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

Chapter 212 Blackwater Swamp
The place was completely empty; the pheasant's neck was gone!
The fat man, still afraid he had misread it, ran back to stand by the rock and peered into the stream below.

"Fatty?" Zhang Wuxun turned around and called to him, "Why did you run back?"

The fat man wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, his face extremely pale. He quickly ran to Zhang Wuxun and the others, and whispered, "This place is too strange. The neck of the pheasant that Brother killed earlier is gone."

Everyone was stunned when they heard this.

The surrounding atmosphere became eerily quiet.

Pan Zi guessed, "With its head cut off, it couldn't possibly have gotten up and run away on its own. It's very likely that it was swept away by the current."

“No matter how it disappeared, we can’t stay here any longer. Let’s leave first.” After saying that, Zhang Wuxun took the lead and walked forward.

A steep downhill slope appeared ahead, and the water flow became rapid here. The exit of the canyon was just ahead.

This short stretch of road was difficult to walk, so Zhang Wuxun supported Wu Xiaoxie's arm, helping him to step firmly on the pebbles, and they walked step by step out of the canyon and to the edge of the swamp.

The water was getting deeper and deeper, reaching above waist level. When you stepped into the mud, it took a lot of effort to pull your foot out.

Fortunately, after walking another ten meters or so, the fat man found a very large and flat boulder, only the edges of which were submerged in water, while the top of the boulder was still dry.

The fat man quickly climbed up, collapsed onto it with his head tilted back, exhausted, but still managed to call for everyone to come over.

Wu Xiaoxie walked over and put A Ning down. He took a couple of quick breaths, wiped the beads of sweat from his neck with the back of his hand, leaned against his backpack, closed his eyes, and lay down. He was clearly exhausted.

The fat man lifted his shirt to cool off, his round belly sticking out like a big watermelon.

Zhang Wuxun sat down next to them, handed them water, and gestured with his eyes to the fat man's bulging belly.

The fat man glanced at him sideways and said, "You're envious of my fat body, aren't you? Ever since you went to the Qinling Mountains with Tianzhen, you've been as thin as a chicken skeleton in the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top. You haven't gained any weight even after half a year of trying. You didn't even want to eat the pig's trotters that I kindly stewed for you. Humph."

Zhang Wuxun was speechless. He looked thin only because of his low body fat percentage; in fact, he was all muscle.

"Tch, who's envious? With all that fat on you, if you were to have surgery, one incision would reveal nothing but golden fat particles." Zhang Wuxun said, slapping the fat man's stomach with a loud thud and then flicking it twice. "Maybe that pheasant neck would like your kind of thing."

"Go away, go away." The fat man waved his hand away. "Go play with stones over there. I'm going to take a nap."

Pan Zi, having noticed something, turned his head and saw the two lying down. He shook his head, then beckoned Zhang Wu to go over. He handed him his binoculars and pointed to a vast expanse of dense, enormous black shadows stretching as far as the eye could see in the deep, sunless black swamp. He said, "Look there."

Zhang Wuxun took the binoculars and was surprised to find that the huge shadows underwater in the swamp were made of the roots of aquatic trees that were twisted and intertwined. Further down, they seemed to be the ruins of ancient buildings, stretching all the way to the deeper parts of the swamp.

"This is the ruins of the ancient city of the Queen Mother of the West? It's completely buried under the swamp." Zhang Wuxun said in surprise. The young man put down his binoculars and said in a calm tone, "There should have been a very prosperous ancient city in this valley. After the Queen Mother of the West's kingdom collapsed, the ancient city was abandoned. The drainage system collapsed, groundwater surged up, and with thousands of years of backflow of rainwater carrying silt, the entire city was submerged underwater."

"It seems that the City of the Queen Mother of the West is very large; what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg," Zhang Wuxun exclaimed.

Pan Zi looked somewhat horrified. "So, does that mean the Queen Mother of the West's palace is also buried in the mud underwater? How easy would it be for us to get in?"

Zhang Wuxun squatted down, splashed some water in it, and sniffed it. The salty, damp smell hit him. "The water is salty, so there should be fewer strange insects in it."

Then he turned to the two fat men and said, "Take off your shoes and let me check them."

The fat man lit the smokeless stove, added some water to the can, and put in ginger and tea leaves, intending to make some simple ginger tea to ward off the cold.

Upon hearing this, she took off her shoes and socks, and examined her feet, which were soaked until they were white and peeling. She didn't find any leeches or other insects, so she turned her shoes upside down and tapped them. Two or three small, light brown, soft-bodied insects, about the length of a fingernail, fell out, but they had already been crushed.

Wu Xiaoxie and Pan Zi did the same. After cleaning the shoes, Pan Zi took out an oilcloth bag, untied the binding, took out the old-fashioned cigarettes inside, and broke off half a cigarette for each of them, saying, "I asked Zaxi for these before we set off. They can remove dampness. Otherwise, with the way we soak, we would be ruined in less than a week. Take a few puffs to keep warm, so that we won't be unable to walk when we get old."

Zhang Wuxun didn't have the habit of smoking, but he still took it and sniffed it. A pungent tobacco smell hit him right in the head, making him feel much more awake and less tired.

The fat guy was a heavy smoker; he finished his cigarette in a few puffs and then asked Panzi for more. Panzi scolded him for being wasteful and refused to give him any more.

Zhang Wuxun handed his half cigarette to the fat man, and then saw Wu Xiaoxie next to him also puffing away. He advised him to smoke less, "Those of us in this line of work are often exposed to the decaying atmosphere of tombs. When we get older, our lungs will be full of problems. Cigarettes are not a good thing. They're okay to relieve fatigue occasionally, but don't get addicted."

In the original storyline, Wu Xiaoxie developed serious lung problems later on. Due to a lack of protection when going into tombs, coupled with mental stress and fatigue, his health deteriorated significantly. He relied on the effects of Qilin Jie to keep going. Later, when Qilin Jie became ineffective, his symptoms suddenly became apparent.

Not to mention that later on, due to the heavy burden on his shoulders, he smoked almost like a meal in order to relieve the pressure, and his lung disease became more and more serious.

Wu Xiaoxie nodded, put out his cigarette, and said nothing more.

The young man next to him held a cigarette in his hand, staring blankly into the depths of the swamp, seemingly lost in thought. When the fat man handed him the ginger tea he had just brewed, to free his hand, he simply tore open the outer paper roll, stuffed the tobacco into his mouth and chewed it a few times, then took the ginger tea, sipped it, and swallowed it.

"Damn it!" The fat man grinned and protested, "Brother, if you don't know how to smoke, don't waste this stuff. This stuff isn't for eating."

Pan Zi laughed and scolded, "You don't know anything. Eating tobacco is much more exciting than smoking. There are plenty of people chewing it in Yunling and eastern Myanmar."

Looking at the young man with some puzzlement, he asked, "But you don't usually smoke, so how do you know how to chew tobacco to relieve fatigue? Did you used to work on a ship? Or in a mine?"

The young man glanced at him indifferently, shook his head, and remained silent, clearly not wanting to talk.

(End of this chapter)