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

Chapter 374 Ultraman Zhang
The large, black coffin was placed haphazardly at an angle, with many small tools lying around it, used for supporting, lifting, sliding, and carrying the coffin, seemingly for transporting it.

“Someone came here a long time ago,” Wu Xiaoxie analyzed. “It should be something left behind by the archaeological team from the late 1970s.”

The fat man circled the coffin, looking it over from all angles, and hissed, "This big coffin looks like it was carried here from somewhere. Could it be that they're planning to move this thing out of the ancient building?"

Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the coffin was placed upside down, with the lid tucked underneath. He cursed, "Damn it, I was wondering why I couldn't find the coffin seam. It was upside down! These bastards have no respect for people!"

Zhang Wuxun put the young man aside to sleep, walked to the coffin, squatted down to look at it, and then said, "No, they just moved this coffin from one place to make room for the coffin they brought themselves."

"You know?" Wu Xiaoxie asked, somewhat surprised. "Whose coffin is this?"

“They believe this is the coffin of the first Zhang Qiling,” Zhang Wuxun said calmly.

The coffin placed on the white marble coffin bed in the cave should be this one. Although the person buried inside is also Zhang Qiling, it is definitely not the first Zhang Qiling. However, his identity must also be special. He is very likely the Zhang Qiling who led his family to select the site and supervise the construction of this place.

As for where the first Zhang Qiling went, Zhang Wuxun felt it was related to the thing behind the corpse forest deeper below.

"What do they think? Making room?"

Wu Xiaoxie frowned, and after thinking carefully about what Tuo Jianzi had said earlier, he said, "You mean that the archaeological team that came here back then was looking for this coffin that is suspected to be the 'first generation Zhang Qiling', or that they were looking for the place where this coffin was placed."

"They want to move a coffin that doesn't belong to the Zhang family to this place."

Zhang Wuxun smiled faintly, "That's right, the archaeological team on the surface is actually a funeral procession."

"Then... what about the coffin? Have they already transported it to that place?" Wu Xiaoxie asked anxiously. He had a premonition that if he could see the coffin, all the most crucial clues and secrets would be connected.

“No.” Zhang Wuxun raised his hand and gently stroked the black coffin. “That coffin was intercepted by the second archaeological team. The funeral failed. Your third uncle knows where the body inside ended up.”

Wu Xiaoxie was startled. "My third uncle? Could he have been in the archaeological team back then?"

Zhang Wuxun nodded. "At first, your third uncle also belonged to the Chenqing faction, but he got away early and didn't participate in the funeral. The Zhang family member who was hiding in the mountains and ambushing us belonged to the passive faction in the team."

Wu Xiaoxie suddenly realized why the ghostly figure, the one with sloping shoulders, suddenly showed up after seeing him wearing his third uncle's face, acting as if he were an old acquaintance of his third uncle, and even asked him which side he was on now.

"But that guy with the sloping shoulders said he was also Zhang Qiling." He still has doubts about that person's words.

When did the name "Zhang Qiling" become something you can buy by the kilogram like cabbage?

So far, he has met four Zhang Qilings: one alive, two dead and in boxes, and one whose authenticity is unknown but who might be a big swindler.

When the ghostly figure revealed that he was also Zhang Qiling, his astonishment was no less than that of someone who had jumped off a cliff, done two somersaults, and then found himself standing on a cloud like Sun Wukong.

At that time, he used his invincible method of questioning to nervously extract a bunch of messy clues from the ghostly figure, but it seemed that Muyu knew even more than that.

After listening to Wu Xiaoxie mutter and recount his sharp exchange with the hunched shoulder, Zhang Wuxun chuckled, "He didn't lie to you about this. He is indeed Zhang Qiling, but only a Zhang Qiling in name only."

"Because in order to get the coffin here, it must be handled by Zhang Qiling. No one can change this process. This is the most crucial step. They were also afraid that if this step was missing, the subsequent events would become beyond their expectations. So they chose Zhang Qiling themselves."

"To put it bluntly, that deformed person is just a man-made fake," the fat man succinctly summarized.

Wu Xiaoxie let out a soft "Ah," and said, "So that's how it is."

The fat man stroked his chin, pondering, "What kind of important person is in that coffin that they would go to such lengths to send all nine sects to the funeral? And is this place some kind of special cultivation ground? What reason do they have for insisting on sending the coffin here?"

