Chapter 27: Emperor Liu

  "A living person can't just disappear into thin air, let's search again!" I insisted on searching once more.

  The four of us then converged and soon made another search along the corridor, this time with the same result as before - no other living soul was found except the locked-in passengers.

  There were many corpses scattered in the corridor, and it seemed that the sailors had suffered heavy losses. Unfortunately, the bodies of Cai Lingyu and Xie Lao San were not found, nor were those of Gui Ye Jia and Lao Taijian.

  We looked at each other in surprise, wondering if all these people had evaporated into thin air?

  It suddenly occurred to me that there were only three places on the massive Jin Hua wheel that could accommodate multiple people. These three places we had not thoroughly searched, namely the tightly locked passenger room, the engine room and behind the large iron 'door' of the cargo hold.

  We first ruled out the big iron 'gate' there, only a sick brain would go there to feed the tapeworm. Secondly, the engine room is possible, but the problem is that we don't know where the engine room is! The most practical way in front of us is to search each passenger's room.

  But every room was locked up.

  At this point, Sherlock and the other two people unintentionally focused their attention on me.

  "Grass, why is everyone looking at me!" I cursed loudly.

  "Haha, the capable ones are always busy." Sherlock smiled slyly and said politely: "Haha, Brother Hong looks a bit familiar, didn't you used to 'mix' in the underworld?"

  I gave him a white eye, no need to think, he must have taken me for a habitual thief. However, it's not his fault, anyone who sees my skilled lock-picking skills will associate me with flying thieves, I slowly said with a serious face: "Actually, I am a... policeman."

  I had just finished explaining, when Xu Lai and Nie Kun were shocked, their faces unconsciously revealing a hint of disgust and vigilance, which they immediately covered up. Their movements were naturally all within my sight. I sneered in my heart, haha, cats and rats can't coexist.

  "In fact, I also have many police friends." Nie Kun covered up the awkwardness in time. I nodded and didn't follow his meaning to continue, but instead talked nonsense: "Lock-picking is a required course in our bureau. As the saying goes, 'know yourself and know your enemy'. A first-class policeman not only needs to learn how to pick locks, but also needs to be proficient in deceiving, cheating, eating, drinking, whoring, gambling, taking drugs, fighting, smashing, robbing, and making trouble."

  "Oh, I see, so that's how it is." Xu Lai nodded repeatedly, but his face showed no sign of believing.

  I exchanged a few words with them and wisely went to open the doors of each room. Starting from the ordinary cabin, the beds were very crowded, but still clean. After all, the passengers who can take the Jinhua ship are all people with heads and faces on the mainland, rich and wealthy, not like the ordinary refugees at the bottom. We found a few clean clothes to wear, so as not to run around naked.

  We took a look around, didn't find anything unusual and immediately moved on to the next room. We quickly swept through the ordinary cabins and arrived at the first-class cabin area. This time, I once again realized the wealth of the rich. In one of the first-class cabins, Xu Lai's eyes landed on a large leather trunk, and after cutting it open with a knife, a palm-sized white jade Guanyin statue was revealed.

  "My goodness, this 'jade' Guanyin is worth at least thirty big yellow croakers!" Xu Lai's eyes gleamed with excitement as he stuffed it into his pants pocket.

  "In a chaotic world, gold is king; in a prosperous era, antiques are treasured. I think the owner of this treasure couldn't sell it for a high price and wasn't willing to sell it cheaply, so they've been keeping it on their body all along." As I said that, I saw Nie Kun and Xu Lai searching the room for more treasures, but then Sherlock also started rummaging through the valuables. I couldn't help but get annoyed: "Stop searching, you can't take too much anyway! Hurry up and focus on the main task!"

  Three people's eyes gleamed with greedy green light, hesitating and stalling, and under my urging, they changed to another room again.

