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

Chapter 429 Wu Xiemen'er
Wu Xie and Fatty squeezed through the gaps between the aerial roots, wide enough for a person to pass through, and entered the banyan tree.

This is a natural arched hollow tube formed by intertwined tree trunks and vines. The space inside is very large and extends far into the distance in the darkness.

The sunken holes were filled with greenish-black bones, as if they had been poisoned. There were human bones as well as various kinds of animal bones, a very mixed collection. It was hard to tell whether they were human or ghost. They were all strung together with hemp ropes woven from plant fibers, hanging in rows like musical instruments such as chimes.

Upon closer inspection, Wu Xie discovered that most of these bones were tubular, with many small, worm-eaten holes on them, and the inside had been hollowed out.

“These should all be very primitive musical instruments made of bone,” Wu Xie speculated.

The fat man clicked his tongue. "This Gu King really knows how to enjoy life. Even when he dies, the whole band has to be buried with him."

"Oh right, all the instruments are here, but where are the members of the symphony orchestra? Did the two guys have a fight and split up?"

As he spoke, the fat man reached out and fiddled with one of the animal bones that resembled a flute.

Amidst the buzzing of the swarming mosquitoes, a sudden "coo-coo" sound emerged.

The fat man's hand froze on the spot, and the hairs on his body, soaked with sweat, stood on end. "Damn it, what was that sound!"

Wu Xie held his breath and tried to discern the source of the sound, but it was so brief that he could no longer find it.

"Could it be..." The fat man's gaze fell on the long bone he had just moved.

"Give it a try." Wu Xie also reached out, slowly approached the bone, and gently poked it.

The strange "cooing" sound rang out again the next moment.

Wu Xie found it strange. He bent down and tilted his head to look carefully from directly below the long bone. He found that the bone was indeed hollow inside, but there were many white hairs, finer than a hair, interspersed inside, densely packed like a spider web.

Wu Xie picked up the long bone and examined it, discovering that the white threads inside originated from the side of the long bone that was pressed against the tree trunk.

When the headlamp shone, many fine, silvery threads shimmered there, and the entire tree trunk seemed to glow faintly.

There was a lot of moisture on this thing, and the condensed water droplets reflected the light back. There were also many white filaments, like mycelium, extending from the cracks in the tree trunk and connecting to all the nearby bone artifacts.

The fat man had a look of sudden realization. "Oh, I see. So these mycelia are the soul that makes the bone tubes make sounds."

Perhaps it is because air flows in from the bottom as the long bone shakes, causing the inner wall of the bone tube to vibrate, and the white filaments inside act as a sound reed, which produces that "cooing" sound similar to a bird's call.

Wu Xie carefully put down the long bone in his hand. Just a slight movement had made such a sound. If all the bones were to collide and resonate with each other, the consequences would be unimaginable. He dared not try it lightly.

Many dark red rune strips of cloth hung from the top of the arched tree tube, gradually turning blackish-brown as they oxidized in the air. Wu Xie strongly suspected that the color was from blood, which was really eerie.

The two continued walking forward and reached the middle section of the tree hole tunnel. Here, many bone artifacts were also hanging, but the animal bones used were replaced with large, irregular pieces of bone, engraved with many patterns of the sun, stars, birds, and beasts. They seemed to be decorations.

The only suspicious point is that these patterns all have a clear orientation, and they all point towards the deeper part of the cave.

After walking another ten meters or so, the tree tube passage came to a fork in the road.

There were no signs indicating the direction of the fork in the road. Fatty nudged Wu Xie with his elbow and said, "Which one should we choose? Men on the left, women on the right."

"Okay." Wu Xie nodded, then walked straight to the right.

"Hey!" the fat man quickly caught up. "Didn't you say to go left? When did you start forgetting left and right?"

“Just go to the right. Have you forgotten that all those guide figurines in the Snake Cave Tower were pointing to the right?” Wu Xie said.

The fat man thought about it and said, "That makes sense." He immediately stopped worrying about it.

Further on, the channels formed by the tree roots begin to slope upwards. After turning a zigzag bend, the road ahead becomes a staircase that was once woven from living vines. Over the years, most of the staircases have become deformed and out of shape.

Wu Xie and his companion climbed upwards quickly, feeling as if they were walking up a spiral staircase inside a cylindrical building.

