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

Chapter 358 The Badge Appears Again
Zhang Wuxun racked his brains and suddenly remembered a person named Zhang Ying.

This man had followed Zhu Yuanzhang when he first rose up against the Yuan dynasty, fighting alongside him for over ten years and earning numerous military merits. In particular, during the Miao uprising in Huguang in the twelfth year of the Hongwu reign, he was appointed General of Martial Strategy by Zhu Yuanzhang and sent to suppress the uprising. He led troops to garrison Jiuxiwei for over twenty years. In the second year of the Yongle reign, he was ordered to lead his troops to Changleli Jiaojidu Beiping in Lizhou, where he later died.

The Zhang family members who are associated with the ancient Miao people could very well be him.

The Zhang family has always been active in the north, and all their birthplaces and activities are around the Changbai Mountains. In ancient times, that area did not actually belong to the Central Plains, but was more under the control of ethnic minorities. The Zhang family branch was clearly a powerful Han Chinese family that lived among other ethnic groups.

The Chessboard Zhang branch is one of the five branches of the main family and holds a high position within the family. What Zhang Wuxun cares about most is that "the Chessboard Zhang is carrying a Qilin."

He turned to look at the young man and noticed that the young man also had a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Would you like to open the coffin and take a look?" he asked.

The young man shook his head and said, "Not this one." Then he turned and walked out.

Seeing that the two had left, the remaining Huo family members stared at the coffin, somewhat restless. The journey had been filled with fear and anxiety, and now that they had finally seen some benefits, they naturally didn't want to let it go.

Huo Chu Shi asked Old Madam Huo, who was standing to one side holding the door, "Master, should we open it...?"

Huo Xiangu waved her hand weakly, "Follow them."

After walking along the corridor for about sixteen or seventeen meters, the young man suddenly stopped and looked thoughtful.

Zhang Wuxun, who was walking right behind him, saw that the door to the cubicle in front of him was half open. The old and rotten door hinges had been kicked open and were hanging diagonally to one side. The broken part of the wood was badly rotten, and it was obvious that this cubicle had been visited.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that this room was exceptionally large, more than three times the size of the previous one. The decorations in the room were also more elaborate and solemn. Most importantly, the coffin in the center had been opened, and the lid was placed directly on the ground to the side. The offering table in the room looked as if it had been vandalized and looted by bandits, with the incense burner rolling to the ground.

The outer edge of the coffin was covered in dust, with many marks of chopping and prying, and a fist-sized notch was missing from the center of each of the four sides of the coffin wall.

Those damn people opened the coffin by brute force. He saw small locks on all four sides of the coffin lid, and they couldn't do anything with them. Since the coffin was made of wood, they just dug a hole and opened it without a second thought.

Logically, if a mechanism lock was set up on the coffin, then other potentially lethal traps should also have been set up as well.

After walking around half of the room, I found a rotten and shriveled skeleton in one corner. The work uniform it was wearing had been corroded by the corpse fluid and alkaline gas, making it difficult to recognize its original color.

The man's fingers were normal. But then again, if Zhang Qishan's family members and Chen Wenjin had really entered this place together, there's no reason why they would be so incompetent as to not be able to open even a simple lock.

Zhang Wuxun examined the man carefully and found a short iron arrow in his throat and another in his chest near his heart.

He cursed inwardly, "You reap what you sow."

There were no work permits or anything like that on the body, so it's likely that the body was taken by the teammates who came with them to avoid revealing their identities after the victim was critically injured and beyond saving.

Just as he was about to withdraw his hand, his fingertips suddenly touched a hard, flat object. Looking down, he saw that the object was stuck in the gap between the metacarpal bones of the white bone.

Because the bones had been corroded by the alkaline gas and were brittle, they could be easily broken. Zhang Wuxun took out that thing, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw it.

Badge – This is a bronze metal badge.

The young man had found a badge exactly like this one in a backpack at the bottom of the lake. Fatty and Wu Xiaoxie found the paper design of that badge in an old research institute that was about to be demolished, but due to its age, the design was already blurred.

However, the brass badge was not affected by the alkaline gas, and the pattern on it was still clearly visible.

It wasn't a Qilin, nor a Qiongqi, nor anything Zhang Wuxun knew, yet there was a lingering sense of familiarity about it. A voice deep within his mind told him that he had definitely seen this thing before.

