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

Chapter 492 Star Chart Overlay
After listening to Zhang Haixing's words, Wu Xie nodded. Such an explanation seemed reasonable.

His constitution has always been unpredictable, and strange things happen to him. If Zhang Haixing's deduction is correct, it was just that the volcanic well was emitting gas at that time, which pushed the giant bone statue up, and as a result, it just so happened that his fishhook got caught on it.

"You said before that thing might be related to our future route. Why did you say that?" Wu Xie asked.

Zhang Haixing closed her eyes and pondered for a while, then took out a pencil and began to draw in her notebook.

Wu Xie peeked over and saw that she seemed to be scribbling messy lines on the paper. At first, he didn't notice anything strange, but the more he looked, the more familiar the pattern Zhang Haixing drew seemed.

Where exactly had he seen it before? He knew he had definitely seen this pattern before, or at least a part of it.

Zhang Haixing stopped drawing halfway through and handed the notebook to Wu Xie to look at. "I saw this pattern on the back of the giant bone statue. It looks like a totem or something, but unfortunately it has been rotten by the heat over the years, so the pattern is incomplete. It's pitch black underwater, and with the help of the faint mist from the bone statue, I can only see and remember this much."

Wu Xie looked at the paper from left to right, and the feeling of déjà vu grew stronger. Where had he seen this before?
Feng also came over to take a look and muttered to himself, "Since it's a river-suppressing stone, could the one on the giant bone statue be a totem related to the Khampa tribe?"

"The totem of the Khampa people?" Wu Xie murmured, then shook his head firmly. "No, I've seen the totem of the Khampa people before, it doesn't look like this."

"Oh, you're so naive." The fat man suddenly leaned close to Wu Xie's ear and whispered, "Do you remember when we were in Banna Ancient Building, we discovered the Zhang family's tattoos and the secret between Yinshan?"

After Fatty's prompting, Wu Xie subconsciously touched the Bodhi seed bracelet on his wrist, and a sudden flash of inspiration struck him. "I know!"

The others were puzzled, but Wu Xie directly asked Feng for the half of the incomplete star map, saying, "I know how to proceed from here."

Feng was skeptical, but seeing Wu Xie's determined expression, he thought for a moment and took out the star map anyway.

The fat man understood what he was going to do. Since there was too much dust on the floor, he laid out a sleeping bag beforehand.

Wu Xie placed the star map and the incomplete totem painting on his sleeping bag, and then used a pencil to draw lines on the star map, following the empty spaces inside the totem.

"Come and take a look." After a while, he put down his pen and beckoned Zhang Haixing and the others to come over.

Feng eagerly stepped forward, and upon seeing it, he froze, his voice trembling uncontrollably, "This...this is a scorpion!"

"To be precise, it was one-third of a scorpion," Wu Xie added.

The Zhang family and the Khampa people had a close relationship a thousand years ago, and their methods of hiding maps were remarkably similar.

Since the paper with the totem drawn on it was too small, Wu Xie simply enlarged the lines and copied them onto the star map. As an architecture student, enlarging the pattern proportionally according to the position of the stars was not a difficult task for him.

As he and the fat man had predicted, when the half-star map and the mysterious totem were superimposed, the missing part was exactly a part of a lotus-sitting scorpion.

No wonder he felt the pattern looked very familiar from the start.

Feng stared at the freshly made, half-crippled scorpion for a long time, but still couldn't figure out where the route Wu Xie had mentioned was. "So, what should we do next?"

Zhang Haixing also looked at Wu Xie, waiting for his answer.

“Look here.” Wu Xie pointed to the scorpion’s half-broken tail with a pencil, and traced a winding path upwards along the tail. He said, “The canyon we passed through earlier is this tail. Just follow the lines of the pattern. However, there are some uncertain places along the way. I think we should be careful to avoid them, as they may be dangerous.”

