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

When Wu Xie mentioned Banna, Zhang Wuxun's eyes flickered slightly, but he didn't say anything more. The current time was not suitable for discussing anything extra.

Just thinking about how the fat man would react when he found out the truth sent a chill down Zhang Wuxun's spine.

He turned his neck slightly uncomfortably, then decisively changed the subject, "Judging from the current situation, there should be more relics of the life left by this 'Snake Worshiping Clan' ahead. I just don't know what secret connection there is between the Nine-Headed Serpent Cypress and the great serpent they worship."

Wu Xie hummed in agreement, not dwelling on it too much. Based on his past experience, even if the truth didn't come to him in person, it would leave him with suspicious clues after passing through countless hands.

The three of them shared a flashlight as they walked and looked around. The contents on the stone wall became increasingly rich, and large patches of mottled dark color began to appear.

“This seems to be a pilgrimage group,” Wu Xie said, pointing to the slightly clearer and more coherent gray-white blocks on the mural. “The clothing and accessories of these people already have the faint shadow of civilized society. Their clothes look very uniform, with beads and strings of accessories hanging on their upper bodies and long robes covering their lower bodies. It’s just that I can’t tell which civilization they are similar to.”

Zhang Wuxun understood the deeper meaning behind his words: that before the Gulan people migrated here, there was already an ancient civilization deep in the mountains that had been destroyed and was greatly affected by the meteorite.

The fat man in front hissed, seemingly having noticed something as well. "Strange, why are these little people covering their lower bodies with skirts? It's like they don't have feet, or their feet are buried in the ground? Don't they have legs?"

"What did you say?" Zhang Wuxun's eyes sharpened, and he immediately turned to look at the corner the fat man had pointed out.

The paintings in this section are located further forward, and the figures are larger. They also have more accessories than the smaller figures behind them, indicating a higher social status. Similarly, the mineral pigments used to paint the murals are deeper and more clearly visible to the naked eye.

Zhang Wuxun clearly saw that the robes covering the lower bodies of those adults seemed to be billowed by the wind as they walked, forming a straight, long strip without any trace of separation when they took a step.

"Boom, these are probably a bunch of living zombies." The fat man said in a deep voice, as if he made a lot of sense.

“Tail,” Zhang Wuxun said. “They don’t walk on legs, but on tails.”

"A tail?!" Wu Xie exclaimed in horror, instinctively asking, "What tail?"

"The snake's tail, there's a snake path below for them to walk on, water flows through it, and there are many evenly spaced stones." Zhang Wuxun narrowed the beam of his flashlight and focused it on a specific spot.

Wu Xie, who has always been very good at interpreting murals, continued Zhang Wuxun's words, "This should be a strange creature with a human body and a snake tail. It's unclear whether they were originally like this or mutated by the radiation from the meteorite. In any case, they seem to be on a journey, and they are going to a place through the snake path."

"They're definitely headed to the Snake Temple," the fat man reasonably questioned, then began to speculate wildly. "The snake spirit in Calabash Brothers looks like this. This thing is either something imagined by those little people below, or it's a regression to an ancestral form. Hmm, maybe their ancestors were actually descendants of Fuxi and Nuwa?"

"Why don't you just say they were made by throwing mud?" Wu Xie pouted.

The fat man argued confidently, "As the saying goes, fish seek fish, shrimp seek shrimp, and turtles seek turtles. There must be some shady relationship between these ancient people and snakes."

"Those little people worship snakes, could it be because they believe they are snakes themselves?" Wu Xie wondered, wanting to confirm some secret unique to the Zhang family with Zhang Wuxun, only to turn around and find that Zhang Wuxun had returned sometime earlier. "Wooden fish?"

Zhang Wuxun grunted, his voice carrying through the passageway in a somewhat ethereal way, "I might... possibly... have discovered something incredible."

Before Wu Xie could ask any further questions, Zhang Wuxun returned. In the dim light, his face looked somewhat subtle.

Wu Xie asked curiously, "What did you find out? Why do you look like that?"

“It’s not wrong to say it’s an offering; those people do have a kind of unbridled worship of snakes.” Zhang Wuxun paused, then continued, “But I suddenly realized that those people and the snakes around them seem to be one with each other, which is what is usually called symbiosis.”

“Companion?” Wu Xie was extremely surprised. After thinking about it carefully, he felt that there was a strange sense of rationality in the bizarre situation. “What about the human body and snake tail? Could it be like a human-faced bird, where the lower half of a person’s body is swallowed by a snake, but because it is covered by a robe, the connection is not clearly visible, so it creates this visual illusion?”

“They’ve been here before,” Zhang Wuxun murmured, a hint of excitement in his eyes. “The Zhang family has been here, and there are snakes in the ancient building, so when did the Zhang family ancestors start raising snakes…”

Perhaps, long, long ago, before the decision was made to establish the West, one of the Zhang family patriarchs had ventured deep into the underground of this place and discovered the secret of the snake-worshipping clan's symbiotic relationship with snakes from ten thousand years ago. Perhaps he even brought a snake out of here.

Zhang Haike said that Wang Zanghai once captured a large snake. Could that snake be related to the disintegration of the Zhang family?
Wang Zanghai stole the snake from the Zhang family and obtained many secrets through it, which is why he began to "hunt" the Zhang family. So where did the snake end up?

It certainly won't be in the hands of the current Wang family, otherwise why would those hyenas be so eager to cast their nets everywhere?

The secret of the snake, the secret of the white sand, the bronze gate, the octagonal bell, the clash between two ancient tribes, the secret sought by countless people—the secret is here, in the ancestral land!

“Let’s go. Zhang Haike knows far more than we do.” Zhang Wuxun smiled with relief. “If we find him, the things Xiao Ge left behind will be there too.”

Upon hearing the words, "Brother Xiao has been here before," Wu Xie and Fatty were instantly energized, their backaches and leg pains vanished, and they pressed on forward.

The rough passageway resembles a fossilized shed skin of a giant python, with its rows of narrow, winding tunnels.

When they came to their senses, the three of them were already standing in front of a cliff.

This is a natural cave more than ten times larger than the previous one. As far as the eye can see, the surrounding rock walls are covered with thick, rusty chains, which extend and intertwine like the tentacles of a monster.

The intertwined chains resembled an inverted giant tortoise shell, and the entire space seemed like a gigantic beehive, or perhaps a snake's nest. (End of Chapter)