Tomb Raiding: My Family's Last Clan Chief is Little Brother

Chapter 272 The Ups and Downs of His Life
(It's the end of the month, thank you all for your continued support, I'll add a little extra chapter here.)

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"Did that bald-headed Chu say who he was?" Wu Xiaoxie asked hurriedly.

Pan Zi said, "That guy is like a saw-off gourd, always saying that if you take someone's money, you have to do something. I bet there are other people who have the same idea as you and are asking him about that guy."

After hanging up the phone, Wu Xiaoxie sighed heavily, his brow furrowed with worry. "Damn it, I finally got a lead, and now it's gone cold again."

Wang Mengmeng stood at the door, cracking sunflower seeds in her mouth, and called out to the inner room, "Boss, your package has arrived."

Wu Xiaoxie came out, took the package, signed for it, and asked in confusion, "I didn't buy anything. The address is Wu Shan Ju, so why are both the sender and recipient names mine?"

Wang Mengmeng quickly moved closer and guessed, "Could it be some kind of prank by someone who's bored? Maybe it was the fat boss who did it?"

“It shouldn’t be.” Wu Xiaoxie shook his head and looked closely at the sender’s address, “Pingtang Prison… Prison…”

Suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind. He realized that the place Panzi had mentioned where Chu Guangtou was being held seemed to be this place.

He hurriedly opened the palm-sized cardboard box, inside which was a square object wrapped in bubble wrap.

Wu Xiaoxie's heartstrings tightened immediately. After the incident with the videotape, he now had a strange fear of packages from unknown sources.

Wang Mengmeng readily handed over a pair of scissors, looking expectant, and said, "Boss, cut it."

Wu Xiaoxie rolled her eyes at him, took a deep breath, and, suppressing her trembling hands, peeled off the bubble wrap layer by layer.

With a slip of his hand, the innermost thing rolled down and landed on his foot, startling Wu Xiaoxie.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a black velvet jewelry box.

"What the hell?" Wu Xiaoxie was stunned for a moment, bent down to pick up the jewelry box, opened the metal clasp, and found a small black square stuck vertically in the center of the white sponge lining inside, where there should have been a ring or something else.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be an SD memory card for a DSLR camera.

"This... damn it, it can't be another one of those recordings, can it?" Wu Xiaoxie hesitated, then realized that there was no such thing as high-tech storage devices back then.

He placed the memory card on the coffee table, wondering if there were any other clues in the box. He pulled out the entire sponge lining, shook it, and sure enough, another small piece of paper fell out.

"Put the card in the camera I left with you last time."

It was such a short sentence, but the font used was awkwardly thin gold script, and it wasn't even properly practiced.

However, upon reading these words, Wu Xiaoxie knew that the memory card must have been sent by Muyu.

This guy finished his business and didn't even come back. What's the point of sending this thing?

Could it be that the person who contacted Chu Guangtou before them was Muyu?
Wu Xiaoxie breathed a sigh of relief. If it really was a wooden fish, he would be at ease.

He made a phone call and summoned Fatty and the young man from their house to Wushanju.

“This was sent by Muyu.” Wu Xiaoxie put the memory card into the DSLR camera. “I guess it contains information that he got from Chu Guangtou.”

The fat man hissed, "That kid Muyu is quick on his feet, he got it already." The three of them stood head to head around the camera's palm-sized screen, concentrating intently.

The screen flickered, and the first image that popped up was of Chu Guangtou with a cigarette between his fingers.

I don’t know if it was because the smoke was too thick, but Chu Guangtou’s head didn’t seem as shiny as before. He also looked much thinner. He was wearing a loose prison uniform that looked empty. His eyes were sunken and he looked very unwell. He looked like he had aged more than ten years.

It wasn't until he finished the cigarette that Chu Guangtou raised his eyelids, glanced at the camera, or rather, glanced at the person sitting opposite him. His eyes visibly shrank, and his eyelids immediately drooped back down.

After a long pause, he finally spoke in a hoarse voice, "You want to ask about Zhang the Mute?"

There was no sound from the other end.

Chu Guangtou pursed his dry, chapped lips, as if he had made a decision, and looked up at the person opposite him. "Give me 500,000, and I'll tell you anything you want to know, how about it?"

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Chu Guangtou suddenly became agitated, his handcuffs clanging against the table. "I know a lot of things, very crucial things..."

The sound of a prison guard shouting can be heard off-camera.

Chu Guangtou deflated like a punctured balloon, shrinking into a ball with a pleading look in his eyes. "My life is pretty much over. Please have pity on me and do me a favor. Call me filial or hypocritical, it's easy for you. I can guarantee that no matter who comes here after this, even if they put a knife to my throat, I will never tell anyone about these things again."

A series of light footsteps came from off-camera. About a minute later, a note for a remittance of 500,000 yuan was pushed onto the table by a slender, fair hand.

Upon seeing the numbers, Chu Guangtou's eyes lit up again. "Good, you really are a straightforward person. I believe you will keep your word."

After lighting another cigarette, Chu Guangtou finally spoke slowly, "I have a photograph hidden somewhere, and that photograph contains a huge secret."

What followed was a narrative that lasted for an hour.

During this time, a prison guard came over to urge them once, but they were quickly sent away by the people on the other side.

“Those people are very abnormal. They seem to be independent, separate from this world, and have no connection with this society at all,” Chu Guangtou said.

"Where they came from, who they were, and what they were investigating, nobody knew. It was as if they appeared out of thin air, suddenly in that place."

“I advised Third Master to stop investigating, but he insisted until a year ago when he returned from the Lu King’s Tomb in Shandong and suddenly told me that one of those people was Zhang the Mute, and that he was still alive and hadn’t aged at all.”

At this point, Chu Guangtou's eyes clearly showed a hint of fear of the unknown that was beyond his comprehension.

He took a deep breath before continuing, "Dumb Zhang was originally Fourth Master's man. Third Master borrowed him from Fourth Master. Third Master asked me to investigate, and I found out some... unbelievable things."

“We don’t have to talk about these things,” the person on the other end spoke for the first time. “Let’s talk about what happens next.”

"Him... ah?" Chu Guangtou was taken aback. "You know him?"

“I know, I don’t want him to hear. Just tell me what happened next, like how you found that photo.”

He didn't want his brother to hear about the pain he experienced as Ah Kun.

Even if he has amnesia and may not feel anything about those things at this moment.

(End of this chapter)