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

Chapter 508 A Dream of Nanke

The space below was much larger than they had expected, resembling the bottom of a trapezoidal square well.

The top gradually closed into an arched stone dome, with a narrow opening in one corner. They had fallen in through that opening, which resembled a ventilation duct.

After standing still, Feng held up the candle and looked around. The surrounding walls were made of many large stone bricks, and the gaps between the bricks were filled very tightly. The walls should have been coated with some kind of special paint, as they were very smooth to the touch.

Feng pondered to himself that this seemed to be a secret underground room where something was stored.

Zhang Haixing landed one step later, and after squatting to dissipate the impact, she looked back up and her face had visibly turned very bad.

“We’re likely going to be stuck here and won’t be able to get out,” she said in a low voice.

The opening they entered was at least seven or eight meters above the ground, and the surrounding walls were extremely smooth. Even if they stacked themselves into a human ladder and jumped up to grab the edge, the opening was so small that it would be difficult for them to climb up.

"My God, coming down here was a terrible decision," Feng lamented. "It's a trap set specifically for intruders."

"Not entirely." Zhang Haixing, having noticed something, walked towards a corner where the blue light couldn't reach.

"What did you find?" Feng asked, puzzled. Then he saw her use the tip of her dagger to pick up a hard, grayish-white, cotton-like lump. He quickly asked, "What is this?"

"A snake's molt," Zhang Haixing replied.

Feng seemed to understand something. "Then, according to you, this must be a place specifically for raising snakes."

"But where is the snake? Where did the snake go?" Feng asked in confusion. "This place is deserted. We haven't seen a single snake since we entered."

As he spoke, he took a step forward and his toe kicked something, which rolled around a few times near Feng's feet.

He looked down and saw that it was the rhinoceros horn candle that Zhang Haixing had lost before. He bent down, picked it up, lit it with the blue flame in his hand, and then walked over to Zhang Haixing and handed it to her, saying, "Here, take this."

Zhang Haixing took the candle, stood up and said, "These snake molts have been here for a long time. Even if there were snakes here before, they probably disappeared due to some change."

"The walls are so smooth, probably to prevent the snakes trapped inside from climbing up. So there should be other exits here. Let's look for them."

The two of them took candles and searched separately. Soon they found a familiar fire symbol in a corner covered by a snake shed skin.

The symbols were haphazardly carved on a stone brick, and the hasty and casual handwriting suggested that the carver was in a hurry, and the situation at the time was probably very critical.

Zhang Haixing squatted down and tried tapping the brick with her finger. There was a hollow sound. She said happily, "It's hollow underneath. It seems that the group of people who came in before us also encountered the same situation."

Feng neither confirmed nor denied her guess, saying, "Let's try prying it open first."

In that instant, he suddenly had an idea. The timing of the two fire patterns appearing was so coincidental that it didn't feel like a warning, but rather like a deliberate mark left to guide those who came after.

He kept this thought to himself and did not tell Zhang Haixing immediately.

It took the two of them a lot of effort to pry the stone up and move it aside. When they shone a lamp on it, they discovered an iron plate underneath, about ten centimeters in diameter, with an image of a linked Bagua (Eight Trigrams) clasp written on it in seal script. Feng raised his hand in a gesture of invitation and casually complimented, "Please, Miss Wang. Having been around the Zhang family for so many years, this little mechanism shouldn't be too difficult for you."

Zhang Haixing glanced at him, said nothing, stepped forward and easily rotated the two rings to the correct position, then pressed down hard.

After waiting for a few seconds, there was no reaction on the wall.

Feng shrugged and said with some disappointment, "It seems I overestimated you. The contact's evaluation of you is somewhat undeserved."

Zhang Haixing ignored his sarcastic remarks, frowned, stared intently at the iron plate, and carefully recalled the steps she had taken to solve the mechanism. She couldn't find any flaws and became puzzled. "Strange, why isn't it moving? Is this mechanism just for show?"

Feng observed the surrounding walls, making sure nothing would change. He took a step forward and was about to say something when he and Zhang Haixing suddenly heard a cracking sound beneath their feet. They exchanged a glance and immediately tried to dodge to the side.

Unexpectedly, as soon as she lifted her foot, the rock beneath her suddenly split in the middle. Zhang Haixing acted decisively, kicking Feng before falling and using the momentum to jump up, grabbing the edge of the crack.

Feng screamed as he fell down. Below was pitch blackness, a bottomless abyss, with thick, smoke-like fog constantly surging upwards. Feng's figure was instantly swallowed by the smoke.

Zhang Haixing felt a slight stinging pain in her calf, which was hanging down, as if something was pulling on it, and she wondered if the fog was poisonous.

She hurriedly scrambled up from the edge of the pit and glanced over. She noticed that a thin, light green thread, about the thickness of a hair, was wrapped around her ankle. She wondered if it was just her imagination, but the thread even seemed to glow faintly.

Zhang Haixing didn't pay attention at first and reached out to pull the thread. Unexpectedly, her finger suddenly hurt. The thread was like a blade, cutting through the glove and getting stuck in her flesh. It seemed to be chasing the blood and drilling deeper.

Zhang Haixing gasped, "What the hell is this?"

Crunch, crunch—a chilling chewing sound came from the thick fog, like a wild beast gnawing on bones. Zhang Haixing's face changed drastically. She immediately used a knife to cut off the thin thread and got up, trying to retreat to a corner.

Unfortunately, it was too late. The moment Zhang Haixing turned around, countless light green, translucent vines suddenly emerged, piercing through the thick fog, twisting and intertwining like a large net, enveloping her from behind.

Zhang Haixing turned around and used her knife to knock away the nearest vines. However, she was no match for the crowd. No matter how fast she moved, she could not stop more vines from rushing up and binding her legs, making it impossible for her to move.

Immediately afterwards, her upper limbs were also bound, and vines wrapped around her like snakes. Her neck tightened, and a feeling of suffocation, accompanied by a dense, throbbing pain, instantly swept through her entire body.

Several thicker vines flew out of the mist, binding the green cocoons on the ground and dragging them into the deep pit.

The stone bricks slowly closed, and the ground returned to its previous calm.

-

"They've been trapped in this illusion for almost twenty-four hours. Will they never wake up?" Wu Xie asked softly, looking at Zhang Haixing and Feng lying in the pile of corpses.

Zhang Wuxun was carefully picking out the ginger slices from the bowl with his chopsticks when he heard this, and calmly said, "Don't worry, he'll wake up in less than two hours."

Good night

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(End of this chapter)