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

Chapter 467 The End of Memories
(This chapter concludes the recollections of the ancient city of Sizhou. The sequel to "The Flower in the Sea of ​​Tibet" will begin tomorrow.)

Zhang Haike took out a pair of horse-leg shears from his package, wedged them into the hole, and asked, "How many inches should I leave?"

The child had already taken off his coat, revealing his entire arm, and said in a stern voice with a serious face, "At most, one palm."

After saying that, he put his hand into the hole and began to grope around.

Everyone held their breath and dared not speak. This was an extremely dangerous move. If anything unusual happened in the hole and affected the Zhang family's child, Zhang Haike would immediately press down the horse-leg shears and cut off the child's hand to save his life.

This is a very wise strategy of sacrificing a pawn to save the chariot.

But after exploring for a while, nothing dangerous happened.

"How is it?" Zhang Haike asked him softly.

"Wait a minute."

The child shook his head, then frowned and reached his entire arm into the hole. He touched something, and his expression changed several times. He immediately pulled his arm back, pulled something out of the hole, and threw it on the ground.

Upon closer inspection, everyone realized it was a blackened hand bone covered in dark green mud, and the inside of the wall appeared very damp.

"There are corpses inside?" someone exclaimed in surprise.

The child looked unwell and said, "Take another look."

Zhang Haike picked up the hand bone and found that the joints were still very flexible. What surprised him even more was that the index and middle fingers of the hand bone were both half a joint longer than expected.

These are the hands of the Zhang family!

Everyone was extremely surprised. They never expected that a member of the Zhang family had died here before them. The exquisitely crafted trapdoor outside must also have been the work of the Zhang family.

What else is inside?

"And this, in the corpse's arms." The child opened his palm, revealing an unidentified object covered in dark green mud.

"What is this?" Zhang Haike put away the scissors and took out a water bag. "Let's wash it and see."

After rinsing it with water, they discovered it was a pocket watch, very old and worn, with a broken, rusty chain hanging from it.

Zhang Haike shook off the water stains, turned the pocket watch over, and saw a qilin embossed on the green rust-covered steel cover.

The group frowned. Every child in the Zhang family knew what the Qilin meant to them. This was no coincidence. Before them, a member of the Zhang family had been here and died unexpectedly.

The front cover was also rusted and stuck to the dial. Zhang Haike scraped around it with a small blade, then inserted the tip of the blade and pried it open with force.

The hands inside had long since stopped, and there was a black and white photo pasted on the inside of the watch cover. It was of a strange man, very young, looking no more than twenty-five years old.

"What does the corpse you're talking about look like?" someone nearby asked.

The child answered, "Sitting against the wall, with my face facing inward."

"That's good." The child who had just asked the question said with some relief, "It means he wasn't sealed alive inside."

"What a load of crap!" Zhang Haike cursed, then said coldly, "He was not only sealed inside alive, but when he was sealed, he wasn't the only one inside. Something was chasing him from behind, so he sat with his back against the wall, completely despondent, and was sealed inside."

"Then what do we do? Should we still open the wall?" someone asked.

The treasures hanging on the card above were enough for them to divide equally and hand over the goods.

"Open!" Zhang Haike put the pocket watch into his magic bag. "The people who died here are from the Zhang family. Even if we can't figure out the cause of their deaths, we still have to bring their Tezuka back."

According to the Zhang family's ancestral precepts, whenever the remains of a member of the Zhang family are encountered outside, a way must be found to bring their remains back, and Zhang Qiling will eventually escort them back to their home.

The others nodded in agreement.

Destruction is always more efficient than construction, and in just ten minutes they had opened a gap large enough for their size to pass through.

Zhang Haike and his group filed in with torches, but once inside, they found that the situation was completely different from what they had imagined.

First, there was mud. Behind the brick wall was a large stone hall filled with mud. The four walls were carved with many murals, but they had fallen off and decayed to the point of being illegible.

The mud pit had only one very sloping edge around it, just wide enough to walk on, and the corpse was sitting on the stone edge at the entrance.

When they came in, they pushed the body, and a series of bodies followed, falling into the mud. There were many more bodies like that in the mud pit.

The group carefully walked around the edge of the mud pit, but found no other way to pass through.

Someone asked in surprise, "What's going on? Is it sealed off like the outside world?"

Zhang Haike said, "This pool should be funnel-shaped. You see, the people on the edge are submerged in mud, while those in the middle have their upper bodies submerged."

"Furthermore, I think there should be an opening leading to other places below this mud."

The corpses in the mud were all wearing goggles and things to protect their mouths and noses. Even if there was no opening below, they must have been retrieving something from inside. But Zhang Haike was more inclined to believe that there was a passage below.

A child used a pickaxe to stir the mud a few times and pulled out a long, green thing that was almost completely rotten. "It looked like a rope."

He pulled it towards himself again, and one of the corpses in the pool moved a few times. He exclaimed, "The rope is tied to these corpses."

