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

Chapter 422 A Huge Mystery
"No way." The fat man sucked in his stomach and followed him in. "Lean meat is generally tastier than fatty meat. It's chewy and easy to eat."

They were now seven or eight meters below the surface. Although they could still hear deafening thunder, the sound was not as irritating to their ears as before.

The two stopped in front of the stone figurine. The fat man reached out and took the red crested snake off, but immediately deflated upon seeing it. "I thought it was some great treasure, but it's just a sheep liver stone."

Sheep liver stone comes in a variety of colors. It is named so because its wrinkled appearance and color resemble sheep liver. It can also be called chicken liver stone. It belongs to the Heluo stone family. Because its color and texture are similar to ancient ceramics, some people also call it ancient pottery stone.

Only natural, high-quality liver stones with unique characteristics are valuable.

Wu Xie took the dark red snake from his hand and examined it closely. The snake scales and rooster comb on it were not carved in an overly detailed manner, and it could only be roughly seen that they were snake scales. However, it was worth noting that the snake's eyes were inlaid with real rubies.

"What is this? Did those wild lamas take the snake just for this? Why didn't they just take it out?" the fat man asked.

Wu Xie gently touched the snake's red eyes with his finger and said, "This thing is called Starry Sky Sand, also known as Starry Sky Divine Sand. It is named for the reddish-brown or slightly yellow color of the scaly hematite or mica contained in its quartz, which resembles stars shining in the sky. Tang Xianzu praised this gemstone in 'The Peony Pavilion: A Visit', saying that this kind of agarwood is the elixir of boiling sea and the flower of the iron tree."

The fat man didn't care whether the cycad flowered or not; he only cared about what he saw in front of him. "Judging from the name, it seems to be quite valuable, right?"

Wu Xie explained, "Starry Sky Sand is a type of aventurine, which is a relatively rare variety of aventurine. Although it is not as valuable as jadeite, look at these two Starry Sky Sand pieces. They have many tiny golden 'eyes' that resemble ice flower patterns. In the eyes of true connoisseurs, they still have relatively high collection value."

The reason those wild lamas took this thing away was probably because they mistook the star sand for some rare jade, since this kind of jade is really beautiful and exquisite under the light.

The two star-shaped stones are set very securely; prying them off would definitely damage the gemstones.

“Then…” The fat man hesitated for a moment, and before he could speak, Wu Xie already knew what he was thinking.

"Don't be greedy. It's fine to just look at these things; if you actually try to take them down, those monkeys might go crazy and attack us."

Just as the fat man was about to ask how he knew, he suddenly smelled a faint stench of corpses mixed in with the rotting wood.

Following the smell, one could see a rotting, maggot-infested human head in a dark corner behind the stone figure, with its eye sockets hollowed out.

The fat man looked at Wu Xie with a deep gaze and said, "Tianzhen, your nose is getting more and more sensitive."

"Absolutely." Wu Xie put the stone snake back in his hand. "In today's society, having just one skill isn't enough to survive in the dungeon."

The fat man gave a thumbs up and said, "It seems that the blind man is quite a competent master. I'll ask him for a few tips tomorrow. You've worked so hard, there's no reason for me to stay stuck in the same place."

Wu Xie nodded. "Not bad, it has potential. Oh, by the way, the tuition fee is set at one million."

"Goodbye." The fat man immediately shut his mouth.

The tower has seven floors in total. Its overall structure is similar to a horn placed at an angle. The tilt becomes more obvious as you go down. Finally, after nearly an hour, they arrived at the last floor.

This floor has undergone a significant change. The walls of the attic have been replaced with stone bricks, and behind the stone figurine is a reddish-brown mural depicting a snake-bodied, monkey-headed guide figurine. Behind it, on the left and right, stand two small statues, resembling attendants.

These guide figurines only appear when the tomb entrance is approached.

But it was clear that the back of the narrow attic where they were, which forced them to bend over, was not the tomb entrance.

"How strange, everything here is beyond the usual logic of tombs," Wu Xie pondered. "I feel like something is wrong, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

At this moment, the fat man suddenly had a strange idea in his mind, "Hey, Tianzhen, do you think that old grave we found before might actually be the same as the grave that the monkey broke off, and that it might also contain a mummified monkey-snake corpse, and that there might be a tower like this under it."

