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

Chapter 366 Pixiu Charity Estate
(The part about Xie Yuchen at the end of the previous chapter has been slightly revised. If it doesn't match, you can go back and check it.)
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Jie San glanced at the map and muttered, "If he walks a little further out, he might just get out."

Pan Zi glared at him. If he were one of his men, he would have kicked him out by now.

Jie Sanduo realized something was wrong, shrank his neck, and quickly shut his mouth.

Xie Yuchen stared at the map for a while, then put it away and said to Xie Sanduo, "Listen to the movements of Miluotuo in the Jade Vein."

Jie Sanduo immediately listened carefully as instructed, but after listening for a while, he became a little doubtful and said, "Boss, it seems like there's nothing left."

Upon listening more carefully, he exclaimed with delight, "There's no sound at all from the nearby mountains; the Miluotu have all fled!"

Xie Yuchen walked forward for more than ten meters with a lamp in hand and found that the road ahead had also opened up, and a large cavity had appeared in that section of the jade vein.

"The wall that trapped us is gone." Xie Yuchen immediately returned to inform them.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Panzi urged anxiously. "Let's hurry up and leave. Muyu has already cleared the way for us. We can't let his efforts go to waste. Let's find the trapped Xiao Ge and the others as soon as possible and rescue them. Xiao... cough, Third Master will also be coming in with his men to join us soon."

Xie Yuchen nodded slightly. Without further ado, the group quickly packed up their equipment, picked up their weapons, and continued forward.

The surrounding space was extremely quiet. Although some paths were blocked by jade veins and needed to be cleared manually, the journey was much smoother. There were only a few lone Miluotuo, which were easily dealt with.

After another three hours of travel, the road ahead was blocked, and what lay before them was a real mountain wall of rock.

There is only one narrow crevice at the bottom of the rock, wide enough for one person to pass through, and deep inside the crevice are dark green jade veins.

Xie Yuchen took out a map, looked at it, and then ordered his men to dig into the fissures in the jade vein.

Unexpectedly, the jade vein was smashed through in less than two minutes, revealing a dark passage behind it.

The passage was quickly cleared, and the group walked in with their lights on. However, after walking less than twenty meters, the path suddenly ended.

"Boss, there's no road ahead," Xie Jiaji said to Xie Yuchen as he turned around.

Upon hearing this, Xie Yuchen immediately went over and looked down, only to find that it was a very high cliff below.

The guy next to him turned on the most powerful fog lights he had, and the bright yellow light immediately illuminated the area below.

What came into view was a huge, irregularly shaped, upside-down bowl-like cave. Dark green jade veins covered the entire space below, including the area above their line of sight, all of which was a vibrant green.

"Boss, should we go down from here?" Jie asked.

Xie Yuchen looked at the map again to make sure they were on the right route before instructing, "Drive in the pitons. We'll go down from here."

"Alright." Xie Jiaji started driving rock bolts into the edge of the cliff to prepare for going down, while Xie Yuchen and Pan Zi checked the subsequent route on the side.

The jade vein passages here are many times more complex than ordinary maze routes, with twists and turns everywhere, and if you take the wrong step, the passage behind you will close within five minutes.

“Our location is here.” Xie Yuchen pointed to a spot on the map where there was a gap in the middle of the route. “Go down from here, and the rest of the way will be from below.”

Since entering the mountain, the path they had been on was rugged and uneven, full of potholes and varying in height, going up and down all at once. But after going down into this cave, the path began to slope sharply downwards.

After quickly getting ready, Xie Yuchen and Pan Zi took the lead in rappelling down, descending more than twenty meters before finally touching the ground.

The two loosened the rope and looked around, only to find that the space inside the cave was much larger than they had imagined.

The surface of the jade veins here is curved, and the place they are standing on is a slope. The center not far away is much higher than this side, and these dark green jade veins have obvious color changes. Large blocks are divided into many pieces like a chessboard, as if a giant tortoise shell has been placed here.

“Look over there, there seems to be something over there,” Pan Zi suddenly said, pointing to the jade vein stone wall behind them.

Xie Yuchen looked in that direction and noticed that the dark green area seemed to be filled with many tall, dark shadows. His heart tightened immediately. Could it be that the thing from before had come after him again?

Before he could even pull out his binoculars to get a clear look, Panzi cursed and, gripping the detonator, was already preparing to charge.

"Wait!" Xie Yuchen stopped him. It was very dark here, and the binoculars did not have night vision capabilities, so they could only see some blurry outlines. "Those shadows don't seem to be Miluotuo."

