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

Chapter 466 Confusing the real with the fake
Once the mechanism has finished operating, the disc will return to its original balance.

In other words, the mechanism can be triggered as many times as there are iron balls on the disc, and each trigger is random with no discernible pattern.

So, this tomb chamber contains at least a hundred hidden mechanisms of varying sizes?!

Zhang Haike had been hanging there for a long time when someone nearby grew impatient and hurriedly asked him, "What kind of mechanism is it? Do you recognize it?"

“It’s a variation of the eighteen-stringed instrument, just much more complicated,” Zhang Haike asked the two people beside him if they could hold on for a little longer.

After receiving an affirmative answer, he took a deep breath to the side, held it, lit the tinderbox again, took out a magnet from his treasure bag, carefully twisted the few threads on it between two fingers, and placed the magnet on the disc.

Instantly, all the small iron beads were attracted to the magnet and fixed in place, unable to move.

But the magnet could not be removed no matter what. Zhang Haike didn't care and flipped off the steel cable, landing lightly on the ground next to the bronze horse.

The moment he landed, he saw the disc instantly sense the vibration and tilt slightly in the direction of his feet. However, since all the iron balls on it were attracted and could not roll, nothing unexpected happened.

After waiting for a while and seeing that nothing had happened, they breathed a sigh of relief.

Someone said, "That kid made it sound so terrifying, but it turns out it's really easy."

Zhang Haike remained noncommittal, but was fortunate that he had once met an old gentleman who had specially created a mechanism with seventy-two strings to demonstrate the function of the eighteen-stringed instrument. Although he was not used to dealing with such mechanisms, he had at least learned the basics. Fortunately, luck had prevailed, and he had made the right bet.

After the group removed and stored the steel cable, they prepared to continue exploring the tomb. Someone asked if they should call the guy upstairs down.

"Why call him?" the man who had said it was easy said unhappily. "He can't do anything. He's so small, and we have to take care of him. He never says anything nice."

"Let him stay up there. Let's finish our work quickly and efficiently before calling him. Considering he helped with the digging of the tunnel, we'll share some of the good stuff we find with him as a reward."

Zhang Haike thought about it and then agreed.

It wasn't that he thought the young man was a burden, but rather that the ancient tomb was extremely complex. The first mechanism alone was so ingenious, and the subsequent ones would probably be even more difficult. It would be good to leave someone up there to keep an eye on things.

It was the first time anyone had ever seen a real "eighteen-string" mechanism, and they were all quite amazed by the intricate threads inside.

Someone looked around in the direction the silk thread extended, and suddenly realized something, "How could there possibly be so much space here?"

"What?" Zhang Haike didn't understand what he meant at first.

The man continued, "Assuming each thread here is connected to a mechanism, the space here simply cannot hide hundreds of mechanisms. Even if they were crammed together densely, they wouldn't be particularly powerful mechanisms. At the very least, the activation mechanism would have to take up half the space. Therefore, there simply cannot be that many mechanisms here."

Zhang Haike immediately realized that the other person was right and asked, "What do you think?"

“I think these hundreds of threads are likely triggering the same mechanism, but when the threads are triggered, only a small part of this huge mechanism is activated, and it’s different each time,” the man said.

"You mean... a puppet?" Zhang Haike hesitated for a moment, then thought of a word that could describe it.

The man nodded. "That's exactly it. Different threads pull on different parts of the puppet, which explains the problem of insufficient space."

A child mentally simulated the triggering of a mechanism, and suddenly a large wooden puppet emerged from the wall, clumsily walking towards them while being pulled by strings. However, it got stuck halfway when the mechanism stopped after only a few steps.

What's the point of attacking them? By the time you get close enough to them, they'll have vanished.

"The mechanism hidden in the wall couldn't possibly be a puppet, could it? That would be ridiculous," the child said.

The child who had spoken earlier rolled his eyes upon hearing this. "I was just using a metaphor."

"Oh, I see." The child scratched his ear. "If that's the case, then the mechanism this triggers might not be the kind of offensive mechanism we were thinking of."