Wu Xie's eyes lit up, and he immediately had an idea. "If that's the case, there must be more than one ancient tomb like this near that temple!"

But the key question is, what is the purpose of setting up so many ancient tombs here? Is it a special burial ritual for the Gu King?
Wu Xie had Nie Xiaoba lead people to search for the exit in the attic, while he and Fatty sat down to organize all the clues they had collected along the way.

From the beginning, when Fatty brought the Snowball Pearl with the lotus-scorpion engraved inside to Hangzhou to find Wu Xie, to the connection between the Yongning Tusi Tomb and the scorpion totem, they came to this place and happened to encounter a monkey tomb raider who dug up a monkey-snake mummy with the lotus-scorpion tattoo on its body. The mummy was wearing a mask that looked like a human-faced bird in front of the bronze gate.

Later, when they went into the mountains, they were attacked by mandrills that could speak sign language. This made them realize that there were humans behind the mandrills, and that they might be connected to the old graves and stone tablets.

However, based on previous speculation, the old grave was buried there before the liberation, while the monkey grave is an ancient tomb from the Ming Dynasty.

Wu Xie silently recited several crucial clues in his mind: "The Kingdom of Longevity, a mummified corpse pieced together from a monkey and snake with a lotus-shaped scorpion tattoo, a human-faced bird, the Zhang family members who appeared here a long time ago and are suspected to be the Wooden Fish Ancestor, and the wild pheasant neck that has reappeared here."

All of this seemed to connect all the special things he had encountered in the ancient tombs before.

The fat man suddenly said, "Tianzhen, don't you think that all these things that have appeared here are very similar to the Queen Mother of the West Palace in Tamutuo?"

"Ah, of course, it's not the layout that's like it, but the things that exist here, like the pieced-together mummies, pheasant necks, and human-faced birds."

“Perhaps we can view this place as a low-budget version of the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West. All indications suggest that it was deliberately made to look like this,” the fat man asserted.

Wu Xie also had this guess in his mind, but the key question was, what was the purpose of the Gu King in making this place like this?

The Kingdom of Immortality, the Kingdom of Immortality, could it be that the King of Gu created all this in pursuit of the so-called immortality?

But how did the Gu King know about the things that existed in the Western Queen Mother's Kingdom? Could it be that the Gu King had also been to Tamutuo?

According to Cai Laojiu's story, the Gu King who eventually turned into a monster was a snake-man with two heads and four arms.

Folk tales and legends from rural areas are often exaggerated. If we were to infer scientifically, the Gu King was likely a deformed child born from incestuous relations.

Or perhaps one of twins devoured the other, and as it grew, the part of the other that hadn't been fully absorbed developed into a teratoma, which then manifested on the surface of the body. But how could such a child, even one of exceptional intelligence, be connected to the ancient kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West from thousands of years ago?

All of this is truly perplexing.

Fatty woke Wu Xie from his deep thoughts, handed him a pack of compressed biscuits, and asked him, "Have you figured out anything? Or if you really can't, you can make up a story to explain it. Who knows, you might suddenly have a flash of inspiration and come up with an idea."

Wu Xie shook his head slightly, and that familiar feeling of being controlled and arranged by others surged up in his heart once again.

Nie Xiaoba's team had already found the passage hidden behind the mural. They removed the stone bricks from the wall to create a door, behind which was a dark and narrow staircase passage. The passage had been reinforced with stone bricks. They went in to explore and found that it had been sealed off for a long time and was relatively dry.

Wu Xie said, "Let's rest here for tonight and continue our journey tomorrow morning."

After eating, Fatty started snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow. Wu Xie lay in the sleeping bag next to him, but he tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep.

He kept imagining what kind of situation would make the Gu King, after seeing the scene of the Queen Mother of the West's Kingdom, have the idea of ​​copying it to Monkey Mountain, which is located at the border of western Sichuan and Yunnan.

Furthermore, could the Gu King in the Yongning Tusi Tomb really be the so-called cursed youngest son of the Tusi? Or is this actually just a fabricated rumor?

Most rumors originate from a real or non-real event. After being passed down by word of mouth, their content has largely deviated from the original point of the event. In the process of spreading, they are mixed with many human likes, dislikes, good and evil.

