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

Chapter 534 Bronze Dragon Turtle
"Hey guys," the fat man knocked on the hard stone door and interjected, "this isn't the time to discuss how awesome your ancestors were and how many tomb doors they built for the King of Hell."

"The key question right now is whether we should go in, and how we should go in," the fat man said rationally.

Everyone came to their senses and stared at the heavy stone door in front of them in silence for a long time. Zhang Haike tried to explore the surroundings again, but to no avail.

“We definitely have to go in.” Zhang Haike took a step back. “I need to know what’s going on inside.”

"Then let's blow it up," Zhang Wuxun reluctantly echoed his words.

The fat man rubbed his hands together happily, "I'm an expert at this, let me do it?"

No one objected. Explosives were indeed Fatty's specialty. Zhang Haike handed him a not-too-powerful grenade and told him to test its effectiveness first, lest he use too much force at once and cause the tomb passage to collapse, which would be disastrous.

Zhang Wuxun and his two companions hid in the side room opposite. A minute later, they saw the fat man, with his arms tucked into a fist-shaped position, dart in.

Then a loud bang was heard, and the stone slabs beneath their feet shook three times. Dust from all corners of the room suddenly spewed out like goldfish fighting for bread.

After the tremors subsided, they went outside and saw that the fat man had cleverly placed the mine in the right corner of the stone door, creating a gap that was slightly larger than three times the size of a dog hole.

Zhang Haike was the first to eagerly squeeze in, lit a tinderbox, and his eyes immediately met those of a huge, round, green beast head.

"Damn it!" Zhang Haike's body tensed up instantly, his hand already on the other gun behind his waist.

After a few seconds, he came to his senses and realized that it was an inanimate object that had been frozen in place. Only then did he go to check the surrounding environment.

Before him was a pool of water. The light from the tinderbox was not bright enough; Zhang Haike could only see about two meters ahead. He arrived right in front of the bronze beast standing near the edge of the pool.

There is still water in the pool, but it is unknown whether it was there before or whether rainwater seeped in from the cracks in the rocks above.

Zhang Haike scooped up a handful of water and looked at it. It was fairly clear, but there was also algae that had been rotting along the edge of the pool for a long time. The algae, which were black, green and white, floated along the edge and were covered with tiny bubbles. When stirred, they floated on the surface of the water like tiny insects.

The bronze beast lay quietly in the water, its surface covered with rust spots formed by damp oxidation. Close to the water's surface, a dense cluster of freshwater shellfish grew, resembling fiery red acorns or pomegranate seeds, with palm-width blood lines, crowding together in a way that made one's scalp tingle.

"What's inside?" Wu Xie was the second to peek in, wanting to ask Zhang Haike if he had found anything.

He stood up and looked up, and immediately saw the huge bronze beast head two meters in front of him. He was startled and exclaimed, "What is this? The Zhang family built a bronze beast here."

Zhang Wuxun and Fatty came in after them, turning on their even brighter high-powered flashlights to illuminate the area behind the beast's head, thus revealing the entire bronze beast to everyone.

It is a single, unified body with a dragon's head, a tortoise's body, covered in scales, and with deer antlers and a qilin's tail—this is a bixi, also called baxia or guifu.

Bixi, also known as the dragon turtle, is the sixth son of the dragon and is an auspicious beast. Legend has it that Bixi helped Yu the Great to move mountains and dig ditches to dredge waterways when he was controlling the floods.

After successfully controlling the floods, Yu the Great had the achievements of Bixi inscribed on a huge stone tablet and had it carry it on its back, thus highlighting its outstanding accomplishments.

Therefore, when ancient people erected steles and wrote biographies for emperors and sages after their deaths, they often used the image of a bixi (a mythical tortoise) to carve the base of the stele, so as to support the base of the stele, symbolizing longevity and the supremacy of imperial power.

Generally speaking, in Feng Shui, the Bixi is a pure Yang mythical beast, which has the ability to ward off evil spirits, resolve conflicts, and bring wealth to the home. Its tortoise tail bestows blessings, its dragon head eliminates misfortune, and its carapace is engraved with the Hetu and Luoshu, making it an extremely auspicious mythical beast.

Wu Xie took the lead in wading into the water to observe, and analyzed as he walked in circles: "This is a mythical beast carrying a stele statue from the Han region. The carving is obviously also the work of the Han people, very exquisite, but the carving technique is very unrestrained and free. Obviously, this is not a work that must be rigorous."

The water reached up to half of Wu Xie's chest, and the bronze tortoise was submerged all the way to its abdominal shell, with the part above the water estimated to be three or four meters high.

From a distance, the scales on the surface of the tortoise shell have many patterns that look like some kind of writing.

Wu Xie wanted to get closer to take a closer look, but he didn't expect that the bottom of the pool near the Bixi was not flat. After taking a step, he immediately felt something was wrong, but it was too late to pull his leg back.

Suddenly, a bumpy stone slab under his foot flipped and sank. Wu Xie exclaimed "Holy crap!" and stumbled into the water, which submerged him headfirst. Caught off guard, he choked on several mouthfuls of dirty water.

After finally managing to get up, I discovered that the ball of my left foot was stuck in a hole in a crevice in the rocks.

