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

Chapter 471 The Mysterious Stele
The fat man, panting heavily, wiped the water from his face that was blurring his vision.

He shouted excitedly, "I brought the wooden fish out!", but unexpectedly met the sorrowful and grief-stricken eyes of Wu Xie and Xiao Ge.

The fat man froze, an indescribable despair welling up inside him. He turned to look at what he was holding in his hand, in disbelief.

It was indeed a person, but it wasn't Muyu; it was Panma, who had been dead for a long time.

Panma's face, speckled with corpse spots, had begun to decompose, decaying rapidly from his facial features until it melted into transparent water in no time.

The fat man stared at his empty palm, a flash of silver scales passing through it, and the veins under his skin bulged. His vision began to blur, and gradually, Wu Xie and the others in front of him were obscured by the mist and disappeared.

How many times has this happened?

He can't remember, and he'll forget it soon.

The clear, ringing bells were soothing, and he felt really tired and wanted to fall asleep, but something in his mind was preventing him from drifting off, as if he would lose something very important to him if he fell asleep.

His eyelids drooped uncontrollably. The fat man felt as if he had forgotten many things. Why was he here? He had indeed forgotten some things after all.

The fat man slapped himself twice hard, howling in pain. The pain brought him back to his senses a little.

In a daze, through the misty fog, he saw an enormous, ghostly black shadow before him, towering into the clouds, its surface dark and deep, engraved with countless strange, incantation-like characters. It was as if a stone tablet had suddenly fallen from the sky.

The fat man stood at the foot of the monument, looking as small as an ant standing at the feet of a giant.

He cursed inwardly. Although he couldn't understand the bizarre situation, he still tried to stare at the words, wanting to memorize as much as possible so he could write it down for Tianzhen later and have him recognize what it said.

But those tadpole-like characters seemed to move. Whenever his attention was focused on a small area, the characters there would start to twist and dance, making him dizzy.

The fat man cursed angrily and reached out to pin the guy down, but he missed and fell flat on his face.

He didn't feel his forehead being hit. When he looked up, he found that the stone tablet had moved back a few inches on its own, just in time to avoid the fat man who had fallen.

"How strange! Is this stele still alive?"

At this moment, the fat man was like the newly appointed stable boy in the Heavenly Court, curious and amused by the strangeness in front of him. However, he did not lose his temper or get angry. Instead, he began to wonder if he was dreaming.

But those two slaps really landed on his face, and his cheeks still hurt. If this was a dream, it felt too real.

He stared intently at the stone tablet for a few moments, his mind racing as he considered how to proceed. He still relied on his most familiar method of enumeration to eliminate the impossible.

First: Let's assume this is a dream, but a dream that's too realistic is actually a manifestation of falsehood.

Second: Assuming this is a hallucination, where does this hallucination come from, why does it occur, and for some reason, he always feels as if a piece of his brain has been hollowed out.

Third: Suppose that he was tricked by someone. This point can be combined with the second point. He was tricked at some point and thus had hallucinations, which were manifested in the form of dreams.

His way of thinking has always been simple. When he encounters something he can't understand, he first doubts the rationality of everything. To put it bluntly, he feels that someone is playing him. If it's not a person, then it must be a ghost playing him.

The current situation is impossible in reality, which is very unreasonable. Therefore, the dream is false, the illusion is false, and only being schemed against is real.

Having figured out the trick, the fat man flew into a rage. "Which bastard is playing tricks on you, Fatty, behind your back?"

I wonder how Tianzhen is doing now. If she's infected, then they'll definitely be infected together.

Who is plotting against them? Could it be those shady Zhang family members again?

He didn't believe that those simple-minded Germans who advocated using wealth and violence to crush people could possess such profound and ingenious tricks passed down from China over five thousand years.

Having understood the scheme behind it, the fat man felt much more at ease. Now that he knew he had been tricked, things would be much easier.

He first shouted and cursed a few times, but after his mouth was dry from cursing, he calmed himself down, took a few quick steps forward, and before the stone tablet could react, he closed his eyes and plunged into the dark stone tablet.

He felt many rain-like things rapidly passing by his body. When he opened his eyes, he found himself surrounded by a hazy, spotted fog. The fog was very moist and felt cool as it floated over his face.