After climbing for an unknown amount of time, the steps finally came to an end. Looking out through the gaps between the aerial roots and vines, it was at least thirty meters above the ground.

Above them was a small temple also built of ebony wood. A thick, dark green vine twisted and coiled upwards, covering the bottom wooden planks of the temple like a giant umbrella, supporting it. A vine covered with black thorns led straight down into the temple.

The temple in the sky was surrounded by green vines, and many palm-sized, three-petaled, purplish-pink flowers bloomed on some of the forked branches. The petals were shaped like rabbit ears or a cobra standing upright.

The sunlight that gets in here is very weak, but the flowers are still blooming very beautifully, and the air is filled with an alluring fragrance.

The fat man's stomach sang out at just the right moment, "This smell has awakened my long-lost ventriloquism."

Wu Xie covered his nose and looked closely at the flowers. He didn't see any dead mosquitoes on the petals, so the fragrance seemed harmless.

Hearing the voice, he turned around and glanced at the fat man sideways, "What did you say in ventriloquism?"

"My ventriloquism tells me it's time to eat... Holy crap! Naïve, get out of the way!" The fat man's expression suddenly changed drastically after seeing something.

Wu Xie subconsciously turned his head to look behind him, only to see a huge and long black shadow looming over him.

Suddenly, a huge, purple-pink, three-petaled flower appeared above the temple behind him, its wide petals spread out to their maximum size like a giant umbrella.

Like a peeled corn kernel, the petals flipped over and pressed against the flower stem, revealing a blood-red, three-toothed core that instantly snapped at Wu Xie with its gaping maw.

Seeing that he couldn't dodge in time, Wu Xie drew his sword, intending to take the blow head-on. The next moment, he was tackled by the fat man, and the two rolled to the side.

The fat man somersaulted up, took the entrenching tool tied to the back of his backpack, and began hacking at the giant flower that was lunging at him.

With a crackling sound, the shovel seemed to have struck some kind of metal, sending black thorns flying everywhere. The fat man looked closely and was immediately shocked. Good heavens, even though the shovel in his hand was chipped, the serrated edge of the flower was completely unharmed, not even a speck of turf was scraped off.

"We can't beat them! We can't beat them!" the fat man yelled. "Tang Zhen, get the hell out of here!"

"We can't retreat—I have some too!" Wu Xie gritted his teeth so hard they almost broke. It took him a long time to chop off a few black thorns from the other side.

The fat man looked at it and, damn it, there was even a big mouth flower. "Where the hell did this thing come from?"

Two enormous flower-shaped teeth attacked one after another. The two were powerless to fight back and could only desperately resist in order to avoid being bitten and swallowed by the huge teeth.

"This thing is too tough; we can't cut it with our knives at all!"

Wu Xie's stamina had already been depleted, and he was exhausted from the long stalemate. He was caught off guard and almost got bitten on the arm. The giant flower turned its head and swung it hard at his side, sending him flying and crashing into a tree trunk.

The fat man rolled away from the giant flower on his side, and seeing another flower chasing after him and biting him, he cursed angrily, "You damn innocent girl, get up and take your one away, I can't take it anymore!"

Wu Xie spat out the blood foam in his mouth, gritted his teeth and got up. He drew the pistol from his waist and, taking advantage of the gap when the giant flower opened its mouth, aimed at the space inside the saw teeth and fired four shots in a row.

The attack was effective, but not particularly noticeable. The giant flower paused for only a few seconds before lunging forward even more fiercely.

In those few seconds of space, Wu Xie kept his eyes fixed on them and suddenly had a plan. He shouted, "Fatty, hold one off for now, I have a way!"

Without a second thought, the fat man pounced on one of them, using his tenacious and persistent skills to entangle it, while the other one went straight for Wu Xie.

Wu Xie grabbed a vine hanging from the tree trunk with one hand, pushed off to the side and leaped high into the air, the calyx of the giant flower piercing straight into the spot where he had just stood.

Wu Xie let go and jumped down from mid-air, grabbing a petal that had flipped to the top of the giant flower. Blood immediately seeped from his palm.

The petals, which appeared to be of pure and elegant color, were actually covered with thorns. The moment Wu Xie touched them, the thorns pierced his flesh, and the barbs on them gripped his skin like claws, leaving his palm a bloody mess.

