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

Chapter 341 White Silk Spores
The fat man had a terrible stomachache, so he randomly chose a big tree some distance away from the group, swung his shovel and dug a small hole in a few strokes, then unbuckled his belt and squatted down to relieve himself.

With his stomach empty, he sighed comfortably and finally had time to observe his surroundings. He then noticed that the big tree next to him seemed a little strange.

He squinted and looked closely, finally noticing what was wrong. He hissed and muttered to himself, "The other half of this tree looks like it's been hit by firecrackers, all dry and brittle. There's no shortage of water in Banna, there must be something fishy going on."

Thinking it over, he wiped himself clean, pulled up his pants, scooped up two shovelfuls of soil to cover the tree, then took the shovel and went to the withered side of the tree. He tapped the trunk and found an echo inside, indicating it was hollow. He immediately started digging at the roots.

They had dug down less than a meter when the shovel head suddenly hit something, making a clanging sound like metal colliding.

"Hey!" the fat man chuckled. "Damn it, it's like finding a needle in a haystack, then suddenly opening the door to the sesame. Lift up your veil and let me, your fat master, see what good stuff is buried underneath."

Hearing the digging noises, Huo Xiaoli crawled through the bushes and came over. "Fatty, what are you digging?"

When the fat man saw someone coming to help, he was overjoyed. "Come and help! I've found a treasure!"

Soon, the other people who came out with them also rushed over after hearing the noise. The group dug the soil efficiently, and in a few quick moves they dug a large pit that was one and a half meters deep. However, they were then blocked from digging any further.

He used his foot to pry away the thin layer of soil, revealing a large iron gate underneath, square in shape and more than a meter in both length and width.

There were some patterns carved on the iron gate. The fat man looked closely and found that they were some rather complicated seal characters. He only recognized the characters for "gate" and "life".

The fat man chuckled, "My lucky charm physique is indeed useful everywhere. Hey you, hurry up and inform Muyu and the others that we've made a major discovery."

Huo Xiaoli immediately rushed over and brought Zhang Wuxun and the others over here.

Zhang Wuxun jumped into the pit, looked at the inscription on the iron gate at his feet, and patted the fat man on the shoulder in a comforting manner, "My condolences, this gate is fake."

The fat man was a little puzzled. "How did it become fake? Look at the words on it, I can still recognize the words 'door' and 'life'."

The others were also puzzled. They had worked hard all night and were about to find a clue, but Zhang Wuxun picked up a bucket of water and poured it over their heads. Naturally, they were very indignant.

Zhang Wuxun explained casually, "Don't you guys think this iron gate is too new and looks cheap?"

"If this is truly the entrance left by the Zhang family, it wouldn't be so rudimentary as to simply put together a cast iron gate, carve a couple of words, and use it to fool people. Moreover, these carvings seem to be deliberately imitated; the strokes are very clumsy, and there's no fluency in the characters at all. It's completely different from what we saw outside the third sealing stone."

"So there's a high chance this door was deliberately put up to fool us, and it's hard to say what dangers might be inside."

Although the iron gate bears the inscription, "Those who enter this gate will either perish or die without a trace; take this as a warning. If you are not a member of the Zhang family, leave immediately," it also mentions the Zhang family's name.

But if Wu Xiaoxie were here, with his many years of experience making rubbings of ancient books, he could tell at a glance that this thing was a counterfeit product.

The Huo family members were disheartened upon hearing this. They had finally found a clue, but it turned out to be completely useless.

"Why don't we go in and take a look?" Huo Xiaoli suggested. "What if we find something inside?"

Someone chimed in, "That's true, this iron gate must serve some purpose."

Zhang Wuxun didn't object; perhaps they could find clues about the collapsed shoulders inside.

He looked at the young man, who squatted down and felt around on the edge of the iron gate for a few moments. Then he gestured for everyone who had gone down into the pit to come up, stood up, and stomped down hard with one leg.

With a loud crash, the iron gate collapsed into the ground. At the last moment, the young man grabbed Zhang Wuxun's outstretched arm and flipped himself back up.

More than two seconds later, they heard an echo of an impact from below. After the iron gate fell, it sounded like it had landed directly on a flat surface. The sound was similar to the sound of the bottom of an iron bucket hitting the surface of water when drawing water from a well.