The fat man looked around. He should have entered the black stone tablet now, but the illusion had not been broken. However, his mind was now completely clear.

Since he was able to squeeze into the heavy stone without any hindrance, it meant that the thing was not a solid object. Coupled with the misty, rain-like sensation on his skin, he suspected that it was actually a kind of rainbow-like phantom.

It could be a natural phenomenon caused by the refraction and total reflection of light, like a mirage, or it could be something like a projector of consciousness, where someone outside the dream is deliberately guiding him to see this thing, similar to the legendary "ghostly blindness," where the 'ghost' wants him to see something, and he sees it.

But none of that mattered. The fat man stepped off the stone tablet and stared intently at the massive building that was right in front of him. He then realized that the words on it weren't words at all, but rather a strange and elaborate pattern.

"Damn it," the fat man muttered.

It's unclear what mechanism this sentence triggered, but the scene before them suddenly began to tremble and collapse in a short while, leaving only a small patch of ground beneath the fat man's feet.

The stone tablet disappeared at the same time as the earthquake, and a narrow staircase leading straight into the distance appeared where it had been. The fat man didn't care about anything else and hurriedly ran up the staircase. The staircase behind him was also collapsing continuously and getting closer and closer.

The fat man turned around and was so shocked his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "Damn it! Damn it!"

The stairs collapsed very quickly, and the fat man dared not delay for a moment. He ran at his fastest speed ever, but in the end, he still couldn't escape a section because the steps in front of him also began to collapse.

With the finish line in sight, just a second before the collapse came close to his feet, the fat man leaped and landed on the platform at the end of the stairs.

He had already made a grab, but in the vast space there were only him and the stone platform he was holding onto. There was nothing to put his footing on, and his palms kept slipping due to sweat. Finally, his trembling arms could no longer support his heavy body.

With a mournful cry, the fat man fell into the endless abyss below.

The nightmare ends here—

The fat man, awakened by the sound of the bell, barely twitched his eyelids before his head lolled to the side and he fell asleep again. When he awoke from his deep sleep, all he remembered was witnessing the deaths of the two people he cared about most, and in the cycle of events, he tried countless times to stop Yun Cai and Mu Yu.

However, every time he thought he had successfully crossed that critical point, he would find that after taking a few more steps forward, he still could not avoid the deaths of the two of them.

Wu Xie offered a succinct critique: "Actually, it's not that you can't wake up, it's that you don't want to wake up."

The fat man smiled bitterly, "No wonder Muyu is so powerful, yet he still had to pay such a high price to change the ending."

"Do you know what can create eternity?" Wu Xie's voice was as soft as the snowflakes slowly falling outside the window.

The fat man looked bewildered and asked, "What is that?"

Wu Xie scrambled the characters for "wooden fish" made of peanuts on the table and sighed deeply.

"It's an end, and once it ends, it's forever."

……

The day before his departure, Zhang Wuxun came to the courtyard one last time to sweep the snow.

The sky was as clear as blue jade, and amidst the endless white snow, only that person's fiery red Tibetan robe stood tall in the vast snowstorm. In the desolate white landscape, there was only a trace of warmth.

The sound of the lamas chanting sutras was like an ethereal and distant lament. The biting wind blew from the distant snow-capped mountains. Although the place blocked by the temple walls was cold, it was not too lonely because of the company of others.

Gently brushing the snow off his Tibetan robe, Zhang Wuxun tied the last pure white hada (ceremonial scarf) to the stone statue. Then he sat down beside the statue, gazing at the three snowmen sitting quietly by the chessboard, lost in thought. His pale face was almost transparent in the candlelight.

Dan walked to the entrance of the courtyard corridor and silently looked at the few dark figures in the courtyard.

He recalled the first time he saw Zhang Wuxun in the temple. The man was covered in blood, his breathing was weak, and he was as fragile as a dying butterfly with broken wings, yet his eyes were as bright and clear as glass beads in the night.

But at that time, the person's eyes were empty; their eye sockets contained only a pair of beautiful beads, black and white, but nothing could be held inside them.

Dan didn't understand Rengolawa's insistence at the time; he just felt that this person couldn't be saved. There were usually people on the snow mountain whose souls had been taken away by Qiongmigo, and such people would eventually lose their minds and die.

