I felt a thump in my heart when I heard that, and my face suddenly turned very ugly.

Seeing my change, Fatty quickly chimed in, "What Miss Foreigner means is that you've actually been watched by that organization all along. When she came into contact with you, it should have triggered some mechanism in the organization, so they suddenly appeared from where you couldn't see, and their target is you."

"Me? Is it just because I know those secrets?" I retorted.

Zoey replied, "The z organization has been monitoring the descendants of the members of the expedition from back then, because they suspect that someone may have passed some information out before the expedition met with disaster."

"Some information?"

"That's right, because someone discovered the secret of the Himalayas, but couldn't directly tell others, so they passed the information out through supplies and letters. Of course, the people of the z organization must have read those letters before they were sent, and they believed that they were transmitted through some kind of symbol or code."

"Why are you so sure? Is there any basis for this?" I asked immediately.

Zoey nodded, paused for a moment, and continued.

"Because my father suddenly discovered the true purpose of the expedition the day before they went to Devil's Gulch, and he passed the information to me through a letter. My father replaced the punctuation marks after each sentence with a Hebrew word. Because they were written very small, they were not discovered."

"I have had a talent for languages since I was a child, and I am more sensitive to language families and languages. When I saw this letter in my father's belongings, I felt that there was something wrong with the punctuation, and it didn't seem like a normal way of writing. So I started to study the meaning of these symbols, and finally found that it was ancient Hebrew."

"After translation, there was only a short sentence—'We were deceived.'"

Zoey saw my surprised expression and continued, "Yes, they were deceived. I kept this secret until I infiltrated the z organization, constantly approached the Himalayan exploration project, and obtained the information you saw."

"Then why not expose them?"

"Because these are not even evidence that points to or convicts the z organization."

Only then did I recall that the secret information did not explicitly point to the z organization.

"What happened after that?"

"At first, I didn't leave the z organization. One was to continue collecting clues, and the other was to find the descendants of the expedition members. According to my investigation, in addition to my father, there were eight Americans in the expedition, three of whom had descendants. I contacted the descendants of the missing members of the expedition in private."

"At that time, I didn't realize that we were all being monitored by the z organization. So I found these three people, brought them the information about the expedition from back then, and asked them if they had found any clues from their father's belongings. Later, we agreed to meet and communicate the information we had learned, but the day before, one person died in a car accident, one person accidentally fell to their death at home, and another person fell into the water and drowned."

"I had to pack my things, leave home, and flee overnight. I first went to my cousin's house in Salt Lake City, and then moved around to many places without a fixed place to live. Later, after thinking about it again and again, since I couldn't escape, I might as well find out the truth and maybe find a way to protect myself. So, with the help of a friend, I boarded a sea ship to China to find the descendants of the Chinese members of the expedition. Fortunately, the z organization's reach in China hasn't reacted so quickly, so I was able to find you all one after another."

Zoey's mouth was dry. After she finished speaking, she drank half a bottle of mineral water in one gulp.

I cursed secretly in my heart, isn't this dragging us into the water?

But then I thought about it again, if it weren't for Zoey, I wouldn't be able to completely stay out of it. From my father's generation, I no longer had the right to stay out of it. My life and death were entirely at the mercy of the z organization.

Fatty seemed to be hearing Zoey's tortuous story for the first time. He had been stunned and didn't say a word. Taking advantage of Zoey's drinking, he took over the conversation, "Who says that's not the case? When Miss Foreigner, a big, beautiful blonde, first approached me, I thought I was having some romantic luck. But who knew that roses have thorns. The night Miss Foreigner found me, three lackeys came to my door, but they weren't martial arts experts. I took them down in no time, and then they ran away."

Fatty Shi Chuan was the son of Shi Yong, the soldier in the Chinese expedition back then. After graduating from high school, he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the army, but he always thought that his father had accidentally fallen off a cliff during a training mission, and his body was never found. It wasn't until he met Zoey that he learned the real cause of his father's death.

After Zoey recovered, she said, "Han Yu surprised me very much. When Fatty and I went to find her, she read all the information on the spot, and then called her tutor and said that she had something to go home for a while, and then called her mother and said that the school had something to go out for a while. Then she left with us without any hesitation."

Han Yu's father was Han Dongsheng, the only physicist in the expedition. Her mother and father were both professors at the university.

"Isn't that because Grandpa Fatty looks reliable?" Fatty chuckled.

Zoey stuck out her tongue, "You look like a bandit, how can you be reliable?"

At this moment, I noticed Old Zhang Tou, who had been drinking and eating meat silently, and gave Zoey and Fatty a wink.

Fatty understood, put one hand on my shoulder, patted his chest with the other, and vowed, "Old Zhang Tou is a distant relative of mine, don't worry, we are all family." After saying that, he picked up his wine glass and drank with Old Zhang Tou. Old Zhang Tou said vaguely, "Family… family."

Zoey whispered to me, "On the way here, we were actually followed for a while when we hadn't left Tianjing City. Later, we got rid of their car and drove all the way here without resting. It's safest in the mountains. There's no electricity, no cell phones, and no one would think we'd set up camp in this place."

The few of them chatted for a long time again. Although the oil lamp was dim and dark, it just happened to illuminate this small place. Old Zhang Tou's two local dogs also went back to their nests to rest after finishing the bones we threw away.

Although the four of us, me, Zoey, Fatty, and Han Yu, had only known each other for less than a day, that shared experience made us feel very close, like we had met comrades-in-arms.

Before going to bed at night, Zoey gave me two white candles, telling me that the oil lamps were not enough, there were only two, and let me use the candles to barely get through the night.

But after I returned to the room, I groped in the dark to find the bed, lay down on it, and fell asleep before I had time to light the candles.