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

Chapter 408 Ten Years of Disaster
The young man turned and left to find his way upstairs. He had only taken two steps when he heard the girl say something in Tibetan. Her voice was very low. At that time, the young man did not understand Tibetan, so he naturally did not understand it.

He turned around and saw the girl struggling to lift her head, repeating what she had just said in his direction.

Although she couldn't see, she used her hearing to determine the young man's location.

Seeing that the young man remained silent, the girl kept turning her head, using her hearing to try and locate him. After confirming that he was still there, she suddenly tentatively asked in Chinese, "Who are you?"

The young man was a little surprised, but he didn't say anything. The girl's face was covered by her hair, and she kept turning her head, which seemed a bit strange.

The young man waited for a while, but when he didn't hear the girl say anything more, he decided not to delay any longer. Just as he turned to leave, he heard the girl say, "If you don't say anything, I'll call them. They're up there, there are a lot of people, and you won't be able to escape then."

The young man stopped again. He saw a kind of annoying cunning on the girl's face. He knew that whether such a person was bluffing or confident, the next second she would arrogantly express the advantages she could bring, while also threatening them.

But this little bit of cleverness was useless to the guy, who could knock the girl unconscious in three seconds.

"Do you know who I am?" the young man asked softly.

The girl nodded. "I know you are Han Chinese. I can smell your scent. You come from the foot of the mountain. There was once someone who came from the foot of the mountain, but you are not him. You are here to find that person, right? He was also Han Chinese."

The young man realized that the girl's advantages were useful to him, so he continued, "I don't know who you're referring to, and how would you know who I'm looking for?"

The girl did not answer the question directly, but instead made her request: "That Han man said that someone will definitely come here in the future. I know a lot about him here. If you take me away from here now, I will tell you everything I know."

The young man saw an anxious and expectant expression on her face, along with a hint of disgust and fear about where she was. She seemed very eager to escape.

The young man nodded. "Okay."

Then he walked over to the girl, reached out and pressed his hand against her neck, and the girl immediately lost consciousness.

The young man remembered that someone had told him sometime ago that people who like to threaten others will never easily reveal their secrets.

Since that's the case, he thought to himself, I'll just have to rely on myself.

Just then, a commotion came from above. Someone speaking Tibetan came down from the upper level. It seemed that the young man and the girl's conversation had alerted the people upstairs, who then sent someone down to investigate.

The young man quickly moved to the side, using the hanging felt to conceal his figure, and quietly observed.

The scent of Tibetan incense in the air grew stronger. Two Tibetans carried a stove past the felt mat where he was hiding, moved it in front of the girl, and then took things out of the unlit stove and arranged them around the girl.

They looked very respectful and left quickly after finishing the arrangement.

Gradually, the young man realized that something seemed off about the Tibetan incense. He smelled a familiar, pungent odor that shouldn't be there—the smell of a corpse.

In a short while, the scent of Tibetan incense became so strong that it was almost suffocating. The air was filled with that nauseating stench of old corpses. At the same time, the smell also caused a reaction in the girl. It seemed that this smell of burning bones had a strong stimulating effect on her, and the girl looked quite painful.

Her face gradually changed from deathly pale to ashen. The young man knew the reason for this change; the girl had skipped the point of death, and her body began to turn into a zombie.

The young man could hear the girl's painful gasps, but he couldn't see anything more specific through the thick blanket. After thinking for a moment, he crept out from his hiding place and came to the girl's side.

Around her were many small incense burners. The young man carefully opened one of them and saw that it was burning a strange bluish-white powder, mixed with many small pieces of bone. This powder was made by grinding Tibetan incense with some kind of dried corpse.

The young man instinctively felt he had to figure out exactly where he was, who these Tibetans were, and what their purpose was in holding this kind of sacrificial ceremony.

However, when he looked up again, he found that the girl had already gotten up, supporting herself on her elbows and knees, kneeling naked on the ground, her head held high, giving the young man a strange smile.

Alarm bells rang in the young man's mind, his nerves tensed, and he gripped the incense burner tightly with one hand. With his speed and strength, he could knock the female corpse off her in an instant.

