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

Chapter 395 The Blind Man's Eyes
What happened next was exactly as Zhang Wuxun had imagined.

In his records, Ma Chongshan mentioned that the thin, abnormal bronze fox masked man explicitly told him that he had a way to restore Ma Chongshan to normal, but this method required the flesh and blood of his closest relatives to sustain him.

To prove his point, the man in the bronze fox mask took out a small stone box from his person, opened it, and inside, a white jade piece separated two spaces in the middle. On each side, a silkworm, about the thickness of a finger, lay quietly and motionless.

The larger silkworm's body was translucent red, like chalcedony, and it looked as if blood was about to drip from inside.

The smaller one was noticeably darker, closer to grayish-brown.

Ma Chongshan's eyes were stung by the red color, and his heart skipped a beat. He immediately thought of his younger brother, who was still sleeping in the cave. He hesitated for a moment and asked, "Can't I use my own blood to feed these silkworms?"

The shadowy figure's fox mask had a half-smile on it, and the narrow eyes behind the mask held a hint of mockery. "From the moment you brought him to Buzaraon, you had already made your choice."

"Now, either take your brother and get out of my territory immediately, or stay here and obey my orders, and I'll help you start a new life."

Ma Chongshan could tell that although they said that, they had no intention of letting people go. The reason they hadn't made a move was probably because they were worried about something.

He had no choice, and the initiative was not in his own hands.

"What do you want from me?" He knew very well that there was no such thing as a free lunch, and he needed to analyze more clues.

“It’s simple.” The bronze-masked man raised his bony fingers hidden beneath his robe and tapped them on the bell on Ma Chongshan’s earlobe. “I want this bell.”

For Ma Chongshan, who had already experienced what it felt like to be a useless person, the temptation of a new life was simply too great.

He agreed without much consideration. The Ma family had many offspring; it was just one brother. Although he felt somewhat guilty, he didn't think he was cold-blooded. He valued his own life more than anyone else's.

"What do I do?" he asked.

The man in the bronze mask chuckled sinisterly, then waved his hand to the side. Another man wearing a golden fox mask returned to the cave and quickly brought out the unconscious Ma Chongfeng.

After that, Ma Chongshan's eyes were also covered with a strip of cloth. He only heard the sound of a large mechanism opening, and then he felt himself being taken to a very dark and cold place, and he was still going down.

A dozen minutes later, the people stopped, and Ma Chongshan felt himself being laid flat on a rough, cold stone platform.

The blindfolds were removed, and the surroundings were bright. The people lit many torches and placed them around the stone platform.

After Ma Chongshan's eyes adjusted to the light, the first thing he saw was a huge disc directly above him, with five long chains hanging down from above, each with a hook at the end, gleaming with a sinister cold light.

There were figures moving around him, and he could only use his peripheral vision to judge what they were doing.

The fox-people stepped on each other's shoulders to form a human ladder under the disc, and then hung a relatively large object on the five iron hooks.

After those people jumped down, Ma Chongshan realized that what they had just hung up was actually his younger brother, Ma Chongfeng!
Moreover, it was done in the same way as slaughtering livestock. Ma Chongfeng was stripped naked, his jaw was removed, and iron hooks were driven into his flesh, hooking his bones and skin and hanging on them.

Several streaks of blood had already flowed from the open wound, winding down the iron hook and dripping onto Ma Chongshan's face.

He could see that Ma Chongfeng was still alive, and his head was still moving, but he didn't know what those people had done to him, and Ma Chongfeng showed no signs of waking up.

Ma Chongshan was horrified by the scene before him and screamed in terror, "What are you doing?"

No one answered his question. In the eyes of those fox-people, Ma Chongshan was not important at all. His existence was just an opportunity to complete the experiment, and they could find a replacement at any time.

Soon, someone came and stripped Ma Chongshan of his clothes, then locked him up and fixed him to a plate-shaped stone platform with edges.

The scene that followed was so cruel that words could not even begin to describe it. The man in the bronze mask, wearing gloves, carefully took the slightly smaller gray silkworm out of the box and then put it into Ma Chongfeng's mouth, which was hanging above.

Not long after the gray silkworm crawled in, Ma Chongfeng began to struggle. The blood vessels under his skin began to bulge, starting from his chest and quickly spreading throughout his body.