Zhang Haixing pointed to the two forks at the end of the lines he drew and asked, "What does this mean? Could it be that there are two paths ahead?" Wu Xie nodded, "We don't have enough clues at hand, so I can't be sure which of these two paths is correct. We can only take it one step at a time."

Zhang Haixing looked at Wu Xie and said approvingly, "I didn't expect that the star charts that the people from Anjing Company had been studying for decades would be deciphered by you by some twist of fate. I really underestimated your abilities before."

Seeing that Feng's expression was somewhat embarrassed, Wu Xie quickly waved his hand, "It's all just a coincidence. If I hadn't seen this thing before, I wouldn't have been able to find the key to it so easily."

Zhang Haixing casually tucked the map into her arms and said, "It's getting late, everyone should get some rest. We'll set off early tomorrow morning." With that, she turned and crawled back into her sleeping bag.

Wu Xie and Fatty exchanged a few more words, then added some more charcoal to the fire in the stove before going to sleep.

Tonight it was Feng's turn to keep watch. After everyone's breathing gradually became even, and looking at the thin moonlight on the floor in front of the window, he finally took off his usual disguise. When he was expressionless, he looked like a robot with a programmed script.

After confirming that Wu Xie and the others were fast asleep, Feng tiptoed to the outside of the Lama Temple, lay down on the edge of the platform, and pulled out a silver metal briefcase from under the wooden planks. It was left behind by the previous team.

He carefully removed the instruments and equipment from inside, took out new batteries from his pocket and replaced them. Then, Feng put on his headphones and began sending coded messages to the reserve teams that would follow him into the mountains.

Inside a snow cave in the snowfield, Zhang Haike and his group were also resting.

Suddenly, the night watchman detected a signal with the same frequency as the previous two times and immediately woke Zhang Haike to report the situation to him.

“It was sent three times in total, and this time the ciphertext was longer,” Zhang Haiyuan said.

Zhang Haike took the note and translated the information based on the code they had previously deciphered.

[I know the next route. We need to overlay a star map to get the Scorpio pattern to guide us. Tomorrow I will go ahead with the person who will untie the bell. There is a river-suppressing stone in the lake, which may be the entrance to an ancient tomb. You guys try to find out more. Leave all other information at the usual place.]
"That old spy is quite capable; he actually managed to fool Bai Ci's eyes," Zhang Haiyuan said indignantly.

Zhang Haike chuckled, "I don't think so. Although Bai Ci is young, he is very shrewd. Even I sometimes fall for his tricks when I'm not careful. Don't underestimate him."

Zhang Haiyuan shrugged. "As the young chief of the Khampa tribe, he carries such an important responsibility on his shoulders, so he probably wouldn't dare to let his guard down against anyone."

"Oh, by the way, Uncle, should we intercept this message?" Zhang Haiyuan asked. In the last two times, in order to lure the enemy into the snow mountain, they had only silently monitored the coordinate information sent by Feng.

“You’ve already intercepted it, haven’t you?” Zhang Haike glanced at him sideways. “Acting first and reporting later, disorganized and undisciplined, deduct ten points.”

Zhang Haiyuan immediately groaned with a bitter face, her round, chubby face scrunched up, "Can you change it to deducting money? My score really can't be deducted any more, or I won't be able to pass this year."

The rest of the Zhang family members, who had been awakened by the noise, chuckled. One of them said, "Haiyuan, if you fail again this time, your graduation period will be extended, and you'll have to repeat a year."

Zhang Haiyuan tried to salvage her precarious score with an innocent and pitiful look.

“No discussion.” Zhang Haike refused coldly and ruthlessly. Seeing Zhang Haiyuan’s expression as if the sky was about to fall, he finally suppressed a smile and said, “However, if you perform well in this mission, it’s not impossible to give you extra points.”

Zhang Haiyuan immediately seemed to be injected with chicken blood, his face flushed, and he gave a cheeky two-finger salute, "Yes, mission accomplished!"

The Zhang family members, who were guarding the monitoring equipment, suddenly intercepted another signal and immediately told Zhang Haike, "That German is still transmitting information."

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