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

Chapter 309 Let bygones be bygones
Hearing Wu Xiaoxie's words, Huo Xiuxiu breathed a sigh of relief, as if she was completely at ease. She teased, "Brother Wu Xie, I never thought you were so dull when you were little, but you've become so smart when you grew up."

Wu Xiaoxie twitched the corner of her mouth and accepted her pointless compliment.

“The second photo of my aunt that I’m giving you is a clipping from a newspaper I found in the Beijing Museum. It’s from 1984.” Huo Xiuxiu’s smile faded, and she became serious. “And the year they went to Xisha for archaeological work was also exactly 1984.”

Huo Xiuxiu continued, "The time difference is currently impossible to determine, but if you look at this group photo from Xisha, based on the surrounding environment and excluding interference factors such as shoes, I have deduced that the aunt in this photo is 1.68 meters tall."

"In the other two photos, the one of Wangfujing shows my aunt at 18 years old, who is 1.65 meters tall. Assuming she would grow taller, why is it that a few years later, in the 1984 newspaper published by the Beijing Museum, her height not only did not increase, but actually shrank by 5 centimeters?"

Huo Xiuxiu sighed, "So, Brother Wu Xie, your guess was right. The person who came back from Guangxi really wasn't my aunt."

"But there's one thing I still don't understand: why did the fake aunt grow back to her original height after leaving home for Xisha?" Huo Xiuxiu stared straight at Wu Xiaoxie. "Is it as you said, that there were two teams vying for power, and the person who was actually in Xisha was the real aunt?"

"So, have you ever wondered where the fake aunt went? Why did she suddenly disappear, as if she vanished into thin air, without a trace?" Huo Xiuxiu's voice carried a hint of seduction, leading the others to unconsciously begin to think along with her words.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Zhang Wuxun suddenly said, looking at Huo Xiuxiu meaningfully. “Since you already know the whereabouts of the real Huo Ling, why are you so persistent in investigating a substitute?”

Huo Xiuxiu's expression stiffened for a moment, then vanished in an instant, before she said with a hint of roguishness, "Can't I be curious? Besides, I've already said so much, you should tell me what you know now. You can't always take advantage of me."

Wu Xiaoxie just found her obsession strange. If most people knew about the hidden danger behind it, they would definitely wish they had never known, kept their mouths shut, and stayed far away.

This little girl is quite unexpected. She brazenly came over with her things and started exchanging information with a few strangers she'd only known for a couple of days. She's incredibly bold.

“I’ve already told your grandma most of it. The rest are just some details, and you might be disappointed,” Wu Xiaoxie said.

A sly smile flashed in Huo Xiuxiu's eyes. She pointed at the young man and said, "Why don't we start with him? I'll tell you about him, and you tell me about the ancient tomb on the snowy mountain you mentioned."

Wu Xiaoxie agreed. These details were deeply etched in his mind, and he also told Huo Xiuxiu some of his speculations.

When Huo Xiuxiu recounted how they were trapped in the treasure room by the little devil and discovered several mummified corpses, her eyes flickered.

Then, his eyes darted around, and he asked in confusion, "Brother Wu Xie, haven't you tried to identify those mummified corpses?"

Wu Xiaoxie paused for a moment, then shook his head and said, "It's impossible to be sure. Apart from the one person who was identified by the guide based on the markings, the faces of the others were all dehydrated and shriveled beyond recognition."

Huo Xiuxiu nodded thoughtfully, "I see... then Brother Wu Xie, please continue."

It took Wu Xiaoxie more than half an hour to finish recounting the details of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top.

Huo Xiuxiu listened attentively, remaining silent for a long time afterward, her head bowed as if deep in thought.

The fat man called her twice, but when she still didn't respond, he pinched a peanut and tossed it to her. "Hey! Little sister, what are you thinking about so intently?"

Huo Xiuxiu, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly moved to the side and dodged the peanut.

The fat man chuckled, "Not bad, little girl."

Huo Xiuxiu snapped out of her daze, looked at the oily peanuts that had fallen behind the bench, her face sour, patted her sleeves, and glared at the fat man, "Luckily it didn't fall on my clothes, or you'd have to pay for it."