The countless subcutaneous capillaries surfaced, and scalding blood dripped down like raindrops, landing on Ma Chongshan's body. After sliding down his skin, it was collected by the stone slab beneath him.

Ma Chongshan was completely submerged in bright red blood, the thick blood almost drowning him.

The strong smell of blood, the trapped roar of Ma Chongfeng, the ghostly shadows in the firelight, the suppressed guilt and fear—all of these swept over his mind like a storm. The world spun around him, and he finally couldn't bear it any longer. His eyelids drooped, and he fainted.

During the time he was in a coma, although Ma Chongshan couldn't move his body, he could actually feel things, just like the experience of a person in a vegetative state. He could feel someone cut open his heart and put something cold inside.

His breathing stopped for a moment, but the blood in his body was still flowing. His heart had been replaced; something else had taken his place, directing his heartbeat and breathing.

Gradually, he felt the fluctuations in the blood vessels of his limbs. He tried to move his fingers, as if breaking through some kind of barrier, and all his senses about the outside world returned to him.

He returned to the same stone cave, where Ma Chongfeng's corpse, now reduced to half a skin, lay beside him.

The pale, bloodshot head was placed next to his head, pressed tightly against his scalp, as if intentionally embodying the brotherly affection between the two.

The bronze-masked man planted one of the female silkworm eggs produced by the mating of the two blood silkworms into Ma Chongshan's heart, and then gave the other female blood silkworm, which had formed a cocoon, and the remaining male silkworm eggs to Ma Chongshan.

The giant cocoon that Zhang Wuxun is seeing now is the same mother blood silkworm from back then. More than 30 years have passed, and it has grown to such a size!

The parchment also states that a single female silkworm egg can only maintain Ma Chongshan's mobility for one year.

Zhang Wuxun counted the large silkworm cocoons hanging in the wooden lattice on his fingers, "Two, four, six, eight..."

As he counted to the end, he gasped. Thirty-six. Subtracting the cocoon that Ma Chongshan had transformed into, there were a total of thirty-six large cocoons in the wooden cluster. Good heavens! Over the years, Ma Chongshan has taken the lives of thirty-six members of the Ma family!

This is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!
After Ma Chongshan regained his mobility, he burned the remaining piece of his younger brother's skin into ashes, put it into a small bottle, and returned to the Ma family with the antique.

He didn't tell anyone about the secret inside his body, and tried to avoid too much contact with people around him, locking himself in his room all day long.

He was afraid to let people know that he was a monster who didn't breathe properly and had no heartbeat.

The father thought that his younger brother's death had devastated him and he could no longer recover. After failing to persuade him, he eventually handed over the Ma family's business to his third son, Ma Chonghai, and Ma Chongshan became completely invisible in the Ma family.

Being invisible has its advantages. Ma Chongshan's actions can be more covert. Since then, the fox-masked man has come to see him every year, even helping him deal with the chosen members of the Ma family and clearing his tracks.

From then on, the Ma family began to decline. Fifteen years ago, Ma Chonghai passed away, and the few male members of the family were still young. Only then did the Ma family remember Ma Chongshan, who lived in a remote corner of the country.

Even though Ma Chongshan was hiding in his own courtyard, he was fully aware of the situation of the entire Ma family.

The ancient well in the backyard garden was built by him after he took over the Ma family, under the pretext of modifying the feng shui, specifically to store the silkworm cocoons that wrapped the skins of the Ma family members.

As for the so-called offense against the Brahmin nobles, this is just a rumor he spread to mislead the public. Every year, countless poor people are killed or even have their entire families wiped out for offending Nepalese nobles. No one cares whether the rumors are true or false.

What exactly did the Ma family dig up in the Scorpion Tomb? Did any of the items they unearthed end up in Nepal? The parchment book doesn't record anything.

Zhang Wuxun glanced at the young man leaning against his backpack, eyes closed, and hesitated for a moment before deciding not to ask.

Since Ma Chongshan has become a living dead, he doesn't need to eat. So the food he ate in front of Zhang Wuxun would become a burden on his body. No wonder he had to sneak out late at night.