It seems the pit is deeper than they imagined, at least thirty meters deep.

The fat man wondered if it might be a cellar used to store rainwater, but he immediately dismissed the idea.

Firstly, Banna receives a lot of rainfall throughout the year, with rain every few days. Secondly, the area has abundant water resources, with streams and creeks everywhere. They encountered no fewer than twenty small puddles along the way in this valley alone. Therefore, digging a well to store water, especially such a deep one, would be completely unnecessary and pointless.

Once the dust in the pit had settled, a bottomless, pitch-black cave was revealed.

The fat man lit a match and threw it down, but the flame flickered and went out immediately upon contact with the air below. This meant that the place was completely sealed off before they arrived, with no oxygen at all.

The group waited outside for about ten minutes. The fat man threw another match down to test the flame. This time the flame burned for a little longer, but it disappeared into the deeper part of the room.

Ever since Zhang Wuxun showed off his skills in the passage, the Huo family members have been showing more respect to the three of them on the surface. When it comes to tasks like scouting ahead, they wisely chose three people with better skills.

With ropes tied around their waists, the three men rappelled down one after another. The miner's lamps hanging around their chests illuminated the earthen walls of the cave, where they could clearly see many white, fibrous hairs resembling underground roots of radishes, seemingly the roots of some plant that had spread from the soil to this place.

After the scouts descended more than twenty meters, the swaying of the rope suddenly stopped. Then, a light swayed upwards a few times, indicating to the people above that there was no danger below, and that they had discovered a new entrance to the cave.

Seeing this, the people above also descended into the deep cave under Zhang Wuxun's guidance. Up close, the white hair-like roots on the cave wall became clearer. Zhang Wuxun then discovered that these things did not seem to be plant roots as he had previously thought. The curled ends of these roots looked more like those of a spore plant.

As the body slid down, the white hairs were carried by the airflow, appearing almost alive, drifting and swirling around the body.

Zhang Wuxun subconsciously looked up at the fat man above him, only to find that the fat man was completely shrouded in a spiderweb-like white beard, some of which even clung to his face and seemed to be creeping into his nostrils. The fat man, however, seemed oblivious to the strange sight. Startled, Zhang Wuxun called out, "Fatty!"

His voice echoed, creating a sonic boom, as if they were trapped inside a bell jar. But after that, the fat man did not respond, and even the three Huo family members who had gone down below fell silent.

Zhang Wuxun grabbed the rope and started climbing. He quickly reached the fat man and ripped off the cotton-like white beard on his face. He then discovered that the fat man's eyes were closed, as if he were asleep, but the way he was lowering himself while holding the rope was the same as when he was awake.

Suddenly, a dark figure appeared before Zhang Wuxun. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was Xiao Ge. Xiao Ge didn't say anything, but simply secured himself to the rope with his legs and then made a series of hand gestures to Zhang Wuxun.

The young man meant for them to continue downwards and enter the passage below, as something was guarding the entrance from above.

Just then, Zhang Wuxun heard a series of heavy roars coming from above the hole above their heads, accompanied by several screams, and drops of blood fell from above like rain.

Clearly, something happened up there, and the two Huo family members who hadn't had time to come down suffered the consequences.

Even a fool could tell that it was that damned slumped shoulder who was responsible. Zhang Wuxun cursed inwardly, checked the fat man, and found that his breathing had become somewhat weak. He immediately grabbed the rope with one hand and quickly descended downwards.

The young man was also carrying someone in his hand, following closely behind him.

After descending more than 20 meters, the bottom showed obvious reflections and shimmering light when the lights shone, indicating that a lot of water had indeed accumulated there. It's just unknown how deep the water is below.

After descending another two or three meters, a hole the size of a manhole cover suddenly appeared in the middle of the white spores on the wall of the earthen well. A human leg wearing military boots was sticking out of the hole. Judging from the clothes, it should be one of the three people who went down earlier. Obviously, these people were also infected.

Zhang Wuxun stepped on the edge of the cave entrance, swung the rope, and used his waist strength to crawl horizontally inside. He then hooked his head forward and saw three corpses of the Huo family members lying inside.

He couldn't hear the three people breathing. When he reached out and touched the hand of the outermost member of the Huo family, he found it was cold and there was no pulse.