But he didn't move, because the girl didn't attack him. Instead, she crawled straight in another direction in a strange, spider-like motion, moving incredibly fast.

The young man followed closely behind her and saw the girl climb through layers of curtains to a wooden staircase. Without the slightest hesitation, she climbed up and entered the upper level of the Lama Temple.

This direction was exactly opposite to the direction the Tibetans carrying the incense burner were going. There was a staircase there that seemed to be specially prepared for the zombified girl. The entrance at the top was covered with various ancient yellow silks with runes written in red Tibetan script on them.

The young man had a slight thought. He placed one hand on the long bars on both sides of the staircase crossbeam, and with a push of his hand, he flipped himself up.

However, before he could reach the yellow silk by the door, his body suddenly froze in mid-air, twisted his waist, and instantly grabbed the railing, hanging upside down from above.

At the same time, a cold gun shot grazed past his hair and struck the wood by the door, sending a piece of wood flying everywhere.

The young man reacted extremely quickly. The second before the next shot hit his hand, he had already grabbed the felt hanging to the side, flipped and leaped up, swung in the air and curled into a ball. Gunshots rang out one after another, and a series of bullets grazed his back and entered the wooden stairs.

The young man had already put all of that behind him; while he was in the air, he had already spotted the blue figure moving quickly through the felt.

Jumping off the felt, the young man leaned close to the ground, pressing his hands on the floor to listen for sounds and pinpoint the direction the person was moving.

Those few shots just now showed that the opponent was no ordinary gunman; he was a formidable opponent.

This guy has a lot of experience dealing with this kind of person.

He stared at the direction the blue shadow was moving, then suddenly kicked the stone wall behind him, using the force to straighten his body and slide out along the ground.

Bullets whizzed behind him, and in an instant, the young man had passed through several layers of felt. He rolled on the ground and was very close to the blue figure. There was a stove in front of him. Suddenly, he stood up and stepped on the burning coals.

A large burst of sparks erupted above the embers, and the young man used this momentum to leap more than a meter into the air. Almost simultaneously, several bullets overturned the charcoal stove.

The sparks scattered across the ground, cooling slightly, with a few splashing onto the felt and burning a few black spots on it.

But the young man was nowhere to be seen at that spot; only charcoal dust, still glowing red, was emitting wisps of smoke, and the place was deserted.

The man in blue robes rushed over anxiously, his sharp eyes scanning the charcoal stove.

Unexpectedly, a dark shadow suddenly fell on his head, and the force of the impact on his shoulder caught him off guard. He was instantly forced to his knees, his neck tightly gripped by the knees. For a moment, he even felt as if his neck had been broken.

But in reality, the guy didn't clamp his neck and twist his waist like he did with the sea monkey. He just grabbed his vital point and kicked the gun out of his hand.

The young man grabbed the blue-robed man by the back of the neck, lifted him up, and held him in front of him, confronting dozens of blue-robed Tibetans who suddenly emerged from behind the felt blanket. Those men were all holding guns and pointing them at the young man.

What was expected to be a tense standoff turned into a surprise when, in the next second, the blue-robed Tibetans suddenly knelt down on their left knees in unison, placed their hands together in front of their foreheads, and bowed very respectfully.

The young man paused for a moment, and then saw an elderly Tibetan man in a blue robe walk up from the back of the crowd. He held a colorful hada in his hands, leaned forward, and raised the colorful hada, which represented reverence and admiration, above his head.

In the hearts of Tibetans, offering a five-colored hada (ceremonial scarf) is truly the highest form of etiquette.

In the current situation where the two sides were originally suspected of being adversaries and restraining each other, such behavior is puzzling.

Immediately afterwards, the young man spotted a familiar face among the group of Tibetans in blue robes.

Logonbu rose from the first three Tibetans in line and respectfully said in fluent Chinese, "We have been waiting for you for a long time, Mr. Zhang. Please accept our apology and the hada we are offering."

The young man subtly observed the people around him and noticed that Luo Gongbu and the other two blue-robed men had red belts with silver trim, while the others had blue belts with yellow patterns. The blue-robed man he was holding and another old blue-robed man had red belts with gold trim, and the intricate embroidered patterns on them were also different.