The smell of dripping blood irritated the giant flower, and Wu Xie, hiding behind the petals, dangled in mid-air, clinging to it with his injured hand.

The giant flower kept swaying its head in search of prey. Wu Xie swayed back and forth like a puppet as it turned, almost sliding to the edge of the petals, which made the fat man tremble with fear.

In that moment of hesitation, another giant flower seized the opportunity and shoved it into the fat man's head.

The fat man felt the wind whistling past and instinctively dodged, but was still bitten on the shoulder. The giant flower grabbed him and flung him into the air, where he crashed into the temple on top before falling back down.

The fat man was thrown around, his head spinning. He flailed his arms wildly, grabbing at the tangled vines, but the fragile vines couldn't support his weight and were on the verge of collapse. The giant flower's gaping maw was right below him, ready to catch him.

Just as the fat man was about to fall, at this critical moment, Wu Xie aimed at the calyx on the other side. He fired the first shot, which deflected the flower head. With the second shot, as the flower head swung back due to inertia, the bullet went straight into the serrations.

Unexpectedly, the plant fibers inside the flower stem were much thinner than the outer skin. The shot, fired at an angle, pierced the flower stem from the inside, and red sap gushed out instantly.

The giant flower hunts by scent and instinct. In just a short while, Wu Xie's hands were bleeding even more; his blood was more attractive than Fatty's.

The giant flower that Wu Xie was holding was almost going crazy, shaking wildly. It had already noticed Wu Xie clinging to it, but its flower head couldn't bend, so it could only use brute force to throw its prey into its attack range.

Another injured flower was also attracted by Wu Xie's blood. It ignored the fat man still hanging on the ceiling, opened its huge mouth, and charged at Wu Xie at an angle.

The time is now!
Wu Xie let go and fell, and the giant flower that rushed over couldn't stop in time due to inertia and bit into another giant flower.

With a crisp snap, half of the stem of another giant flower was bitten through, and the flower head drooped down. Driven by its survival instinct, it struggled to fight back.

Plants don't feel pain, but they do have dynamic stress responses. The two giant flowers became entangled, and the temple on top was completely smashed to pieces by their fight, with broken wood and tiles falling all over the ground.

Wu Xie pulled his long sleeves to wrap his still-bleeding hand, and waved to the fat man who was still hanging overhead after waking up from his dizziness.

The fat man immediately cut the vines binding his ankles and fell with a thud onto the giant flower. He let out a painful scream that was stuck in his throat. As he rolled down, he tried to land on his back, because his back and buttocks were covered with many black thorns, making him look like a fat, large hedgehog.

Wu Xie quickly ran over and helped him up. Without thinking twice, the two of them immediately helped each other crouch down and carefully crawled under the giant flower where they were fighting, running as fast as they could along the steps.

As the two figures disappeared around the corner, a slender, graceful black shadow descended from the sky. With a swift movement, she chopped down the two colossal dodder vines in the battle circle in just a few moves.

The heavy flower head crashed to the ground with a loud thud, like a house collapsing.

The dodder's flower stem seemed confused for a moment before shakily retreating through the opening at the top.

The woman in black had a beautiful face, alluring but not seductive, with a touch of crimson on her lips, making her look as young as sixteen.

She sheathed her knife, half-squatted down, reached out and dipped her fingertip in a drop of Wu Xie's blood, and said softly, "He's a little better than I thought. That kid's judgment of people isn't bad."

A slightly smaller dodder vine was peeking out from the gap above, but the woman in black ignored it and turned to leave in the direction Wu Xie and the other had fled.

On the other side, Wu Xie and Fatty were out of breath and ran to the left side of the fork in the road in their panic.

After running a long way and seeing no sign of being chased from behind, he dared to stop and catch his breath.

Fatty's buttocks were still covered in black thorns. He bent over as Wu Xie cleaned them for him, complaining, "Tianzhen, if you ask me, you should really change your name to Wu Xiemen'er. If I had known you were going to be this unlucky, I would have listened to Fatty and chosen the left side. If there is another mistake next time, I will never listen to you again, even if you kill me."

Wu Xie grabbed the barb and cursed at him, "Get lost! If we don't encounter something outrageous every time we go into a tomb, that would be fucking abnormal."

Goodnight, Makka Pakka

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(End of this chapter)