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

Chapter 364 Stopping the Divine Gift
"Not yet." Huo Xiaoli shook her head, a little helplessly. "The mission has to be completed. I can't get into this tower. I need you to do me a small favor."

Zhang Wuxun's composure was almost shattered by this guy's shamelessness.

He held back for a while, but couldn't help but sneer, "I think with your thick skin, if you just pounce on it and ram it, out of respect for your shamelessness, and say 'Open Sesame,' that stone tower might just open."

Huo Xiaoli wasn't angry at all, still smiling. "Why bother? You're just like Zhang Qiling, stubbornly clinging to the long-extinct Zhang family. What good will that do you? You've had the Ghost Seal for so long, aren't you even a little curious about what's inside the Bronze Gate?"

Zhang Wuxun put his hands behind his back, and a fully loaded pistol appeared silently. "It's enough that so many of you are eyeing the things inside the bronze gate. What I'm more curious about is what your Wang family has managed to obtain after all these years of painstaking research."

Huo Xiaoli was suddenly a little surprised, "Aren't you curious about the truth?"

After seeing so much here, don't you really want to know anything at all?
“I’m curious—” Zhang Wuxun chuckled with a sigh, “I’m curious…how many clusters of blood flowers can bloom on your chest…”

The blood of the Wang family doesn't seem to have anything special about it.

Zhang Wuxun watched as the two silver bullets flew from the muzzle of his gun, piercing the darkness, one of them striking Huo Xiaoli's chest like a meteor.

The second bullet was originally aimed at his neck, but Huo Xiaoli dodged it. The bullet grazed the bronze mask, only passing by his skin, and red blood seeped out.

Huo Xiaoli was jolted back a step by the bullet that struck her chest. She looked down at the small hole in her clothes, and the faint smile on her face finally disappeared.

"When I first saw you, I thought we were the same kind of people," he said slowly, enunciating each word clearly.

Seeing that not a drop of blood had flowed from the hole in his chest, Zhang Wuxun clicked his tongue impatiently, "So you think you're wrong? I'm not as cowardly as you, wearing a bulletproof vest even when I go underground."

"There's nothing I can do. You're a member of the Zhang family, after all. Even a camel that's been overeaten is bigger than a horse. I'm just an ordinary person, so it's normal for me to be cautious."

After saying this in a low voice, Huo Xiaoli suddenly pulled out an octagonal bell from somewhere, the very one that had been hanging on Zhang Ruitong's coffin.

Zhang Wuxun's pupils suddenly contracted, and his voice tightened, "What do you want to do?"

"The leader once said that although the Zhang family is very powerful, you actually have many weaknesses, such as the loss of soul syndrome, and the irreversible effects of the meteorite on you."

As Huo Xiaoli spoke, she gently shook the bell in her hand.

Zhang Wuxun's mind went blank for a moment, and pain swept over him. His face turned deathly pale, and his whole body began to tremble uncontrollably.

"Put the bell down!" His eyes suddenly turned bloodshot, and he stared fiercely at Huo Xiaoli.

Huo Xiaoli looked at him teasingly and shook the bell again.

As if in response, the bell atop the stone pagoda emitted a clear, melodious sound, but to Zhang Wuxun's ears, it sounded like a rumbling truck hurtling towards him and crashing into his forehead.

"..." In that instant, Zhang Wuxun felt a needle-like pain in his head. He squatted on the ground and hugged his head. The huge roar and sharp whistling were all mixed together. Some warm stuff flowed down his ear. He touched it with his hand, and in his gray and dizzy vision, he could no longer see what was on his fingertips.

It seems... to be blood...

"Boom——"

Another sound, like a muffled thunderclap, struck Zhang Wuxun's head. This time, Zhang Wuxun couldn't hold on any longer and was knocked unconscious.

Seeing that the person on the other side of the bridge had already fallen, Huo Xiaoli sighed with regret, put away the bell, found the backpack hidden behind the stone tower, took out three empty military water bottles, and tied them around her waist.

He then climbed back onto the rope bridge, intending to cross over and bleed Zhang Wuxun.

The nine-turn lotus flower beneath the stone tower is actually a large blood sacrifice plate. He had tried it, and ordinary blood wouldn't work; only the blood of the Zhang family's Qilin would do.

Fortunately, the meteorite jade inside the temple bell could resonate with the bell on his hand; otherwise, he really wouldn't have been able to do anything about the Zhang family.

But when he climbed over the rope bridge and landed on the ground, he turned around and found that Zhang Wu, who had been lying on the ground, was nowhere to be found.

