Traveling Through the Grave Robbers' Chronicles: Starting from Meeting You

The underwater ancient village is not small in scale. At first glance, it seems as if the entire village is buried under the lake.

Zhang Qiling held Wu Xie on his left and Zhang Hanyan on his right. The three of them swam around the fence and examined the situation closely.

There were many things hanging on the fence, rotting corpses, rusty guns, rotten cowhide messenger bags, and a few tea cans.

"It's not convenient to hold hands, so let's take all these things up and look at them slowly."

"Okay, Wu Xie, take a breath."

After Wu Xie took a deep breath, Zhang Qiling let go of his hand, picked up the things on the fence one by one, and swam to the surface of the water.

Zhang Hanyan took out the dagger she carried with her, cut the rope tied to Wu Xie's legs, and grabbed him and swam upstream together.

The bamboo raft was anchored in the middle of the lake, and Zhang Qiling placed everything he was holding on the raft.

Before he could turn around and dive, Zhang Hanyan and Wu Xie appeared beside him.

"Young man, don't go down yet. Let's see what's in these tea cans. They are sealed so well."

Zhang Hanyan put away the water-repellent beads, picked up a tea can and tried to open it with force. The opening had been rusted shut tightly, and it could not be opened at all.

Zhang Qiling took the tea can and knocked on the bottom of the can twice. The bottom of the can was broken, and the things inside fell onto the bamboo raft.

It was a small black piece of iron, about the size of a thumb, with the patterns on it still clearly visible.

The small piece of iron had an irregular cross-section and was obviously not a whole piece, but was taken off from something else.

They opened the cowhide bag again and poured out everything inside.

There were three combs, two hairpins, a wooden mirror frame and a box of Pechoin vanishing cream in the bag.

"Except for this piece of iron, all the other things in this pile are junk. Hanyan, how about we go down and look for some more?"

Wu Xie rummaged through the things he had fished up, but couldn't find anything truly useful.

He looked towards the deep water, thinking of the Yao village standing quietly at the bottom of the lake, and could hardly control his curiosity.

Zhang Hanyan shook her head. "No, there is only one water-repellent bead. We have to hold hands to make it work. This is very inconvenient. We still need some professional diving equipment."

She looked towards the dense forest on the shore. The fat man who sent the clouds down the mountain had returned and was walking towards the lake.

"Hey! Fatty, what are you three doing in the water? Did you catch anything good?"

The fat man put his hands to his mouth in a trumpet shape and shouted at the three of them.

Zhang Qiling swept everything on the bamboo raft into the water, leaving only the small piece of iron.

He held Zhang Hanyan's waist with both hands, lifted her up gently, and easily placed her on the bamboo raft.

"Let's go back first."

After he finished speaking, he and Wu Xie jumped onto the bamboo raft one after another and paddled slowly towards the lake shore.

As soon as the bamboo raft docked, the fat man walked towards them impatiently.

"What did you get?"

Wu Xie threw the iron block in his hand lightly towards him, and the fat man reached out and caught the iron block steadily in his hand.

"What is this? A piece of broken iron? There's nothing special about it except that there are some pretty patterns on it, but..."

The fat man said this as he took the piece of iron under his nose and smelled it.

"Why does this thing smell like that? What's that smell? It's weird."

"The smell of a dead person..." Zhang Hanyan said faintly.

Zhang Qiling paused while wiping her hair, then as if he remembered something, smiled slightly, and continued what he was doing.

"What smell of death? Could it be? Is this the smell of death that Panma mentioned?"

Wu Xie snatched the iron block from Fatty's hand and put it under his nose to smell it.

“Well, at that time, in the stilt house, after you all went out to chase after Tan Jian, he crawled out from under the floor to grab the box.

When I caught him, the box fell to the ground and the buckle was broken. Inside was this kind of iron block.

However, that piece of iron is a little bigger than this one and has no patterns on it, but they taste the same.”

Wu Xie and Fatty stood by without saying a word. After listening to Zhang Hanyan, they once again studied the piece of iron in their hands.

After some discussion, they returned to their tents to change their wet clothes, and then found a shady place to sit together.

"Wu Xie, do you have Xiaohua's phone number?" Zhang Hanyan asked Wu Xie.

Wu Xie shook his head. "No, I didn't think about it at all when we separated, so I didn't leave a phone number. What's wrong?"

"No, I just want to ask Xiaohua for some personnel and professional equipment. It would be too time-consuming to rely on just a few of us."

Zhang Hanyan thought about it, stood up and walked into the tent, took out a bronze token engraved with a black bird and an egg-sized dust-repellent bead.

The moment the bronze token and the dust-avoiding bead touched each other, a crisp cry of a crane was heard.

In a moment, a ferocious falcon swooped down towards Zhang Hanyan.

"Han Yan!"

Zhang Qiling thought the falcon would attack her, so he quickly stood up and pulled her behind him to protect her.

Wu Xie and Fatty were also startled by this sudden change and stood up and stepped back.

The imagined scene did not appear. After diving for a distance and approaching the ground, the falcon slowed down and landed on a dead tree in front of them.

The falcon tilted its head slightly and looked at them with its eyes wide open.

"It's okay. This is a falcon raised by the Zhang family. It's used to deliver messages. It won't attack people."

Zhang Hanyan patted Zhang Qiling's shoulder gently and pressed his shoulder to make him sit down.

She took out the letter she had written long ago and tied it to the falcon's feet, then touched its head and said, "Okay, you can go now."

The falcon stretched its neck slightly forward, rubbed its furry head against her palm, then spread its wings again and flew away into the sky.

"Hanyan, are all your Zhang family's communication methods so ingenious? In the past when there were no communicators, I saw that people used carrier pigeons to send messages, didn't they?"

"Yeah, you don't use carrier pigeons at home, but eagles?"

Wu Xie and Fatty looked at the direction where the falcon disappeared, with a hint of envy in their eyes.

Zhang Hanyan smiled indifferently, pulled Zhang Qiling to sit down, and put away the token for summoning the falcon and the dust-avoiding beads.

"Carrier pigeons fly too slowly, not as fast as hawks. Moreover, in the days when people were not even able to get enough food, carrier pigeons were easily shot, so we did not use carrier pigeons."

Zhang Qiling's eyes were gloomy. In his memory, there was nothing related to the Zhang family. Naturally, he did not remember that he had ever summoned a falcon with Zhang Hanyan.

The falcon that was about to be taken away by the second elder was old and had died long ago. The current one was raised by Xiliu at Zhang Hanyan's request to be used for communication between them.