Wu Xie spat out the mud in his mouth, wiped the algae water off his face, cursed his bad luck, and was about to pull his leg out when he suddenly heard a "sizzling" friction sound coming from above his head. The sound was not loud, but it was terrifying.

He looked up abruptly, and his expression immediately changed drastically.

For some reason, the thick shell on the back of the bixi, which is nearly three meters wide, began to slip off at this moment!
"Damn it!" Wu Xie cursed inwardly. They were all in the water, so why was he so unlucky?

Wu Xie was extremely anxious and tried desperately to pull his leg out, but as if things weren't going to go wrong, his foot seemed to be caught in an octopus's suckers, and the more he pulled, the deeper he sank.

Seeing that the turtle shell was about to slip to the edge, Wu Xie hurriedly took a deep breath and dived into the water to grope for his shoelaces, hoping to escape.

Several rapid splashing sounds came from behind him. Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the water, shouting, "You're going to fall in! Hurry up!" Wu Xie coughed and kicked his legs, yelling, "My feet... my fucking feet are stuck!"

Upon hearing this, Zhang Wuxun quickly bent down and dived into the water. He squinted and saw a black, bucket-sized unidentified object in the murky water, biting Wu Xie's foot tightly.

He immediately drew his sword and slashed, the blade striking the metal object with a clang.

Zhang Wuxun realized that this thing was also a bronze object, and it was very likely the mechanism that caused the tortoise shell to slip off, meaning that this object could move.

He immediately grabbed the two corners of the thing with both hands and tried to twist and pull it, and actually managed to pull the head that was biting Wu Xie off.

Wu Xie felt a sudden loosening of his foot, followed by a heavy weight on it. Before he could think, he was swept away by Zhang Wuxun, who had just emerged from the water.

With a loud crash, the tortoise shell, like a tribulation bell to subdue demons, slammed heavily onto the spot where the two had just stood, carrying an overwhelming force.

Wu Xie belatedly turned around and saw the pool water behind him splashing up several feet high, heading straight for the top of the cave.

The echo was powerful, and the waves surged, only gradually subsiding after a dozen or so breaths.

After everything fell silent, the fat man splashed over and shoved Zhang Wuxun and the other man over the head, yelling, "You two troublesome little bastards! That stone slab is about to fall, and you're still dawdling in the water! Don't you want to die?!"

The side chamber was large and dark. Fatty and Zhang Haike were on the other side of the tortoise, a little far away. They had only seen Zhang Wuxun rush into the water, and then the tortoise shell slammed down on them. Fatty was so scared that his heart almost exploded. Fortunately, the two of them managed to escape at the last moment.

The fat man still feels lingering fear just thinking about it, and he slapped Wu Xie hard on the back twice more, saying, "You troublesome brat."

"You fucking... ugh... scolding... your grandson..." Wu Xie gagged as he was slapped. The pool water looked clear, but it actually smelled bad.

Zhang Wuxun silently took Wu Xie's arm, "Let's go, let's go up first and see what was stuck on you just now."

Once Wu Xie had caught his breath, he was helped to the shore by the two men, as if he were an empress dowager ascending the throne, limping all the way with his left leg.

The fat man then noticed that something was wrong with him. "What happened to your leg? Did you just bump it?"

"Hehe, what do you think?" Wu Xie sat on the edge of the pool with a gloomy face, raising his left leg.

At the same time, he stared at the fat man with a set of skillful, resentful eyes, trying to make the fat man feel guilty for what he had just done.

The fat bird ignored him, but pointed at Wu Xie's foot in surprise, exclaimed "Eh!" and called out, "Little turtle!"

Wu Xie's vision went black, and for a moment he had the illusion that his lifespan had been shortened by a few seconds.

A muffled laugh, suppressed in his throat, came from the side. Wu Xie glared at him and saw that it was Zhang Haike.

Zhang Haike was also holding a miniature tortoise figurine in his hand, which looked cute. He said he had found it in the corner of the pool.

The fat man glanced at the small one, then at the large, shell-less tortoise in the pond, and exclaimed, "So this was a turtle's den after all."

Zhang Wuxun made Wu Xie take off his shoes himself before taking them out of the beast's mouth.

Fortunately, the boots were sturdy and tightly tied, so Wu Xie only twisted his ankle and was otherwise unharmed.

“What’s holding you back is also the Bixi,” Zhang Wuxun said to Wu Xie, studying the disassembled bronze beast head.

The most obvious difference between the Bixi and the tortoise is that the Bixi has a row of teeth, while the tortoise's mouth is similar to a bird's beak, with only a pair of sharp beaks used to tear food.

So the question comes back to the beginning: why are there so many bixi here?

Wu Xie took the ornament from Zhang Haike's hand, looked at it, and said, "This is also something made by Han craftsmen, and it's very casual. It looks like it was carved casually to pass the time."

The jars they had seen outside were all of Han Dynasty specifications, and all the details here are clearly related to the Central Plains.

"Is there any direct connection between these bixi (mythical tortoises) and the Zhang family's construction of the bronze gate?" Wu Xie asked, puzzled.

“You’ll find out if you go and see it.”

Zhang Wuxun threw the beast head back into the water and turned to walk towards the large bronze tortoise statue in the water.

I can sit here, letting the wind and snow freeze me in place. There will never be another person in this world who can use death as a romantic ingredient, and so naturally. — *The Grave Robbers' Chronicles: The Other Shore*