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

Chapter 254 Human Head and Snake Body
The two men returned to the pit with the only survivor.

The fat man waited on the side. When the two were in place, he chuckled, reached into his backpack, pulled out several detonators, lit the fuses, and tossed them out one after another.

A deafening roar—it was as if the whole world was spinning, and the deafening explosions were left far behind them.

Clods of dirt were falling from above. The fat man turned his head and looked back. Good heavens, the tunnel had collapsed!

Large sections of the stone slab above collapsed, burying the entrance they had come down through, along with the alchemy furnace.

"We're doomed now." The fat man shrank his neck and chuckled sheepishly. "We can't go back now."

Zhang Wuxun didn't care. "This road is a dead end anyway. There are so many mummified corpses up there, and the palace gates are closed. Going up there would be like a mouse marrying a cat; it's just suicide."

The group nodded in agreement.

Having survived the ordeal, they ran a little further until the tremors completely stopped. The group, covered in dust and dirt, collapsed on the ground, panting heavily.

The fat man wiped the sweat from his face and grinned, "That was fucking exciting."

Wu Xiaoxie gulped down several mouthfuls of water, choked and coughed for a while, and only then did his soaring adrenaline subside. He patted his still-ringing ears and laughed and cursed, "Where the hell did you get that detonator? You almost deafened my ears."

The fat man laughed and said, "I got it from Old Pan, plus my own stash. Didn't I say last time that I wouldn't go into a tomb without explosives?"

"That old woman, the Queen Mother of the West, is really something else. She brought so many suicide squads to guard her tomb. Luckily, Muyu's arsenal is quite capable, otherwise we would have suffered a great loss this time."

Thinking of the sea of ​​mummified corpses, Wu Xiaoxie still felt lingering fear. However, that old ghost Wang Zanghai miscalculated this time. No matter how hard he tried, he never imagined that a thousand years later, a group of guys with firearms would eliminate the killing move he had planted without lifting a finger.

"Those mummies seem to contain some kind of snake, but its body is covered with black bristles, making it look like a centipede magnified a hundred times. Compared to a pheasant's neck, the difference in appearance is obvious," Wu Xiaoxie gestured.

Zhang Wuxun nodded. "This snake is called the black-haired snake. Although it looks very different, it is actually a subspecies of the pheasant neck snake. It is not as venomous as the pheasant neck snake, but compared to the pheasant neck snake that can mimic human speech, this snake is more bizarre. It is said that this snake can control people's thoughts. After being bitten by it, people will have hallucinations. If their willpower is not strong enough, they will die in the hallucinations."

The fat man clicked his tongue in amazement. "It can't be that mysterious, can it? Could this snake be the embodiment of Lady White Snake's resentment? But we're not Fahai, are we?"

The others laughed at him, and Wu Xiaoxie said, "Maybe you really are the reincarnation of Fahai."

"Go away, go away." The fat man waved his hand. "If it's really a reincarnation, then I, Fatty, must be the reincarnation of Vajra Subduing Dragon."

"Ew~" Everyone exclaimed in disdain.

After joking around for a while, the group continued walking forward.

The passageway was not very wide, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side. There were no intricate carvings or patterns inside, and the entire perimeter was paved with stone bricks about an arm's length long.

Every so often, there are small cylindrical grooves on the ground against the wall that have been melted and injected into the edge of the grounding wire, with some grease still inside. Clearly, this passage was built to facilitate passage for people.

To prevent oxygen shortage in the passageway, the group did not light the lamp oil. They quickly traversed the passage, and at the end of the passageway appeared a narrow crevice. After squeezing through, they discovered that it was a very small stone chamber.

In the center of the stone chamber, facing the entrance, was a square stone platform with many basketball-sized, amber-colored, translucent spheres on it, with something vaguely floating inside.

As the group approached, they shone their lights on, and the fat man yelled, "Damn it, there are jade terracotta figurines here too!"

The simple stone chamber was sparsely furnished, except for four black jade figurines placed against the four corners of the wall, identical to those outside, as if they were guards here.

Before the jade figurines could awaken and revive, the group, wielding knives, swiftly and decisively stabbed the four jade figurines into sieves.

The fat man was very curious, so he used a knife to peel open one of the jade figurines and then picked out a soft, black-haired snake from the junction of the chest and throat.

The fat man tossed the dead snake aside, then examined the desiccated skull closely. He clicked his tongue and said, "So these snakes eat brains, huh? Look at what you gave Xuan this thing; there's not a drop of juice left."

Zhang Wuxun nodded. "Very likely. Look at this."

He reached into the mummified corpse's Adam's apple and took out a small, white-brown pellet, threw it on the ground, and crushed it with his dagger. "This is white phosphorus and charcoal powder mixed with many impurities."

He then pulled a tiny object from the mummified corpse's throat, with an extremely fine thread attached to the back. "This is a very ingenious little mechanism. In the outer hall, when the star chart mechanism is activated, the jade figurines come to life because the black-haired snakes inside sense the high temperature. The function of this little mechanism is to activate the small mechanism at the same time as the main mechanism, causing friction to ignite the white phosphorus powder and awaken the black-haired snakes from their dormancy."

“If we move those spheres on the stone platform as soon as we come in, we will definitely trigger the mechanism unintentionally, bringing these jade figurines to life.” Zhang Wuxun said, then stood up.

Wu Xiaoxie casually pulled a small bottle of disinfectant spray from the side pocket of his backpack and sprayed it on his hand. He had just stuffed it into his backpack after changing the dressing on Panzi's arm.

The young man stared at the brick seam at the feet of the jade figurine, then suddenly pulled out his knife and chopped down on one of the bricks. With a crisp sound, the brick shattered.

The young man sheathed his knife, extended two fingers of his right hand, pinched the cracked brick, and forcefully pulled it out.

Everyone crowded around and saw that there was actually a hidden layer under the stone bricks.

The interlayer was carved with many patterns. Chen Wenjin waved his hand and said, "Pry open all the bricks."

After a series of clanging sounds, all the stone bricks were lifted up, revealing the complete pattern underneath.

Chen Wenjin frowned and murmured, "This is..."

The pattern is divided into two parts, left and right, surrounding the central stone platform. Each part is carved with two very strange creatures. The one on the left is a snake with a human head and covered in scales, but its tail has many barbed tentacles like an exploding firework. The one on the right is the opposite.

The fat man looked left and right, then exclaimed, "Damn it, no matter how I look at it, it looks like a snake and a centipede were cut in half, their tails were swapped, and then a human head was attached to them?"

Wu Xiaoxie nodded, "I also think that this human-headed, snake-bodied creature... could it be the Queen Mother of the West's secret to immortality? This is a bit too hasty, it's neither fish nor fowl."

(End of this chapter)