Chapter 142: Strange Occurrences 1

I woke up to the swaying of the car. As soon as I opened my eyes, He Yu’s big face was right in front of me, scaring me half to death. He chuckled at me and called out, “He’s awake, he’s awake! Master Si, he’s burning up with a fever this high, yet you still insisted on bringing him to such a dangerous place. That’s really not right.”

Immediately after, I heard a familiar voice drift back faintly from the front passenger seat. “Even his classmates met with misfortune. Leaving him at school alone didn’t feel safe, but the project on my end can’t be put on hold either, so I had to bring him along for now. Ask him if he’s thirsty. I have water up here.”

I reached out and felt around, realizing I was in the back row of a moving van. He Yu, probably afraid I’d roll off if left to sleep on my own, was sitting beside me in the back, letting me rest my head on his thigh while holding a cold towel to my forehead.

Lu Ayao was sitting in the seat right in front of my head. Hearing the sound, he turned to look back at me. I gave him a dazed look, then glanced up at He Yu, completely baffled by what was going on.

“Stop staring. You passed out with a fever. We gave you some fever medication three hours ago. How are you feeling? Any better? Are you thirsty? Do you want water?” He Yu pulled me back and made me lie down properly.

I cleared my throat. “Where are we? Why am I here? And why are you here? What’s going on?”

He Yu sighed helplessly, turning his gaze toward the front passenger seat. “As for what’s going on, you’d better ask your Fourth Brother. After all, I was snatched up by them out of nowhere midway through. Now I have no choice but to tag along!”

“Fourth Brother?!” Hearing that key name, my voice squeaked with excitement, and I hurriedly turned to look at the front seat.

Fourth Brother turned around from the passenger seat to look at me, offering a rare smile and a greeting. He gestured for me to lie back down. “You have a fever. Getting up too fast might make you motion sick. Lie down and rest; we still have a long way to go.”

I didn’t quite know how to describe my feelings at that moment. My heart bounded with joy, feeling as though I had suddenly grasped a lifeline. It felt as if the heavy burden I had been carrying these past few days vanished in an instant, and the mysteries that had plagued me for so long finally had an outlet.

A wave of relief swept over me, and the joy on my face was impossible to hide. He Yu grumbled at me, “Hey, can you stop moving around, my young master? With all your fidgeting, it’s like this towel was never even applied. I just changed it for you, and now I’ll have to do it again in a bit. All you know how to do is sit there grinning like an idiot.”

Aside from still feeling a bit dizzy, I felt like I was fine. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts before asking, “Wait, Lu Ayao, didn’t we just come out of the old site of Xinchang Bank? Fourth Brother, are we on the highway now? What on earth is going on?”

Lu Ayao stayed silent. Fourth Brother sat up front and leisurely pulled a string of beads from his pocket. The moment I saw it, I froze. What Fourth Brother held in his hand was clearly the bracelet I had sold in Yunnan just a few days ago! How on earth did that thing get into Fourth Brother’s hands?

“Did you think what you did in Yunnan could really stay secret?” Fourth Brother turned around and tossed the bracelet to me. “Good lad, you’ve really grown up and gotten capable. When my subordinate told me you were impersonating me to sell stuff in the group chat, I thought I’d misheard. I didn’t expect you to actually pull something like that.”

I caught the bracelet, unable to say a word for a long time. The truth was simply too shocking.

Fourth Brother said, “After you came out of that tomb, my men kept eyes on you the whole time. At the same time, I realized someone else besides me had their eyes on you. Their surveillance methods are remarkably sophisticated, and I haven’t managed to uncover their true identities yet.

“I knew Qiao Sangui had blocked your channels for fencing goods, but I couldn’t get over to you right away. I figured you’d try to find a way to sell something for cash, but damn it, I never expected the first thing you’d think of was impersonating me online.

“My guy alerted me the second you posted that message, so I immediately dropped five thousand to buy this bracelet off you. At the time, you must’ve thought I was some rich idiot with more money than sense, didn’t you?”

I nodded silently, slipping the bracelet back onto my wrist. I was stunned by how deep Chen Si’s cunning had become over the years. To think the three of us had been gloating back then, thinking we’d struck it rich and gotten lucky with some rich sucker with more money than brains—never imagining it was just Fourth Brother using a roundabout way to send me financial aid.

Fourth Brother went on to tell me a great deal more. This time, he didn’t avoid any topics. Much of what he revealed was entirely new to me, and I realized that everything I had dug up before was nothing more than outdated news—merely the tip of a vast iceberg.

It all started after he left Shennongjia. After saying goodbye to me, Chen Si took all the photos he had taken of the subterranean ruins to the archaeological institute. Several top experts there put their heads together and worked tirelessly for seven straight days, finally uncovering a clue regarding the origin of the ancient ruins beneath Shennongjia.

The conclusion they reached was that the ruins beneath Shennongjia very likely belonged to a mysterious ancient kingdom from the Xia Dynasty. However, there is no record of this kingdom in any official history found to date; it exists only as brief fragments in the surviving unofficial local records of ethnic minorities in western Hunan.

Piecing together these snippets from various ethnic minority records, Wu Yili was the first to construct a model of this religious state called “Ne.”

Ancients from the Xia Dynasty and earlier mostly worshipped primitive deities. To put it simply, their nature worship reached an extreme at one point, a tradition that many ethnic groups carry on to this day. For instance, the Yi people worship spirits of the land, wind, water, and mountains, while the Mongols worship the heavens, which evolved into the concept of Tengri.

However, the people of the Gune Kingdom that Wu Yili investigated clearly strayed from this pattern. They worshipped something called the “Lotus Bodhisattva,” and the descriptions in those local records were remarkably strange.

Roughly translated, the “Lotus Bodhisattva” was an uncanonical god who controlled life and death. It is important to note here: not “governed” or “presided over,” but “controlled.” Ethnic minority languages are not like English; they are precise in their phrasing. Fourth Brother said the linguist translating for them had specifically used the word “control.”

Those specific words gave Wu Yili and the bald professor a headache for quite some time. What exactly did it mean to control life and death?

There are no records indicating the actual location of the Gune Kingdom, yet they appear in local chronicles from multiple different regions. What they had in common were a few sparse lines, but these places were vast distances apart, and the records came from entirely different ethnic groups.

It was as if the people of the Gune Kingdom would suddenly appear in one place, vanish, and then, after some time, reappear thousands of miles away to live. Without exception, they remained acutely aware of their identity as people of the Gune Kingdom, making no effort to integrate into other ethnic groups.

In addition to this, Fourth Brother shared a bizarre little story with me from those far-fetched local chronicles.

The story, recorded in one of the chronicles, tells of a young Yi man who went into the mountains to gather herbs. He went almost every day and was very familiar with the deep mountain terrain. However, on this trip, he discovered a strange cave he had never seen before. He was certain the cave had been newly excavated. Curious as to why anyone would dig a hole in a place infested with venomous snakes, he went inside to investigate.

Inside, he found a corpse. The body had already turned pale and begun to rot, having been dead for two or three days. There were two massive puncture wounds on the ankle, likely from a venomous snake bite. In that era, with no emergency services or hospitals, being killed by venomous snakes or wild beasts in the mountains was a common occurrence.

The young man immediately backed out. Not wanting to disrespect the body, he covered it with leaves, bowed a few times in prayer, and left. But something strange happened three days after he saw that corpse.

A stranger suddenly arrived in the village, looking for a place to stay.