Chapter Thirty-One: Wooden Barrel

  I was so angry that I stamped my feet repeatedly. These wooden barrels are my responsibility, and if they get damaged, who can I reason with?

  "It's just a top-secret file of the National Government, what's the harm in taking a look? It's not like we'll die. The heavens are high and the emperor is far away, who knows if we've made a move?" Nie Kun said with a scowl on his face, clearly displeased with my actions.

  As he spoke, he glanced inside the broken barrel and wondered: "Huh? It seems to be a photo of a woman." Xu Lai was also not afraid of trouble, as soon as he heard it was a woman's photo, he immediately went over to study it with Nie Kun.

  "Hey, you look great, hehehe...... it's even better if you don't wear clothes."

  "Look, it's a bit like Cai Lingyu that woman, I wonder if it's her own unspoken file."

  Two people bumped their heads together in a hurry, staring at the broken hole on the wooden barrel with wide eyes.

  I'm also helpless now, things have come to this point, sitting on the ground with a thud, praying not to be blamed by my superiors.

  But these two rascals' level of recklessness far exceeded my expectations, with a sentence "look down on it, smash it and forget about it", they actually used force to smash the wooden barrel into pieces.

  I didn't have time to stop it before I saw the wooden bucket shatter all over the floor, with its contents spilling out.

  A stack of black and white photos, a few documents, and a large number of ice fragments, with a... head emitting white mist visible through the ice.

  Nie Kun and Xu Lai, the two culprits, were stunned. Inside the wooden bucket was actually a human head. We carefully opened the face of the head, and as soon as we saw its appearance, we gasped in shock. It turned out that this head belonged to a woman, and she looked almost identical to Cai Lingyu!

  "We've seen a ghost!" The rest of us, except for Old Corpse, were stunned and bewildered. Third Master Xie's spirit almost collapsed: "Ah, you've killed Captain Cai, you've killed her... Don't kill me, please don't! As for Zhang Jue and the other sailors, they too were shocked beyond words.

  I had a moment where I really suspected that Nie Kun killed Cai Lingyu and hid in the wooden bucket to play a prank. It was too similar! Thinking of this, I wrapped the head with a rag and quickly took it to the room where Cai Lingyu was being held, Nie Kun and the others followed. We compared the head with Cai Lingyu himself who was sleeping soundly, the similarity was astonishingly 99%. The only difference was that the blood in the head had long been drained, the face was as white as a ghost, looking very gloomy.

  I couldn't help but carefully examine the human head in my hand again, and saw that there was no sign of rot or decay on it. It felt a bit stiff due to being frozen, but overall it still had the tactile sensation unique to skin and muscle, as if it had just been chopped off from the neck, which was clearly impossible.

  We returned to the room with a strange expression, and the old man was already waiting for us: "Hand it over, let me take a look."

  I hastily handed over the skull. This old eunuch was a professional tomb raider, having seen more corpses than living people; perhaps he could "see" something.

  The old man carefully felt the human head, his face changing several times, finally putting the head on the ground, spitting out a mouthful of air, and said in a low voice: "This head has some age to it, having undergone at least dozens of extremely meticulous special processing, basically maintaining its pre-mortem state."

  "This person's head looks exactly the same as Cai Lingyu, isn't it weird?" I said. The owner of this head must be one of Cai Lingyu's ancestors; otherwise, you can't find anyone who looks so similar in the world.

  We picked up the scattered documents and photos on the ground one by one to take a look. I soon discovered that these black-and-white photos were all taken of the owner's life, very casual, as if they saw something and took it, some didn't even have a front face, but strangely, only she appeared in the photos, with the same background. She was wearing a jacket commonly worn by women at the end of the Qing dynasty, carrying a cloth bag, with a strong sense of the era. There were pictures of her standing, gazing into the distance, squatting down to examine the soil, drinking water, and various trivial actions, with an expression on her face that didn't seem like she was posing, looking very natural. The background in the photos was a continuous mountain range, with a small lake in the mountains, and a small thatched cottage not far away. All of her photos were taken around this background, from different shooting angles.

  "This doesn't look like a posed photo, it's more like a candid shot." Xu Lai said with a puzzled expression. As I looked at these photos, I thought they were more like a series of documentary-style photos, documenting the daily behavior of the subject in the photos. Next, we focus our attention on the thin file, if there are any secrets here, basically can only be found from these files.

  But as he unfolded the document and took a look, his eyes widened in shock. "What the hell is this?!" Nie Kun cursed.

  All I saw was no Chinese characters on the document, just dense and numerous numbers without any spaces.

  "This must be a coded document." I was shocked, some highly confidential files were even converted into codes for recording in order to prevent others from seeing them. The purpose is that even if the spy finds it, without the corresponding decoding key, it's hard to decipher.