“Do you remember the photo your second uncle gave you?” Zhang Wuxun turned to look at Wu Xiaoxie. “That person is ostensibly a member of the organization, but in reality, he is one of ‘it’s’ people.”

"Chen Wenjin and his Chenqing faction initially belonged to the organization, but after the leader died, the team was secretly taken over by 'it'. What 'it' wanted was never to transport the coffin, but to use the guise of transporting the coffin to obtain the deepest secret that the Zhang family had been hiding all along."

After realizing this, Chen Wenjin and his group began to resist. Their first step was to cooperate with Master Xie Jiu to rescue Xiao Ge from the sanatorium. The second step was to find out the reason and truth behind "it" doing all this.

However, it is clear that Chen Wenjin and his team failed, and they became "its" test subjects.

"Is that 'it' the person planted in the Huo family?" Wu Xiaoxie asked.

Zhang Wuxun's tone remained indifferent, "That's only a part of 'it,' a very small part."

Wu Xiaoxie was increasingly confused. Judging from what Chen Wenjin had said, it seemed that "it" could hide in the crowd when it was chasing them. But Muyu seemed to mean that "it" included not only those people, but also other things within its scope.

Zhang Wuxun patted him on the shoulder and comforted him, "Alright, don't worry about these things. These things are too far away for us right now. All we need to do now is get Xiao Ge out of here successfully, and that will be enough."

Wu Xiaoxie took a deep breath, clearing his mind of all his jumbled thoughts. "You're right, let's go."

"So we're just going to leave this coffin here and not care?" The fat man was getting anxious as he watched Zhang Wuxun walk over, pick up the little brother, and carry him away.

"No way," Zhang Wuxun said irritably. "There's no need for that; it'll cause big trouble inside."

Upon hearing that there was big trouble, the fat man gave up, but he was still a little curious. "What big trouble? Could it be that the one inside has turned into a giant, century-old rice dumpling?"

But then I thought, if the Zhang family was this difficult to deal with when they were alive, wouldn't they be even more difficult to deal with after they died and turned into zombies? They might have evolved a suit of armor that makes them invulnerable to swords and spears. If they were released, that would be terrible!
"Goodbye, Mr. Ultraman Zhang." The fat man made a funny face and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

They quickly found the stone door hidden behind haphazardly placed wooden crates. The door, suspended from above, was carved with a beast's head. It was half-open, held aloft by a heavily rusted, precariously balanced jack that looked as if it might break at any moment. The three men led the young man through, and behind them was a small stone hall. On a stone platform facing them sat a very large burial coffin.

What's special is that this coffin is square, with roughly the same length and width. The patterns carved on the sides of the coffin are very simple, and the top of the coffin lid features a pair of phoenixes and dragons touching heads.

There are no epitaphs or other records, only four large seal characters engraved on the head of the coffin: “Azure Sea and Blue Sky”.

The fat man said, "This is a coffin for a husband and wife. You can tell that the Zhang couple were very loving and wanted to be buried together in the end."

Zhang Wuxun suddenly remembered the family genealogy inscription on the flip door they had seen when they came in. The two people at the very top were named Zhang Bihai and Zhang Biqing. He never expected that they would be buried here.

He wasn't sure which branch of the Zhang family, the one with the generational name "Bi," belonged to, but the young man seemed to be deep in thought at the time.

However, they didn't dwell on it and didn't disturb their predecessor who was sleeping inside. They walked around the coffin and went further back.

Pushing open the third stone door, they found themselves behind a staircase leading upwards. They quickly climbed up and discovered a three-story stone pagoda carved directly into the mountainside.

On either side of the entrance to the stone tower stood a stone beast, each as tall as a person, with a deer's head and a red forehead, two pairs of ram's horns of different lengths on each side, and covered in scales, standing there majestically.

The fat man immediately exclaimed, "Holy crap, what the hell is that? Is it a sika deer?"

On second thought, this doesn't make sense either. Where would a sika deer get such big wings? And this land animal has four claws. It looks really strange. This thing is a hybrid of two different things.

“This is Bai Ze. It has a deer's head, a horse's body, beast's feet, a fox's tail, wings, and ram's horns. It must be Bai Ze.” Wu Xiaoxie turned to Zhang Wuxun and said, “Hey Muyu, besides Qilin and Qiongqi, does anyone else in your Zhang family have Bai Ze tattooed on their body?”

Zhang Wuxun shook his head. "I don't know. I've never seen it before. It's very likely the tattoo symbol of Zhang Bihai's branch."