After saying that, she looked at the young man and said with a smile, "I didn't expect this antique brother to be so amazing. No wonder my grandma had to kneel to him. I used to think I was wronged by kneeling to him for no reason, but now it seems that it wasn't a loss after all."

Wu Xiaoxie asked her what inspiration she had gained after listening to her.

Huo Xiuxiu shook her head. "It's a mess. I've thought of something, but I can't put it all together yet."

The fat man sipped his drink and urged her, "It's your turn."

"Don't rush me, I won't renege on my promise," Huo Xiuxiu said. "I need to think carefully about what to say. Let's start with a nightmare."

Huo Xiuxiu described it very carefully, taking quite a bit of time.

Although it sounds simple, there's something strangely abnormal about the whole thing.

In summary, Huo Xiuxiu had seen her grandmother hanging on the bed frame above the bed in a strange posture, her eyes rolled back, her hair disheveled, yet she appeared to be fast asleep.

And he muttered in a dreamlike voice, "There's no time left."

Wu Xiaoxie felt a chill run down his spine, because he had heard those words before.

Just after the young man emerged from the meteorite cave in the underground palace of the Queen Mother of the West, he seemed to be possessed, constantly muttering the phrase "There is no time left."

However, after regaining consciousness, the young man had no memory of that murmur.

"Did your grandma say anything else?" Wu Xiaoxie asked anxiously.

Huo Xiuxiu was somewhat surprised by his reaction, but still shook her head and said, "No, he just kept repeating this sentence."

"And later my grandmother told me that the reason she hung it on the bed frame was actually to practice her kung fu."

"Grandma said this is how the women of the Huo family practice flexibility. They have to sleep with their bones hanging down to achieve maximum flexibility. She has been sleeping like this since she was a girl at the age of nineteen, which has resulted in many bone spurs on her body. Only by hanging down can she avoid the pain."

The fat man's thoughts veered off-topic for a moment, "Damn, your grandpa must have practiced for a long time before his wedding night."

Huo Xiuxiu rolled her eyes, ignored him, and continued to say to Wu Xiaoxie, "I once sneaked into my grandma's room and found a few very special videos inside."

Upon hearing the word "video recording," Wu Xiaoxie's eyelids twitched involuntarily. "What video recording?"

Huo Xiuxiu lowered her voice, her expression revealing a barely concealed panic, "I saw many people crawling on the ground."

"In that group photo of Xisha, several people are crawling on the ground, as if they have become soulless puppets, mechanically repeating the crawling motion."

“I saw Chen Wenjin, Li Sidi, and several other people, but not my aunt or this antique brother,” Huo Xiuxiu said. “I don’t know if they’ve become the ‘forbidden women’ you were talking about before, but their behavior was clearly abnormal.” Wu Xiaoxie was surprised, “No Huo Ling?”

Huo Xiuxiu shook her head, "No, but it seems my aunt has ultimately become like that."

The fat man couldn't help but interject, "Didn't our boss take us for a mud bath in the swamp outside the Queen Mother's Kingdom? What do you mean, she already transformed when she was at the Golmud Sanatorium?"

Wu Xiaoxie shook his head, "It shouldn't be. This might be a way for Chen Wenjin and the others to leave clues for future generations, or a record to verify their speculations."

“So, there’s only one truth.” Zhang Wuxun spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention. He said, “That is, the few videos you watched were selected by someone. What you thought was watertight was actually all done under your grandmother’s nose.”

Huo Xiuxiu was a little unconvinced, "You underestimate me too much!"

She had barely finished speaking when her expression suddenly changed. "No, you mean that all the information I've found out now was actually intentionally leaked to me by my grandmother?"

Wu Xiaoxie has a deep understanding of this kind of trickery that involves squeezing toothpaste into his nephew. "It's very likely. You were only a few years old when the videotape was discovered. How could you possibly outmaneuver your grandmother?"

Huo Xiuxiu was immediately deflated. "Why did Grandma do that?"

Zhang Wuxun rested his chin on one hand and hummed, "This is probably some kind of strange hobby of the older generation of your Nine Gates? Digging pits for your own descendants."

Huo Xiuxiu's lips twitched. "Now that you mention it, I suddenly feel a little pathetic."

After she finished, she turned around and looked at Wu Xiaoxie. Her furrowed brows immediately relaxed. "Haha, there's another one here who's in the same boat as me."

