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

Chapter 522 Jade and White Sand
After Wu Xie came to his senses, he realized that Yama, the King of Hell, had not caught up with him.

"I saw it." The fat man's voice was soft, and it was unclear what he had seen, but his expression was somewhat excited. "Turn around quickly."

Wu Xie still couldn't figure out why that damned King Yama kept chasing him, and then suddenly stopped.

Upon hearing what the fat man said, he immediately turned around and saw Zhang Wuxun leaping into the air from the rocks, rushing straight towards Yama like lightning. It seemed as if he was about to crash into Yama's arms, but in reality, he scooped up the down jacket he had taken off and covered Yama's rocky head with it. He then used the momentum to flip over from above and land behind Yama.

The King of Hell paused for a few seconds before reaching back to grab the man, but Zhang Wuxun had already slid down by a rope and rushed in the opposite direction the moment he touched the ground.

The slipknot on the rope was tied around Yama's neck as he put on his clothes. Yama was thrown backward and fell to the ground by his relentless charge, his arms flailing wildly.

Another slender black figure jumped out from the crevice in the rock. Wu Xie looked closely and realized that it was Zhang Haixing, who had been missing before.

She was holding a long rope in her hand, and like throwing an Indian roti, she jumped around in the open space. In no time, she had tied up Yama's arms, which were waving in the air with their four legs in the air, into a pretzel shape.

But Yama was clearly very strong, and when he tried to break free, the rope was stretched so tight that it made a tooth-ache-inducing creaking sound.

Zhang Wuxun, who had run away dragging the rope, turned back, stepped on the head of the King of Hell, pulled out his hunting knife and plunged it hard between the stone ball's head and the mummified body, trying to sever its neck completely.

With a "bang," the rope snapped completely, and Yama's freed hands grabbed Zhang Wuxun's limbs. Wu Xie and the others' hearts were in their throats.

The fat man shouted at Zhang Haixing, "Do you have any more detonators? Let's blow their mothers up!"

The arm held by the King of Hell was already starting to feel the pain of dislocation. Zhang Wuxun gritted his teeth, felt the resistance from his hand, and used all his strength to press the blade down.

Yama felt a jolt as if he were being electrocuted. His arm clenched instantly, but then lost its strength a moment later. Like a Transformer whose energy transmission had been cut off, his hard arm collapsed and crashed heavily to the ground.

Zhang Wuxun finally breathed a sigh of relief, straightened up, stretched his shoulders a few times, and put away his hunting knife.

"How is it? What's inside?" Zhang Haixing asked curiously.

Zhang Wuxun glanced at her, expressionless, "Anyway, it's not something you should take."

Zhang Haixing pouted and stood aside, "I'm not interested in this anymore, but don't forget what you promised me."

"What's going on?" the fat man asked casually, quickly stepping forward and subtly separating Zhang Haixing from the mummified corpse of the King of Hell. "What just happened? Why did it suddenly explode? And why is this old zombie chasing Tianzhen? Is there something on Tianzhen that's attracting it?"

Zhang Haixing sensed his wariness and suspicion, and gave a disdainful snort.

The fat man gleaned something from Zhang Wuxun's act of tearing off his clothes, and he hit the nail on the head.

If it was Wu Xie's half-baked blood that attracted him, then Fatty's own face was covered in Wu Xie's blood, and he didn't see Yama chasing him away.

“It wasn’t her, it was Feng who did it.” Zhang Wuxun shook his head and explained, “Feng’s getting blown up was intentional. I had already pulled him out of the swamp before Yama smelled the zombies and was about to attack him.”

"I never expected that this guy would detonate the detonator while I was distracted by the drumming. Luckily, Zhang Haixing whipped me away in time, otherwise I would have been seriously injured."

Upon hearing this, the fat man exclaimed "Oh!" and bowed to Zhang Haixing with a grin, "That was my petty mistake, I wronged you, old sister. We've been through thick and thin together, so please don't blame me."

Zhang Haixing rolled her eyes without any politeness and reminded Zhang Wuxun, "How do you plan to get that thing? Let me make it clear in advance, I only know that there is something inside it, and I know nothing else."

That thing could make a dead, dried-up corpse so powerful; it was definitely no pushover. Zhang Haixing was somewhat watching the show.

Wu Xie sniffed himself carefully and realized, "When Feng was thrown into the air by the blast wave and hit me and Fatty, he stuffed something into me."

"The only one who could seduce Yama so relentlessly is probably Corpse Saint Incense," Wu Xie mused. No wonder Mu Yu wanted to strip him naked.

Zhang Wuxun smiled. "Smart."

