Chen Tao rubbed his temples and tried to calm down.
Everything so far seemed like a jumble of scattered fragments in his mind.
He tried hard to find out the cause and effect of the matter among the clueless fragments.
Perhaps it was already in Uncle Long's plan from the time he went to Heizigou.
When Uncle Long met the Tongren in Suzhou, he had already negotiated cooperation with the Ye family. What happened in Heizigou was just a show played by Uncle Long and Ye Rong to Yan and his gang.
After that, Uncle Long arranged for Lao Mao and the others to step on the plates in Heizigou, and cleverly caused the "disappearance" of those people.
In fact, Lao Mao and the others were probably already secretly heading to Tatunaan at that time.
Taking advantage of this incident, Uncle Long took Yan and the others to Heizigou.
Chen Tao had no way of knowing Uncle Long's purpose for doing this. After Heizigou came back, Uncle Long immediately followed the plan and asked Ye Rong to pretend to be himself and go to the desert to join the old cats waiting in the town, but he himself went there his true destination.
However, things did not develop according to Uncle Long's plan.
The appearance of the real Chen Tao disrupted all the original plans.
The appearance of the great wizard was also unexpected.
Chen Tao thought about it over and over, and finally discovered that the breakthrough point lay in the two secret messages left by the old cat.
Along the way, Chen Tao only saw two signals, one for Uncle Long and one for Chen Tao.
The first time I saw it was on a broken boat on the river.
It says,
"Uncle Long is in danger, there is someone behind you."
Judging from the first information, Lao Mao should have separated from Uncle Long and the others pretended by Ye Rong very early.
The most likely possibility is that the old cat fell into the hands of the great wizard's group.
And if Chen Tao's guess is correct, Lao Mao doesn't know that Uncle Long is Ye Rong pretending to be.
At that time, Ye Rong found that the old cat was missing, so she went to track it down. At this time, the great wizard left some people to deal with them.
So, the old cat who was in the team of great wizards secretly left a signal to remind Ye Rong.
In the lost city, Lao Mao saw Hao Zi who was taken away by the great wizard, and knew that Chen Tao had also come to the desert.
After that, Ye Rong and the others encountered an ambush by the great wizard's group again and were trapped in the Jial Cave.
Maybe it was that time that Lao Mao discovered the traitor in Ye Rong's team.
After that, there was the second code word.
In the Forest of the Undead, Chen Tao saw another sentence left by the old cat.
"Little boss, Mr. Long is trapped in Jiaer Cave. There is a traitor in their team. Be careful of Li Hao!"
At this time, Lao Mao already knew that Ye Rong and the others were trapped, and reminded Chen Tao that there was a traitor among those people.
But Lao Mao didn't know that the traitor turned out to be Yan.
He said to be careful about Li Hao, he probably discovered that Hao Zi's body had been tampered with by the witch, but in the end, Chen Tao still failed to notice this.
Chen Tao didn't know where the old cat went in the end.
Because I couldn’t see him again in the end.
Along the way, Lao Mao has been looking for opportunities to remind Chen Tao and Ye Rong behind him. Judging from the afterimages in the black hole, Lao Mao may have encountered something unexpected that time in the Forest of the Dead.
These are all the things that Chen Tao can guess.
After that, Chen Tao and the others rescued Ye Rong, went to the temple, and everything happened next.
In a daze, the car had entered Shanxi.
Chen Tao and the others said goodbye to Liang Shaokai in Taiyuan, and finally contacted their family members to take them back to the ancient city.
Everything is still the same.
When Chen Tao was lying under the big tree in the yard to enjoy the shade again, he couldn't help but wonder if he was dreaming.
He still couldn't believe that he really went to that place called Tatunaan.
However, the rat-headed mask that he locked tightly in the cabinet told him.
It's all true.
The first thing Chen Tao did after returning was to find the map left by his grandfather and compare it with the tattoo on Balohard's body taken on his cell phone.
Sure enough, the two are basically similar, but the one left behind by grandpa has a lot of differences.
Grandpa's map should have been copied from Uncle Wang's body, and after coming out of Tatuna, grandpa made certain corrections on the original basis.
Thinking of everything between Uncle Wang, Grandpa, and Tatunaan, Chen Tao felt that maybe only one person could tell him the answer.
Mr. Li.
Just as he was about to get up, he was suddenly hit by something.
Chen Tao rubbed his thigh and took out the strange bracelet from his pocket.
This bracelet was found on the child's bones. The style is very unique and does not look like an ordinary thing.
After weighing it in his hand, Chen Tao decided to ask Mr. Li carefully. Maybe he would know the origin of this bracelet.
By the way, let's see if we can get some clues from Mr. Li.
When they arrived at Mr. Li's woodware shop, Haozi introduced an exquisite makeup box to two young girls with great excitement.
Seeing Chen Tao coming, he glanced at him and waved his hands at Chen Tao, as if he was afraid that Chen Tao would come and steal his luck.
Chen Tao didn't have time to watch him fooling around with girls, even though they were all pretty.
It’s hard for singles these days!
Turning around the front hall, Chen Tao arrived at the back with ease.
At this time, Mr. Li was lying on the kang and taking a nap, covered with a black tunic-style coat.
"Why, which one did those two girls look at?" Old Man Li didn't move and just opened his mouth.