The children present were all very clever, and they quickly figured it out. They had already checked that the tomb was completely sealed, and the only movable mechanism in the entire space was the bronze horse in front of them. Therefore, the new passage must be related to this bronze horse.

"We'll find out whether it's a mule or a horse once we dig it up and take it for a spin," Zhang Haike said.

Everyone agreed, but they didn't find any mechanisms or hubs where they initially dug, which meant that the mechanisms were hidden in the walls on either side or under their feet.

However, most of the interior structure of these places should be made of bluestone, a rock of such hardness that even if they had a week, they wouldn't be able to open it up.

Therefore, the only way is to trigger the mechanism here.

They've wasted too much time here; they need to make progress.

The group climbed out of the tomb chamber again and hid behind the tomb raider's tunnel. There they saw the young man squatting obediently at the corner.

It was clear that the young man had overheard their conversation. Although he hadn't said anything, they still felt a little embarrassed.

Zhang Haike first carefully fixed the tinder to the edge of the notch on the bronze horse's back, then used the back of his knife to knock a small piece off the blue brick on the ground. After grinding it on the ground until it was about the same size as the original small iron bead, he rolled over and climbed up as well.

By the dim light of the fire, Zhang Haike flicked his fingers and sent the brick ball flying into the bronze horse. After a series of soft knocking sounds, everyone held their breath and waited for the mechanism to activate.

The Zhang family members had excellent hearing and quickly picked up on a series of rustling sounds coming from inside the tomb. The sounds were so faint, like the rustling of clothing, that it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. An ordinary person would not have been able to hear such a sound.

Everyone listened more carefully, and after three to five seconds, suddenly, the entire tomb chamber shook violently, and the carving of the Nine Heavens Mystic Maiden on the floor began to tremble. The floor at the location of the Mystic Maiden's left eye slowly caved in downwards.

Zhang Haike quickly threw in a tinderbox. The light flashed by, and they could see that a dark, steep passage had appeared where the floor had sunk, looking like a deep well from above.

After waiting for a while, nothing else happened in the tomb. The group probed for a while and felt that there was really no great danger, so they entered the tomb again and went to the edge of the deep well. This time, the young man also silently followed them down.

Looking in from the edge, you can see that the passage is deep and strange. The first short section was obviously reinforced by later people with blue bricks, but further down it turns into yellow soil, and you can see many obvious marks of shovels digging.

This is a tomb raider's tunnel?! How is that possible? Such an ancient mechanism, why would it reveal a man-made tomb raider's tunnel after being activated?!

Zhang Haike peered inside and sniffed, then confirmed, "This cave was dug by our colleagues a long time ago. The air inside is death air, which means that this is the true starting point of the tomb."

The group of people were all dumbfounded at the same time. "They weren't poached from outside?"

“It shouldn’t be.” Zhang Haike shook his head. “It’s too deep down there. Besides, I suddenly have a clue about the unusual structure of this place we are in.”

“This is very likely not the tomb chamber at all, but a temporary outpost set up by tomb raiders to facilitate their future operations. There must be something extremely precious and important down here,” Zhang Haike said solemnly.

A temporary rest stop is a place built by tomb raiders near the entrance of a particularly difficult-to-enter ancient tomb in order to carry out their operations for an extended period of time.

For example, there might be a very abandoned little earthen temple in some deep mountains. If it is connected to a deep cave behind it, this little temple is actually built by those tomb raiders to deceive the local people.

They would stockpile food and equipment in the temporary camps and operate underground for extended periods.

Most temporary settlements are simple little houses, but some are as sturdy as fortresses.

However, the fact that such a meticulously crafted tomb is so realistic that it can be mistaken for an ancient tomb suggests that it would take more than ten or even several decades to excavate the tomb below, and it may even be passed down to two or three generations of descendants. The value of such a tomb may even exceed that of an ordinary royal tomb.

The more they thought about it, the more alarmed they became. If this really was just a temporary card, it could explain some of the inconsistencies.

But the temporary card is just a place to rest temporarily, so why hang so many things on it?
Moreover, it's not hard for them to see that these things are genuine antiques, and they were probably taken from the ancient tombs below and hung up by tomb raiders.