"So what should we do now?" Wu Xie squatted down and looked at the neck that he had cut open. In the firelight, there was a piece of jade plate that was as big as a bowl. It was so green that it looked like it was about to ooze water. There were two imperfect cut marks on it.

"What is this?" he asked, puzzled.

“It’s a very special kind of meteorite jade. Be careful, don’t touch it with your hands,” Zhang Wuxun said.

Wu Xie turned to look at the stone head and found that there was also a piece of jade embedded there, like an inverted trapezoid, inserted in the middle of the stone. He felt that there should be a larger piece inside the large honeycomb. The piece embedded in the neck was more like the edge of the jade, which Zhang Wuxun had cut into two unequal halves with a knife.

The King of Hell's attack was clearly targeted. If this thing was controlling the King of Hell to attack them, then wouldn't this jade be alive?

"Is this beautiful piece of jade the brain of Yama, the King of Hell?" the fat man blurted out.

Zhang Wuxun hummed in agreement, took the torch from his hand, and then slowly extended a finger to approach the jade at the head of the stone ball.

Wu Xie exclaimed, thinking to himself, "Didn't you just say I couldn't touch it?" Then he saw Zhang Wuxun control his fingertips, stopping them two or three centimeters away from the jade piece.

“Look carefully,” Zhang Wuxun said.

They all bent down and peered over, and saw several extremely fine, almost invisible silver threads peeking out from the jade, like the nerve tentacles of some kind of coral polyp, tentatively drifting towards Zhang Wuxun's fingertips.

Zhang Wuxun abruptly pulled his hand back, the silver tendrils trembling in the air, trying to capture that fresh life force from before, but to no avail, and finally reluctantly withdrew slowly.

Wu Xie and the others held their breath, watching intently, and it took them a long time to regain their breathing rhythm.

"What the hell is this thing? It's a bug, a parasite." The fat man's mouth was almost big enough to fit a fist.

Zhang Haixing also exclaimed, "So this is the real reason why Yama rides corpses. Yama himself is dead, but with this thing existing, his devouring consciousness is always alive. The living corpses that are being ridden are actually being eaten."

Zhang Wuxun nodded in agreement, "Otherwise, where would we get such a tall and strong fighting corpse shell? Its legs must have been pieced together from those sacrificial offerings using tentacles."

The fat man looked at Wu Xie with a mocking smile, "If it weren't for Mu Yu's quick hands, you would have almost been at the bottom too. I reckon your small frame wouldn't have been able to support this six-meter-tall giant corpse. Yama would have stepped on you like he was wearing high heels." "Get lost!" Wu Xie cursed at him.

The two exchanged playful insults and jokes. Wu Xie had a lot of questions to ask Zhang Wuxun, but he was hesitant because there were outsiders present. So he chose a question he could ask: "Isn't corpse fighting something from folk tales? Although I've heard my grandfather talk about it before, things like zongzi (rice dumplings) are extremely uncontrollable. How did the people of Kham use the Corpse Saint Incense as a medium to transmit the message of feeding?"

Then he told him the strange tale that his grandfather had once told him as a story: during the chaotic battle between the Northern and Southern factions, the Corpse King raised by the Northern faction went on a killing spree, indiscriminately killing both humans and animals.

Creating a fighting corpse often results in numerous casualties, whether from one's own side or the opponent's.

Moreover, the zongzi, which are neither dead nor alive, are extremely rare and hard to come by. If the path Wu Xie has been pursuing had not been artificially designed into an extremely dangerous mode, it would have been even more difficult for him to encounter a zombie transformation in his life.

Even if a military general were to be unlucky enough to be buried in a corpse-raising ground and become a giant coffin bearing the title of "Corpse King," in reality, almost everyone would tacitly kneel down upon encountering such a situation.

Therefore, Wu Xie himself did not believe it, and even his grandfather, who was very knowledgeable, did not believe it.

He felt that the Corpse King in his grandfather's story had the same thing in common with the Yama King who was now in a mess: his belly was full of white sand. Moreover, the Yama King had a more advanced brain and had essentially broken away from the ranks of zombies.

Even if we were to force a ranking of the world's top zongzi (sticky rice dumplings), this one would probably be the most famous and number one.

After listening, the fat man shook his head. "Although the story is fictional, the elements in it must have a reason. Although I am not as experienced as the old man, I am not bragging, but I have actually seen a so-called corpse fight once."

That was when Fatty was young. Back then, he had just started working on his own and, with his boldness and meticulousness, he made a few small deals. They weren't tomb raiding, but rather antique trading.

