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

Chapter 562 White Vine Accompanying a Snake
It was just a sound, yet it seemed to be a call from the depths of a dark swamp, piercing through the fog and reaching the very core of one's being.

When Wu Xie turned around, the sound of the bell was like a bubble floating on the water, which burst and disappeared in an instant, leaving no trace.

Wu Xie felt a surge of excitement. Where did the sound from the copper bell come from? Could it be Mu Yu and the others?
As he was pondering, the wooden plank beneath his feet suddenly sank and then collapsed completely. This time, there was no cushioning whatsoever, and Wu Xie, along with the nameless skeleton inside the coffin, fell out through the crack in the bottom of the coffin.

The feeling of weightlessness came instantly, and in his haste, Wu Xie only had time to grab the vines at the bottom edge of the coffin, barely managing to hold himself up.

The rotten skeleton, felt, and various copper beads and pendants inside the coffin clattered and crashed down on him, then slid down like hailstones, affecting the many coffins below.

Wu Xie was so badly hit that he couldn't open his eyes. Instantly, his nose and face were filled with all sorts of strange, putrid smells that were hard to describe, making him feel like he had been cursed with bad luck.

In a moment of panic, he quickly hunched over, protecting his head with his elbows and keeping his mouth tightly shut, afraid that something dirty might fall into his mouth again, just like before.

A few moments later, the contents of the coffin were finally emptied. A faint sound of fragments colliding could still be heard from below. No one knew how deep it was or where the contents had gone.

Gradually, the faint sound faded away, and silence returned to the surroundings.

Wu Xie breathed a sigh of relief. When he looked up, he felt something hanging next to his ear. He turned his head and looked out of the corner of his eye and found that it was a very small bronze bell.

He was startled, fearing that it would also roll down, so he quickly shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head to clamp the copper bell between his fingers. He gripped it tightly with one hand and quickly released the vine with the other to grab the bell.

Upon closer inspection, he realized he was right; it was indeed an octagonal bronze bell, very similar in appearance to the two wooden fish he had previously worn on his wrist.

He wondered if what he had heard earlier was actually the sound of the burial bells inside the coffin.

But he soon discovered that it was a completely sealed, soundless dead bell, its surface covered with rust green, the thin copper walls almost rusted through, and when shaken, he could hear a rustling sound inside, as if insects were crawling.

Wu Xie was worried that there might really be bugs inside, so he didn't dare to crush it rashly.

He could only support himself with one hand for a short time; after just a short while, he felt an intense soreness in his shoulder and upper arm muscles.

Since it was a useless bell, Wu Xie simply put it back where it belonged, throwing it back into the coffin that had collapsed and only a few edges remained.

The small copper bell gently tapped against the coffin wall, but what echoed in my ears was a loud "boom," like a muffled thunderclap at my feet.

Wu Xie was startled and quickly grabbed the vines with both hands to steady himself. He looked down warily but found nothing.

In the darkness beneath his feet, which seemed capable of swallowing everything, he had a constant feeling that something was approaching him.

"Boom!"
With another sound, accompanied by the whistling of a heavy object falling through the air, a coffin within Wu Xie's line of sight trembled heavily.

Long, thin objects fell from the top, smashed through the coffin, and landed on the pale horizontal beam below, whereupon they drooped and remained motionless.

Wu Xie squinted and strained to see, and discovered that it seemed to be human-shaped, but it was a corpse.

"Holy crap!" Wu Xie's eyes widened in disbelief. Good heavens, good heavens, this is so embarrassing!!!
"Thump, thump..." Like dumplings being dropped into a pot, corpses fell one after another from above, the sounds of heavy objects crashing against the wooden coffin lid echoing continuously.

Seeing the falling corpse getting closer and closer, about to hit him, Wu Xie quickly climbed onto the nearest horizontal log, hugged the tree and curled up, his heart trembling, afraid that some careless thing might hit him.

Just as he feared, a bloodstained corpse crashed onto the crossbar Wu Xie was riding on. The white dust on the crossbar was shaken up like spores. The corpse was thrown in half at the waist, splitting into an "n" shape. Its arms and legs wobbled back and forth like a seesaw made of clay a few times before finally sliding off from the legs.

"?!" Wu Xie silently shrank back and moved his head back.

With a whoosh, another corpse swept through the air, so close that it almost brushed past Wu Xie face to face, the shockwave ruffling Wu Xie's messy hair like a gentle breeze.

The moment their faces met, Wu Xie froze, and it took his brain a full three seconds to slowly process the information—that bloodied and mangled face belonged to Fatty!
﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

Zhang Wuxun kicked away the dying man in front of him, casually flicked his knife, turned it around, and tucked it under his arm to wipe away the blood.

The white vines that had been clinging to the cave walls, waiting for a long time, suddenly moved, dragging away the corpses on the ground as nimbly as cleaners, and quickly disappearing into the dark snake path.

He tilted his head slightly to look at the two people locked in combat on the other side, his eyes flashing with a ferocious, beast-like light. "How many is this?"

Zhang Haike continued working, multitasking, and casually remarked, "Including the one I have in my hand, this is the thirty-third."

As soon as he finished speaking, he plunged the sharp blade in his hand into the heart of the person opposite him, and with a clockwise twist, thick blood gushed out, staining his hand.

The corpse fell to the ground, and Zhang Haike bent down to remove its mask.

Zhang Wuxun clicked his tongue in disgust, raised his knife and pushed aside the white vines that the dog, smelling the scent, was sneaking over to wrap itself around Zhang Haike. He said, "We can't drag this one. Drag that ugly one over there."

The white vine wrapped itself around the blade, sucking away the last bit of blood, and then, like a puppy, wiggled its tip ingratiatingly, making a hissing sound.

Zhang Wuxun, knife in hand, approached the corpse at Zhang Haike's feet and pointed the tip of the knife at the gushing blood from the wound. "Here, take it."

Several white vines surged up at once, wrapping the corpse tightly, lifting it up like an offering, and slowly disappearing into the darkness along the top of the snake path.

"Are there any outsiders who haven't died yet?" Zhang Wuxun asked, looking down at the thickest and most beautiful white vine that remained at his feet.

The white vine, which had been secretly climbing around Zhang Wuxun's ankle and up his leg, suddenly straightened up upon hearing the sound. It paused for a moment, tilting its vine tip in a very human-like manner, as if communicating with its other vine companions, before waving its tip.

“That’s it. These are all the Wang family members who slipped in from under the Ice Burial Cliff,” Zhang Wuxun said to Zhang Haike.

Despite having witnessed this scene many times, Zhang Haike still found it unbelievable and chuckled, "I'm quite curious how the brainwaves of these two species communicate with each other, and why it can understand what you're saying."

Zhang Wuxun lightly stroked the tip of the vine with his fingertips and said, "The ancestral tree was originally the symbiotic tree of snakes. After evolution, I possessed the same consciousness molecules as it."

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