Lucky (Part 2)
Amidst this extremely boring conversation, we finally caught up with Zhang Tianyi.
Looking up, a section of mottled red brick wall is faintly visible, and the half-old homestay is nestled among the ivy covering the walls, overlooking the surrounding area.
At this time, the sky light gradually became less dazzling, and the steep slope as straight as a ladder to heaven narrowed again, becoming very winding and tortuous as it rose upwards. When we landed, we almost had to turn half of our bodies sideways, pressing our entire bodies tightly against the mountain wall.
Especially at the endless number of corners, if you take half a step forward, you will feel the mountain wall suddenly tilt towards your side or even backward, and the front is suddenly empty.
In this kind of hellish place with no place to go, it is hard to believe that all the tourists on that bus were here to enjoy the sights and sounds, and that each of them had the skills and courage to rival Spiderman.
The team leader was still thinking about the travel agency and didn't say much about Zhou Tingmao's final ruthless calculations.
I was not in the mood to care about a group of sneaky people. I was just thinking carefully to see if there were any suspicious points about the more unfamiliar banyan tree that needed my further consideration.
For a moment, everyone slowed down their pace and walked carefully, without much conversation along the way.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, the air became a little cooler. In front of us, we climbed higher again, and the extremely dense shade of trees was arranged symmetrically along the newly opened path.
When you get here, the road under your feet becomes a gravel road, with pebbles of equal size laid out very beautifully and smoothly.
To be honest, the physical exhaustion along the way was secondary. The main thing was the various unexpected shocks and gains that came one after another, which was a huge drain on the will of all of us.
The artificial neatness and meticulousness before my eyes are truly pleasing to the eye.
We stopped and controlled our desire to rest. We did not walk into the extremely beautiful shade of the tree for the time being, but instead basked in the sun for a while.
After we finished resting on the spot, news from Yan Er finally came. Perhaps out of concern for the little girl Ruirui who was still sleeping, he lowered his voice and asked us how we were.
I told him the general situation and he was silent for a long time before continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened, telling me that he had found out some things while we were on the road.
What surprised me was that Yan Er actually went to check the driver Lao Zhao first.
"I asked the guy who stopped the car with Zhang Jia. There was something wrong with the driver, Lao Zhao. He was too conspicuous."
Yan Mo said: "Bald, obese, with a huge red burn on his chin, it's as if he deliberately wanted people to remember what he looks like, so that they can recognize at a glance that he has been in trouble."
It suddenly dawned on me that Yan Mo was a person who was good at disguising himself and hiding. I still remembered the greedy and cunning manager Yan Er. After hearing what he said, I probably felt the familiar unnatural feeling out of experience.
"After all, it's a service industry. A tourist bus driver who often travels between the highway and the mountains should be very conspicuous. I asked people to inquire about taxi drivers and illegal taxi drivers in Hubei, but they didn't have any impression of him. I also asked several gas stations nearby, but neither the surveillance cameras nor the staff had seen him."
"Then I tried to test Ruirui who was half asleep and half awake. Although she was in a trance, she was not very scared of "sprouting". The fact that the driver Lao Zhao got separated from her did not leave her with a very scary or exciting impression. It was more like an adult specifically explained something to her and she remembered the general idea vaguely because she was young, and in the confusion, she mistakenly believed that she had witnessed it with her own eyes."
My eyebrows jumped when I heard this. Children of five or six years old sometimes cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, and sometimes they tell lies without knowing it. It is not difficult for adults to repeatedly instill a scene or thing into her.
If this is true, then the whereabouts and life or death of driver Lao Zhao are very suspicious.
The fellow who used to follow the team leader and call me "Master" could not stand up immediately. He said indignantly that he would go back and check all those rotten brains, as if he felt that he had been fooled.
With so many heads, it would be mentally abnormal for him to check them one by one. I patted the guy on the shoulder and saw that he was very exhausted because of his "negligence".
Seeing this, the team leader winked at me and said deliberately:
"Yeah, such a young child, why didn't he ask where the adults at home went, and didn't want his mother. But he only remembered a driver and a sister he didn't know."
His eyes kept on Zhang Tianyi, asking me to ask more questions.
The guy didn't know about the flirting between the three of us, and it was like a wake-up call. He suddenly opened his eyes wide and said, "Yes, how could this be possible?"
Yes, what's going on? Ask Zhang Tianyi. I thought angrily.
This guy was the first one to ask about the driver's appearance, but then he kept silent. It turned out that he knew that Old Yan would automatically work overtime and wait here.
"What about the tour guide?" Zhang Tianyi asked in a calm tone, "She probably doesn't have any children at home."
Interrupted by his question, I subconsciously pricked up my ears to express the same question.
Yan Mo seemed to be used to it and said yes.
"Not only that, she doesn't have any elderly parents at home, she lives alone."
He then relayed the original words of a local villager, saying that "there was no one in the house day or night, only a pair of incense offerings. There was also a pile of dirty clothes for children, which I didn't know where they were picked up from, and they looked very fierce."
The local dialect I heard gave me a headache, but the meaning was clear enough: the female tour guide was a loner.
