Beipai Tomb Raiders Notes

Chapter 580 "Ghost House"

Seeing that I had noticed, the middle-aged man explained, "No one is usually here. The surveillance is used to prevent thieves."

The wound on my forehead ached slightly. I suppressed my fear and said, "Isn't the eldest daughter of your Jiang family interested in me? I want to see her now."

Jiang Zhe kicked the stool and said coldly, "Don't take yourself too seriously. Who do you think you are? Can you meet her just like that? The lady is only interested in the people behind you."

I stared at the surveillance camera and shouted, "I'm already in this state! If you're so confident in this situation, why haven't you dared to show up yet? If I'm not mistaken, you noticed me as early as when we first came into contact with the Xia family, right?"

At this time, the middle-aged man's cell phone rang.

He listened for a few seconds, frowned and said, "Zhaoxue, are you sure? According to my uncle, you can't show up easily."

"Okay, got it. I'll listen to you."

Then I was pushed out.

I don't know where this is. It looks like a warehouse halfway up the mountain.

It was late at night, with moonlight, but visibility was low, so I wondered if I could run. What were the chances of getting away?

I quickly rejected this idea. I was not familiar with the surrounding environment and they had guns on them. If I chose to run, I might not be able to get out of the house even ten steps.

Soon, a neat tea field appeared in front of us. It was very large, lush green, and stretched as far as the eye could see.

After walking along the tea field path for a few minutes, a woman suddenly appeared in front of me. From a distance, she had black hair that fell past her shoulders and was wearing a thin white dress. She had her back to me and was picking tea leaves into a medium-sized bamboo basket in her hand.

"Zhao Xue, the people are here."

"Thank you for your hard work, Fourth Uncle. You guys go and guard outside the field."

"this...."

The woman was still concentrating on picking tea leaves. Without turning her head, she said, "It's okay. From what I know about Mr. Xiang, he's a smart man."

As a few people left, only the woman in front of me and I were left in the huge tea field.

I tried to tap the handcuffs, but when that failed, I looked at her back and said, "Girl, you're incredibly brave. Aren't you afraid I'll take you hostage? Or ambushed someone somewhere out of sight?"

After hearing this, she took a deep sniff of the tea leaves and said, "These tea fields are all ours. If Mr. Xiang likes to drink tea, you can pick some. This year's Jiukeng tea is of very good quality and smells much more fragrant than in previous years."

Her voice sounded gentle without a local accent, but I felt a sense of fear in my heart.

"Thank you. I prefer wine to tea. From what I heard from your conversation just now, your real name is Jiang Zhaoxue, right? She really lives up to her name. In winter, even the heaviest snow will melt into the river, leaving not a single snowflake."

What I said was a metaphor, meaning that she hid it too deeply.

After hearing this, the other party laughed and said, "It's a pity that it rarely snows here in winter."

After saying that, she slowly turned around.

This woman was actually wearing sunglasses. She had delicate features, no makeup on her face, and very fair skin. Unlike Xia Shuishui's fair skin, hers was so fair that you couldn't see any blood in it. It gave me an unhealthy feeling.

In addition, I noticed that there was a tattoo exposed on her wrist and just below her neck. It should be a large tattoo.

"Why are you wearing sunglasses so late at night, girl?"

After hearing this, she took off her sunglasses, revealing her half-closed eyes, with only the whites of her eyes visible.

"You...you can't see?"

She smiled and nodded at me.

"Yes, I'm blind and can't see anything. I have an older brother named Jiang Wanglin, who was born with cerebral palsy. My father, Jiang Shouye, couldn't walk when he was a child and has been in a wheelchair his entire life. And my grandfather was also born with a disability. Compared to the three generations of our family, my situation is relatively good."

"Mr. Xiang, do you believe that there are curses in this world?"

"A curse? Something to do with the rebel treasure?"