Pan Zi paused for a moment, then asked nervously, "What is that? Could there be something even more terrifying than Miluotuo here?"

"Don't rush, take a look first." After examining it through the binoculars, Xie Yuchen handed it to Pan Zi.

Pan Zi was stunned when he saw it. He took a few steps closer, looked carefully through the binoculars, and said with a puzzled expression, "Master Hua, to me, those things... look like sculptures."

He looked in several other directions and exclaimed in alarm, "Holy crap, it's all sculptures! We're surrounded! Is this a trap?"

Xie Yuchen's expression was grave. He instructed his men to stay there for now, and then said to Pan Zi, "Let's go take a look first."

Each of them held a gun, put on headlamps, and slowly moved towards that direction.

The surface of the dark green jade vein is very rough, but they can walk across it steadily in a straight line.

The closer they got, the clearer the shadowy sculptures became. Finally, the two stopped and breathed a sigh of relief, realizing it was a false alarm.

In front of them was a huge stone sculpture of a Pixiu, which, including the base below, was estimated to be more than six meters tall. It was astonishingly large; even the tip of one of its toes was larger than a human head.

With its feet off the ground and wings outstretched, it appeared as if it were about to take flight.

"Is this Pixiu going to heaven?" Pan Zi wondered. He looked up at the rock above and found that it seemed to be a dome-shaped treasure roof.

Shining the fog lights up and looking closely through binoculars, they discovered that beneath the jade vein above, there was a large lotus-shaped relief. From where they stood, they could only see one petal of the lotus, which was densely covered with miniature versions of Pixiu.

That's what they said, but those little Pixiu were estimated to be over two meters tall, just a little smaller than the one in front of them.

The Pixiu stone statue in front of me is not very detailed. The body is only carved with the general shape and scale patterns. Only the head of the Pixiu is made to look very lifelike, with bulging eyes and a ferocious face. The original auspicious beast that wards off evil seems to have become a ferocious beast with the meaning of suppression.

The Pixiu held a stone ball the size of a millstone in its mouth, its surface covered with cloud and thunder patterns, and it looked extremely heavy. They looked around the stone carving from left to right, feeling that it seemed to have grown out of thin air from the jade vein, with the connection between the stone carving and the jade vein being perfectly seamless.

Xie Yuchen touched the jade vein with his hand, stared at it carefully for a while, and suddenly said, "There is a stone mountain behind this. The jade vein only covers the surface. This place was indeed built by man."

Pan Zi also pressed his eyes against the jade vein and looked inside, and found that it was indeed so, just like a candied hawthorn coated with a thick layer of syrup.

He grabbed the butt of his gun and slammed it down hard on a spot on the edge of the stone carving. The seemingly very hard jade wall instantly shattered into several radial cracks.

Seeing this, Xie Yuchen also stepped forward to help. After a series of clanging sounds, he soon felt the butt of the gun hit something harder than the jade vein.

The two then stopped. The jade vein had been smashed open, revealing a hole the size of a basketball, half a meter deep inside the actual rock layer.

Judging from the appearance, these massive stone sculptures were carved directly onto the mountain rocks by craftsmen using materials found on-site.

"Could the entrance to the Zhang Family Ancient Building be here?" Pan Zi asked, somewhat puzzled.

Xie Yuchen shook his head. "It shouldn't be. We've only reached halfway on the map; we're still a long way from the finish line."

Panzi looked around and asked, "So how do we get there? It seems like this area is closed off. Do we have to carve out a path ourselves using the map?"

However, they had just looked at the map and there was no correct route on the other side, so the key must lie in these stone carvings.

Xie Yuchen and his companion returned to the place where they had landed and instructed the staff to search the surrounding area to see how many such stone carvings there were.

The men went out and quickly returned to report: "Boss, there are nine in total, all of them are Pixiu, facing the center, and their postures are all strange."

He then handed the camera, which had been used to take photos of the stone sculpture, to Xie Yuchen with both hands.

Xie Yuchen took it and looked through it, his gaze finally settling on the stone ball in the Pixiu's mouth. "It seems that we need to find the right mechanism to open this passage."

As he spoke, he pointed to a few of the guys in the group who were best at rock climbing, "You guys, climb up these Pixiu and take a look. Don't touch the mechanisms for now, just see which stone ball can rotate."

