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

Chapter 357 Divine Fruit
What the person behind this is looking for is likely hidden beneath the ancient building, but Zhang Wuxun has no intention of reminding Huo Xiangu of this.

Regardless of whether that thing exists or not, he will not let outsiders get it. The reason he agreed to Huo Xiangu's request was just to create a smokescreen.

Huo Xiangu is doomed. After leaving the ancient building, the person behind her can only focus their suspicions on Zhang Wuxun, but they cannot be sure whether the item is actually in Zhang Wuxun's hands.

The real reason is that it doesn't know what that thing is, just like Schrödinger's cat, which can neither be sure if it exists nor deny that it doesn't exist. The same principle applies to Zhang Wuxun.

They quickly found a mechanism on the west pillar that allowed them to climb up, and one by one they climbed up to the fourth floor.

Once you go up there, to your surprise, there's only one huge human-faced turtle in the huge space on this floor, and the surrounding area is completely empty.

This turtle was pitch black all over, with an extremely long neck and limbs. Strangely, on its slender neck was the face of a woman, delicate yet fierce, with thin eyebrows, long eyes, and soft features. The expression on its face was a half-smile, much like the mysterious and terrifying Thangka figures in Tibetan culture. Furthermore, the ends of the turtle's two front claws were shaped like human hands.

What's strange is that no matter which direction they come from or how they move, the face they see is always facing them, and the expression is constantly changing, distorted and eerie. Those narrow, resentful eyes are always staring at them, making people feel uneasy.

"what's the situation?"

"Could this be another hallucination caused by some kind of mechanism?"

It's clear that the toxic gas pool in the cave left a deep psychological scar on the Huo family.

Zhang Wuxun reached out and touched the stone turtle's face, noticing some small, concave edges under his fingertips. He then looked closer and said, "This is interesting. Someone has manipulated the face of this thing in post-production."

He gestured for the Huo family members to turn off their lights, leaving only the one in his hand still lit. Then he shone the flashlight up from the stone tortoise's chin, and the stone tortoise's entire face turned and flipped over.

"You've all played with kaleidoscopes, right? The reason this thing can change faces is actually the same as a kaleidoscope. It relies on the reflection of light through mirrors. You can imagine that this stone tortoise face is made up of many delicate and tiny kaleidoscopes, which is why it looks like it's staring at people."

Some of the curious members of the Huo family leaned closer to take a closer look and exclaimed in amazement, "My goodness, this thing really does seem to be true!"

Huo Xiaoli had already climbed onto the back of the human-faced turtle and shouted, "Uncle Yu, come quick! There's something on the back of this big turtle!"

Zhang Wuxun also climbed up and saw that there was a black, concave shell on the turtle's back, inside which was a charcoal-black sphere the size of a basketball.

Huo Xiaoli pinched her fingers and flicked it, discovering that the black ball could actually move. She then picked it up with both hands to take a closer look.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be face-to-face with a human face.

"My goodness!"

Huo Xiaoli shuddered and immediately let go, jumping aside. The black ball rolled away from her hand, and the stone tortoise fell to the ground, crashing onto the wooden floor with a loud metallic clang.

Everyone was startled and stared at the black ball on the ground as if facing a formidable enemy, fearing that it was a bomb that might suddenly explode.

Zhang Wuxun was speechless. "Why are you making such a fuss? You're a grown young man, can't you act a little more steadily?"

Huo Xiaoli's face turned pale, and she said with a bitter expression, "That thing was very light, and it looked like a human head. No, I saw more than one face. This... this thing couldn't have been made by peeling off human faces and sewing them together, could it?"

Zhang Wuxun jumped off the stone turtle, approached the basketball-sized black sphere, tested its weight on his hand, and then mocked it without any politeness: "You're not very brave, but you have quite the imagination. Peeling off human faces? This is just a mud ball covered with a layer of metal. The human faces on it are all carved."

The young man seemed to recognize what it was, and simply said three words, "The Kingdom of the Shiren."

Huo Xiaoli, who was hard of hearing, misheard and stared in disbelief, "What? A cannibal kingdom?"

Zhang Wuxun rolled his eyes in annoyance, "I told you to study more, but you insisted on pretending to be a pig. The Shiren Kingdom, descendants of Shennong, the Yan Emperor."