A bad feeling suddenly rose in his heart, and he immediately turned his head to look at the other side of the bridge, his eyelids twitching instantly.

The Zhang family member had somehow woken up and, while he was struggling to climb over the rope, had taken a shortcut across the stone bridge to the other side of the stone tower, and was now standing right in front of his backpack.

Huo Xiaoli felt a slight pang of regret. "I miscalculated."

The Zhang family member's recovery ability is really strong, but he wasn't too worried. Anyway, the bell was in his hands, so he could just shake it a few more times.

However, something unexpected happened—this time, the Zhang family member did not react at all to the bell and the temple bell!

How can this be?

Huo Xiaoli was incredulous and shook the bell several more times.

The thunderous sound of the bell resounded throughout the entire hall, and the things inside the stone tower seemed to move as well.

Huo Xiaoli then realized that something was wrong. The Zhang family members in front of her suddenly had the ability to resist the energy of the meteorite, which was obviously very abnormal.

At the same time, he also noticed that the person opposite him seemed to have been possessed by something, becoming a completely different person. He exuded a terrifying aura, and his eyes changed color, with both pupils turning into an eerie, glowing gold. Meanwhile, fine, crimson blood-like lines were crawling up his face, quickly covering the right half of his face.

Huo Xiaoli's gaze met those eerie eyes, and his whole body stiffened instantly. He saw an enormous gray-white shadow rise from behind the Zhang family member, and a thick, fog-like shadow began to spread outwards from its feet, swallowing up all the faint light around it.

The Zhang family member himself also adopted a beast-like aggressive posture, slightly bowing, his muscles and bones bulging and taut, and the lines on his face becoming increasingly red, as if blood was dripping from beneath his skin.

Huo Xiaoli was a little scared and involuntarily took a step back, pulling out the pistol hidden on her lower back.

However, before he could fire, the Zhang family member seemed to teleport, appearing in front of him in the blink of an eye, and all his shots missed.

Huo Xiaoli felt a tremendous force, as if a fully loaded truck had crashed into him. His chest went numb until he was thrown to the ground and spat out a mouthful of blood. Only then did he feel the long-lost pain.

Monster! It's a monster!

Huo Xiaoli was so terrified that he forgot to think. At this moment, his mind was filled with the words "run away quickly." However, when he came to his senses and looked over, he found that the Zhang family member was still standing on the other side of the bridge, looking at him with an extremely strange expression. In the blink of an eye, those gray shadows disappeared without a trace.

Huo Xiaoli sat on the ground, completely stunned. Large beads of cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He hurriedly groped around to check his body and found that apart from the mouthful of blood he had spat out, he was unharmed.

Judging from his past training injuries, it would be a miracle if any bone in his chest remained intact after that heavy blow.

What's going on here? Could it be a hallucination caused by the meteorite?

His mind was buzzing and in a jumbled mess. Realizing that the situation was beyond his control, fear began to creep into his eyes.

He had just gotten up from the ground when he heard the crisp sound of a bell falling to the ground and rolling into the water. At the same time, he felt his toe kick something, but it was too dark and he didn't know where his flashlight was, so he couldn't see clearly. But his intuition told him it must have been the bell.

That's it, our most important trump card is gone.

Based on the principle that "as long as the green hills remain, there will always be firewood to burn," Huo Xiaoli decided not to linger any longer. She quickly pulled out a few small parts from inside her clothes, twisted them into a small crossbow bolt in a few moments, tied a rope to the tail of the small bolt, and then aimed at the backpack, intending to hook it over, as the materials inside were of utmost importance.

Unexpectedly, the short arrow flew over but missed its target, and the backpack was no longer there.

Zhang Wuxun took out the black ball covered with human faces from inside, picked up his backpack in his other hand, walked straight to the dark river, gave Huo Xiaoli a wicked smile, and let go.

The backpack was submerged instantly after it fell in. There was a splashing sound, and in the blink of an eye, the tiny creatures in the underground river had devoured everything that had fallen in.

Huo Xiaoli watched helplessly as all his efforts over the years went to waste. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was contorted with rage, but he was still wary of the strangeness surrounding "Zhang Wuxun," and besides, without that bell, he couldn't defeat the Zhang family.

The two people looked at each other across a ten-meter-wide underground river.

Huo Xiaoli had two bullets left in his gun. After making up his mind to escape, he fired them all at "Zhang Wuxun" as fast as he could, then immediately turned and ran out of the archway, disappearing into the passageway in a flash.