A great influence or trend of thought often originates from the smallest, most subtle things. The result of such a trend is often malicious. Even if it starts out as good, it will eventually turn into evil because not everyone can use the guise of morality to conceal the evil thoughts in their hearts.

Some of these rumors are created to cover up a real, ugly, and horrific event, deliberately fabricating such a rumor to conceal it.

The more Wu Xie thought about it, the more he felt that there must be an even bigger mystery behind this chieftain's son who proclaimed himself the King of Gu.

He even had a terrifying suspicion: the so-called Tusi Gu King was actually a man-made entity.

This person must have personally witnessed the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West during the Ming Dynasty. Because he wanted to emulate the Queen Mother of the West's immortality, he created a low-budget version of the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West here.

Who could this person be? And what role do the Zhang family members, who are connected to the wooden fish, play in this?

After a day of trekking through the mountains, Wu Xie lay down, and fatigue gradually brought him into a deep sleep.

In his dream, he saw a very strange person whose profile resembled a wooden fish. He was dressed in a heavy, snow-white sacrificial robe, draped in a white robe with dark patterns woven with gold thread, and wearing a cloak and hood. He was standing in front of something enormous and incomprehensible.

Everything around seemed to be swallowed by a black hole, plunging into a hopeless darkness. Only that person held a blue octagonal lantern, emitting a cold, eerie blue light.

The man's robe was like a silvery veil adorned with moonlight, pristine and ethereal.

Wu Xie's vision was like that of a snake crouching on the ground. The scene in front of him flickered and changed constantly between black and white and red and blue. He tried his best to look up at the huge thing. The light and shadow flickered, and the thing seemed to be constantly changing and tilting, like a wall about to collapse.

Wu Xie wanted to shout out to warn the man in white, but the sound he made was so faint that it was as if he had stuck his head into a deep well. The echo was loud, but he couldn't even hear what he said.

For a moment, everything seemed to blur before his eyes, and the enormous thing suddenly became clear. Wu Xie's perspective as he looked outwards also shifted.

The mysterious man in white robes picked up Wu Xie, or rather, he became the vessel inhabited by Wu Xie's consciousness.

Although it was only for a second, it was enough for Wu Xie to see clearly that it was a huge, indescribably enormous club-shaped statue made of bronze. It was exactly the same strange, leech-like statue they had seen in the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top, magnified countless times.

Wu Xie's consciousness was forcibly frozen on that thing. He felt his vision begin to converge from the edge to the center until finally, he could not see it anymore. But at the same time, he realized that it was the darkness around the bronze statue that swallowed everything up.

Everything disappeared, including the mysterious white-robed man who resembled a wooden fish.

Wu Xie's consciousness sank into chaos. In his hazy state, he felt as if someone was pushing him. He was very unwilling to wake up and felt an inexplicable sense of irritation. He wanted to curse, but he didn't know if he actually cursed. The person pushing him stopped.

When Wu Xie woke up, he opened his eyes and felt that he had slept exceptionally well. However, he didn't know why he had dreamed of snow all night, which made him feel cold all over.

"Young Master, you're awake." Nie Xiaoba hadn't fallen back asleep since being woken up by the water last night.

The fat man was still snoring and muttering in his sleep, seemingly talking about how he had held his daughter and so on.

Wu Xie got up and looked over there, and his mouth twitched. This fatso, I wonder what wonderful thing he was dreaming about, drooling all over his face without him even realizing it.

He felt that his clothes were damp, as if they had been soaked in rainwater. He wondered what was going on, and tried to stand up by pushing himself up with his hand, only to touch a handful of ice water.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that two-thirds of the floor in the already cramped attic was flooded.

He hurriedly asked Nie Xiaoba what was going on.

Nie Xiaoba told him that around 4 a.m., the coffin lid on the top layer that was blocking the tomb's hole seemed to have collapsed due to the rain, and without any obstruction, all the water flowed in.

Wu Xie looked at the other guys leaning against the wall and asked, "None of you slept and stood all night?"

Dafu scratched his head and chuckled, "Young Master, you don't need to worry about us. You are our leader and need to get plenty of rest. We roughnecks can fall asleep standing up, let alone leaning against a wall."

Wu Xie patted Nie Xiaoba on the shoulder, "After this job is over, I'll give you all double the bonus."

Goodnight, Makka Pakka

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(End of this chapter)