Legend has it that the clay figurines used by the Shennong clan were human-faced and turtle-bodied. The Classic of Mountains and Seas - Hainan Inner Classic mentions that "the clan is located west of Jianmu. Its inhabitants have human faces and fish bodies, and no feet." The clan in the Classic of Mountains and Seas is said to be a descendant of Emperor Yan.

The Song Dynasty book "Taiping Yulan" quotes "Fengsu Tong" as saying that when heaven and earth were first created, there were no people. Nuwa molded people from yellow clay.

Then it is said that Nuwa used ropes to throw yellow mud and create many people. These primitive people lived in groups, with polygamy and chaotic reproduction. In order to make reproduction clear, Nuwa asked each group of cave dwellers to make dolls to count the number of people.

The clay figurines used by the Shiren Kingdom of Shennong, the Yan Emperor, were human-faced and tortoise-bodied. Later, these human-faced and tortoise-bodied figurines became the national emblem of the Shiren Kingdom.

Zhang Wuxun suddenly remembered that the two-headed magnetic turtle they dug out from under the spirit hall of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top had patterns carved with a woman's face on its body. It was hard to say whether there was any connection between them.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas - Overseas Eastern Classic records the following sentence: "In the east, Jumang has the body of a bird and the face of a human, and rides two dragons." In mythology, Jumang is the god of spring, also known as the god of wood, who is in charge of the growth of plants in spring.

The form of the winged man Jumang was that of a human face and a bird body, which reminded him of the human-faced bird outside the bronze gate. Upon closer inspection, he found that the details of this stone tortoise were very similar to the human-faced bird statues he had seen on the stone walls of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top and the Queen Mother's Kingdom.

Looking at the human-faced turtle in front of him, Zhang Wuxun was starting to doubt his own existence. Could it be that the Zhang family ancestors dug this thing out of a super ancient tomb from the time of the Three Sovereigns and put it here as a decoration?
Thinking about it this way, I couldn't help but think, "Damn, it's not impossible."

As the most original tomb raiding family, the Zhang family has probably visited every ancient tomb in the world that they could enter. They took out the secrets of the ultimate records inside and sealed them all in the Zhang family's ancient building.

As Zhang Wuxun was examining the human-faced tortoise, one of the Huo family members suddenly exclaimed, "Holy crap, look! What's that dark mass up there?" Everyone turned on their lights and looked up, and what they saw immediately shocked them.

The ceiling on this floor is ridiculously high compared to the previous two floors, with numerous beams evenly and regularly interspersed above, forming a huge chessboard-like structure overhead.

Seeing that many things were hanging in the shadows of the beams in the chessboard grid, someone couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "What are those things hanging up there? Are they fairy fruits?" As he spoke, he wanted to shoot one down to take a look.

"What kind of divine fruit is that?" Zhang Wuxun said coldly, looking at him. "That's Tezuka from our Zhang family. If you dare to take it down, I'll twist your head off and hang it up as a ginseng fruit."

The Huo family member shrank back, quickly put away his gun, and chuckled awkwardly, "Misunderstanding, misunderstanding."

Looking up, the boxes hanging in the shadows varied in size and shape, with different patterns on them. There were tens of thousands of boxes in total, which looked quite impressive and spectacular.

Someone couldn't help but hiss, "Damn, if this place is full of people, there must be at least tens of thousands of them. Does the Zhang family have that many people?"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than someone with sharp eyes chimed in, “Are you stupid? The materials of these boxes are all different, they were obviously hung up at different times. If ten thousand people die in one family, even divine retribution wouldn’t be this severe, it’s a total annihilation disaster.”

Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge remained silent. In a sense, the Zhang family had indeed experienced a calamity that nearly wiped out the clan, but it was not a natural disaster, but a man-made one.

The empty Tezuka shell that I saw scattered on the ground in the left front room of the annex building was very likely taken from here, and the hand inside was probably taken to its territory by the Chenqing faction for research.

The Huo family searched around and found no other clues besides the Tomb of Ten Thousand Hands and the Human-Faced Turtle. So they spontaneously began to look for a way to the next level.

While Zhang Wuxun and the other person were checking the Tezuka above their heads, the Huo family had already found the entrance based on their past experience.

Huo Xiaoli picked up the black ball covered in human faces that she had discarded and placed it back on the tortoise shell. Then she waved to Zhang Wuxun, "Master Yu, come over here quickly, we've found the stairs."

Zhang Wuxun turned around and saw that a section of stone bricks on the east wall protruded out, forming a stone staircase leading upwards.

