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

Chapter 246 The Truth and the Lies
Wu Xiaoxie instantly understood what Chen Wenjin meant.

The eleventh person, not shown in the photo!

In other words, the person who took the photos of the archaeological team was none other than Uncle San himself.

“But this doesn’t make sense.” Wu Xiaoxie noticed something suspicious and asked urgently, “Why would my third uncle take such a group photo? Isn’t he part of your archaeological team? Why is he doing the work of an outsider on such an important occasion, while Xie Lianhuan, who joined later, is standing in such an important position?”

Chen Wenjin sighed, "This is exactly what I wanted to tell you. The flaw in the version your third uncle told you was actually not Xie Lianhuan, but Wu Sansheng, who came to me to ask for help to get into the archaeological team."

Wu Xiaoxie frowned, his brain working rapidly, and he pondered for a long time. Chen Wenjin waited patiently for him to figure it out on his own.

A true lie is often made up of countless false details mixed into the truth, and these details are usually the key to changing a true event into a false one.

Now, upon closer examination of the reality, the so-called truth that my third uncle told him back then has numerous and subtle logical flaws.

Why would Jude Kao, a seasoned smuggling merchant, choose Jie Lianhuan, a rich young man who is all talk and no action and has no practical experience, to carry out his plan?

Therefore, the only person Jude Kao could find was Wu Sansheng, who was bold, adventurous, and had the necessary background. Furthermore, a key factor in Wu Sansheng's infiltration of the archaeological team was his romantic relationship with Chen Wenjin at the time.

Wu Xiaoxie wiped his face heavily. In this way, the logic was clear, and everything that happened in Xisha back then could be explained.

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but smile bitterly, "It turns out that my third uncle had everything backwards."

The fat man next to him counted on his fingers, finally managing to sort out the relationships between the group, when suddenly he thought of something and hissed, "So, the person who was trapped in the underwater tomb and left his last words in the tomb raider's tunnel back then was your real third uncle!"

Chen Wenjin clearly hadn't expected this and hurriedly asked, "What last words?"

Wu Xiaoxie looked somewhat ashamed. He picked up a stone and wrote down the last words verbatim from the ground.

Chen Wenjin breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing this and smiled, "You misunderstood the arrangement of those blood-red characters. Why don't you try looking at it from a different angle?"

Upon hearing this, Wu Xiaoxie was first stunned, then suddenly turned his head to stare at the words on the ground, muttering, "Wu Sansheng made me die with my eyes wide open, Xie Lianhuan; Xie Lianhuan made me die with my eyes wide open, Wu San..."

"Oh my god!" Wu Xiaoxie's eyes widened. "I read the order backwards."

After Wu Xiaoxie realized what was happening, he almost coughed up blood in frustration. "Damn it, that old bastard Third Uncle has done so much harm!"

Thinking that his real third uncle had long since been fed to the fish at the bottom of the sea, Wu Xiaoxie couldn't help but feel a deep sadness.

"And then?" Wu Xiaoxie pressed. "What exactly happened to you on the seabed of the Xisha Islands? Why did you all disappear? Where did you go?"

Chen Wenjin said, "The events of that year were far too complicated; you probably wouldn't believe it if I told you."

Wu Xiaoxie smiled bitterly, thinking to himself that things had come to this point, even if you said that Xie Lianhuan was my real father, I would accept it without question. Chen Wenjin continued, "When Wu Sansheng suddenly drowned, he was still holding the snake-browed bronze fish in his hand. The people in the archaeological team had been dealing with cultural relics for many years, so they obviously knew what had happened. I was the one who introduced Wu Sansheng, so I have an inescapable responsibility for his accident."

“I was devastated at the time and wanted to give up my position as team leader and even quit the archaeological team. However, when I reported the news, the higher-ups ignored me and instead ordered us to continue the archaeological work. Although I was puzzled, the situation was urgent, so I had no choice but to continue leading them down to the seabed.”

"What happened next basically matches what your 'Third Uncle' said. He was probably afraid that Wu Sansheng would leave some clues in the underwater tomb, so he pretended to be unwell and left the group to secretly follow behind us. As a result, he was blocked outside the Qimen Dunjia mechanism of the Dinghai Stone Monkey," Chen Wenjin said.

Wu Xiaoxie could guess what would happen next. In the underwater tomb, Xie Lianhuan lost track of the archaeological team, and the team never appeared again. As the only surviving member of the team, he took on Wu Sansheng's identity to avoid suspicion from his superiors. This was clearly a decision he had made after careful consideration.

"And then?" Wu Xiaoxie pressed.

“Qiling said that before he was drugged, he saw someone who looked exactly like Wu Sansheng. In fact, that person was your third uncle,” Chen Wenjin said.

"Why?" Wu Xiaoxie asked. "What was his purpose in doing this? No, didn't Wu Sansheng die on the rocks at sea? Didn't you find his body a long time ago?"

Chen Wenjin shook his head. "We made a mistake. The body was actually one of the first people Jude Kao sent out, but they failed and only took out some relevant information. That's why Jude Kao hired your third uncle. At the time, the body's face was completely soaked and unrecognizable. We only recognized it because the waterproof suit it was wearing was the same as Wu Sansheng's."

Wu Xiaoxie looked somewhat enlightened, hesitated for a few seconds, and then asked, "Then what was his purpose in drugging you?"

"He thought that Xie Lianhuan had told me everything after he left, and that I had come down with my men to confront him, so in desperation he resorted to this tactic of drugging us," Chen Wenjin explained.

Then Chen Wenjin began to recount how they had been locked up in the Golmud Sanatorium.

Zhang Wuxun glanced at the young man subconsciously, and seeing that he still had that coffin-like face, not even blinking, he sighed inwardly.

There is actually a loophole in Chen Wenjin's words, and this loophole may not be discovered until later, when Wu Xiaoxie grows into the Evil Emperor in the Sand Sea.

Zhang Wuxun had previously analyzed the plot and information provided by the system and concluded that the people who drugged the archaeological team in the underwater tomb were actually members of the Wang family in disguise.

Chen Wenjin casually brushed this point aside with a seemingly reasonable excuse, but she had obviously also noticed the suspicious point, otherwise it would be hard to explain why they were locked up in a sanatorium after waking up.

After discovering they were being followed in the underwater tomb, Xie Lianhuan and Wu Sansheng pieced together the clues they had gathered and analyzed them, understanding Xie Jiuye's plan. Therefore, for the sake of their families, the two decided to play along.

It doesn't matter whether the corpse holding the snake-browed bronze fish belonged to Jude Kao or a member of the Wang family.

Importantly, the astonishing plan of Jie and Wu began the moment the body was discovered.

“When we woke up, we found ourselves locked in a basement, and Qi Ling wasn’t there.” Chen Wenjin paused slightly, seemingly still shaken, “And we discovered that someone had been secretly watching us.”

(End of this chapter)