Zhang Wuxun twisted his bones to switch the positions of his upper and lower body in the narrow cave, then reached out to unfasten the safety buckle and dragged the fat man in from the cave entrance.

The space inside was too small, so they had no choice but to drag the fat man from the three corpses of the Huo family members to a deeper area, and then move the corpses at the entrance of the cave in to make room for the young man who came down later.

When the young man descended to the entrance of the cave, he did not come in. Instead, he first stuffed the person he was carrying into the cave, and then climbed back up along the rope.

The space here was so small that even sitting down, one couldn't lift their neck. Zhang Wuxun had no choice but to kneel down next to the fat man, pry open his mouth, and shine a light inside. He then discovered that there was a large clump of cotton-like filaments blocking his throat. Some of these had even crawled in through his nasal cavity, gotten wet with saliva, and stuck to his palate. He hurriedly used tweezers to carefully reach in and remove them. However, there were still some white filaments at the junction of the trachea and esophagus, and the tweezers weren't long enough.

The fat man's breathing became heavier, but his chest was still not rising and falling noticeably.

Zhang Wuxun reached down and pressed along the trachea to the sternum below the fat man's throat, then pressed on his stomach a few times. Finding something stuck in his stomach, he immediately took out a box of Huoxiang Zhengqi Water from his spatial storage, cut open a small bottle, lifted the fat man's head, and poured it down his throat. Then he slowly pressed on the bottom of his stomach.

After a few rubs, the fat man suddenly convulsed, curled up into a ball, looked extremely painful, rolled his eyes back, and tilted his head back as if he was about to vomit.

Zhang Wuxun quickly moved aside, allowing the fat man to turn to the side. He then used his right hand, shaped like a spoon, to pat the fat man's back with a little force.

The fat man vomited uncontrollably, spewing out large clumps of white, cotton-like filaments mixed with undigested yellow-green food. Combined with the herbal smell of Huoxiang Zhengqi Water, the air was instantly filled with an indescribable sour and foul odor.

Zhang Wuxun continued to induce vomiting for two or three minutes until the fat man's vomit turned into grass-green water. Only then did he turn him over and feed him some water. The fat man gagged a few times and then opened his eyes groggily.

The deliveryman brought two more people down from upstairs. After seeing Zhang Wuxun's method of treatment, he asked him for a few bottles of Huoxiang Zhengqi Water (a traditional Chinese medicine for treating ailments), then hung the two people upside down on the rope and poured the medicine down their throats in a very simple and crude manner.

In contrast, Zhang Wuxun's approach was much gentler.

To avoid making the passage even more smelly, Zhang Wuxun dragged the remaining two Huo family members who were still breathing to the entrance of the cave and made them vomit into the water below.

The lynx found the place with the shoulder-shoulder first, ambushed and killed two people, and then waited by the side for its master to come.

The beast didn't realize it had bitten through the rope hanging above, which indirectly bought Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge some time, allowing them to quickly get the person down.

With slumped shoulders and a throbbing right leg, he limped to the edge of the deep cave. His ankle, visible beneath his right trouser leg, appeared dislocated, with cracked and purplish skin.

When the two large lynxes saw him approaching, they immediately stood up, shook their heads, and rubbed against his legs, making snoring noises.

With a slumped shoulder, he casually stroked the heads of the two lynxes a couple of times. Seeing several ropes hanging from the cave entrance, he immediately pulled out the Yao knife tucked behind his back and cut the ropes one by one.

Suddenly a rope fell down in front of him. The young man immediately raised his index finger to make a shushing gesture, braced his feet against the wall, and pressed his back against the wall.

The spores crawling all over the wall seemed to be suddenly scorched by the firelight, and immediately curled up and retreated to the side.

The hunchbacked creature guarding the entrance, with its lynx-like shoulder, had no intention of chasing after them. After cutting the rope, it dragged a rotten log as thick as a bucket from somewhere, placed it across the entrance of the cave, broke off many branches and laid them on top, and then began to fill the hole with soil.

Because of his old injuries, he didn't intend to have a direct confrontation with Zhang Wuxun and his group below. He couldn't beat either of them, so he just wanted to trap them here and kill them.

Goodnight, Makka Pakka

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(End of this chapter)