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

Chapter 403 The Limits of the World
The tremors lasted for more than ten minutes before the surroundings finally quieted down completely.

After the initial shock, Logomb looked at the young man thoughtfully, a hint of something flashing in his eyes. He quickly composed himself and rekindled the fire for warmth.

The cave was relatively well-oxygenated. Using their tools, the group moved the snow piled up at the cave entrance little by little into the crevice at the back of the cave, working together to dig open the snow-blocked entrance.

It was the dead of night, and the outside world was shrouded in gloom. There was no moon, and no matter how many stars there were, they could not illuminate the vast earth.

The next day, when they went out to take a look, they discovered that the side of the snow-capped peak where they had been standing had been completely slashed down by a sharp sword, as if a sword had fallen from the sky. Large swaths of snow that had covered the mountainside had fallen into the valley below the previous night.

What horrified them even more was that there were many freeze-dried corpses hanging around the cave.

These are people who died here after entering the snowfield with Dong Can. At the edge of the cave entrance hangs a mutilated corpse that was strangled by a rope and fell to its death against the mountain wall. Its head has been eaten clean by some kind of falcon on this snow mountain.

The faces of the corpses were so badly mutilated that it was impossible to tell what they looked like before they were born. There must be even more corpses buried deep in the snow in the canyon below.

After the initial shock, the three porters were overjoyed and immediately reached out to feel the corpse's pockets, trying to find something of value.

Encountering a corpse in the snow-capped mountains is not always a bad thing. Firstly, the corpse may be carrying a lot of things that you can take and exchange for money.

Secondly, if the identity of the deceased can be known, along with personal belongings or other items, information can be obtained from the family.

When they came out of the cave in the morning, the snowstorm had mostly stopped.

However, no valuable clues were found from the surrounding corpses. Judging from the exposed bones, these people's joints were worn out, especially their leg bones and shoulders, indicating that they had been doing hard labor before they died.

The locals were very familiar with how to climb the snow mountain safely. Led by Luogongbu, the group climbed down the steep cliff and stopped when they were almost at the bottom of the valley.

There were more corpses here than before, some of which were frozen solid and piled up in the ice. Judging from their clothing, they were not the same group of people who had fallen to their deaths from the cliff.

These people did not have any major external injuries, but the old Tibetan man, Laba, knew how they died just by looking at the posture of the corpses.

All the corpses had their backs pressed tightly against the cliff, just as they were now in their current positions.

These people must have been trapped by the blizzard when they arrived here not long ago. They wanted to rest before continuing their ascent, but the temperature suddenly dropped, and many of them didn't have time to react. They were exhausted and fell into a deep sleep, but were frozen to death by the extreme cold of the snowfield.

A large portion of the bodies here are of foreign appearance.

Laba said to the young man, "Boss, these people must have come from the mountains and were resting here when they froze to death."

There are too many corpses here, and there must be even more buried under the snow. The bodies are buried in the snow, and as time goes by, they will never be discovered.

"Come out?" the young man asked doubtfully. "Is anyone out and about in the snowy mountains?"

“It’s not what the owner thinks,” Laba explained. “I don’t recognize these people’s faces. They’re not from Medog. For the past twenty or thirty years, foreigners have frequently come into the mountains. I don’t know their purpose, but it’s definitely related to this no-man’s-land.”

The young man nodded, his gaze fixed on the direction from which the group of corpses had come, his face revealing no extra emotion.

Laba and his men continued to plunder the dead as usual, especially the packages of foreigners, which contained many valuable items.

At this moment, Logombu noticed a large dark shadow in the distance and pointed it out to the other two.

He put his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the blinding snow light and looked over. He saw that three foreigners were embracing each other before they died, and there were several other people huddled together for warmth. They seemed to be protecting something in their arms.

Laba and the other two exchanged glances. Seeing that the young man only glanced at them casually and didn't seem to care, the three of them climbed over, pried open a crack in the frozen corpse with their knives, and stuffed a tinderbox through the opening. Sure enough, they saw something wrapped in cloth hidden inside.