Zhang Wuxun's previous guesses were not unfounded. The reason why Ma Chongshan suffered a backlash was probably because he secretly swallowed a male silkworm egg. When the male silkworm gu ate Ma Chongshan, it also swallowed the female silkworm egg in his body that was protecting him.

Ultimately, the cause of all this is nothing more than the dark selfishness of human nature, which is self-inflicted. The Tibetan in blue robes back then was right; Ma Chongshan was indeed using a pure and hypocritical facade to wrap a greedy soul.

However, the Wang family has been waiting for more than 30 years, so why did they rush to Nepal to silence them this time?

After a few moments of internal struggle, Zhang Wuxun chuckled to himself. It seemed his new face had already come in handy.

The stage has been set up. Once he goes to Motuo and meets up with Aning, the main character will take the stage, and the grand show on the snow mountain will be in full swing.

Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge waited underground for two days until the giant silkworm moth that Ma Chongshan had transformed into finally emerged from its cocoon.

First, one end of the cocoon gradually became moist, and tentacles as thick as a human arm trembled out. Then, a head covered in bristling gray hairs emerged, and the black compound eyes at the front, which were larger than a watermelon, looked terrifying.

Next came the forelegs, thorax, abdomen, and wings. It took more than an hour for the silkworm moth to finally climb to the edge of the wooden frame, its wings still wet.

Once the wings and downy hairs on its body were completely dry, the giant silkworm moth flapped its wings and, after several tentative attempts, actually managed to fly up, albeit unsteadily.

When its wings are fully spread, including its body, this silkworm moth is nearly three meters wide, much larger than one can imagine.

All the characteristics of a normal silkworm are magnified countless times in this one, giving one the feeling of facing a biohazard crisis.

Zhang Wuxun and Xiao Ge held their breath, hiding behind a pillar, and silently watched as the giant silkworm moth slowly flew to the larger cocoon.

Zhang Wuxun was wondering why the creature inside the huge silkworm cocoon wasn't coming out, but then he saw the giant silkworm moth use the same method, secreting a clear, watery liquid from its mouth, gradually wetting one end of the cocoon, then folding its wings, digging a hole with its forelegs, and crawling inside.

A commotion arose from the giant silkworm cocoon hanging above. After waiting another day, the male silkworm moth, having completed mating, emerged from the large cocoon. It then spun its last bit of white silk to seal the opening, and tremblingly flew back into its own cocoon, where it soon died of old age.

Zhang Wuxun was practically turning into a mushroom from waiting, when the guy on the other side finally started to move.

He asked Zhang Wu for a palm-sized white jade box, then climbed up the wooden pillar, approached the large cocoon, used a knife to make a new hole in the place where the male silkworm moth had bitten him, and then crawled straight inside.

Zhang Wuxun was dumbfounded by everyone below. What was going on? Was this guy going to have a cesarean section to retrieve his eggs?

He quickly ran over and climbed up the pillar, ready to provide timely support to the young man should a fight break out inside.

Less than two minutes later, the young man emerged from the large cocoon, holding a jade box in his hand, which seemed to contain something.

Thinking of what the young man had said before, "wait for it to lay eggs" and "it will be useful," Zhang Wuxun wondered to himself, "Could it be that when the young man went in just now, he put the two eggs laid by the mother blood silkworm into a box?"
What use would the Heavenly Longevity Silkworm be to the young man? This thing is so strange, the young man can't possibly risk a whole bunch of people to save one person.

As if noticing the confusion on Zhang Wuxun's face, the young man took the initiative to explain after returning to the ground: "This kind of Heavenly Longevity Silkworm Gu that has not yet been stained with blood is very rare. As a medicinal material, its most essential function is suppression."

"Suppression?" Zhang Wuxun was puzzled at first, then realized a possibility and exclaimed in surprise, "This thing works on that blind man?"

The young man put the jade box away and nodded. "It can't completely cure the problem, but it can slow it down."

Today, many of the Monpa people's witchcraft traditions have been lost, and perhaps this is truly the only place in the world where the mother blood Gu of the Heavenly Longevity Silkworm still exists.

Zhang Wuxun once asked the system if Hei Xiazi's eye disease was not only due to a mysterious family inheritance, but also due to some acquired reasons, such as something unclean pressing on his shoulder.

If that thing isn't dealt with, even the system's materialization capabilities can only delay its decay.

(End of this chapter)