The one-story house is surrounded by old trees, and there is no sunlight all year round. When you walk in, you feel chilly all over your body. The faint musty smell and steam remind you of the basement and old toys when you were a child. Lin Yan followed behind the Chinese tunic and turned into an office, an old-fashioned wooden office. There is a large stainless steel thermos cup on the desk, and the desktop computer makes a buzzing sound from time to time. The office is close to the toilet, and after staying for a long time, I only feel the smell of ammonia water hitting my nose.
"Xiaolin, sit down. I'll take out the contact information of the archaeologists last time. It's still locked in the cabinet." He said in the tunic suit and poured Lin Yan a glass of water from a disposable paper cup. The old archives, just transferred from the archives room, you just flip through it."
"Excuse me." Lin Yan said politely.
"No trouble, no trouble. Young people can do something. We heard about the official kiln porcelain last time. It's really good. Professor Chen came back and praised it for a long time." He laughed happily in the Chinese tunic suit, and put the melon seeds on Lin Yan attentively. In front of him, he took the key and went out the door.
Lin Yan sat at the desk and waited. The office decoration was old but of good quality. A pure leather boss chair was very comfortable to sit on. The thick shade outside the window blocked the sunlight. A sparrow jumped lightly among the branches, flapping its wings and flying away. up.
There were a lot of files about the Ming tomb on the table, sorted into kraft paper envelopes, and Lin Yan flipped through them, including a lot of background materials of the same period, project approval forms, equipment rental reports, reimbursement vouchers, etc. An envelope marked with 'staff details' attracted his attention. Lin Yan patted the dust and opened the file bag, only to see a few smaller envelopes inside. The ink on the label had begun to fade. The upper one is marked "Salary of the Shanxi Archaeological Team in 1987", the next few are the roster and contact information, etc., and the bottom one is marked with the word "important" in red, and the label reads: due to work Casualty list and compensation details.
casualties? Lin Yan took out the envelope. It was very thin. It seemed that there was nothing left except the kraft paper bag. The glue on the seal was out of date and could be opened with a light tear. Carefully put my hand in, it was empty, and I groped for a long time against the envelope before I found a small piece of thin paper. The lines of the hand-painted form on it were smudged in a large area. At a glance, I knew that I was in a hurry to draw, and I was in a hurry when the pen and ink were not dry. Drag the ruler's sake.
A series of footsteps sounded from far to near in the corridor. Lin Yan was startled, and instinctively stuffed the paper back. After thinking for a long time, he realized that he had already been allowed. Old documents always gave him a feeling of peeping at the time. Feeling, like a thief, lightly travels back from the present to the past.
The sound of footsteps went away again. Lin Yan looked carefully at the slip of paper in his hand. He also filled out the form with a pen. He divided up the name, reason for compensation, amount, etc. Lin Yan scanned it line by line. .
"Li Erzhuang, with a broken hand bone, 30 yuan in compensation for medical expenses, received and signed."
"Sun Dapeng, mentally schizophrenic, pays 150 yuan for medical expenses, received, signed."
"Wang Aiguo, schizophrenia, compensation of 150 yuan for medical expenses, received, signed."
"..."
The reasons for compensation filled in after the entire row of names below are schizophrenia, but the column of diagnosis details is completely blank. I can write my own name, and read down the clumsy handwriting. When I reach the last two, the signature column is blank. Swipe forward, and the reason for compensation says that I have died.
"Jun Xiangdong, Jiang Ying... these are the two dead?" Lin Yan took a sip of water, carefully flattened the paper, and muttered in a low voice: "The compensation is a thousand yuan, eh, strange, the compensation for these two people Why didn’t you get the gold? One thousand yuan was considered a huge sum of money in the village at that time... "
Lin Yan dubiously opened the kraft paper bag containing the staff list, took out a stack of yellowed papers, and looked at them one by one. Except for the complete materials of the students sent by the university to participate in the excavation of Ming tombs, the rest were in the local area. The villagers hired were relatively simple, they only filled in their name, age, gender and the name of the village they belonged to. Lin Yan counted them, and there were thirteen people in total. The oldest was only twenty-four years old, the youngest was only sixteen, seventeen. Eighteen-year-olds make up the majority. Thinking back on the professor's words, Lin Yan couldn't help sighing, wondering what it was like for these children to be tortured by nightmares in the tomb, and to see their friends die in a very strange way in front of their own eyes.
It was still too ruthless, Lin Yan turned his head and glanced at Xiao Yu, the ghost was leisurely standing by the window with his hands behind his back, looking at the scenery, as if he had nothing to do with himself.
When he turned to the forms of Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying, Lin Yan was surprised to find that compared with the crooked information filled out by other villagers, the information left by these two people was so concise that it was almost blank. The words "wages not received".
Lin Yan stared at the column of hometown and frowned, and whispered, "They are all foreigners? No wonder no one took the money after death..." As he spoke, he turned over the documents of the two, and only the last one remained in the stack of rosters. Zhang's name is Wang Zhong, which is similar to Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying. The information is almost blank, and he is not a local. The upper right corner says 'salary not received' in five black characters.
"Wang Zhong, Wang Zhong... this person is not on the compensation list." Lin Yan compared a few forms, and muttered, "Is this so frightened that he ran away without even taking his salary?"
Lin Yan was immersed in some old documents when the office door creaked open suddenly, and he came in in a Chinese tunic suit fumbling with a kraft paper bag in his hand, and said to himself: "What's going on, this is..."
Hearing his voice, Lin Yan hastily put down the file bag and stood up, stepped in with two tunic suits and waved his hands: "Sit down, sit down, look at my memory, I put it away before the business trip, why can't I find it? "
"What can't you find?"
