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

Chapter 535 The Altar of the Bixi
The Zhang family wouldn't have carved so many bixi (mythical tortoises) in the side chamber for no reason.

Zhang Wuxun decided to go and see the large bronze tortoise with the mechanism tortoise shell on top, since it was the most special thing here.

"Be careful," Wu Xie warned from behind, "there might be other traps hidden nearby."

Zhang Wuxun casually waved his hand, then plunged into the water, swimming directly towards the bronze dragon turtle.

After what had just happened, the water in the pool was already murky and the underwater visibility was pitifully low.

Following his memory, Zhang Wuxun swam around the area where Wu Xie had triggered the mechanism and quickly found other similar beast heads. Including the beast head that Wu Xie had caught and taken away by his foot, he found a total of nine similar small Bixi statues around the bronze Bixi.

He tried it out briefly and found that the head of each tortoise could rotate. Fearing that he might accidentally trigger some other mechanism, he did not make any further moves.

After figuring out the underwater conditions, he swam towards the giant tortoise, grabbed one of its thick front legs that was crouching on the base, and climbed up in a few quick movements.

As Zhang Wuxun stood on the bixi's raised head and peered over its shell-less back, a stench of decay, extremely oily and depressing, assaulted his nostrils.

He never expected that the inside of the bixi's shell was hollow, filled with most of a cavity of yellowish-white solidified fat. The pungent smell of corpses came from this fat, mixed with a rancid smell, commonly known as stale oil.

Upon smelling it, Zhang Wuxun felt that it was even stronger than the stench of a corpse.

He raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose, suppressing the nausea he felt, and carefully examined the grease in the tortoise jar. Beneath the thick layer of solidified grease on top lay the real, murky corpse oil.

To prove his point, Zhang Wuxun inserted the tip of his dagger into the jar cavity, scraped off a bit of solidified black oil from the inner wall, and then took out a tinderbox to blow on it.

As the flame approached the tip of the knife, the small lump of oily skin ignited very smoothly and naturally.

The reason why humans feel fear, avoidance, and disgust when faced with the corpse of a fellow human who died an unnatural death is because the subconscious mind sounds an alarm, causing the individual to develop a sense of shared identity and crisis awareness towards the corpse in front of them.

At the same time, mutilated body parts are more likely to evoke a sense of shared vulnerability or empathy than intact bodies.

Even though Zhang Wuxun had harvested so many dog ​​lives that he couldn't count them on both hands, he still felt a sense of nausea and discomfort when faced with such a large jar of human corpse oil.

Zhang Wuxun inevitably felt resistant; he no longer wanted to figure out why the Zhang family would set up a large tortoise-shaped jar here specifically to hold corpse oil.

In fact, considering the connection between this corpse oil and the bronze door, he already had a fairly certain guess about its role.

So he decided to hand over this terrible thing, pot and pan, to Zhang Haike, who was dedicated to recording the deeds of Zhang's ancestors.

"Zhang Haike, come here." Zhang Wuxun straightened up and beckoned to Zhang Haike, without giving any further advice.

Upon hearing this, Zhang Haike raised his head and started walking in that direction. "What?"

Seeing this, Wu Xie and Fatty thought Zhang Wuxun had discovered something strange and directional, and were about to go over when Zhang Wuxun stopped them. "You two stay where you are, or walk a little further back."

"Okay, then." Wu Xie and Fatty exchanged a knowing glance and didn't insist.

Zhang Haike genuinely believed that Zhang Wuxun had discovered some crucial clue, so without thinking, he waded through the water and climbed onto the tortoise, asking him expectantly, "What's wrong? Did you find something?"

"Here, see for yourself."

Zhang Wuxun gave him an encouraging look, stuffed the dagger, which had been stained with oil, into his hand, and then jumped into the water without looking back, swimming after Wu Xie and the other man towards the back of the side chamber.

At first, Zhang Haike was confused, but when he saw clearly what the jar of stuff was, and looked up at Zhang Wuxun's relaxed back that even Er Kang couldn't beckon back with his hand, his silence was deafening.

He inevitably recalled the earthenware jars containing entrails he had seen outside, and combined with the current situation, deep questions arose in his mind.

Why did the Zhang family boil corpse oil here? What was their purpose in doing so? And where did they find the corpses to boil this corpse oil from?
There were also specially treated internal organs. Perhaps they underestimated this place; their owners had probably already integrated into this tortoise enclosure long ago.

Zhang Haike felt that Muyu's departure was so decisive, and he even tricked him a little before leaving, so he must have sensed something or made some connection.

He decided to stop worrying about it, wiped the dagger clean and put it away, then made a few notes in his notebook. After looking around and finding no other clues, he quickly climbed down from the bixi.

Wu Xie and his group waded into the water for more than ten meters, and then there were steps leading down, about four or five meters long. The water was up to their necks as they went down, and it got deeper and deeper as they went down. To avoid slipping again, they swam down.

Zhang Wuxun swam in front, and after swimming a distance, he threw a cold firework into the water, instantly revealing the scene underwater.

Under the flickering, white light of the cold flames, they saw many irregular, enormous shadows on the bottom of the water, resembling a jumble of stone slabs. However, the "stone slabs" reflected a faint purple glow under the firelight, suggesting they were some kind of special mineral.

Wu Xie held his breath and dived to the bottom of the water. He reached out and touched it. The cold and damp touch made him realize that this was probably the place the Zhang family had mentioned, where they smelted ores and made bronze doors.

The bronze plates underwater were completely corroded and rusted purple, layer upon layer.

He swam forward a bit, climbed onto a bronze plate, and stood up, his upper body above the water. He saw Zhang Wuxun standing in front of another bronze plate, looking solemn.

"Was the Bronze Gate built here?" Fatty asked, voicing what Wu Xie and Fatty were thinking.

Zhang Wuxun threw a few more cold fireworks into the water, illuminating the bottom of the pool as bright as day. More and larger bronze plates stretched out behind, where there were even larger shadows.

Those are all giant smelting equipment.

Wu Xie had already reached a conclusion. He said, "The copper was sourced locally. The rocks here contain a large amount of copper ore, and perhaps tin ore as well. They smelted bronze on the spot and cast it into these bronze plates."

Secrets are the source of all power, but secrets are also the source of all suffering. — *Tibetan Sea Flower*