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

Chapter 417 The Corpse-Keeping Granny
Upon hearing the order, the waiter immediately grabbed the boss by the collar and slapped him hard across the forehead.

The owner of the ancient corpse shop cried out in pain, hurriedly covering his head and opening his eyes, shouting, "Stop hitting me! Stop hitting me! I'm awake!"

Wu Xie carefully examined his expression and asked, "Where did you get that ancient corpse with a monkey's head and a snake's body outside?"

A flicker of panic crossed the boss's eyes as he stammered, "I...I just came from the countryside to buy it. The snake is either from a local or a family. Gentlemen, what exactly did you rent? What do you want to ask? I have no idea."

Wu Xie sneered and raised his chin at the big, hairy monkey in the iron cage, "You're kidding me. All this talk about monkey tomb raiding was actually done by you, wasn't it?"

"No, no, how could I not do that? I just picked that thing up from the ravine. Smashing graves can get me into legal trouble, I wouldn't dare." The boss looked terrified and denied it repeatedly.

The fat man angrily retorted, "Don't try to fool me! If it weren't for you, why would you be raising this big, hairy monkey?"

The fat man's loud shout startled the large, furry monkey that had been carefully eating an apple in its cage. It bared its fangs, spitting out saliva and fruit crumbs, and even threw the fruit that Nie Xiaoba had fed it at people.

Nie Xiaoba couldn't dodge in time and was sprayed with foul saliva. Enraged, he stood up to hit it with a bamboo pole. It quickly shrank into a corner against the wall, staring fiercely at the people outside, looking very unruly.

The boss hurriedly waved his hand, "No, no, that's not Monkey San'er. Actually, that's a person. I picked him up from the mountains."

Hearing this, Wu Xie shone the lamp over and looked closely at the "monkey".

It looked quite old, with rough, bluish-gray fur all over its body, patchy and missing parts, its face covered in flour, and its fangs protruding from its thick lips, giving it a fierce and menacing appearance, much like the cat-faced old lady in the folk horror stories of Harbin.

Fatty's lips twitched, and he nudged Wu Xie's arm. "I thought I could rekindle my relationship with the sea monkey's in-laws in the mountains, but it turns out she's just an old lady who's a giant zombie."

The boss noticed their strange expressions and tentatively asked, "Aren't you going 110 mph?"

The fat man lit a cigarette, grinned, and said, "Doesn't your grandpa's house look like a police station?"

"Don't call 110, you guys hit me, you've pinched my shoulders until they're bruised and sore, are you all crazy, or do you have a lump in your head?"

The boss suddenly got angry, stood up and glared at Wu Xie and the others, "This is my house, you all get out of here!"

A hot-tempered guy came up and smacked him on the head, yelling, "You son of a bitch, if you keep acting arrogant, I'll slap you twice and make you lose your bearings!"

The boss's initial arrogance vanished instantly. He covered his head and stammered, "Since you don't call 110, why are you bothering me with all this monkey carcass stuff? Oh dear, I'm in trouble now. Do you want me to pay you protection money?"

The fat man scolded, "Who cares about your two or three dollars? Tell me honestly, where did you get that dried corpse from outside? And what's the deal with this old monkey?"

"If you don't give me a clear explanation today, I'll call 110 right now and send you to a labor camp. How about that?"

"Don't talk nonsense, I don't believe you. You don't look like a good person." After realizing that Wu Xie and his group had nothing to do with the police, the boss relaxed a lot and his voice became much softer.

Seeing that the boss's attitude was softening, Wu Xie imitated Sichuan dialect to get closer to him, "How did you dig this out of the chieftain's tomb? What about the other things in the tomb? With your tiny business, if you had the other things, you could have opened an exhibition in Los Angeles. Looking at how poor you are, did you lose the other things?"

The boss's face turned green; Wu Xie's words had clearly hit a nerve.

The fat man pressed on, "Is your wife locked in this cage? She looks a bit like a monkey. I think you have some weird quirks, a bit of a sibling relationship, and a bit of an interspecies thing. I'll call 110 and they'll not only accuse you of trafficking corpses, but they'll also put you on charges of indecent assault."

The boss was furious, his face turning ashen. He glanced at the four or five young, strong men around him, then relaxed his clenched fist and muttered, "I'm one against seven. It's not that I can't beat you, but that you're ganging up on me. I'm a wise man, I'm not going to argue with you."

