As he spoke, his father stood up, clearly lowering the phone and hiding it in his hand, but the camera still captured images through the gap between his fingers. The image was upside down. Li Cu tilted his head and saw a person walking out of the bathroom, waving and lifting a bag to signal his father to leave.

He looked at the image in the video, and cold sweat broke out; he realized he recognized this person. The person’s name was Huang Yan. He was the one who had carved words into his back. The wound on his back began to hurt, and his mind started to become chaotic; his hands trembled slightly.

The video went black, clearly because his father had hidden it in his sleeve. Li Cu covered his mouth, with only one thought flashing wildly in his mind. “None of this is coincidental.” It turned out that none of this was a coincidence; he was not just an innocent bystander caught up in this matter. Everything had a causal relationship.

The video shook, and after two or three minutes, the image reappeared. He saw that the video was capturing a scene that seemed to be in a conference room. His father only dared to place the phone under the table, capturing a few dim legs, but the background voices were clearly audible.

One person said, “Did you find the entrance on the blueprints?” “It’s already been sorted out,” he heard a stranger’s voice say. “But there’s a problem; the passages inside are not designed very reasonably, and they don’t seem to be meant for human passage. All the passages are arranged like branches, and the number of passages far exceeds the number of rooms. This means that the main space in this ancient tomb consists mostly of passages.”

“I don’t quite understand.” “Only one type of architecture would have such a deconstruction: a maze. However, these passages are distributed very regularly, so it can’t be a maze. I think it’s very likely that these ‘passages’ are not actually passages; we still don’t know their purpose.”

At that moment, the phone was lifted slightly and came to the tabletop. For a second, the phone captured the people on the table. Li Cu saw Huang Yan, who was carefully examining a diagram, and also saw a man wearing sunglasses, leaning over the table, turning a key in his hand. It was very similar to the key in the tea canister, likely the hotel room key. The man in sunglasses looked very bored and seemed completely uninterested in the meeting’s content.

In a very brief moment, when the phone captured this person, he noticed that the man’s head turned slightly, as if he had seen his father’s phone. The phone instantly returned to under the table. Li Cu stroked his chin; this was interesting. That blind man was also in this group. They were having a meeting. Where were they planning to go?

Then he heard Huang Yan’s voice: “Which passage are you planning to enter? It looks like all the passages can lead to the central area. Can we just break through any one of them?” “No, once these passages are breached, the sand above will pour down. We must find the passage closest to the sand surface to enter. We need to conduct a field survey; if the sand layer above is too thick, we won’t be able to do anything.” “You must find a way; if you can’t get in, then there’s no need to come back,” Huang Yan said.

The meeting fell into silence, and all that could be heard was the sound of the black bear constantly turning the keys in his hand. After about ten minutes, a woman’s voice broke the silence.

“Even if we can’t come back, you won’t get anything.”

Huang Yan scoffed, clearly dismissive: “People should think more about themselves; our matters have nothing to do with you.”

Another silence ensued. The camera remained focused under the table, capturing a pair of women’s legs that were constantly crossing, clearly very tense. The woman was wearing tight-fitting sports pants, and her curves at the hips and thighs were perfect; she appeared to be a tall girl. Her shoes were New Balance.

Then, Li Cu saw a pair of legs next to the girl stand up. It was a pair of long men’s legs clad in black leather pants. Li Cu recognized the pants and the movement of the legs; the person must be leaning over, which made the standing legs appear very long.

It was the black bear; he stood up, and Huang Yan asked him, “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving. You guys are in serious trouble this time; following you won’t lead to anything good,” the black bear replied before walking away.

Huang Yan slammed the table: “We paid a deposit!”

“I’ll return it to your card tomorrow. By the way, do any of you have final instructions to give?” the black bear asked. “Speak up quickly; I have a bus to catch.”

The scene was filled with silence, clearly very awkward. The black bear sighed, and suddenly Huang Yan exploded; judging by his legs, it seemed he wanted to fight immediately but was held back by those around him.

The scene descended into chaos, shaking for about three or four minutes before the video froze. Li Cu dragged the progress bar and found that the video had ended.

Li Cu frowned, feeling perplexed. “That’s it?”

He looked at the folder again, checked the properties, and found no other files, just this one video.

There was a lot of information in the video; it was clear that it aimed to show him a pre-departure meeting. Huang Yan was obviously the leader of the group, along with his father, the black bear, a woman, and several others, all gathered in a hotel conference room.

The black bear had exited the meeting midway, and even during that operation, Li Cu leaned toward stepping back because he had had some exchanges with the black bear.

It seemed to align with what Wu Xie had told him, a meeting before Huang Yan’s entry into Badanjilin.

But what significance did his father have in filming these things for him?

He fell into thought, and in fact, he understood why Su Wan hadn’t let him watch this video.

Su Wan always believed that Li Cu’s family issues had a significant impact on him. Li Cu had always lived with his father; although there were constant frictions between them, it was precisely his father’s rough character that had helped to lessen some shadows in Li Cu’s family life. Su Wan thought that Li Cu’s father was very important to him.

Su Wan’s family was happy; he couldn’t understand Li Cu. Though his father was significant to Li Cu, Li Cu no longer felt regret over losing his relatives.

When his parents divorced, the importance of those two people was to be together. If they were no longer together, they became two independent individuals, and Li Cu could only resolve to stop feeling regretful about them.

No matter what kind of loss it was, he would no longer feel that kind of regret.

“Only in this way can he truly confront the issue of his parents’ divorce. In the video, it seems that the father is about to take a path of no return; this could be the last words he speaks to himself. Su Wan must have hidden it out of fear that he would break down after watching it. Is that really the case? Li Cu sneered and said to himself, ‘Su Wan, that’s not my old man.'”