Laba thought to himself, anything that these people go to such lengths to protect must be extremely precious.

In order to make the gap bigger so that they could take the package out, Laba and his team went through a lot of trouble, breaking off several arms that were tangled together and frozen into one, before they could finally pull the package out through the enlarged gap.

These people were not the faces that appeared in Motuo, nor did they enter the snow-capped mountains from Motuo. Laba and the others could sell the things they took from them with a clear conscience, without worrying about being discovered by the temples that had good relations with these foreigners.

At noon that day, Laba led the group to a snow slope, where they dug a hole in the snow to shelter from the wind and rest.

The young man maintained his indifferent expression, merely eating the dry rations that had been slightly heated over the fire, and he rarely spoke throughout the journey.

Laba and the others were somewhat curious about their reclusive and generous employer, but that was all; right now, the most important thing was to divide the spoils.

They laid out all the valuables they had taken from the dead, divided them up roughly, and finally opened the tightly sealed package.

After removing the outermost black cloth, there were layers upon layers of velvet cloth inside. After unwrapping three layers, the bottommost gold-threaded cloth contained something that looked like an iron box, and under the box was a thick black notebook.

They opened the box, which contained some fossil-like specimens and two fist-sized gold balls.

The gold ball was placed separately in an iron box, and it looked more precious than the other instruments in the box.

Inside the iron box was another small, exquisitely crafted box, its shape resembling a large piece of jade.

The third porter accompanying them was Laba's distant nephew. The young man couldn't contain his excitement and reached out to open the small box, wanting to see what was inside.

Unexpectedly, as soon as the lid was moved, a whooshing sound rang out.

Before Laba and the others could react, the young man had already collapsed to the ground, his face turning blue and purple, spitting out blood and foam, making painful sounds in his throat, still tightly clutching the jade box in his hands.

Laba and his companion instinctively retreated in terror. The blood the young man vomited gradually turned black. After a long while, Laba finally reacted and reached out to touch his nephew's face to check his breath. However, his hand was intercepted halfway through his outstretched hand.

"Don't touch it, it's poisonous," the young man said seriously.

Laba stared intently at his nephew, who lay on the ground, his body growing cold. He sighed deeply. He hadn't known his nephew for long and didn't feel much grief.

Having spent years making a living trekking through the snow-capped mountains, they were used to the sudden deaths of their companions. Today it's someone else who dies, tomorrow it could be you or me. Accidents can happen at any moment; death is just a common occurrence. The young man stared intently at a tiny hole between the eyebrows of Laba's nephew's body, then carefully pried open his fingers to remove the box.

The deliveryman touched the lid of the box with his finger, and the small hole from which the needle had just been shot had now closed automatically.

He said slowly, "This is a trap box, and there are still quite a few poison needles inside."

Laba's nephew's death did not open this Pandora's box.

Logomb suggested somewhat fearfully, "Why don't we just throw the box away? We've already gotten enough."

The young man shook his head, grasped the box lid with his right hand, and gently rubbed his fingertips between the gaps.

Laba and his companion quickly moved away, fearing that the box would explode and poison them as well.

The deliveryman placed one hand on the lid and slowly turned it to the right. A series of clicking and grinding sounds came from inside the box. After two turns, he gently lifted the lid.

Seeing that no poison needles were shot out this time, Luogongbu curiously leaned over to take a look inside, and immediately gasped and exclaimed, "My goodness, Master, close it quickly, this thing is too dangerous."

There are countless dense threads under the lid, and half of the fine needles that were originally taut on the threads have shrunk to the edge of the box.

The young man ignored him, inserted two fingers, avoided the threads, pinched the knob at the bottom and turned it gently, and the remaining half of the needle, along with the threads, retracted.

Laba and the other man stared at the young man's hand, utterly dumbfounded, unsure of what expression to make.