"It seems we were wrong earlier. This opening wasn't sealed off by people outside, but rather by those inside who, for some reason, had no choice but to seal themselves off here. The traces of the seal are still there," Zhang Haike said.

Someone chimed in, "You mean there's something strange in this mud, and the Zhang family didn't want it to crawl out and harm people, so they sacrificed themselves?"

Zhang Haike sneered, "I've never thought of people in our line of work as being so noble. The fact that there are bricks on the ground outside means that when the terrible thing happened, the people inside were constantly trying to block it. The people outside probably didn't know what was happening inside and kept trying to dig in."

Everyone tensed up at once. How terrifying must that thing be to kill so many members of the Zhang family at once!
Someone asked, "We don't know how many more Zhang family members' remains are here, and there are other things in the mud. How are we going to get them out, one by one, by pulling them up?"

Zhang Haike waved his hand and said, "Don't rush. I've suddenly discovered something even more terrifying than the possibility of danger in the mud."

Everyone looked at him with suspicion. Zhang Haike took a deep breath, took out the pocket watch again, opened the cover, and showed everyone the photo inside. "Do you know who this person is?"

Everyone shook their heads. If someone could carry a pocket watch engraved with a Qilin, they must be a member of the Zhang family.

But with so many family members, the only people they saw each day besides the elders who tested their teaching and a few close relatives were mostly just vaguely familiar faces.

Zhang Haike lowered his voice, "This man is the kid's father. I met him when I was a child."

"What?!" Everyone was shocked. Suddenly, they remembered that the little devil had been following them when they came down, and they immediately turned around to look for the little devil.

A flash of firelight caught Zhang Haike off guard, revealing a pale little face at the cave entrance. His heart nearly stopped, and everyone fell silent instantly.

The young man stood quietly where they had just entered, looking at them.

After a long standoff, Zhang Haike finally spoke, "You arranged for us to come here, why?"

He suddenly remembered that all the clues along the way were provided by this kid, but before that, none of them had noticed anything wrong.

They were immediately filled with fear and shuddered at the thought that such a young age could possess such deep cunning.

Zhang Haike quickly calmed down. The only exit was occupied by this brat. The slope beneath their feet was very steep, and they could slip and fall if they were not careful. They also had no idea whether there were any deadly moves in the mud. Therefore, they could not act rashly now and had to figure out what this brat wanted to do.

The young man countered, "Do you know how these people died here?"

Zhang Haike and his companions exchanged glances. Someone immediately pulled a body out of the mud using a rope, only to find that the head was tilted to one side. With a gentle twist, they easily severed the head. Zhang Haike and his group instantly understood what was happening. They then examined several other bodies; all had their necks severed, and their bodies bore many obvious signs of struggle.

These people were murdered in the Zhang family’s usual way of killing people, meaning they were killed here by other members of the Zhang family!
This is a scene of internal strife within the Zhang family!

Their hands, holding the corpse, trembled uncontrollably. They had all heard about the internal strife within the family, but they never imagined it would happen in this very place.

So how did this brat find out?
"Are you investigating the cause of your father's death?" Zhang Haike asked him.

The young man shook his head and silently watched them.

Zhang Haike gritted his teeth and continued to speculate, "Your father was murdered here by our fathers? So you lured us here to take revenge?"

The young man shook his head again, "I have no idea who your father is. The father you think I am is not actually my father."

"?" Zhang Haike and the others exchanged bewildered glances. "Then why did you lure us here?"

The young man looked at Zhang Haike and said, "I was there when all of this happened back then."

Zhang Haike subconsciously wanted to ask something, but just as the words were about to spill out, he suddenly realized what he was doing and immediately shut his mouth.

"I want to come down to this place," the young man said calmly. "But I'm still too young, and there are many things I can't do, so I need your help."

"What are you doing here? What's down in this mud pit?" Zhang Haike asked.

What I'm about to do is none of your business.

The young man explained, “Beneath this mud pit, there are spiderweb-like passageways, all filled with silt. But each passageway connects to various rooms where you can rest and breathe fresh air. Some of these rooms have many things you need. Use the equipment from these dead people to advance through four or five rooms, and you can complete the test.”

"Once you get the items, leave here immediately, or things might change."

"And what about you?" Zhang Haike felt a sense of unease.

"I have to go very deep into the area," the young man said.

Zhang Haike vaguely realized what had been strange about him earlier, "Where exactly is this place?"

"It's a long story. This is the site of the ancient city of Sizhou," the young man told them simply. "There are at least four layers of rock beneath our feet, and we are only on the first layer."

"The Zhang family has been running this ancient city. Back then, it was buried and disappeared by a flood. So there are too many good things inside. What I want is in the deepest part."

Zhang Haike couldn't understand how a child so young could remain calm in the face of so many corpses of his own family members. Even the others were still somewhat unable to process the scene before them.

After learning more about the situation, he realized how much suffering a child must endure to calmly face the darkness and loneliness of living among corpses, because this child, deliberately destroyed by those people, had no idea what loneliness was.