The men dispersed as instructed, and Xie Yuchen himself walked to the Pixiu he had seen before, climbed onto the base, gripped the patterns on the Pixiu's scales with his fingers, stepped on one of the Pixiu's hind legs, and lightly jumped up, leaping two meters high. He kicked the Pixiu's chest with his toe, twisted in mid-air, and pounced outwards. In the instant he jumped, he grabbed one of the Pixiu's forearms and swung up easily.

Standing on the forearm of the Pixiu, his height was just enough to reach the mouth of the Pixiu, and his line of sight was level with the stone ball.

He examined it closely with a light and discovered that the bottom of the stone ball in front of him had a gap that allowed it to rotate, and the top of the ball was not completely touching the upper jaw of the Pixiu.

The other guys quickly finished their checks and jumped down. Everyone gathered together and shared their findings.

"The stone ball in the mouth of all the Pixiu can rotate, and the only thing that can move on the Pixiu's body is that stone ball."

This is very bad news. All the mechanisms are working, which means they have no chance to make mistakes. Nobody knows what will be released if a mechanism is activated incorrectly.

Everyone looked at each other, then turned to Xie Yuchen and Xie Yuchen, waiting for the two people in charge to make a decision.

Xie Yuchen pondered for a while, then took out the photos from the camera again and examined them carefully, one by one.

When he turned to the fourth photo, his gaze suddenly froze. It seemed that a pair of small wings were carved on the back of this Pixiu.

This is the Pixiu in the northeast direction. Xie Yuchen immediately walked over there, stood under the Pixiu, looked up, and used binoculars.

Sure enough, at the base of the original large wings, under the armpits where the Pixiu's two front paws stand up, two small wings the size of fists have appeared, carved together with the Pixiu's scales. You really can't see them unless you look closely.

"This should be the one," Xie Yuchen said.

Panzi also looked through the binoculars, and sure enough, it was there. He immediately exclaimed, "You young people have such good eyesight! Those two little wings were hidden there like chicken feet. If you hadn't reminded me, I really wouldn't have been able to find them."

Xie Yuchen calmly said, "Hurry up, I'll go up and activate the mechanism, you take them downstairs and set up defenses."

"Okay." Pan Zi nodded, raised his hand to signal the two families' men to take their respective attack positions, so that they could kill them with a single blow if anything came out.

Because of the deterrent effect left by Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge, and Wu Xie's appearance wearing the Third Master's mask, Wang Baqiu and the others' suspicions were quickly extinguished.

They had heard about the incredibly difficult duel between the Huo and Jie families, so when Wu Sansheng stepped forward to invite them to participate, they had no doubts. After all, Wu Sansheng had been in seclusion for so long, and now that he had recovered from his illness, he was bound to make a name for himself and it was not surprising that he was eyeing that big duel.

Although Wang Baqiu and his group outwardly refused, they had already secretly bribed people to gather information about Banna, secretly hoping that old fox Wu Sansheng would be unable to escape this time.

Once news of Wu Sansheng's death spreads, the entire gang in Changsha will be thrown into chaos, and they will seize all of Wu Sansheng's assets.

Most of the dozen or so men Pan Zi brought this time were loyal to Third Master, while a small portion were sent by Wang Baqiu and his men to wade across the river to deliver a message.

Pan Zi knew exactly what those old bastards were up to, so when he came down, he only chose a few people he could trust the most.

The Xie family has always had its own methods for training its employees, with obedience being the most important criterion. It is said that the Xie family's young master Jiu Ye is even more skilled at dealing with people than the old guys from the Nine Gates.

Let's return to the topic.

Xie Yuchen quickly climbed onto the forearm of the Pixiu stone sculpture, wrapped his arms around the stone ball, and used all his strength to slowly push the stone ball in one direction until it started to rotate.

A series of scraping sounds came from behind the stone sculpture, and with a loud thud, the stone sculpture sank half a meter, then slowly shrank inward, retreating a distance of two meters.

Xie Yuchen was drawn inside by the mechanism, and after checking that there was no danger, he jumped down from above.

After the stone sculpture retracted, a square opening was revealed on the ground. When a light was shone on it, a long staircase was visible leading down from the opening, stretching into the depths of darkness.

Led by Xie Yuchen and his companion, the group filed in and walked down the stairs for more than ten minutes before reaching the first turn.

After walking down for a few more minutes, the stairs finally ended, and a large stone chamber appeared in front of them.

Thank you so much to the generous donors [祁沐云], [年少时最是天真], and [不会起名的取名废]! Sending you a huge heart...*
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(End of this chapter)