The fat man grabbed him, "What are you whispering about? Speak louder."

"No, no, no." The boss said awkwardly, lowering his voice, "That monkey in the cage isn't my wife. To be honest, I don't even know if it's a person."

"The dried monkey and snake carcass I mentioned earlier was actually something I picked up from a ravine in the mountains. I thought it looked strange, so I took it. But unexpectedly, the old monkey followed me. I was afraid that it might run away and hurt someone, so I had to lock it up."

Seeing that he was willing to talk, Wu Xie lit a cigarette and handed it to him. "Tell me in detail, tell me as much as you can. If you want it, I'll give you money. More than you would make in half a month running this little shabby shop."

Seeing that Wu Xie's expression was genuine, the shopkeeper was somewhat tempted and took the cigarette. "Are you serious?"

“My son is kidding me.” Wu Xie squinted at him. “We’re not the police.”

The waiter next to him took out his wallet and pulled out two large bills for him. Seeing the red bills, the boss finally made up his mind and told him the whole story.

To make a long story short, the owner's surname is Luo, and his given name is Luo Wenbing. He is a local, and his family has been in the business of exhibiting mummies for generations, a process that is quite complicated.

The mummies in front of the display case were acquired by his father after a fierce struggle, much like a palace intrigue, from the other two shareholders of the original exhibition hall at a very low price.

Times have changed. The original exhibition hall has been reduced to just this small shop by the time it was handed over to him, but fortunately, the original capital inside is still there.

Because of its good relationship with the local area, this small exhibition shop has never been shut down over the years. Occasionally, people who are curious and want to spend a little money to experience something exciting, or those who need corpses for filming or other purposes, rent it out, which is a fairly considerable source of income.

The strange, unusual corpse was indeed something he had picked up from the mountain. Wu Xie guessed that he had gotten it from someone else.

The process is as follows: the mummified corpse exhibition shop doesn't get many customers during the day and is usually closed, only opening for extended periods on weekends.

A week ago, the shop happened to be closed that day. Luo Wenbing had also heard about the monkey tomb raiding incident, so he thought he and a few brothers who liked to look for supernatural things would go up the mountain to see what was going on. But they were unlucky that day. Before they even got there, it started to rain. The group grumbled and had to quickly find a place to take shelter from the rain.

The rain that day was unusually heavy, pouring down in torrents. The white rain stung people's faces, obscuring the road ahead. The path was a slippery, muddy mountain trail rarely used by anyone, so Luo Wenbing stumbled and fell flat on his back.

After finally managing to get up from the ground, I found that all those bastards who were running ahead had vanished without a trace, and their footprints were hidden by the grass on the ground.

Luo Wenbing had no choice. The fall made his tailbone ache terribly, and he even suspected that he had fractured it. He had to find a large tree that could barely shelter him from the rain and carefully limped to the bottom to stand.

The rain kept falling, and as darkness fell, the group of people still hadn't come looking for him. Luo Wenbing was both angry and scared. In this desolate wilderness, what if a wild boar or something appeared and bit him? He couldn't very well go and complain to the King of Hell.

So Luo Wenbing endured the pain and, with great effort, finally climbed up the tree branch. He took off his outer shirt and trousers, wrung them out, and put them back on, thinking he would just make do for the night.

I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering, and only breathed a sigh of relief when I found that the rain had stopped.

Luo Wenbing's stomach rumbled loudly. He remembered that when he climbed up, there seemed to be a wild lychee tree next to this big tree. The lychees were almost ripe at this time of year, and he could smell their fragrance. He thought it would be perfect to pick a couple to fill his stomach.

He gritted his teeth and endured the pain to climb down the tree, then climbed up a fruit tree on the side, casually reached into the branches of the nearby tree, grabbed two or three fruits, and plucked them down.

The sweet juice made my mouth water and my stomach rumbled with hunger.

In the darkness, with the trees dimly lit, Luo Wenbing could only rely on his senses to grope for something. He suddenly grabbed a fuzzy fruit that seemed to be a large one, but he couldn't pull it off no matter what he tried, which puzzled him.

Hunger made him too preoccupied to care about anything else, so he simply ignored it, grabbed some fruit from the side and ate it all up. He managed to fill his stomach to about half full, and then the sky began to lighten.

