Tomb Raiding: My Family's Last Clan Chief is Little Brother

Chapter 154 In trouble
The flashlight beam shining ahead reflected light, indicating that the passageway had come to an end.

Zhang Wuxun paused slightly, took a deep breath, and said to Wu Xiaoxie and the others, "We might be in trouble."

Upon hearing this, everyone tensed up, slowed their pace, and walked over little by little. Soon, another jade gate, blown open, appeared at the end of the tomb passage.

Wu Xiaoxie shuddered, reaching for the dagger tucked into his waistband. His voice trembled, uncertain as he said, "Wooden...wooden fish, am I seeing things? That door in front..."

“I didn’t see wrong.” Zhang Wuxun drew his sword, took a few steps inside, and looked around. There were still unburnt embers on the floor of the tomb. “We are indeed back.”

The fat man was shocked. He pointed to the several sacks piled up in the center of the tomb, gasped for breath, and couldn't utter a single word.

Pan Zi's expression was solemn, and he said in a deep voice, "It seems that there is indeed something strange about this place. We were clearly on a straight path, but we turned back without knowing when."

"Are we stuck in a maze?" the fat man shouted, then turned to Shunzi and said, "Shunzi, quickly tell your dad to talk to him and teach him a lesson. Tell him not to joke around with us. We have important business to attend to, and we can't afford to waste time."

Shunzi infuriated him. "Don't talk nonsense, it can't be my father."

The fat man glared at him. "How do you know it's not your father? If it's not your father, then it must be one of the others. You know, when you came in to pick up your father, you didn't even think to bring a few more incense sticks to light for these old folks and cheer them up. If the old folks are happy, the road will be cleared."

Shunzi was speechless, looking at the mummified corpses on the ground, and said uncertainly, "Could it really be these old seniors causing trouble? I don't have any incense, how about I light a few cigarettes to try?"

Zhang Wuxun heard their conversation getting more and more outrageous, and the fat man had already taken out a cigarette to put it into practice. He reached out and stopped him, saying, "It shouldn't be. I came in before, and I didn't encounter anything when I left."

"So these old seniors have been lying here lonely for ten years and want to keep a few more people around for company." The fat man spoke with such conviction that Zhang Wuxun would have almost believed him if he hadn't known the original plot.

"Alright," Wu Xiaoxie raised his hand to interrupt them, "There's no point in pondering this here. Let's try going through it again. If we really can't get out..."

Everyone understood his unspoken words. Looking at the despair on the faces of the several desiccated corpses on the ground, their skin wrinkled like orange peels, they felt an increasingly ominous feeling.

Zhang Wuxun made the decision, "Then let's try again, but this time we need to leave someone behind to stand at the door and watch the passageway to see if there are any changes as everyone walks around."

As for who should stay, the group exchanged glances, somewhat hesitant.

Those who remain here may be in danger, and among the five of them, Zhang Wuxun currently possesses the highest combat strength. However, things are unpredictable, and who knows if the thing lurking in the shadows is trying to divide them and then defeat them one by one.

Zhang Wuxun lit two cold flames, throwing one into the tomb chamber and the other into the passageway at the entrance, saying, "Go, be careful."

The fat man frowned and said, "Are you sure you can manage on your own? Why don't I stay too, so we can look after each other?"

Zhang Wuxun waved his hand with a smile, "No need, I'm not a child, what's there to worry about?"

"Alright then." The fat man nodded and handed the rifle in his hand to Zhang Wuxun. "You know how to use it, right? I don't think I've ever seen you use a gun before."

Zhang Wuxun took it, released the safety, pulled the bolt to chamber a round, and said, "No problem."

Wu Xiaoxie nodded and said, "Then be careful on your own. If you really can't get out, we'll be back soon." After saying that, he called Fatty and the others to walk out of the tomb.

This trip took much less time than the first one, only about ten minutes, and the fat guy and his group returned panting.

Wu Xiaoxie, without even taking a sip of water, hurriedly asked, "How is it? Has anything changed?"

Zhang Wuxun shook his head, handed them the water bottle, and told them to sit down and rest for a while.

The fat man was extremely anxious. "This must be a ghost wall. Let's quickly burn some paper money and pray. Shunzi, you quickly kowtow to your father twice and ask him to talk to these old people and tell them to stop messing with us. Otherwise, we'll just leave him here and go."

As he looked around, he spotted the loosely folded novel on the ground. He tore out a few pages, took a marker from Wu Xiaoxie, scribbled a few lines on it, then lit it with a lighter and placed it in front of the mummies to make a fire.

"Is this reliable?" Wu Xiaoxie was desperate and grasped at straws. He also tore off two pages of paper and whispered, "No matter how many zeros you write, this isn't ghost money. What if the old folks find out we're lying to them and get even angrier?"

"Shh." The fat man winked and whispered, "If you don't tell and I don't tell, they definitely won't know."

Wu Xiaoxie thought for two seconds, wrote "100,000" and "1 million" on the pages of the book in his hand, then folded the paper into the shape of a gold ingot and threw it into the fire, muttering something under his breath.

Zhang Wuxun's lips twitched, and he looked up at the sky speechlessly. He stopped Pan Zi and the other man who were about to kneel down and kowtow. "Alright, alright, stop messing around. Wang Zanghai is good at using strange and ingenious techniques to torture people's minds. We need to calm down and not let him lead us by the nose."

Wu Xiaoxie rubbed his face and calmed himself down. "You're right. We can't fall for Wang Zanghai's trick. Think about it carefully. If it's a trap, then it must have flaws."

The fat man also put down his tattered book and came over to ponder, "Hey, do you guys think there might be something wrong with the murals on the walls on both sides of the passageway? Maybe the paint is poisonous, or maybe it can hypnotize us or something, and we've all fallen for it without even realizing it."

Zhang Wuxun also sat down cross-legged, took a marker and wrote 123 vertically on the ground, and said, "Why don't we list out all the possibilities we can think of, and then eliminate them one by one? The last one left is very likely the reason why we are trapped here."

The fat man clapped his hands and said, "This is a good method. I'll go first. The first one is 'ghost wall'."

Zhang Wuxun wrote down as instructed, "The second and most likely mechanism, what else?"

Shunzi said, "What the fat boss said earlier is that something is influencing our feelings, like hypnotic suggestion or something."

Due to the limited space, Zhang Wuxun simplified it by writing only the two characters "illusion".

Wu Xiaoxie frowned. "Theoretically speaking, it's very likely to be space folding."

"Does anyone else have any?" Zhang Wu asked.

Pan Zi said, "Is it possible that everything we're seeing is an illusion, and that we've been tricked a long time ago?"

Upon hearing Pan Zi's words, Wu Xiaoxie immediately recalled the ambiguous scenes he had encountered in the Qinling Mountains, and a chill ran down his spine, sending shivers down his spine.

(End of this chapter)