The young man took out a black stone from the box. It was about the size of a bottle cap in diameter. Its surface was bumpy and irregularly shaped, and it was quite ugly, looking like many small, twisted faces squeezed together.

"What is this?" Logomb asked, puzzled.

The young man shook his head, looking somewhat confused; he had never seen anything like it before.

There was nothing unusual about the black lump. Logomb turned around and picked up a black notebook from the side. This thing seemed to be worthless as well, and it was full of foreign tadpole script.

He couldn't understand it, so he casually flipped through it and put it aside, sharing the two golden balls with Laba.

The young man picked up his notebook, which was written in German. This meant that the foreigners who froze to death in the canyon were very likely from Germany.

Laba was overjoyed, feeling that this was the luckiest day of his life. While he was happy, he also pondered how to explain his reasons for leaving to his employer.

He already has a gold ball, and may be even richer than his employer, so there's no need for him to venture deeper into the snow-capped mountains.

But that would be a bit unfair. Just as he was hesitating, he saw the young man hold up the notebook in front of him, point to a string of awkwardly written words on it, and ask him what it meant.

It turned out that there was a very complicated pattern drawn on a page in the middle of the notebook, with many strange patterns and a crooked Tibetan annotation next to it.

This string of Tibetan is an old and obscure script used in Medog, called Galai. It sounds a lot like Monpa, but they are actually quite different.

There are no more than three thousand people in the world who can still speak Galai today, and it just so happened that Laba learned a few words of this language by chance in the past.

He stared at the line of text and translated it with a mix of guesswork and deliberation: “The edge of heaven and earth seems to be the limit of the world.”

﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

The previous Deren recorded these contents in great detail. The young man only mentioned some things in a general way, and he also added them in small print on the side based on his own guesses and previous records. It was very detailed, but some contents were inevitably a bit sentimental.

Zhang Wuxun didn't want to miss any information, so he could only patiently read it word by word.

The black notebook that the young man got from the German was also in the box. Deren seemed to have obsessive-compulsive disorder, as he had wrapped it in a neat square of oil paper, preserving it very meticulously.

Zhang Wuxun opened his notebook and began reading as quickly as possible.

The German section records information dating back to before the 20th century, during the heyday of the Old Nine Gates, when these Germans had already begun investigating and analyzing them.

The story begins one day when their supreme leader received a celestial stone from the inland. It was delivered by a middle-aged man with an Asian face. The celestial stone was carved with patterns that mortals could not describe, exquisite and unparalleled, like a door to an endless divine realm, very mysterious.

Upon seeing the celestial stone, the German leader was immediately captivated and subsequently invited the middle-aged man to have a private conversation with him.

No one knows the specific content of the secret meeting, but after leaving the secret room, the leader began to arrange for his men to investigate.

They found a lot of information, but it was scattered. Following the middle-aged man's advice, they began investigating all the rumors about the snow-capped mountains near the Himalayas. It took them decades, but they only found some minor details.

The arrival of Dong Can and his group brought hope to the German leaders. Around 1942, the Germans discovered survivors of the old cavalry in some places, but two of them were fools who were beaten to death by their gambling losers.

They subjected the sole survivor to severe torture, and eventually discovered more than a dozen golden orbs buried underground in his estate.

The man recounted what they had encountered in the snow-capped mountains years ago, and pointed out that within the area surrounded by golden spheres, there was an enormous black celestial stone with countless patterns on it, which looked about five or six parts similar to the patterns on the miniature drawings made by the Germans.

At that time, the German leader was already very old, and when a person is about to die, some of their bad traits inevitably show.

His sons were unhappy that their elderly father was still clinging to such a large business, so they decided to kill him.

The leader's sons fought amongst themselves, suffering heavy losses, and eventually the devastated estate was taken over by an American businessman.

It's worth mentioning that this American businessman's name was Cox Hendry.

Thank you so much to the generous donor [Lost Memories, But Not You] for the donation! Sending you love!



(End of this chapter)