Chapter 5 - Chapter 5: 3. A cigarette butt (1/2)
“name?”
the guard sat across from noland lee, asking without lifting his head. a yellowed notebook lay open on the table in front of him.
“noland lee jarvis.”
“age?”
“twenty-one.”
the guard flicked his ink pen at the floor, scribbling some words carelessly in the notebook:
“ah, you can speak fluently already and without any confusion in your consciousness. it seems that the severe vomiting and diarrhea didn’t damage your brain.”
“vomiting and diarrhea?” noland lee was slightly taken aback.
“yes, vomiting and diarrhea.” the guard glanced at noland lee, a warning in his gaze:
“if anyone asks what happened on the carriage, you only have these few words, got it? vomiting and diarrhea.”
the guards on the train must be afraid of someone leaking that sleeping powder was brought onboard.
it was an unexpected incident with potentially big or small consequences.
it all depended on how the informant handled it.
beneath the eaves, noland lee honestly replied:
“yes, vomiting and diarrhea.”
“good.” the guard nodded in satisfaction, pinching the cigarette in his mouth with his fingers, flicking ash into the ashtray on the table before moving it back and taking a hard drag.
as he exhaled a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, he lamented:
“if only all the sin soldiers were as honest as you. it would save us a lot of trouble. cleaning up blood, sweeping glass fragments, and fixing windows; i was almost outdone by the trouble those two bastards caused.”
the guard wrote a few more words and continued talking to himself, seemingly treating this task of taking a statement as a rare break.
“why do you think those two sons of bitches wanted to escape through the window? did they think they could escape from the suffering borderland just because they dug up a few graves and sold some illegal tomb artifacts in south capital province? what delusional fools…”
seeing the guard in a good mood and wanting to pry some information, noland lee timely asked:
“chief officer, according to you, are those two tomb raiders?”
the guard’s eyes lit up at being called chief officer and his liking for noland lee increased. he grinned:
“heh, tomb raiders? they are far more skilled than ordinary tomb raiders; they are tomb-robbing masters with some fame in the illegal forces of south capital province.”
the guard took a drag of his cigarette:
“… i don’t know the specifics.
“all i know is that these two are very good at stealing artifacts from ancient graves and have never failed. they are well-versed in tomb mechanisms and the obscure ancient tatis language.”
“if it weren’t for their internal strife over the sharing of the spoils, local officers would have had a much harder time capturing them now.”
noland lee narrowed his eyes slightly.
he keenly detected an unusual detail.
there were only three sin soldiers in the carriage he had been in before.
these were himself and the tomb-robbing brothers who met their end.
the tomb-robbing brothers were proficient in the tatis ancient language.
so was noland lee.
three individuals proficient in that language, all with some expertise in archaeology, were placed in a single carriage to be watched.
was it a coincidence or intentional?
if it was intentional, what was the purpose behind the person who arranged it all?
as noland lee pondered, a wailing whistle sounded from the front of the steam train, followed by the harsh noise of brake pads coupling with the wheels.