"Hey buddy, let's go." he said.

This floor has been replaced by a wooden railing. Like many towers, it contains many compartments and corridors. All the compartments have their doors and windows tightly closed. The window lattice carvings are uniform and neat, covered with a layer of special black cotton paper. This alkali-resistant paper feels very similar to oil paper.

From the outside, the tops of these compartments do not overlap with the ceiling, but are covered separately, with a gap of more than a meter between them and the top. They look like large coffins arranged in a row, with very uniform length, width and height. Even people with obsessive-compulsive disorder would feel comfortable looking at them.

As you walk up the stairs, a faint blue glow permeates the entire space. Looking up, you discover that the dome is inlaid with many luminous pearls the size of a child's fist, stretching into the distance like a blue Danube River.

Many people exclaimed with envy, but upon seeing the distance—more than four meters from their bare feet to the top of the cubicle—they had no choice but to give up, unless they could mutate into kangaroo genes to jump to the top of the cubicle.

But that's impossible. Before they even jump up, their heads will already be spinning around like a football under their feet. Zhang Wuxun can guarantee that.

After taking a few steps forward, Zhang Wuxun tried to push the door of one of the cubicles and found that it was locked from the inside with a latch. In other words, the door of this cubicle could only be used for one-time entry and exit. After exiting, the small hinge in the latch would activate the moment the door was closed, locking the door shut.

However, this was no problem for Zhang Wuxun. If he couldn't unlock it, he would simply remove the door from the frame.

The structures between these wooden buildings are all traditional mortise and tenon joints, and once you know the trick, they are easy to disassemble.

Zhang Wu located the mortise below the door hinge, inserted the tip of his short knife into it, and forced the tenon embedded inside out. He quickly disassembled the bottom of one side of the door frame. The hinge above took a little longer because it was connected to the small top beam. He pried off six small tenons in a row and removed the entire bearing.

Then, holding onto the wooden door, they carefully pushed it inside, and the double door became a single door.

A thick layer of dust had accumulated on the ground, which looked a lot like alkali powder. The Huo family hesitated for a moment, but then they saw Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge walk straight in, circle the coffin once, and then stand in front of a wall.

The space inside was not large, at most three square meters. Facing the entrance was a large black wooden coffin, and the wall behind it, directly opposite the head of the coffin, was covered with wooden plaques covered with densely written characters, all of which were epitaphs written in small seal script.

The epitaphs reveal that those who were allocated a small cubicle here were all prominent figures in the Zhang family who had made outstanding contributions to the clan.

For example, the Zhang family member in this compartment is a very capable person from the 34th generation of the Zhang family's chessboard branch. His name is Zhang Shengqing. He was born in the mid-Qing Dynasty and lived to be over 170 years old. He did not die of old age, but died in a bloody battle.

The contents of these small wooden plaques reveal that Zhang Shengqing's life was remarkable, with his contributions filling an entire wall. However, he died in the Korean region during the height of border conflicts. He was a great hero who died on the battlefield, and his family later brought him back to be buried here.

The contributions made by the family are mentioned after his life. Apart from various strange embellishments, the wooden plaque mentions his parents the most. His parents also made great contributions: "They excavated countless tombs and obtained a great deal of wealth, which helped them establish the Zhu family's empire and made a lot of profit. For these two contributions, they are buried in the tomb of a man."

This means that Zhang Shengqing's parents were exceptionally capable, having robbed countless ancient tombs throughout their lives, obtaining invaluable items from them. They also assisted Zhu Yuanzhang in pacifying the Ming Dynasty, bringing numerous benefits to the family and accumulating countless merits. It was only because of the contributions of Zhang Shengqing and her parents that they were qualified to be buried here.

"Holy crap..." Zhang Wuxun couldn't hide his amazement. Could this "to secure the Zhu family's rule" refer to Zhang Renfu, the rebel general at the end of the Yuan Dynasty? No, no, he died in the Battle of Longwan. He died too young, and his name wasn't even among the ten founding generals.

Who could that be?

To be honest, there were quite a few generals under Zhu De who were surnamed Zhang and skilled in military strategy.

Thank you so much to the generous donors: [Dessert Shop Manager], [Dali Chen], [Nie Mo Wang Qing Chang], [Hua Hua Guo Lai], [Nian Shao Shi Zui Shi Tian Zhen], and others! Sending you a huge heart!


(End of this chapter)