After a few times, the fat man felt that going it alone wasn't risky, unlike the perilous tomb raiding where one was almost guaranteed to die. So he broke up with his gang.

After enjoying a period of extravagant living, the fat man realized that he was too young to continue living such a lazy life, so he decided to take a gamble and spread the word that he was going to acquire something big.

As the saying goes, "Gold is valued in times of chaos, jade in times of prosperity, and antiques are worth a fortune in times of peace."

Dealing in antiques can be profitable, and it's not as lucrative as some people think. Antiques have a lot of potential for appreciation. With some effort, you might be able to turn your little stall into a listed company someday.

Those in the know knew he had some money, so once word got out, all sorts of shady characters came knocking on his door.

The fat man considered himself a semi-leader in the industry and looked down on the junk produced by small workshops. Just as he was wondering if his business was going to fail halfway through, someone came to his door with a photo.

That was a ship belonging to a chieftain during the Qing Dynasty.

The fat man had sharp eyes and immediately recognized that there was something strange about the ship. Although it was indeed an antique, there were no signs of soil staining like those of burial objects. Moreover, the ship in the photo had a bottom, but there was no picture of the inside of the ship, as if it was deliberately hiding something.

Seeing that the other party's expression was not right, the fat man tried to trick him with words, and the man reluctantly revealed that it was actually two boats hooked together, with the middle and edges nailed shut. There seemed to be something in the middle of the cabin, and they didn't dare to sail it after transporting it out. They thought they would just sell it and be done with it. After saying that, he urged the fat man to take it, and said that if he was interested in it, they could cooperate for a long time.

The fat man was very suspicious. He vaguely sensed from the other person's words that the place where the two ships were found seemed to have more than just these two ships. Could it be a very large burial complex?

The fat man was very bold at the time, thinking that there must be treasure inside. He asked a few questions to get rid of the people first, and then went outside to inquire about the situation of the lama team. He learned that the team had actually disbanded. It was said that they had fallen into a dungeon somewhere and suffered heavy losses. Even the tips of chopsticks were broken off. Only one or two cats survived.

It seems that even if there were other boats in the tomb, no one dared to go down and grab the lama. From then on, the boat became a unique item, and ordinary antique dealers dared not buy it. He got a good deal.

A few days later, the man came to the door again, his face ashen as if he had just had a rectal prolapse in the outhouse. He was eager to get rid of the boat and offered a price two percentage points lower.

So the fat man stopped arguing, bought the boat, and left it in the warehouse he rented locally without paying any attention to it.

Later, I discovered that the seller had disappeared a few minutes after receiving the money, which made me suspicious. So I took the train there and found that the goods had indeed been delivered.

But that bastard lied. The two boats were not sealed at all. The middle of the boats had long been cracked, and a grayish-blue corpse hand with fingernails like bird claws was sticking out of the gap.

Now the fat man realized he'd been tricked and was in big trouble.

He didn't dare touch anything inside the ship. He sealed the warehouse and returned to the capital, not knowing what to do next.

He was holding back his anger, and after drinking too much, he couldn't control his mouth, and the matter gradually spread.

Before long, someone came knocking on the door, specifically asking to buy the fat man's boat, offering an astronomical sum, and acting as if they were very powerful and influential.

The fat man didn't want to get into trouble, so he readily agreed and didn't care what the fat man was going to do, only telling him to get away quickly.

He thought that was the end of it, but after a long time, he suddenly received a sum of money, exactly as it was in the account. Out of curiosity, the fat man decided to go to the warehouse to take a look.

When they arrived, they found that the person had only taken the items, leaving behind a floor covered in white sand, a very unusual color.

When asked, the old man guarding the warehouse said that a large group of people came at night, dragged a truckload of iron chains, tied up the boat, and took it away.

The whole thing seemed to end there, and the fat man completely forgot about it, treating it as a windfall and a lesson learned for the future.

It wasn't until a series of events occurred that he realized what exactly he had sold.

After some time, people started buying up a type of fine sand that looked like salt, offering very high prices.

Suddenly, a climate of fear and unease arose, and a frenzy of panning for gold in the sand swept through various coin markets.

The fat man sensed with suspicion that the people who collected this sand were the same group who bought the boat. He didn't dare to ask too many questions, whether they had actually collected it or what the purpose of it was.

Until everything came to a close, no one knew which faction those people belonged to; the whole affair remained shrouded in mystery from beginning to end.

But the fat man still had a strong feeling that the disappearance of the boat seller must be related to the boat buyers, and that he had just luckily escaped disaster.

After the thought popped into his head, the fat man, fearing for his life, hid quietly for a while before gradually feeling relieved.

Good night and sleep well.