  "Good heavens, don't tell me this is real! A Song Dynasty Longquan kiln ceramic bowl!" Sherlock picked up a small, crack-ridden blue-green ceramic bowl and took a sharp breath. This foreigner was a thorough expert on China, especially when it came to identifying treasures.

  "Give it to me quickly!" Xu Lai stretched out his hand to grab, Sherlock covered the porcelain bowl with one hand and swiftly turned around to hide the thing in his crotch: "Come on, grab downwards!"

  "Scoundrel!" Xu Lai shouted loudly. Sherlock spat: "You have no right to call."

  I couldn't help but shake my head, this team is hopeless. Among the four of us, two are hooligans, one is a foreign hooligan, and one is a spy - none of us are decent people.

  Helplessly walked into the next room, which was indeed Room 108.

  The door was open, and there was no one inside. The lid of the black coffin had fallen to one side, with a large amount of congealed blood remaining inside.

  I clearly remember that before Oni no Tsuki left, they deliberately locked the "door" tightly, which means that "Pillar" either opened the "door" by himself or someone intentionally let him leave.

  After searching around the room, nothing useful was found. The ghost had taken away all the weapons and tools under the black coffin.

  We could only leave with a sulk and went to the next room.

  All the way, we didn't find any living people. To be honest, we relaxed a bit, or our minds were focused on finding treasure, which is very dangerous.

  Click, after unlocking, I gently pushed it open.

  Suddenly, a black muzzle stretched out and pointed straight at our chests.

  My face changed greatly: "Ah, finally found the real owner!"

  "Don't resist if you want to live!" a low shout came over.

  We hastily raised our hands in surrender, threw away our weapons and meekly gave up resistance. Although the room was very dark, we could still make out that the other party had submachine guns in their hands. At such a close distance, they could have shot us into sieves with their eyes closed.

  The man slowly walked out of the room, and I took a look. He was an excessively young man with a somewhat pale complexion, whose appearance was more delicate than handsome, with a feminine beauty. His figure was slender, his muscles full of explosive power. His eyes narrowed, coldly staring at us.

  "Liu Huang, it's really you!" Nie Kun and Xu Lai exclaimed excitedly as soon as they saw the person clearly. They were about to rush over to give him a hug, but Liu Huang, the young man with a gun, had a sly smile on his face and pointed the muzzle at them, freezing them in their tracks. The two men's faces changed instantly, and they said discontentedly: "What do you mean? We're on the same team!"

  "I never join forces with trash." Liu Huang said coldly.

  I broke out in a cold sweat on my forehead. It seems that this young man is the escaped Green Gang disciple, but his relationship with Xu Lai and others seems... not so friendly.

  "This hero, we have no feud with you, don't kill the wrong person." I hastily said.

  Liu Huang didn't respond to me, sniffed the air with his nose, looked up at the 'flower' board on the ceiling and sighed, muttering to himself: "Alas, there are more and more dirty things."

  "Do you know what's going on outside?" I was shocked, and my hand had just subconsciously dropped down. Liu Huang's gun muzzle immediately pointed over, and I quickly raised my hands: "Alright, alright."

  "Don't force me, I don't like killing people." Liu Huang said coldly. I nodded repeatedly, thinking to myself that you have the nerve to put down your gun and say something like that!

  Liu Huang's eyes gleamed with a green light, like the glow of a wild beast's bloodlust, as he gazed at the big and small hills on the ground. The two pangolins were suddenly frightened and trembled with fear, hiding behind my heels.

  At this moment, I shuddered violently as if electrified, and the green light in his pupils was so similar to that mysterious person who ambushed me and injected me with something mysterious! Are they somehow connected?

  Only then did Liu Huang's other hand somehow produce a bronze bell.

  Ding ding ding...... The crisp bell sound is like rhythmic jumping notes, reverberating in the empty corridor.