But Rengolawa could tell that the reason he was still clinging to life was because he was thinking about something, but no one knew what he was thinking about.

Later, his body gradually recovered, but nothing changed. Lord Lawa said that his soul was just imprisoned in a certain place in his body. Time goes by, and one day the mountains and rivers will be still, and the afterglow of the setting sun will shine in.

Dan thought that this living body might become Lord Lawa's longing, or it might be discarded after ten years when it is found to be useless. Lord Lawa always has a long patience.

But after returning to the Lama Temple, Dan clearly noticed that the man's soul had returned to his body. Had his longing finally come to fruition? Perhaps.

Only occasionally do I meet his gaze, shrouded in mist, and I still can't see through what he's thinking.

-

The majestic snow-capped mountains stretch for thousands of miles, with the snow line never ending. The howling wind carries a mournful cry from the depths of the soul, a cry that is hoarse and desperate.

It started snowing on the first evening of our trip into the mountains, but it wasn't heavy. The fierce winds were exhausting, and it took three days for them to finally stop, but the storm gradually intensified.

Zhang Wuxun and his group of five were all bundled up in thick windproof mountaineering clothing and wearing snow goggles, hurrying along the road while following the map.

Having previous experience climbing Changbai Mountain, and not having reached the most treacherous sections, the journey was challenging but not insurmountable.

It is now the fifth day since they entered the snow mountain. At their current pace, they still have at least a week to go before reaching their destination, the sacred Lake Umbhunath.

As evening approached, they found a cave in the cliff that was not covered by snow and offered some shelter from the wind, where they could rest.

Zhang Haixing assumed she was the team leader, raised her hand to signal everyone to wait outside, and went inside to check the situation herself.

Logically, such caves are likely to be inhabited by large snow mountain animals, but the traces they found within five meters of the entrance were all left a long time ago, at least more than half a month ago.

The wind is really strong tonight. Even if the tents we set up a few days ago are now secure, they will probably still be blown away by the gale in the middle of the night. It would be bad if someone got hurt. Getting injured on a snowy mountain can be fatal if you're not careful.

After Zhang Haixing went inside, she turned on her flashlight and soon stepped on a small mountain of rotting white bones on the ground.

She casually rummaged through the rubble and found some decayed animal bones with animal horns inside. Based on her experience, she judged that these should be the bones of a wild antelope. There were many sharp and rough bite marks on the bones, but she couldn't tell what kind of carnivorous beast had left them.

She picked up the walkie-talkie and called the people outside, "Feng, I found a lot of bones inside. They've been there for some time. Can you come in and help identify them?"

Feng himself is an associate professor of zoology. He has his own expertise. When he heard Zhang Haixing's call, he looked at Zhang Wuxun, who was leaning against the cave wall marking the map, as if seeking instructions. Among everyone present, Zhang Wuxun had the highest combat power, so Zhang Haixing's role as the leader was really just a figurehead.

Darkness falls quickly on the snow-capped mountain. In the blink of an eye, the snow line outside was already pitch black. Wu Xie was freezing and hung up a hand warmer, urging Fatty to light the smokeless stove with the materials to warm his hands.

Noticing Feng's gaze, Zhang Wuxun put the map back into his backpack and told Wu Xie and the other man, "You two be careful here, I'm going in to take a look."

The fat man patted the gun slung at his waist. "Don't worry, my marksmanship is top-notch."

Wu Xie nodded and tossed two pieces of dried ginger into the small pot of water that was boiling on the smokeless stove.

Zhang Wuxun walked out of the cave and set up several linked sentry guns around the cave about ten meters away. Then he returned to the cave and walked inside with Feng.

When they reached the pile of animal bones, Zhang Haixing's footprints had already gone further in; she probably couldn't wait and went ahead first.

Feng picked out a relatively intact piece of tibia and examined it under the light. "It is indeed the remains of an antelope, but the bite marks on it are a bit strange."

"What's strange?" Zhang Wuxun took it and examined it, running his fingertips over it a few times. "These marks don't seem to have been left by the same wild beast."

I've had such bad luck lately. A boil the size of a soybean grew in my nasal cavity, forcing me to go back to the hospital. The diagnosis was acute suppurative inflammation of the nasal vestibule hair follicle. It hurt so much I couldn't even breathe. I'm so upset (╥_╥).