After being chilled by the mountain air all night, Luo Wenbing had a terrible headache. His buttocks were still swollen from yesterday's fall, and his waist was numb. He just wanted to get down the mountain as soon as possible.

With his legs injured and his feet not moving properly, Luo Wenbing was covered in sweat. He finally managed to climb down the tree, and leaned against it to rest before continuing. But then he saw something dark and hunched over in the grass behind the tree, its face turned toward him and staring at him.

Luo Wenbing's hair stood on end instantly. Without even seeing what it was, he grabbed a rock from under the tree and threw it at it. Without caring whether he hit it or not, he turned and tried to run away.

No matter how far he ran, until it was broad daylight, he realized he was back under the same lychee tree, with the dark, shadowy thing still staring at him from the grass.

The surroundings were so quiet that not even a bird could be heard. Luo Wenbing's heart sank. He thought to himself that he was doomed and had probably encountered the wandering ghost of someone who had fallen to his death on this mountain years ago while gathering herbs.

An old man once said that the ghosts of those who died violently are not content with their deaths and may want to take the life of the living person with them.

This kid is quite extraordinary. He wondered if this violently deceased ghost had no relatives to mourn him, and that he had finally found someone who was still breathing, so he wanted to trap him to relieve his boredom.

So he stopped running, since he knew he couldn't escape no matter how hard he tried. So, about two or three meters away from there, he picked a large handful of fruit from a tree, arranged them in three piles, and stuck three branches of the same length on them.

Then he chattered on and on, saying a string of nice things to the ghost that had trapped him, promising that when he returned, he would bring people up the mountain to find his remains, find his living relatives, or erect a monument for him and burn some paper money on Qingming Festival and the fifteenth of the lunar calendar.

Afterwards, he kowtowed three times earnestly in that direction, thinking to himself that since he was so sincere, the ghost should at least give him some face.

Unexpectedly, after he finished kowtowing three times and had just gotten up, he heard a thud behind the tree and a dark mass fell down, which startled him greatly.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the thing was half a monkey carcass, which had been dead there for who knows how long, its skin was dry and cracked.

Luo Wenbing nearly fainted from anger. Damn it! All that pleading and begging he'd done was for this damned monkey.

He was furious. He rushed over to take a look and discovered that the cracks on the dried monkey carcass were not skin, but oxidized cotton and linen fabric.

Luo Wenbing, being in this line of work, naturally recognized that the corpse was unusual. In his surprise and doubt, he couldn't help but think of the monkey tomb raiding incident that had been making headlines in recent days.

Could it be that the monkeys dug up the coffin and carelessly discarded the ancient corpse inside here? Looking at the fruit trees nearby, Luo Wenbing became increasingly convinced that this was the case. Monkeys aren't stupid; dry, tough meat is nowhere near as delicious as sweet fruit.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that there seemed to be something pressing down under the half-mummified corpse. So, they moved the corpse aside and found a very long section of python carcass underneath.

Based on the principle that "if you don't pick it up, you might as well pick it up," Luo Wenbing wove the two halves of the mummified body into a basket with the tree branches he had picked, took it down the mountain, and then tied them together with strong hemp thread and placed them in a display case.

Although the descent from the mountain was smooth, he did not forget his promise when he encountered the ghost wall before. Every day, he would light an incense stick for the mummified corpse and place some small fruits on it.

As for the old monkey in the cage, Luo Wenbing noticed movement in the bushes behind him when he was carrying the mummified corpse down the mountain. After turning around several times, he finally discovered that what was following him was a strange creature that was neither human nor monkey.

Granny Monkey's target seemed to be only the ancient corpse in his hand, and she did not show any intention of attacking Luo Wenbing.

Luo Wenbing was in a hurry to get down the mountain, so he simply ignored it and followed it all the way down. Fortunately, it was already dark by then, and no one noticed him as he wandered around the streets.

The reason why the monkey grandmother is considered a person is because Luo Wenbing discovered that at midnight, this thing would chatter away like a whisper, muttering some very old local dialect, pronounced the same as the local ethnic minorities, which he could understand a little bit of.

Luo Wenbing therefore suspected that this old monkey might be the same "monkey" that robbed the chieftain's tomb.

This section is a continuation of the new side story "Snake Ridge Corpse Kiln" by the author, Third Uncle.
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(End of this chapter)