Chapter 013: The Archaeological Team

“Dad, what’s going on here?” Ye Xiaoxuan and Ye Dajun exchanged puzzled looks; they had thought this was going to be a trap, but from the looks of it, it seemed more like a celebration!

What was happening? Had Chen Jiatang suddenly turned over a new leaf and was now trying to curry favor with the Ye family?

Chen Jiatang stood up and greeted Ye Xiaoxuan and Ye Dajun warmly. “Xiaoxuan, Dajun, come, hurry and sit down. Let me introduce you to someone!”

Ye Xiaoxuan sat down warily beside his father, shivering a little at Chen Jiatang’s seemingly kind expression.

This guy suddenly becoming so polite—there was definitely something fishy about it! After all, back in the day, the Chen and Xuan families had become bitter enemies over a strip of land in the fields, and they hadn’t spoken for more than ten years! Just a few days ago, Chen Jiatang had been beaten up and called his nephew over for revenge, and now here he was putting on this act—there had to be a scheme behind it!

Chen Jiatang pointed to Ye Xiaoxuan and Ye Dajun and said to a man in his thirties beside him, “Captain Zhao, these two are the smartest young men in our Reed Village; they’re cousins. The older one is Ye Dajun, the younger is Ye Xiaoxuan. If you have them helping you, your work will be twice as effective with half the effort!”

Captain Zhao turned to look at Ye Xiaoxuan and Ye Dajun, nodded in satisfaction, and said to Chen Jiatang, “Good. I’ll pay them twenty yuan a day. They can start work tomorrow!”

Ye Xiaoxuan frowned. “Start work? What do you want us to do? Steal dogs or kidnap someone?”

Captain Zhao burst out laughing. “Nothing shady, just helping our archaeological team move things and run errands.”

Ye Dajun nodded in agreement right away. “Alright, I’ll help out!” But Ye Xiaoxuan still wasn’t willing, unable to figure out what Chen Jiatang was really up to.

Normally, a good job like this would be kept for his own people—why give it to his enemies? The change in attitude was just too abrupt and too extreme.

Ye’s father tossed a chicken bone on the ground, waited for the dog Da Huang to come and snatch it, wiped his hands on his clothes, picked up a pack of cigarettes from the table, pulled one out and lit it. He said to Ye Xiaoxuan, “Alright, your mother and I have checked it out—it’s a good job arranged for us by the village secretary as a favor. That’s settled!”

Then he leaned down, whispered in Ye Xiaoxuan’s ear, “Twenty yuan a day for just carrying things. If I could manage it, I’d have signed up myself! That’s six hundred a month—only a fool would say no!”

Seeing that his father was tempted, Ye Xiaoxuan could only sigh helplessly and mutter, “It’s not that I’m afraid of being a fool for not going, I’m afraid I’ll become a fool if I do! What’s Chen Jiatang really scheming?”

One couldn’t blame Ye Xiaoxuan for being suspicious. The job seemed easy and paid well, but why would it be handed to an old enemy? Chen Jiatang had three brothers, and his nephew Chen Tianfeng was a strong young man too—why give the job to the Ye cousins?

For someone who’d wanted to kill him just a few days ago, Ye Xiaoxuan wouldn’t believe such sudden goodwill, even if he’d been kicked in the head by a donkey!

There seemed only one explanation: Zhang Cuizhi must have intervened! To keep her affair with Old Huang from being found out, she must have put in a good word for Ye Xiaoxuan with Chen Jiatang.

Since Chen Jiatang was treating, they might as well eat their fill. The brothers ate until they were stuffed, then took their parents home and went together to the shore of Great Immortal Lake.

The vast surface of the lake stretched endlessly, with a large fishing boat anchored out on the water and a few smaller boats nearby. Lights glimmered here and there; it seemed some people were sleeping on the boats. These were, presumably, the so-called archaeological team Chen Jiatang had mentioned.

Ye Xiaoxuan had grown up by the shores of Great Immortal Lake. The sweeping, thousand-mile stretch of water was shrouded in mystery, filled with legends that had accompanied his childhood. In fact, these tales were a shared memory for all the villages around the lake.

The mysteries of Great Immortal Lake were endless! No one could say for sure how vast it really was, or how deep. Mysterious as it was, though, what did it have to do with archaeology? Could there be ancient treasures on the lakebed? If there were, the villagers—many of whom fished there year-round—would surely have found something by now.

The archaeological team had set up a large camp on the western mound outside the village. A rough count showed nearly fifty tents—clearly, they had quite a few people.

As Ye Xiaoxuan and Ye Dajun approached the camp, a burly man in camouflage emerged from behind a tree. He shoved his hand inside his jacket and eyed the brothers warily. “What are you doing here?”

Ye Dajun glared and gave the man a shove in the chest, grumbling, “I want to go to the lake. Who are you to block the way?”

The man staggered back with the shove, then twisted his waist and suddenly pressed the cold muzzle of a gun to Ye Dajun’s forehead.

Wait—was that a pistol? Ye Dajun grabbed the man’s right hand, closed his left eye, and peered into the dark barrel with his right, then turned to Ye Xiaoxuan with a grin. “Hey, little Third, doesn’t this look just like the one you used to have?”

The burly man was startled—did these two bumpkins have guns as well? It was strictly forbidden to own firearms!

Ye Xiaoxuan reached for the man’s gun arm, like a mischievous child seeing a new toy. “I used to play with one too, but Erganzi swiped it from me! Is this one air-powered or gasoline?”

The burly man was about to lose his mind. This Browning pistol was worth over five thousand on the black market, and these two yokels were treating it like a toy!

Just as he was about to slap both of them, a voice behind them exclaimed, and someone strode over, asking the brothers, “Weren’t you told to come tomorrow? What are you doing here now?”

It was Captain Zhao.

Ye Dajun grumbled, “This is weird. We grew up by this lake—how come it’s suddenly your territory? And besides, there’s nothing here but water and mud—what could you possibly be studying?”

The burly man glared, about to scold him, but Captain Zhao coughed to stop him. He smiled at the brothers and explained, “Archaeology is just one part of our work. In fact, we’re a branch of the Academy of Social Sciences. The mysteries of Great Immortal Lake have drawn national attention, so we’ve been sent to investigate.

Of course, we’re not trying to claim the place for ourselves. You’re welcome to come by anytime, and we could use your help. It’s just that once our work gets underway, some of our equipment is quite delicate—one bump and it’ll break. We use a lot of electricity and we try to keep things discreet. It can be dangerous if you’re not careful, so we’ve set up a restricted area for everyone’s safety, with the consent of both the village chief and the party secretary!”