But thinking back to the sincere feelings of the tour guide before the accident, her concern for Ruirui could not be fake, and the resentment and anger for being dragged into danger for no reason were also real.
Not only that, Yan Mo paid someone to rent a car, and under the pretext that "the car was scratched by someone else with a fake license plate", he went to check the toll stations that the tourist bus might pass through. Coincidentally, he still found nothing.
He didn't think that a mere travel agency could have such secretive means, so he turned around and asked the guys who were searching the mountain to focus their search around the mountain pass, and they made a new discovery.
Today's unexpected gains came one after another. When I heard this, I couldn't help but slowly let out the breath I had been holding for a long time. My sore legs softened and I sat down on the ground and continued listening.
It was a very subtle feeling. On the one hand, I was still a little anxious; on the other hand, all kinds of information were continuously gathered by my partners and entrusted to me. Although the situation was very complicated and still needed to be unravelled, the feeling of having something to rely on was indeed reassuring.
The team leader patted my shoulder silently, grinned, and sat down to accompany me.
Yan Mocai said that the bus had actually been parked not far outside the valley. There was a concave corner there, which was difficult to detect from a distance.
There was a flat area that could be used for parking. Under the rainproof tarpaulin were some miscellaneous, semi-new repair tools. There was also an old shack with kitchen waste inside, indicating that someone had always lived there.
But there were only a few deep ruts from repeated tire tracks, and none of them led to the main road outside.
In other words, it is possible that the bus has never left here.
I put myself in the tour guide's shoes and imagined a very bizarre and illogical picture:
They were a group of tourists who came from nowhere. They didn't need a tour bus to pick them up. They just appeared in front of the valley and got on the bus naturally.
The bus driver, Lao Zhao, took the full bus of people and sat for a long time waiting for the company's shuttle bus to bring the rotating tour guide.
After that, the bus only needs to drive along the road on the outer edge of the valley for a while and then turn directly back into the valley.
Then, the tour guide got on the bus, and everyone's heads moved. Dozens of pairs of eyes looked at her with smiles.
The freeze frame of this scene gave me goose bumps all over my body.
"The electricity problem is easy to solve. We found a civilian generator behind the shack. The power is about 70 kilowatts and it can burn diesel. The price of the machine is about five figures."
Yan Mo asked a fellow who knew a lot about vehicles to come over and report on the various traces left by the bus, and then called another fellow over to report the amount of daily necessities consumed by the driver, Lao Zhao, in about a month.
Yan Mo is an expert in logistics. He added two more sentences to give me a rough idea, and then said:
"In theory, as long as someone regularly supplies him with drinking water, diesel, rice, flour, fruits and vegetables, it won't be a problem for him to stay here alone for a year or two."
As for who will replenish the supplies here, the answer is ready just a few steps away.
This is a mountaintop B&B, and there should always be a vehicle delivering goods inside.
The throughput of materials to entertain tourists is not that large, and adding one more portion for driver Lao Zhao is nothing at all.
At this point, I understood: "The B&B's supply truck...?"
"I checked. There will be news soon."
Yan Mo explained something to the people around him and asked me whether I should send someone up the mountain to meet up.
"There's another piece of news, but I don't know if it's useful. The toll booth said that eight years ago, there was a piece of news that was not too big or too small. A couple who were traveling by car disappeared. Their car broke down on the side of the road due to a flat tire, and no one knew where they were lost, in some scenic spot or on some mountaintop."
"Most of their luggage was still in the car and the woman had a photo in her wallet with her last name on the back."
"——Xiao Liu." I closed my eyes and said the name first, thinking of the couple who tried to rescue other tourists together with the female tour guide but died and were buried alive.
So that's how it is.
The female tour guide was indeed friendly and impartial to all the travelers who joined the group. When she was worried about the tourists who squeezed in at the last minute, she must have had no idea that this journey would lead to a dead end.
In other words, there were actually three types of people in the car at that time.
The first one is that you appear near the valley and walk into a car full of "tourists".
The second type is hikers who came out to join the tour, but they did not notice Zhou Tingmao, the mud monster, mixed in among them.
The third possibility is that the car broke down and they were walking lightly trying to find someone to tow the car, but they accidentally discovered the shack and the bus with Xiao Liu and her boyfriend.
The driver may invite them to sit in the car and wait for a while, saying that he is willing to lend them extra diesel. He needs to discuss the loan with his colleagues who are about to arrive, and also invite them to take a free trip along the way.
Once on the bus, the two loving couples will be lucky to find that the valley is green and pleasant in the distance, the driver looks a little scary but very kind and easy to talk to, and the caring and cheerful female tour guide even brings a five or six-year-old child.
This combination dispelled all their doubts and concerns.
Until that moment, it was pouring rain. As one of the only few normal people in the team, Xiao Liu was caught off guard and saw some real images flashing by behind the false scenery of the valley, and screamed in fear.
Behind them, the "tourists" who had already walked into the cave were talking and laughing as usual. Their eyes were looking outside, staring at the two people who were still in the rain, patiently waiting for them to come in.
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