He guessed that the belt was a symbol used by these Tibetans to distinguish their identities.

Logombu pulled out a yellowed black-and-white photograph from his pocket and handed it over with both hands. “All of this was arranged by Mr. Dong. Before he left, he said that someone would come here in ten years. We have waited for three decades, and sure enough, just before the end of the fourth decade, you have arrived.”

The photo shows Dong Can wearing a blue Tibetan robe with a red and silver belt, suggesting that Dong Can holds a high position among this group.

The young man flipped the photo over to the back, where a line of text read, "The secret is here; they will help you."

These people call themselves the Khambaruo people, and they live in a place called Khambaruo, which is a secluded valley in the snow-capped mountains.

The lake that the young man passed by when he arrived here, which looks like a blue ribbon, is called Wenbu Gongga, which translates to "Blue Snow Mountain" in Chinese.

The fish-beast that feigned an attack on Logonbu was called Maponim, which means "big red fish." In fact, according to the Khampa Luo people's records, this fish-beast can transform into wings after a thousand years and fly 90,000 miles into the sky. The fish-beast in its winged form is called Garuda.

In Bon religion, there is a bird-shaped war god named "Qiong," which is usually translated into Chinese as "Golden-winged Roc." The characteristic of the Qiong bird is that it can eat and conquer serpentine dragons. In the Naxi language, this bird god is called "Garuda."

The young man followed the Khampa people to their territory. They crossed a more secluded valley where many mani stones with burn marks were piled up, covered with messy and strange colored patterns, forming a very strange stone array.

The blue-robed Tibetan led the young man into the stone formation, where they walked back and forth many times. Suddenly, their eyes lit up as they arrived at a much wider valley.

It was an extraordinary valley in the snow-capped mountains, full of greenery, like a paradise, with farmland, streams, and many white stone houses.

Seeing this, Zhang Wuxun felt a toothache. The territory of the Khampa people was hidden so mysteriously that they even used mani stone formations. With Ma Chongshan and his group's limited intelligence, they probably just stumbled into a stronghold set up by the Khampa people in the snowy mountains by accident.

So, what was the purpose of the Wang family taking the octagonal bell that Rengolawa left for Ma Chongshan?
Could it be that those bastards from the Wang family are too afraid to face the Khampa people, so they came up with this dirty trick? If so, then that sheepskin map was very likely something the Wang family deliberately created to trick Ma Chongshan. The Wang family's target was Khampa!

Besides calming the mind and spirit, could that octagonal bell also serve as a guide?

What the hell? An octagonal bell isn't a navigation arrow. Have the Wang family lost their minds?

As Zhang Wuxun pondered this, he couldn't help but feel a little amused.

He lowered his head and rubbed his forehead, then looked back at the book. He stared at the four words "Marponim" that were highlighted in bold on the page, and the smile on his lips suddenly froze.

Damn it, he knew what the Wang family was up to.

"Move at the sound of the clear bell!"
Their real purpose in taking the octagonal bell was related to the fish and beasts in Lake Umbongga!

The Khampa people say that Dong Can locked a terrible demon inside a bronze door, but this method is not a permanent solution, as the demon will come out of the door every now and then.

The reason Dong Can stayed here to find a way to deal with the demon was because he met a girl here who stirred up the stagnant pool in his heart. That girl was Xiao Ge's mother, Bai Ma.

The Khampa people selfishly chose to conceal this fact, because they needed Xiao Ge to help them fight the demon and resolve this once-in-a-decade disaster.

The blue-robed Tibetan led the young man to see the demon they spoke of, in the back room of the chieftain's house.

The room was very large, and the walls were deliberately painted with a special black pigment. The torch could only illuminate a small area inside. The entire room was empty except for a three-person-tall black stone statue placed in the very center.

This is not a Tibetan deity statue. The young man is very knowledgeable about various civilizations, and this is the first time he has seen a deity statue that looks like this.

He keenly realized that the strange statue in front of him must be related to the girl in the Lama temple who had been turned into a corpse by the corpse-storing incense.

Goodnight~ I'm about to meet Wu Xie and Fatty...*
(End of this chapter)