, we would wait for Xiang Dun to go out and socialize. Once we knew what the general situation of this tulou was, we could start planning.
In my sleep, I once again dread of soone knocking on the door. In my dream, I looked at the door calmly. No matter what was outside, I had already accepted it.
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TN Notes:
(1) Traditional Hakka communal residence in Fujian, typically a large multi-story circular structure built around a central shrine. Little more info here. The Hakka are Han Chinese people whose ancestral hos are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan and Guizhou. More info here.
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It's a stretch, but Wu Xie and the gang arrive at the tulou in Season 2 Episode 9. Jia Kezi is canon with a different backstory I guess and I'm assuming Huo Dao Fu took You Erque's place in the drama. Jia Kezi is this dude if you kept getting him and the other Warehouse 11 guy mixed up like lol:
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