While I was racking my brains, my head suddenly buzzed.

Zhang Wuxun turned his head and saw Huo Xiaoli fiddling with a bronze bell hanging from the ceiling directly above the coffin.

Every time the bell swayed, Zhang Wuxun's ear bones would vibrate. The clear sound of the bell sounded to him like a bell amplified countless times.

"Don't move your hands!" he coldly reprimanded.

Huo Xiaoli was a little confused. Seeing Zhang Wuxun's unpleasant expression, she quickly withdrew her hand and asked cautiously, "Master Yu, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing." Zhang Wuxun calmly put away the badge, not mentioning the strange feeling he had just had. He stood up and moved aside the corpse in the shadows so that everyone could see it. "If you don't want to end up like this corpse, you'd better not touch anything here."

"Oh." Huo Xiaoli glanced at the corpse, not paying much attention, and scratched her head. "Hey, Mr. Yu, I checked that bell. The reeds inside are still there, but why isn't it ringing? Did it break because it's been here for too long?"

Zhang Wuxun suddenly turned around and stared intently at him. "You mean, the bell didn't ring?"

Although Huo Xiaoli didn't understand, she nodded, "Yeah, it didn't ring."

Upon hearing this, the young man who was examining the mummified corpse in the coffin stood up, gave Zhang Wuxun a look, then gently touched the octagonal bell with his hand, while looking up to observe the reactions of the crowd.

This time, Zhang Wuxun heard it very clearly. The continuous humming sound, similar to the sound of a bell, was coming from this bell. Judging from the expressions of everyone present, it seemed that only he and Xiao Ge could hear this sound.

There was definitely something wrong. Zhang Wuxun's heart skipped a beat. He leaned closer to examine the octagonal bell and found that its material was exactly the same as the bronze mask on the face of the blue-eyed fox corpse they had seen in the Lu Palace. The thing that made the copper tongue inside was a petal-shaped fragment of meteorite jade.

"Is there something wrong with this bell?" Huo Xiangu asked softly. Zhang Wuxun didn't tell the truth. "The bell is fine. The problem is with the person lying in the coffin."

Huo Xiangu frowned. She couldn't see anything unusual about the skeleton that had turned into white bones, so she had Huo Xiuxiu help her to walk to the wall directly opposite the coffin and take a closer look at the epitaph on the wooden plaque hanging there.

At first glance, she was so shocked by the three characters "Zhang Qiling" at the top that she almost fell over. Her face filled with horror, she looked at the young man standing to her side and behind her, stammering, "You...you are..."

The young man's eyes remained indifferent, without a trace of expression.

Zhang Wuxun clicked his tongue and shone the beam of his flashlight behind him, pointing to the words "selected as" on the back. He said sincerely, "Grandma, your eyesight is really good. You picked out those three words at a glance. You didn't pay any attention to the rest. Selected as, this person was selected as 'Zhang Qiling' when he was nineteen years old. Zhang Qiling is not just a simple name, but a title with special meaning."

"Qiling" means, as the name suggests, removing the spirit tablet of the deceased and transporting the coffin to the ground.

In other words, "Zhang Qiling" is a member of the Zhang family who is in charge of preparing the body for burial. Whenever a member of the Zhang family dies outside the family, Zhang Qiling is responsible for bringing back the tomb raider who represents their identity and burying him in the Zhang family mansion.

Old Mrs. Huo looked somewhat surprised. "Isn't he the patriarch of the Zhang family?"

“Every Zhang family patriarch is called ‘Zhang Qiling’.” Zhang Wuxun lowered his eyelids, pointed to the family genealogy engraved on the inside of the open coffin lid, and said, “This person’s real name is Zhang Ruitong. He is the penultimate generation of Zhang Qiling, but you must be very familiar with one of his grandchildren.”

"Who is it?" Huo Xiangu had a guess in her mind. "The person you're referring to... is it Master Zhang?"

“That’s right.” Zhang Wuxun nodded. “It’s Zhang Qishan.”

A sense of horror flashed through Huo Xiangu's mind as she recalled the past. She looked at the young man and hesitated before asking, "Master Zhang once conducted a large-scale search for a man named Zhang Qiling. In other words, you were also in the funeral procession in Banna?"