Wu Xiaoxie looked at her speechlessly, "Little girl, you're asking for a beating by poking at people's wounds like that."

Huo Xiuxiu wasn't intimidated by him at all. She laughed a few times, then waved her hand and said, "Let's not talk about that for now. Let me tell you about some of my later discoveries."

Huo Xiuxiu began her rambling tale again.

Simply put, she once found some very special letters under her grandmother's book box.

I initially thought it would be a love letter or something, and with the curiosity of a little kid discovering a big secret of my parents, I opened it, only to find that it contained forms for receiving packages.

The above dates back to 1995. Every year in the second half of March, Mrs. Huo would receive a notification to pick up a package.

Because of the Huo family's special status, every package and mail they receive each year is opened, inspected, and recorded.

The envelopes that Huo Xiuxiu found contained the cargo registration forms that were originally in the package.

The entire form only had the words "videotape" written on it.

This undoubtedly piqued her curiosity even more, so she repeatedly ventured into her grandmother's room. Her efforts finally paid off, and she found the videotapes in a hole in the wall behind the wardrobe.

Out of sheer curiosity about the contents of the videotape, Huo Xiuxiu secretly saved up her allowance to buy a CD burner. While her grandmother was out discussing business, she burned the contents of the videotape and then sneaked to her classmate's house to watch it.

When she first saw the contents, she was terrified and lived in fear for a month before her anxiety finally subsided.

According to Fatty, Huo Xiuxiu's personality is actually very similar to Wu Xie's in his early days. When she encounters something strange, she will scratch her head and insist on figuring it out.

Under the influence of Grandma Huo, Huo Xiuxiu, who was only a teenager, had already awakened her potential as a little fox.

She knew that her grandmother was hiding a big secret, perhaps related to the whispers during that nightmare, so she began to try to investigate it.

She used a clever but extremely risky method: she imitated her grandmother's handwriting to write letters to the addresses listed in those old letters.

After guarding the mailbox for five months, a special letter finally caught her eye.

The letter contained only one simple sentence: "Let bygones be bygones."

The address for the letter was in an antique shop in Liulichang, Beijing.

Huo Xiuxiu rushed over, only to find that the shop owner was a thin old man with a large gold tooth in his mouth when he grinned.

“He didn’t admit it at first, but coincidentally, at the end of the year, a batch of his goods ran into problems when going through customs. I took advantage of his weakness and made a deal with him.” Huo Xiuxiu was a little smug. “If no one had helped him deal with it, he would have lost his entire fortune and might have even gone to jail.”

After hesitating for a long time, Jin Wantang finally told Huo Xiuxiu the whole story when she called him again.

"Jin Wantang said that it was the largest tomb raiding operation in history, with all the elites of the Nine Gates participating. It was an unprecedented collaboration."

"But later, because of his greed, he stole the things that those people had dug up and was kicked out of the team."

"However, before he was kicked out, he was taken to see a leader by those people. The Nine Gates were very respectful to the leader, and the man was very young and had a very special feature: his two fingers on his right hand were unusually long."

As Huo Xiuxiu said this, she glanced at the young man unconsciously, and then continued, "At first, Jin Wantang was planning to tough it out, but he didn't expect that the leader would just press his Touwei acupoint with two very long fingers, and he would immediately faint from the pain."

The reason he didn't faint was because the leader wouldn't let him.

Jin Wantang stole two pieces of Lu Huang silk, one hidden in his sleeve and the other in his shoe insole. He eventually confessed to both, and with Huo Xiangu pleading for him, he was spared his life.

The real reason was that those people's own systems were in complete chaos at the time, and they didn't have time to deal with Jin Wantang because many people in the team had already died, and the number was still increasing.

Everyone is like a powder keg filled with gunpowder, just waiting for a critical point to explode.

After being expelled, Jin Wantang returned to the capital and stayed at home in fear for several months. Afterwards, he heard rumors that after he left, a major incident occurred on the cliff, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries to the Old Nine Gates, which were severely weakened.

Moreover, since then, the status of the Nine Gates in the martial arts world has been purged, seemingly because a hidden force is leading them to kill each other.

Good night~
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(End of this chapter)