Reunion: Escape from the Monstrous Snake/Content

## Story

### Cambodia, 1944

In 1944 Battambang, Cambodia, a group of people, including men dressed in American military uniforms, were digging up artifacts. Japanese soldiers were hiding nearby planning to attack the group to steal from them, but when the soldiers moved in, they found that the other group was gone. One of the Japanese men went inside the historical remains which were located inside a large tree. He cautiously entered and found a relic sitting on the ground. He felt something was off and hurriedly grabbed the relic and reunited with his men outside. A screeching noise came from within the tree and a branch/vine reached out and killed one of the men. Everyone else retreated. The camera panned up to show that many corpses were dangling from branches on the tree.

### Hei Yanjing's Rotten Luck

Hei Yanjing encountered a woman that worked for Xie Yuchen and the Xin Yue Restaurant. He asked if he could use Xie Yuchen's expensive car for a couple more days, but she refused his request and drove away with it. Hei Yanjing proceeded to get into his run-down vehicle and accepted a ride request. Before he could leave, a group of men stopped him and started to attack. He easily subdued him and drove away. Meanwhile, a male and a female in a van watched the fight on security cameras. They had information about Hei Yanjing pulled up on their screen saying he was 185cm and Mongolian. The man thought Hei Yanjing was just another henchman, but the woman thought that Hei Yanjing may have some value since her father said to contact Hei Yanjing if anything were to happen to him. Suddenly, Hei Yanjing appeared outside their window and took down everyone inside the van.

The girl from earlier introduced herself as Gu Huaisheng (顾怀盛)'s daughter, Gu Ziqing. Her father went missing a month ago in a forest in Cambodia. She contacted Hei Yanjing because he was her father's emergency contact. She, and her father's employer from a Japanese research center, wanted Hei Yanjing's help. After Hei Yanjing heard how much he was going to get paid, he agreed to go to Cambodia with them.

### Mission in Cambodia

The group landed in Cambodia and set up camp. Gu Ziqing wanted to know the relationship between her father and Hei Yanjing. Hei Yanjing and Gu Huaisheng worked together in Doctors Without Borders. Gu Huaisheng was a military officer within the team while Hei Yanjing was a doctor.

Everyone gathered in a tent to discuss some things first. Gu Huaisheng's employer, Boss Huang, told everyone he bought them insurance, except for Hei Yanjing. In Hei Yanjing's prepared profile, it said that his Han Chinese surname was Qi (齐) and was called Hei Xiazi (another nickname meaning Black Blindman). Hei Yanjing saw skin marks on Boss Huang's hand and asked him about it. Boss Huang replied that it was melanoma and that he only had six months to live.

Boss Huang then got up and introduced himself to everyone. His Japanese name was Okita Shima and his Chinese name was Huang Xie. He then moved on to discuss what they were there to do. The historical remains were from one of the first cities in the Khmer Empire dating back to the late 8th and early 9th centuries. But it was abandoned halfway through construction and was hidden in the forest. Boss Huang wanted an ancient Cambodian pagoda that was covered in gold (鎏金佛塔). Information on the pagoda was first recorded in the Yuan dynasty by a scholar named Zhou Daguan. The French translated his works and called the pagoda "Bojianban Pagoda." This pagoda was found by the previous exploration team that included Gu Huaisheng. But Boss Huang lost contact with them and could only find them by their GPS signal.

They made their way through the forest following the path Gu Huaisheng made before. However, the rain had created swamp like conditions and they had to divert to an abandoned village. There, Hei Yanjing found an old sword and offered Gu Ziqing some of his pork fried rice with green peppers. He found evidence that the area was occupied by the Japanese and was suspicious as to how Boss Huang knew so much. Boss Huang was relying on pills to delay his disease. He only had one pill left and decided to sew it in his arm to save it for when he needed it.

They arrived at the historical remains in the tree and found evidence that Gu's team had been there before. They also found reliefs on the wall that indicated that the people there sacrificed humans as offerings to the snakes. Hei Yanjing thought that there should something there that was the predator of the snakes. The team quickly stumbled upon corpses from the last team and found large snake skin. Hei Yanjing thought a man-eating python was in the tomb.

They continued and one of the men with them started shooting out when he heard something moving. The python killed one person before it began to attack everyone in the group. Hei Yanjing managed to kill the snake with his knife. There were wounds on the snake that confirmed there was a bigger predator in the tomb with them. After some people left, Hei Yanjing took some part of the snake's internal organs and then licked the blood on his knife.

One of the team members started trouble with Gu Ziqing which Hei Yanjing handled. Gu Ziqing started opening to Hei Yanjing. She hadn't met her father since she was six because he caused her mother's death. She was raised by her grandparents and was only there to make money since Boss Huang offered it to find her father.

They traveled to another part of the tomb and had to traverse through water. Hei Yanjing threw glow sticks into the water to see if anything would take the bait. Something did and the team started shooting into the water. They climbed up on objects and avoided whatever was there. One of the experts in the team started climbing up the wall but was dragged up by something. They sent someone up to check if he was okay, but that person couldn't find him. The team set out to rescue their expert since he was the only expert with them. One of the men in the team suddenly became annoyed that Hei Yanjing was wearing sunglasses. Hei Yanjing explained that his eyes suffer from a type of illness where the darker it gets, the better he can see. As they started to move again, they were attacked by whatever was in the water. They had to divert to another part of the tomb.