  Unbeknownst to me, I felt an irresistible wave of fatigue sweeping over my entire body, and my eyelids were as heavy as if they had been filled with lead water, making it impossible for me to lift them. I don't know how quickly I fell asleep, but the scene in front of me became blurry and 'mystical', vaguely remembering Liu Huang pulling us into the room, after which I completely lost consciousness.

  After an unknown period of time, when we woke up, we were in that same room again. Liu Huang was nowhere to be seen. I hastily turned on the light and saw that there wasn't a single piece of furniture left in the room, but right in the middle of the floor, there was a huge 'hole'.

  We looked into the 'cave' and there was no light inside. Our line of sight couldn't see anything clearly, we only knew that the space was extremely large, almost covering the entire hull.

  "Actually, the Jin Hua has a hold." Sherlock exclaimed. Listening to his explanation, it turned out that the hold was often a sealed space used to isolate the middle deck from the ship's keel, just like how there is a small space between the floorboards and the concrete floor at home. Some holds can be very large and useful, while others are extremely small, barely able to fit anything. The Jin Hua's was the latter case.

  Liu Huang didn't kill us, instead he pulled us here to do what? We looked around the corridor, but his figure was already gone. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn't dare provoke him.

  "I asked if you had offended him?" I couldn't help but ask Xu Lai. The latter hastily shook his head: "How dare we, don't look at his young age, he's extremely formidable, no one dares to provoke him. He was recommended by our Green Gang's elder who has long since retired from the world to complete this task. On the contrary, he doesn't get along with us at all and never cares about our lives!"

  The generation of Da Zi is unmatched in the Green Gang, Huang Jinrong and Zhang Shaolin are both one level lower as Tong Zi, while Du Yuesheng is even two levels lower as Wu Zi. Chiang Kai-shek had not risen to prominence before he became a disciple of Du Yuesheng, his generation was so low it's pitiful. Those who were recommended by the seniors of Da Zi generation, Xu Lai and others did not dare to easily offend them.

  "It's all right, at least they didn't do anything to us." Sherlock shrugged and said with a belated fright.

  Suddenly, a withered and greenish old hand was pulled out from the 'hole' on the floor.

  "Zombie!" Several people jumped up in a hurry.

  I took a look at this hand and asked tentatively: "Corpse Old Man, is that you?"

  "Little rabbit, you're still alive! Quickly pull me up!"

  As expected, it was the old eunuch. I quickly pulled him out of the 'hole' and saw that he was covered in dust all over his body. After patting his clothes, he opened his mouth to ask: "Where is that person with the surname Liu?"

  "I said: 'Run.'"

  "Ah~" The old man's face turned red with rage, and he stomped his feet in anger: "It was that guy who helped Sun Dianying steal the tomb of Emperor Qianlong back then! Narrow road encounter, I was actually bewildered again by him using Quanzhen Sect's 'Dang' Soul Bell, shameful!"

  I listened and found out that the old eunuch and Liu Huang were old enemies. Hmm, that's not right, Sun Dengying stole the imperial tomb in '28, now more than 20 years have passed, that person should be at least over 40, how come he still looks so young?

  "Blind man, where are the others?" Xu Lai asked bluntly, his tone no different from asking 'Flower' boy. I thought to myself that this guy is done for. Sure enough, Corpse Old Second didn't say a word, just flicked his wrist and a needle flew into Xu Lai's thigh, causing him to cry out in pain.

  "This is the greatest master of the Qing Dynasty, known as the King of the Earth, the corpse of Gonggong. You ignorant little man, don't you dare to admit your mistake!" I shouted loudly in a pretentious manner.

  "Lord of the Earth!" Xu Lai and Nie Kun's faces changed at the same time, and they hurriedly knelt down to pay their respects: "So you are Lord Di Wang, senior. We didn't recognize Mount Tai, please forgive us, seniors!"

  This time I was stunned, the old eunuch wasn't bragging, did he really have such a great reputation?

  At this time, Sherlock said to the 'cave' entrance: "Someone else is coming up!"