"Can I borrow your shoulder for a moment?" Zhang Haike called out to one of them.

The man instinctively tensed up, and Zhang Haike jumped up, stepping on his slightly bent thigh. He then quickly kicked the man's shoulder with his other foot to gain momentum, and the man soared into the air. He stretched out his arms and hugged the bronze bottle hanging on the top of the tomb, stopping on it.

The bronze bottle swayed violently like a chandelier for a while before gradually coming to a stop.

Zhang Haike realized something when he was wandering around earlier. He hurriedly took out a tinderbox from his treasure pouch, blew on it twice to reignite it, and then held it up to look at the connection between the tomb top and the thing. When he saw it, his expression turned grim.

He then looked at the joints of the coffin and the other hanging burial objects and found that they all had similar openings about the size of a bowl. He clamped the bronze bottle between his legs and released his other hand to feel what was inside the opening.

The contact surface has a smooth arc shape, meaning that the things hanging on it to hold the burial objects are iron balls that are just a little bit larger than the opening, so that they can fit inside without falling off when the burial objects sway.

Zhang Haike let go and jumped down, bending his knees slightly to absorb the impact. After standing up, he said seriously, "Everyone, this really is a temporary post station."

“Why did you make it look like this in Linkali? What did you see up there?” the others asked.

"Iron balls, all the chains are made of iron balls, and the hooks for hanging things are slipknots, plus springs made of steel bars. This not only holds things in place, but also absorbs shocks without affecting their movement," Zhang Haike replied.

"They had no choice but to make it look like this, like a simplified version of a seismograph. There's probably something big hidden under this tomb. Everything here is designed to cause vibrations, including that bronze horse."

"You mean they did this to prevent danger from below? So they could escape in time?" someone asked.

“That’s not all.” Zhang Haike tapped the ground with his toes. “Only when the tremors here are strong and frequent enough can the burial objects be hung up here, just like hammocks on a ship. Sailors can sleep in hammocks and won’t fall off no matter how much the ship rocks, so they can rest well. Similarly, this way the burial objects won’t be damaged during the tremors.”

Everyone listened to his words and seemed to be deep in thought.

One analyst said, "In other words, all the materials used to build this place were sourced locally. The bluestone slabs were too heavy, so they laid them on the ground and then used blue bricks to build the structure on top. Therefore, there must be a large ancient tomb under this temporary site, and it must be very large in scale."

"Not only is there a large tomb, but there's also a great danger below." Someone pointed out the obvious, putting a chill down the spine of the excited crowd. "Don't forget the bronze horse mechanism. It's placed here guarding the entrance. Whether it's to facilitate the escape of tomb raiders or to hide other entrances remains to be seen."

Indeed, there are more than just these threads inside the bronze horse, and it is very likely that the bluestone slabs in other parts of the mural could also sink down, revealing the passage underneath.

Zhang Haike nodded. "You're right. No matter what, we have to go down and take a look."

There was no need for further words; the crowd followed Zhang Haike and filed into the deep well.

He slid straight down, using his feet as brakes for a good four or five minutes, before finally hitting the bottom.

He whistled upwards, lit a tinderbox, and walked to the side. He found that this place really was like the bottom of a well. There was a curved wall, also built of blue bricks, with a hole in it, only the size of a fist.

After everyone slid down, Zhang Haike pointed to the small opening for them to see.

He had just thrown in a tinderbox, but it went out because he bumped into something.

"What's in here?" Someone held a tinderbox to the entrance of the hole to look inside, but unfortunately the hole was too small and the light couldn't reach further inside.

He couldn't help but scoff, "Who's going to see this hole? It's not even enough for peeping."

The others chuckled softly.

"Alright, stop joking around." Zhang Haike waved his hand. "If you put one hand in, who's next?"

Now no one could laugh anymore.

"That brat, but I'll do it."

Although the boy complained that the young man was a burden, or perhaps he underestimated the young man's abilities, he still stepped forward when things were truly dangerous.

Nobody knows what's inside; those who take action can only gamble with one hand.

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(End of this chapter)