Then he told Wu Xiaoxie and the other person about the family genealogy they had seen in the auxiliary building.

"Bai Ze is an auspicious beast, there shouldn't be any danger behind us, shall we go?" The fat man gestured with his chin toward the wide-open tower gate.

Zhang Wuxun looked a little surprised. He carefully recalled the model of the ancient building in his mind, making sure he hadn't led them astray, and then nodded, "Let's go in and take a look."

The three-story stone pagoda appears to be just an outer shell on the outside, but inside it resembles an ancestral hall used for offering incense in an ancient temple.

Facing them was a bronze round cauldron with three animal legs, as thick as an oil drum. There was no gap between the cauldron's belly and the ground, and a thick layer of cinnabar-like powder had accumulated inside. They didn't know what it was, and they didn't dare to touch it.

The crisscrossing stone beams were covered with small wooden boxes, each with a wooden tag hanging from its bottom by a red silk thread, like a wind chime, extending all the way up to a high place.

Wu Xiaoxie shone the light upwards, "It seems that this is still a place where Tezuka's works are displayed."

Zhang Wuxun remained noncommittal and walked straight to the back of the bronze cauldron, where there was a mural extending from top to bottom, depicting a white Ze with a snow-white body, a red-crowned beast, and animal feet.

In fact, Bai Ze's appearance is somewhere between a Qilin and a Pixiu. Its body is covered with scales like a Qilin, and it has two opposite horns, but its four legs have beast claws similar to those of a Pixiu, which are completely different from the hooves of a Qilin.

Only when you get close and shine the light on it do you realize that the scales of the huge Bai Ze in the mural are all inlaid with half a white pearl that is round and shiny. The scales are arranged very closely and have a warm light yellow glow, just like dragon scales. Even the center of the flame on its forehead is inlaid with a red teardrop-shaped agate, which is beautiful and sacred.

The entire beast is depicted as if it is walking upwards along the peak of the Cangshan Mountain, leaving only a lonely and desolate silhouette for the viewers below, as it treks towards the black sea of ​​fire stretching in the upper left corner of the mural.

"Where is it going?" Before he knew it, Wu Xiaoxie was standing next to him, looking up at the mural together, muttering to himself, "Could this black fire be the hellfire that Wang Zanghai mentioned in the Snake-Eyebrow Bronze Fish?"

“It’s heading deeper into the snow-capped mountains,” Zhang Wuxun said softly. “Not Changbai Mountain, but another snow-capped mountain.”

Wu Xiaoxie turned to look at him, and in an instant, he felt that sense of distance, like distant mountains and deep mist, reappear around Muyu.

Zhang Wuxun didn't say anything more. He turned around, put the young man down, and walked back to the mural. He stared at the beads for a while, then reached out and touched them.

The instant he reached out and approached, Wu Xiaoxie clearly saw something like very fine white dust spontaneously disperse from the mural and spread around.

He wanted to take a closer look, but Zhang Wuxun frowned, turned to the side to block the direction from which the white dust was spreading, and pushed him back with his other hand, "Stand back a bit, there are bugs on it."

Wu Xiaoxie said "Oh" and quickly walked to the back row to stand with the fat man.

Zhang Wuxun turned around and took an empty can from the fat man's backpack. He used the can to scoop out a handful of red powder from the bronze cauldron, then carried the half-can of powder to the mural. He placed the can in the center against the wall, asked the fat man for a cigarette, lit the cotton filter end, and placed it directly into the powder.

The fat man shook the cigarette pack; there were two cigarettes left. He asked if they should light the remaining two as well, saying, "If you're offering incense, you have to light all three together, right?"

Zhang Wuxun raised an eyebrow, confidently saying, "It's not about offering incense. You'll see."

He then walked over to Wu Xiaoxie and the others, reminded them to hold their breath, and waited quietly for a few seconds.

A series of clicking sounds echoed from the mountain wall, like a metal spoon striking a glass, the sound spreading from the bottom of the mural to the top.

Then they saw that the white mural in front of them suddenly changed color, as if it had passed through fog.

The Bai Ze, which originally had its head facing left, suddenly transformed into a crimson fire-treading Qilin with its head facing right.

Thank you to [Dessert Shop Manager], [Huahua Guolai], and other generous donors! Sending love and goodnight~
[Take a look at the series of pictures about Zhangjia Ancient Building pinned to the top of the author's post.]

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(End of this chapter)