  Alright, now no one can watch. Although I'm a special agent, each profession has its own specialty, my main training is for external affairs, that is, catching people, carrying out assassinations, escorting things and other physical activities. Decoding passwords, this high-level technical work, I didn't even graduate from high school, but as soon as I touch it, I get a headache.

  In the end, we couldn't find any clues, so we could only put the human head, ice block, documents and photos back in order and place them in the corner.

  Looking at the seal with the words "National Government's Top Secret File", my eyelids kept twitching. I don't know if when we arrive in Taiwan, Special Agent 0901 Tian Wenliang discovers that the file has been opened, he will be furious and secretly execute me. Just thinking about it makes me afraid, and I really have no bottom line.

  "When Cai Lingyu and those women wake up, let her take a look. It's possible that this head belongs to her grandmother." Xu Lai said.

  "Don't you think it's strange that the National Government's archives actually left out a person's head? What does this imply?" Nie Kun suddenly asked.

  As soon as he asked, I also thought of the twists and turns of the matter. What is an archive? It's a record that documents one or a series of events. Generally speaking, archives are in the form of files, accompanied by photos, copies, etc. to illustrate, and there may be a small amount of precious artifacts as auxiliary explanations. But using human heads as archives for something, it's almost unheard of in ancient and modern times, China and abroad. A corpse report only needs three things: pictures, autopsy reports, and character introductions.

  If we must consider human heads as part of a file, then there is only one explanation.

  "There's something on this person's head that can't be fully expressed in words." I thought to myself, suspecting such a possibility. But after thoroughly examining it again, I still found nothing and couldn't help but doubt my own hypothesis once more.

  I suddenly noticed a piece of wooden barrel debris at my feet with a string of numbers written on it: "Number 568922".

  This number should be the file number. I also saw similar ones when I went down to the lower cabin before.

  "Wait, with such a large number, isn't it saying that there are at least over 500,000 files in the series?! If each wooden barrel contains one person's head, then over 500,000 people must have died!" I was shocked by this possibility. However, soon after, I shook my head, this is just my own speculation, a large number doesn't necessarily mean there are that many things, often the numbering only changes the last three digits, while the other numbers have different meanings. For example, Special 0901, 09 is the task number, possibly the ninth task of a certain category, 01 is the first executor of the task."

  "We'll open the rest of the wooden barrels and see if there's anything else strange inside," Xu Lai suggested. I firmly stopped him, scolding him in a low voice: "Don't move, can you guarantee that these wooden barrels don't have anything unclean inside?"

  "Whatever, I don't want to see any more crap like that anyway. There's no gold or antiques here, so forget it."

  Nie Kun didn't intend to dig deeper, and I breathed a slight sigh of relief. What I didn't know was that this decision would lead me astray on my future path of searching for historical truth.

  Next, we tied up Xie Lao San and Zhang Jiao, locking them in two separate rooms for interrogation later. As for the other sailors, they were also tied up and locked away, but some of them still had to be relied on to keep the Jin Hua ship running. The foreign devil Sherlock was also locked in a separate room.

  "After everything was done, 'Have you guys heard of a strange legend recorded in the Qing Dynasty's local chronicles?' The corpse suddenly asked us out of nowhere."

  We shook our heads.

  "In the Shunzhi era, a strange thing happened in a rural village in northern Jiangsu. A farmer's wife had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was particularly naughty, always going out to cause trouble and play pranks. One time, while playing, he kicked an old beggar who had wandered into the village from elsewhere into a lake. It was winter, and the old beggar almost froze to death. Afterwards, the old beggar, harboring resentment in his heart, stayed in the village and secretly put poison in the boy's drinking water. Then, while the boy was sleeping under a tree, he used a sharp rope to strangle him. Suddenly, the old beggar lit a string of firecrackers next to the boy's ear, and the boy woke up with a start, subconsciously running outwards. As a result, he ran too hard and didn't notice that his head had been cut off by the rope, and his body continued to run wildly, never returning, and no one ever found him. The mother was heartbroken, holding her son's severed head in her arms. That night, she beheaded her own daughter and attached her son's head to the girl's body. Miraculously, her son came back to life, living until he was 50 years old with the help of the girl's body."

  Our eyes widened in shock and we asked: "Did that little girl just die like that?"

  The old corpse shook his head: "The little girl's skull was picked up by the old beggar and placed in a wooden bucket, buried in a place with good feng shui. A hundred years later, not only did the little girl come back to life, but she also became a fierce mountain spirit, devouring all the people in the original village."

  Suddenly, ah!

  At the same time, a scream came from Cai Lingyu's room.

  She woke up.

  We rushed quickly to Cai Lingyu's room to check.