“Young Master wasn’t there at the time, so Zhang Qishan found another member of the Zhang family with the Qiongqi tattoo. That person was quite skilled and was chosen as Zhang Qiling’s replacement,” Zhang Wuxun said.

"Is that Zhang family member still alive?" Huo Xiangu's eyes held a hint of anticipation. She was eager to know the details of everything that had happened in Banna, who exactly was it that instructed Chen Wenjin and Huo Ling to lead the funeral procession, what they did in Banna, and what their purpose was.

“Alive.” Zhang Wuxun put on gloves, brushed the dust off the surface of the corpse, and carefully examined it. “We’ve seen him before, more than once.”

Huo Xiangu's eyes lit up immediately, her breathing quickened, and her hands clenched unconsciously. "Where is he?"

Zhang Wuxun gave her a strange look. "What's the use of asking this now? With your current condition, you'll be out of breath after just a few steps. Whether you can even get out alive is unknown. What good will asking do? You can't just fly over there and drag someone out."

Huo Xiangu was stunned for a moment, a look of dejection flashing across her face. Yes, she was already in this state, so what would be the use of asking? It would only add to her troubles.

She subconsciously touched the ring on her hand, then suddenly remembered something, looked at Zhang Wuxun, and resolutely insisted, "I don't have time, but you do, and you have plenty of time."

"So?" Zhang Wuxun raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"I can pay you. How much do you want? Or what else do you want? I can write a message, and you can go to Zhizhi or Zhongling to cash it in after you leave," Huo Xiangu said confidently.

Zhang Wuxun shook his head helplessly, "Besides being dishonest and untrustworthy, you old Nine Gates really need to change your bad habit of being only interested in profit. Even if I don't like that guy, I won't help you, an outsider, to deal with him."

Huo Xiangu was speechless and unable to refute his words.

Zhang Wuxun sighed, "I can only tell you what I know. Because of the Zhang family's ancestral teachings, Zhang Qishan always puts the national interest above all else in his mind. He made great contributions in the army in his early years, and he entered politics in his later years to protect the Nine Gates from being completely wiped out by the higher-ups. But it is also a fact that he lost his mind and used the Zhang family patriarch."

"When your older generation was forced to get involved, the people behind it had already set their sights on the new generation. So Huo Ling and the others were involved because it was all planned out in advance, and there was no escaping it."

"Although Huo Ling and the others eventually left the Chenqing faction, it was precisely because of this that they became thorns in the side of the people behind them. Huo Ling knew too much. Even if she hadn't been tricked and ended up like that, she would never have survived peacefully. In the end, it was all her own fault."

"They only have themselves to blame..." Huo Xiangu murmured repeatedly, her face full of bitterness. "Is this truly retribution? The seeds we planted have now come back to haunt our descendants. When will all this end..."

Zhang Wuxun looked at Huo Xiangu, who was enveloped in guilt and remorse, and wanted to say something, but he didn't know how to start. So he simply stopped paying attention to her and focused on looking at the situation inside the coffin.

While the two were talking, the young man listened quietly to them, his eyes unwavering, as if he were just a detached bystander.

Zhang Wuxun moved the skeletons in the coffin to one side, lifted the cotton quilt that was neatly laid out underneath, and found that the agate and jade artifacts buried with the deceased were all neatly placed under the quilt. The leather products among them were so rotten that they could not be recognized as they were originally.

At the very center of the coffin, there was a narrow, long dust mark among the burial jade artifacts. The artifact had been taken away long ago, but eventually returned to its new owner.

"Your black gold was supposed to be kept here," he said to the young man, pointing to the mark.

The young man remained silent, gripping the black gold ancient sword in his hand tightly.

Zhang Wuxun rummaged through the pile of burial jade and picked out two jade rings, one large and one small. The original jade bases were inlaid with various ancient jades engraved with runes. He handed the two jade rings to the young man.

The young man took it, looked at him, and his eyes showed some surprise, as if he were asking Zhang Wuxun how he knew.

Zhang Wuxun smiled and said, "I guessed. After all, not everyone wants to live too long. You recognized him after just one glance last time, so you must have met before."

After Master Wu and his men left Banna, they went up the mountain for the first time. The young man, who had been suffering from amnesia, recognized Jude Kao on the donkey's back at a glance and deliberately avoided letting the other man see him.

Something's definitely off.

Thank you so much to [不念] for the generous donation! Sending you a huge heart (v)
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(End of this chapter)