They continued down a rocky corridor where Ka Luosi was dragged in a crack in the rocks by a moving tree branch. When they looked in the crack, they discovered many bones. Suddenly, their expert fell down from above severely injured. One of the bosses in the team didn't want to continue on since three of his men had already died, but Boss Huang insisted they continue. Hei Yanjing set up a trap using some of the snake he collected earlier and a phone which could make noise. He thought whatever was in the tomb had poor eyesight and relied on hearing. Soon, the branches of a tree started to creep in on the trap. Everyone shot at it and once it left they went down to check it out.

Hei Yanjing said he had seen something like it before. There was a Malaysian legend of the Hand in the Tree's Shadow. A hand that lived in the forest would reach out from a tree and drag people in. The hand only appears after a storm and a storm had appeared only just before. Hei Yanjing thought they would be doomed if they went and that Gu Huaisheng was surely dead. Boss Huang wanted them to continue so he could retrieve the pagoda.

They continued and Hei Yanjing started to talk about the creature from before. He called it a Nine-Headed Snake Tree and that he'd seen it before. Gu Ziqing and him started talking about her dad. They soon reached the edge of a cliff. Gu Huaisheng's GPS signal was indicating that is on the bottom of the cliff. So, they head down. There were many skeletons at the bottom. Hei Yanjing found a notebook with a picture of a bunch of men in military uniform on one of the skeletons. They soon found the tip of the pagoda statute, but the snake tree was nearby and began to attack again.

### Dangers Revealed

They managed to escape it and Hei Yanjing brought the piece of the pagoda statue to Boss Huang. Boss Huang checked for its radiation and found that it was the item he was looking for. Hei Yanjing also thought Gu Huaisheng wasn't dead and purposely left that stuff there. He showed Boss Huang the picture of Japanese soldiers he found down below and thought one of the men in it was Boss Huang's father. Boss Huang admitted it was but maintained he did not have much information about that place. Hei Yanjing didn't buy it and Boss Huang revealed that he knew there was something dangerous in that place from his father. Everyone became upset since Boss Huang played with their lives. Hei Yanjing pointed out that since Boss Huang was soon dying, he was not as worried for his life. The type of illness he had wasn't cancer but something else that likely couldn't be treated by normal means. Boss Huang didn't know what it was and thought it might be related to his father's research there. He thought that the pagoda was made of special materials that could cure his illness. His dad brought one back and he conducted research with it, but he ran out of raw materials and had to get another pagoda. He became upset that others wouldn't go down again and took Gu Ziqing hostage. One of the henchman, Hu Li, was able to disarm Boss Huang but Hu Li was then attacked by the snake tree.

Everyone went down again. While Hei Yanjing and Gu Ziqing were talking, they were attacked by the snake tree and taken to the place where it digests its food. Just as the snake tree was about to kill them, they were rescued by Gu Huaisheng. He explained what had happened and how the pagodas worked. The pagodas could stop the snake tree from producing cells which is also how it can stop cancer cells. But when one of the pagodas is moved, it triggers a trap sending out the tree's spores, propagating more of the plant.

Boss Huang found the pagodas and went further in to get them. Hei Yanjing and the other two went to the same place and saw where the spores emerged from. Hei Yanjing left to find a way out. Boss Huang used one of the injured members of his team as bait for the snake tree while he and the other men safely crossed over the area to get to the pagodas. Boss Huang was able to leave the area with the pagodas but soon met up with Gu Huaisheng and Gu Ziqing. They tried to stop him to no avail and only attracted the snake tree. Hei Yanjing tried to save them but fell down into the cave where the snake tree's lair was located. He took out a bomb and set a timer. Meanwhile, Gu Huaisheng sacrificed himself so that his daughter could safely get away. Boss Huang was killed by the snake tree as well. Hei Yanjing and Gu Ziqing were able to get out of there before the bomb went off.

### Aftermath

Gu Ziqing held a funeral for her father and wondered where Hei Yanjing was. She called him and the other told her that he had something to finish. Hei Yanjing received a phone call from Zhang Qian Jun Wan Ma who had heard that Hei Yanjing was organizing a tomb raid to the Blind Tomb. Zhang Qian Jun had said he had been there before and he was at the location Hei Yanjing had specified. Hei Yanjing asked him what his last name was again and the other repeated that it was Zhang, the same Zhang as the Zhang Clan.

## References

1. ↑ Xu Lei has said in an interview before that Hei Yanjing is Mongolian. However, in the novels and in another interview, Hei Yanjing's family was part of the Manchurian banner men.
2. ↑ In Sand Sea Volume 3 Chapter 1, Xie Yu Chen reveals to Wu Xie that Hei Yanjing's Han Chinese surname is the same Qi (齐).
3. ↑ Hei Yanjing prepared the same meal for Li Cu in Tomb of the Sea
4. ↑ Hei Yanjing saw a Nine-Headed Snake Tree in Gutong Jing in the television show Tomb of the Sea.
5. ↑ This is the same beginning for the 2017 Chinese New Year Extra that Xu Lei wrote. The extra, also known as the Blind Tomb extra, remains unfinished. Zhang Qian Jun is part of the Zhang family but not Zhang Qi Ling's or Zhang Qi Shan's branch.