"Um, um, Grandpa Li, it's me." Seeing that he woke up Mr. Li, Chen Tao scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Oh, Tao Yaozi is here." Mr. Li took off his clothes and sat up cross-legged.
Right now, it's lunch time.
Perhaps because Chen Tao came, Mr. Li was in a very good mood today. He set up a small square table on the kang, opened a pot of wine, and asked Haozi to go out to a restaurant to buy some hot dishes. While eating, he told the two of them a thrilling story. Tomb robbing story.
"So, what happened to those three people,"
"If you want to know what happened, let me explain next time!" Mr. Li wiped his gray beard and smiled at Chen Tao and Li Hao on the table.
The two of them were fascinated by what they were listening to, and when their grandfather stopped talking, they couldn't give up. Chen Tao filled a cup of wine for Mr. Li and said with unfinished content:
"Grandpa Li, I've been listening to you tell stories since I was a child. You always stop when it's the most exciting moment. It's not easy for me to do this. Please tell me more!"
Li Laomi took a sip of the white wine in her cup, smacked her lips with great aftertaste and said:
"Hey, Tao Yaozi, in this story telling, the key is to explain nine points and leave one point. If you explain it all at once, there will be no point in it. Let's continue tomorrow!"
After speaking, he drank all the wine in the cup.
When Chen Tao saw this, he stopped asking any more questions. This is Mr. Li's rule. No matter where he is, when he is telling stories, he will have a piece of sober wood on the desk and a small cup of white wine. When the wine is gone, the book stops.
When Mr. Li was young, he was a well-known storyteller here. When he was a teenager in Beijing, he became his disciple Zhou Yaoting, a famous storytelling star at that time, and married his daughter Zhou Linglong.
After Zhou Yaoting's death, he began to wander alone in the world. In order to support his family, he went to bookstores everywhere. His superb storytelling skills allowed him to attract a large number of audiences, and he gradually gained some fame.
At the end of the Anti-Japanese War, it was said that a Japanese officer wanted to listen to his story. No matter how many times the Japanese came to invite him, he remained unmoved.
The Japanese officer's soldiers became anxious and kidnapped Mr. Li and took him to the military camp and locked him up.
It was also Mr. Li who had great luck. Not a month after the Japanese army captured him, Japan announced its surrender, and the Japanese army evacuated in a hurry.
After Mr. Li was severely beaten by the Japanese, he was thrown into the street.
With such an experience, Mr. Li became famous, people admired his patriotic spirit, and more and more guests came to listen to his stories.
During the special period after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Li's family was transferred to the countryside to where they are now. Later, they opened a lacquerware shop in the county town, but they never went on stage to tell stories again.
Times have changed. Modern people's lives are filled with dazzling high-tech equipment and film and television works. Those people and things of the older generation are disappearing and perishing bit by bit, and are finally buried in the dust of history and disappear.
Only after dinner, when recalling the past, Mr. Li would talk about that part, which was the glory of his generation.
Chen Tao and Li Hao have loved to pester Mr. Li to listen to stories since they were children. Naturally, they knew Mr. Li's temper and habits. When they saw him put down his wine cup, they changed the topic and talked about Chen Tao's grandfather.
"Your grandpa, that's an amazing man!"
Mr. Li was silent for a long time, grabbed the wine cup, drank all the wine in one gulp, and sighed in frustration.
"Sigh... there aren't many of those old guys left..."
Listening to Mr. Li's sigh, Chen Tao felt troubled. Looking at the gray-haired old man in front of him, he suddenly wanted to cry. After all, people are no match for time. It's not that he is afraid that he will die, but that he is watching the familiar people around him disappear one by one and never come back again. What kind of sadness it is, Chen Tao still can't understand it now.
"The Spiritual Alliance is no longer what it used to be. People are scattered and everyone has their own thoughts. Once your grandfather dies, those people will be unable to hold on." Mr. Li looked at Chen Tao.
"Tao Yaozi, the old Chen family and the Li family will depend on you in the future."
Mr. Li's sudden call made Chen Tao a little confused. Although it is said that grandpa's death did cause a great shock to the Spiritual Alliance, as the leader of the entire alliance, grandpa's death was a huge blow to the alliance.
However, as a descendant of the Chen family, Chen Tao's father and several uncles never let him take over the family business.
Although he lives in such a family, Chen Tao can be said to know nothing about his own family and family business. It’s also thanks to the fact that I learned something in four years of college that I could barely work as a assistant in Uncle Long’s shop. Otherwise, I would have no choice but to line up and go to the labor market to submit resumes everywhere.
Chen Tao asked himself, it was okay to let him see the shop and sell things, but he was in charge of the future of a family, so it was better to pull him down.
"I think back then, when the great ancestor set up tomb guardians, he chose hundreds of households. Now, they are scattered and perished. If it weren't for your grandpa, I, Li Yixing, would have long been reduced to an ordinary person and buried in the world. .”
Tomb keeper!
Chen Tao was shocked.
Uncle Long once asked Chen Tao to remember a sentence.
The Chen family are tomb keepers, not tomb robbers.
Could it be...
Chen Tao suppressed the excitement in his heart, and was afraid that Mr. Li would suddenly cut off the topic, so he hurriedly gave him a glass of wine and spoke cautiously.
"Mr. Li, what exactly is the tomb-keeper you mentioned about?"