She nodded. "I didn't believe this when I was little, but now that I've grown up, I'm convinced. That treasure shouldn't have belonged to our Jiang family. We took it for ourselves. That's why, over the past hundred years, all direct descendants of the Jiang family have been born with varying degrees of disabilities, as if they've been cursed."

"That's not necessarily the case. It could just be a coincidence after that," I said.

She slowly shook her head. "It's not a coincidence. Many years ago, that Feng Shui master was trying to help us solve this problem. The source of the pit you discovered and the things you saw were all attempts made by that Feng Shui master back then. Even what's on me is another attempt."

She tugged at her clothes and showed me her tattoos.

I looked closely, but couldn't see it all. I only saw the part of her right chest near her arm. The tattoo was of Buddha. The strange thing was... the Buddha's eyes were rolled up and his hands were raised high, as if he wanted to grab something.

Then she raised her neck, and I saw a bunch of lotus flowers tattooed just below her neck.

"This is a body-suppressing diagram called Four Buddhas Fighting for the Lotus. Have you ever heard of it?"

"It's a different world, so forgive my ignorance, I haven't heard of it. Are these tattoos useful?"

She smiled and said, "Men and women are different. My brother has a different kind of tattoo on his body. The one I got cost me about four million."

"You don't need to be told this," I swallowed.

She straightened her clothes and said, "I don't have many friends. Maybe it's because we are the same age, so I want to tell you this."

"Even though I can't see with my eyes, I know what you look like in my heart. Over the past few months, I've known your every move. You've shown me your world, including the two doctors in the small clinic. I love their story, and seeing that they have a happy ending, I'm happy for them."

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Throughout the conversation, she has always spoken in a gentle and polite tone, and even called me Mr. Xiang. But the more this woman acted like this, the more dangerous I felt. I felt a chill on my back and a fear in my heart, because I couldn't see through her. If I wasn't handcuffed, if I had a knife in my hand right now, I might stab her to death.

As for the curse she talked about, I don’t care whether it’s true or not, that’s not important.

I wanted to keep some distance from this woman, so I subconsciously took a step back.

I asked the question I was curious about.

"Miss Jiang, could you tell me the exact number of treasures that your Jiang family ancestors found in Qiandao Lake?"

After hearing this, she asked, "How much was the annual tax revenue at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty?"

I thought about it and said, "Between the Xuanhe and Jingkang periods, it was probably around 80 million guan?"

She nodded and said something, and my hands couldn't help shaking after hearing it.

She said that if all the buried gold, silver and jewelry were converted into copper coins of the same period, it would be equivalent to more than 280 million strings of cash...

This number is beyond my comprehension and I cannot imagine exactly how much it is.

She said calmly, "You have to understand that this wealth does not belong to the Jiang family alone, but to all the villagers of Jiang Village. To this day, the commune has distributed dividends every year. Even if the people of Jiang Village do nothing, the dividends are enough for them to live comfortably for a lifetime."

"Even Great-grandfather sold all the gold artifacts buried by the rebels until his death, and he still couldn't use them all. We just kept doing this day after day, year after year, making money. To this day, even I don't know the exact amount of money we have abroad. You've been in Qiandao Lake for so long, you should know about Lishang Bank. It's our Jiang Village's bank, which facilitates capital turnover."

"Grandpa is in poor health, and I've been in charge of all family affairs for the past few years. The Xia family became wealthy because they were taken care of by the Jiang family. As you saw before, the villagers no longer live there. We have kept this secret together. It was like this before, it is like this now, and it will be like this in the future."

She put her sunglasses back on, looked at me, and said, "For nearly half a century, in the entire Qiandao Lake, apart from the deceased old man of the Xia family, no outsider knew of the existence of the Jiang family. Your master described us as ghosts floating in Qiandao Lake, which is quite apt."

"Since your family is not short of money at all, why did you set up this scheme in secret? Why do you keep targeting us?" I asked nervously.

She suddenly smiled again, and that smile made me feel a chill on my back.