Although Zhang Haike no longer dared to underestimate him, he couldn't help but worry when he saw his thin frame. "Don't you need any help?"

“You can’t help me.” The young man slowly walked in from the cave entrance, looked at them and said, “I lived here for a long time, and you don’t know anything about this place.”

“Take the things and go back as soon as possible. If the Zhang family finds out you’ve come here, you’ll be in big trouble. Even your parents won’t be able to protect you.”

Before anyone could react or ask any questions, the young man jumped into the mud and tumbled in.

A few bubbles rose from the mud, fluttered around a few times, and the little noise from when the young man jumped in quickly disappeared without a trace. Zhang Haike and the others looked at each other in bewilderment once again.

"What should we do?" After a long pause, someone finally spoke up. "Is what that kid said true?"

"Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. In short, I don't want this wild release to fail," another person chimed in.

"Are you really going to listen to him?" someone said indignantly. "Why should we listen to him? There must be even more precious treasures deeper in the valley. The time for letting the animals roam freely is about to end. I don't want to lose to this little brat. We've already lost face enough. Anyway, I can't swallow this insult."

The air fell silent again. The man looked left and right, cursed "coward," then grabbed the equipment from the dead man next to him, put it on, and plunged into the mud.

Seeing this, the others no longer hesitated and quickly packed their gear before jumping down.

Zhang Haike couldn't stop them in time, and the key point is that even if he did, no one would listen.

His bad feeling grew stronger, but he had no choice but to jump into the mud with the other children and struggle to dive down.

They swam through the mud for about three minutes following the corpse tied to the rope, then crawled out of a well, but there was no sign of the young man.

The group had no time to pay attention to their surroundings and hurriedly followed the small muddy footprints on the ground. They saw two holes under a collapsed wall, one large and one small. They couldn't squeeze into the smaller one no matter what.

"It looks like that kid went into the small hole. No wonder he said only he could go in," someone said.

The opening was secured by bluestone slabs, making it impossible to widen. With no other option, they had to crawl into the larger opening.

They couldn't understand why a Zhang family child who was too young would be allowed to work in the tomb. Sending such a young child to the fields was a violation of clan rules.

They thought the two cave entrances would lead to the same place, but they didn't. After walking for a long time, they realized they had gotten separated from the guy.

At the same time, Zhang Haike and the others also noticed something unusual about their bodies.

Unbeknownst to them, everyone had developed an unidentified red rash that was incredibly itchy. One child, in particular, was so badly affected that he collapsed to the ground and began to convulse.

Zhang Haike hurriedly gave him some egg whites to induce vomiting, and found that there were very small things wriggling in the vomited muddy green water.

Upon closer inspection, he discovered that they were actually countless tiny leech eggs, encased in a white, translucent egg membrane, as densely packed as sesame seeds inside a broken dumpling.

Zhang Haike examined his skin closely, and suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. Underneath the thin layer of his skin, there were countless tiny bumps that were trembling and crawling all over his body.

He used a dagger to prick the skin, and with swift reflexes, pulled out what was inside—it was indeed a leech.

These leeches are several times more troublesome than ordinary leeches. Common treatment methods are completely ineffective and may even encourage the leeches to burrow deeper into the body.

When Zhang Haike saw the remains of the three Zhang family children lying around the bend ahead, he suddenly understood what the young man meant when he said that he had lived here for a long time.

That little brat, and these Zhang family children who are all under ten years old, are all orphans of the Zhang family.

In this dark and sunless underground city, they were forced to become tools for those adults to draw blood to avoid danger.

-

Zhang Haike felt a little thirsty and paused for a moment.

Wu Xie was engrossed in listening, so he quickly poured him a cup of tea and asked, "And then, how did you guys survive?"

Zhang Haike finished his drink in one gulp, then poured himself another cup before saying, "Later we realized that only that child's blood could help us get rid of the leeches on our bodies, but we didn't know where he was. In order to lure him out, we started to sabotage the second floor."

"You can probably guess what happened next. We brought explosives, and the ancient city's structure is very unstable. If he doesn't want to give up his goal, he will definitely come back to stop us."

However, reality is always cruel. After the ancient city was flooded, the local government not only did not excavate it, but instead built a lake and a dam on the site of the ancient city and poured a large amount of mercury into the silt above the ancient city to seal it off. This behavior was very strange.

Some speculate that the sudden flood that struck the ancient city was not a natural disaster, but rather someone's attempt to bury some secret within the city forever.

Above the mercury was a layer of rammed earth that completely surrounded the area. Zhang Haike and his men were completely unaware of this at the time. After a barrage of bombardments deep underground, they destroyed the structural balance of the ancient city, causing a large area of ​​the city to collapse.

The soil covering it cracked, causing mercury vapor to leak out and poison all the crops in the area.

The young man had already obtained what he wanted and left the ancient city when he discovered this situation. He knew that Zhang Haike and the others had encountered trouble down there, which led to the story about the Scorpion Tomb that Jin Wantang later told.

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