What he didn't know was that the last two bullets he fired suddenly disappeared into thin air when they were only two meters away from Zhang Wuxun's chest, as if they had turned into gas and dispersed into the air.

Standing on the other side of the bridge, "Zhang Wuxun" simply watched Huo Xiaoli's figure leave without showing any intention of chasing after her. It seemed that he was intentionally letting her go, or perhaps he was avoiding something inside the stone tower.

He stood quietly by the river, looking up at the dark bell above the stone tower with a calm, almost ethereal gaze, his eerie golden eyes devoid of any emotion.

The red markings on the right side of his face were fading little by little. Holding the black ball with the human face, he walked step by step across the fourth stone bridge from the left. By the time he passed through the passageway and the stone chamber and arrived at the Bell Corpse Forest, the tattoos had completely faded and were no longer visible.

He took his first step, and the bells jingled without wind, causing the red threads to tremble. The heads of the ancient mummies all turned toward him, as if issuing a final warning.

Zhang Wuxun smiled helplessly and had no choice but to retreat.

Amazingly, when he stepped back to a certain distance, the bells seemed to be pressed down by someone and stopped shaking.

Zhang Wuxun found a place to sit down, leaned against the archway, and slowly closed his eyes.

﹉﹉﹉

After an unknown amount of time, when Zhang Wuxun regained consciousness, he found himself in a completely enclosed jade vein cave.

When I opened my eyes, there was a lit lantern hanging beside me.

All that met his eyes was the serene, amber-like light of jade. Zhang Wuxun was stunned for a long time before he remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness.

He followed Huo Xiaoli to a large cave. Huo Xiaoli seemed to want to use him, or rather his blood, to unlock the stone tower. When the octagonal bell rang for the third time, his consciousness seemed to be trapped somewhere, and he could not perceive anything.

He has no memory of what happened after that.

"Damn it!" Zhang Wuxun cursed under his breath. It was that same feeling again. He had experienced it more than once. It was as if the memories in his mind had been stolen out of thin air. Even if you knew what was going on, you were powerless to do anything about it.

[System, were you the one controlling my body before?] He asked in a low voice in his mind.

Yes and no

Unexpectedly, the system gave an ambiguous answer.

Zhang Wuxun was puzzled. "Why is this answer different from the way you used to give me?"

The system succinctly stated, "I can only do my best to prevent it from bestowing divine gifts upon the host."

[A divine gift? You mean, the divine gift of the Zhang family?] Zhang Wuxun was extremely shocked. He had always thought that the memory that was inexplicably lost from the meteorite was temporarily borrowed by the system because he later discovered that a small black and gold ball had appeared in the space.

"Yes," the system replied.

Zhang Wuxun was stunned for a long time, as if he was just coming to his senses, when a sudden wave of endless fear surged into his heart.

It turns out he had already been given a divine gift.

When did it start? Was it during the meteorite incident? Or did it happen even earlier?

Was searching for Zhang Menyu truly an instinctive thought for him?
He began to doubt his own memories, because the divine gift was fragmented, and his memories were divided and edited into countless pieces.

Tian Shou can freely knead and delete these fragments, and then fill the blank memory with memories that do not belong to him, thus achieving the purpose of manipulation.

The instructions and unfamiliar memories instilled by God during the time of birth are completely forgotten when one is awake, and one's instincts are also unconsciously influenced by those forgotten memories.

"What did I do?" he asked the system.

His greatest fear is that, due to the influence of divine inspiration, he has forgotten some of the original content and is subconsciously influenced by some consciousness that does not belong to him, thus doing something irreversible.

"It must be within a specific scope," the system slowly explained. "The influence of divine intervention doesn't happen all the time."

[The influence of divine intervention will disappear once one leaves a certain area.]

The bell array's purpose is to create disruption; its consciousness cannot escape and is trapped here by the Zhang family, confined to that area.

The Zhang family's constant interference in historical development wasn't about controlling the world, but rather because they understood the laws and truths of natural evolution. They were using subtle changes to alter history and create a butterfly effect, aiming to correct these laws and prevent the return of free will in the world. However, the Wang family dismantled the Zhang family's power, forcing the Zhang family to cease their interference in history.

[Those who glimpsed this ultimate end in history, besides King Mu of Zhou and the Zhang family, included Tie Miansheng and Wang Zanghai.]

Thank you so much to the generous donors [Nie Mo Wang Qing Chang] and [Bu Nian]! Sending you a huge heart!

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(End of this chapter)