"Professor Chen said that you came to look for the roster of the archaeological staff of Ming Tombs in Shanxi. I found it and put it together. I opened the cabinet just now, and everything else is there. The fortune teller's one is gone." Said the Chinese tunic and stuffed the kraft paper bag To Lin Yan, "Look, not all of them are numbered. Everyone has a number. They filled it out when they joined the team, and I kept a copy of it so that they can be counted when paying wages."
Lin Yan flipped through several forms, each of which contained the staff's name, ID number, phone number, address, working hours and type, etc. It was indeed as the Chinese tunic said, there was a gap between No. 34 and No. 36. One, but the information from No. 30 onwards is very brief. Some even only have names and phone numbers. These people are all temporary workers. No. 34 is hired to drive a tractor. No. 36 and No. 37 are temporary chefs. Forms are due on the 37th.
Number 35 should be the mysterious fortune teller.
"That person didn't follow the team. He came to look at Fengshui with a compass, left after leaving an idea, and negotiated the price with me, saying that he would pick it up after his method was useful. We have all the money ready. He never came to pick it up, otherwise the accountant would definitely keep the money."
It was so clean, Lin Yan stared at the extra pin between No. 34 and No. 36 and frowned. He didn't even want money, what was he trying to do
"Think about it again, did you take it out and put it somewhere else?" Lin Yan was a little impatient, "Or another colleague took it away?"
The tunic suit rubbed his hands, and touched the key in his hand in confusion: "It's unlikely, I only have the key to the cabinet. I just cleaned it up and locked it before the business trip. It will be gone soon after I come back."
Lin Yan's heart skipped a beat, this incident seemed to be too coincidental, he couldn't help turning his head to look at Xiao Yu, the ghost was frowning and staring at the direction of the door thinking, and didn't respond to him.
Seeing that Lin Yan's expression was wrong, he picked up the paper cup on the table and filled it up with the water dispenser, put it back in front of him, and comforted him: "It's okay, you sit and drink water and eat melon seeds, I'll look for it from other places, I remember When the man first came, he was talking nonsense, and no one believed him, so he left a phone number and address, saying that we will definitely have to look for him in the future, which is not really what he is talking about."
"Where did you put it..." the Chinese tunic suit was talking to himself, while flipping through it in the office. Lin Yan wanted to help, but was pushed back into the chair, so he could only stare at the screen saver of the desktop in a daze. The changing lines, green, red, and blue slowly change, getting bigger and smaller, rolling a mess, and I can't figure it out.
"Today's time is not coincidental. If you come at another time, you can ask others for you. If you don't rest today, the whole building is empty. I'm the only one who rushed back."
Lin Yan smiled embarrassedly: "That's really troublesome for you." Then he thought about it and said casually: "Is there someone else, just now I heard footsteps coming from the corridor in the room, just passed by, and didn't enter the door."
He was washing his hands in the washbasin by the door in the Chinese tunic suit, but when he heard this, he suddenly stopped, looked up and said, "Impossible, this building is full of files, and there are only three offices. I checked just now, and there is no one there."
Lin Yan gasped, and looked at the dark corridor at the door, feeling suddenly ominous in his heart.
Maybe it was just passing by to check the information like himself, Lin Yan comforted himself. Just in time, the sun changed its angle, and a few loose beams of light penetrated into the room from the gaps in the leaves. It was light yellow without temperature, and the dust in the light was undulating, falling on the dark brown tabletop. The side light seemed to spread a thin layer. , a cactus was watered too much, and the leaves drooped listlessly.
"Hey, I remembered, wait a minute." A hint of excitement flashed through the voice of the Chinese tunic suit, and after a long time of digging through the lower shelf of the glass cabinet, he took out an old jacket, rummaged through pockets one after another, and found a small pocket in the lining for a long time. He fumbled for a crumpled piece of paper, studied it over and over for a while, and muttered: "That's right, that's it."
In the Chinese tunic suit, he slapped the note in front of Lin Yan: "Address and phone number."
Lin Yan's expression suddenly relaxed.
At noon, the weather became hotter, and the Chinese tunic suit turned on the fan, and the humming of the fan blades and the rattling of documents being blown kept ringing. Lin Yan held the phone under his ear, and held a pen in the other hand to scribble on the notebook. Because of nervousness, the tip of the pen trembled slightly.
"Beep...beep..."
"... your call is temporarily unanswered."
The sound of leaving messages on the phone came four times in a row. Lin Yan and the Mao suit exchanged glances, dropped the receiver, and stretched wearily. His eyes moved to the lower part of the note. The address written with a pencil looked familiar. Where did he see it? Lin Yan tugged at his collar irritably, trying to unbutton it for some air, when he suddenly remembered the series of hickey marks on his neck, and was so frightened that he hurriedly buttoned it back.
There was the sound of splashing water from the water dispenser, followed by a series of gurgling sounds. A thought flashed through Lin Yan's mind, and Lin Yan froze in place holding the cup, hitting his brain like a hammer, with a muffled bang.
"Brother Chen, what does the fortune teller you mentioned look like?"
The Chinese tunic suit thought for a while, and recalled: "It's been a long time, I don't remember clearly, I saw a man in his forties or fifties, about my height, and his hair was shaved very short."
Lin Yan swallowed, and entered the address into the mobile phone navigation, and the green road map was displayed section by section, extending all the way to the northwest corner.
That's right, Lin Yan stared at the red dot indicating the destination in the upper left corner, and said softly in his heart, I found you, temple owner.