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

The air fell silent for a moment.

"Believe it or not," the fat man looked at Wu Xie's face, "I think this is your corpse. You fucking died a terrible death."

Zhang Wuxun's eyes narrowed as he noticed the seven headless, mummified corpses lying on the large communal bed nearby. He immediately walked over, squatted down, and stared at them.

He saw many familiar details, some of which he had made himself.

Zhang Haike also composed himself, propped himself up on his knees, and looked closely at him. Feeling somewhat incredulous, he softly asked Zhang Wuxun, "Is it them?"

Zhang Wuxun picked up a mummified corpse's hand bone and showed it to him, "I broke it."

After saying this, he quickly turned around and looked up. Wu Xie stood behind him, one hand on his stomach, his eyes cold.

Zhang Wuxun stared intently into his eyes and suddenly realized that his gaze was somewhat like Zhang Qiling's, only it was an act.

"So, can anyone tell me what's going on?" Wu Xie's voice was unusually calm.

Zhang Wuxun didn't want to speak, so he just shook his head and turned back to continue examining the mummified corpse.

“It wasn’t me either,” Zhang Haike said firmly.

The fat man walked over, put his arm around Wu Xie's shoulder and patted him, then deliberately glanced at Zhang Haike with a suspicious look. "We definitely believe Mu Yu; he's not that bored. As for you, we might not be so sure."

Zhang Haike rolled his eyes at him. "Stop pretending. I don't believe you can't guess that it's someone else."

"Not many people know the location of the burial site, but it will eventually leak out. What we should be considering now is why they dug the body out of the ice and moved it all the way here."

Wu Xie stopped pretending, thought for a moment, and said, "A prank? To scare me? To intimidate me? Or to sow discord?"

On the other side, while searching for clues, Zhang Wuxun accidentally turned the mummified corpse over and saw that the clothes on the back of the corpse had a large hole, and that several thoracic vertebrae in the middle of the shoulder blades were broken.

These weren't the external injuries he sustained while hunting these "Wu Xie" figures; rather, they resembled...

To verify his suspicions, Zhang Wuxun called Dan over and together they turned all the mummies over one by one.

Sure enough, they had the same external injury marks on their backs.

It's very similar to the jade-like corpse inside the bronze gate. Something inside its body burst out from its back and ran away, or perhaps it was taken away by someone beforehand.

Zhang Wuxun stood up and made way for Wu Xie and the others to see.

Looking at those unique wound marks, Wu Xie reflexively touched his chest and then his back, but he didn't feel anything living thing about to burst out of his body.

After thinking about it, he figured that he might have Qilin Blood Dragonfly in his body, which was specifically designed to ward off evil spirits, so he felt somewhat relieved. But his heart was only half at ease before he immediately became anxious again, because the person in the mud was a genuine member of the Zhang family.

Wu Xie quickly turned around to take off his protective suit so that Zhang Wuxun could check his back to see if he had been parasitized.

"No, it won't happen," Zhang Wuxun reassured him. "I already checked it for you when you vomited up the bumps on the giant jellyfish's tentacles."

"What about you and Fatty?" Wu Xie asked, since Fatty, with his ordinary blood, was more dangerous.

Zhang Wuxun put his gloves back on and, as he had instructed, touched the fat man's back. "I don't feel anything, but after you go out, you and the fat man should go to the hospital for a thorough full-body checkup."

The fat man wasn't too worried. "Even if some kind of parasite entered my body from the mud, it would take several months to incubate. There's plenty of time."

Wu Xie thought it made sense, so he stopped worrying and turned to look at the other pile of bones.

Zhang Wuxun changed into a new pair of gloves and asked the fat man, "Where's the other corpse?"

The fat man was surprised that this hadn't fooled him. "How did you know there was another 'Innocent' here?"

Zhang Wuxun smiled faintly, "Without a 100% resemblance, you wouldn't say it's Wu Xie's corpse, but these mummies wouldn't be recognized as Wu Xie."

The fat man stuck a finger into the big black tree, then pulled open his protective suit and took out a stack of photos from his back pocket.

"This was found in the body's pocket," the fat man said. The man had been impaled by a tree, right above their heads.

Dan suggested that they go up and take a look, bring the body down, and then examine it carefully.

The rest of the people gathered around to look at the photos.

All the photos had turned yellow, but Fatty kept digging and pulled out a few bottles and a Nikon camera that had been released two years ago. Wu Xie usually paid some attention to photography in his spare time, so he recognized it as a relatively new Nikon D70.

This indicates that the owner of the camera evaded the surveillance of the Zhang family and Anjing Company and entered the depths of the snow-capped mountains between March of the year before last and June of last year.

Zhang Wuxun and Zhang Haike exchanged a quick glance, realizing they had overlooked someone. "These photos weren't taken with this camera," the fat man said. "These photos were taken a long, long time ago. This person somehow got hold of them, then took a new camera into the snow-capped mountains, intending to photograph something, but ended up dying here before achieving his goal."

"Look, there are the original owner's notes on the back of the photo."

The photo does look quite old; the image is a faded color, caused by color distortion due to oxidation, and there are many yellow spots on it, indicating that it was not properly preserved.

However, it doesn't affect the clarity of the content above; it's all about snow-capped mountains and Tibetan people, and the location of each photo is carefully written on the back.

"Filmed at the Seventh Pass." Something like that.

This must be a scene from the original owner's journey to this place. Looking down, a portrait soon appears: a Tibetan man and a very handsome young man in white. The young man in white is a Han Chinese. Turning the photo over, you can see the words "Laza and Yun'an" written on the back.

Laza must be the Tibetan, so the young man in white must be called Yun'an.

Behind them in the photo is a huge snow-capped mountain. It was obviously a souvenir before they entered the Daxue Dam. Wu Xie and his friends also recognized this snow-capped mountain, as it was the only way to reach Wenbu Gongga Lake.

The equipment was not visible in the photo, but the less equipment they carried, the larger the group must have been; their baggage must have been carried by their horses.

“There are many foreigners in the group.” Zhang Haike flipped through a small stack of photos that he had taken from Wu Xie. “There are Germans and Russians. There are only a few Han Chinese, and the photos are a bit blurry, so you can’t see their faces clearly.”

Suddenly, he paused in flipping through the photos, then pulled one out and placed it in front of everyone, saying, "This is it."

Wu Xie looked down and met the gaze of one of the three people in the photo, and immediately understood what Fatty meant.

It was a face he knew all too well. "It's my face," Wu Xie said.

After saying that, he looked up at Zhang Haike and muttered under his breath, "What a fucking bastard!"

Zhang Haike raised his eyelids slightly but said nothing.

The "Wu Xie" character stood with La Za and Yun An, with him in the middle of the three. Behind them was a stream, and many people were sitting on the rocks by the stream drinking water. Everyone was giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Their actions made them look like a typical tourist adventure team.

The back of the photo reads: Me and my two dearest friends.

These characters are all in the style of the Slender Gold Script. Since they are all written with a pen, it is impossible for them to be exactly the same.

The handwriting is also different from Wu Xie's.

"At least from Wu Xie's perspective, he has a very good relationship with this Laza and Yun'an."

"So naive and innocent, that's exactly you, Naïve." The fat man turned his head and stared intently at Wu Xie, his eyes a little strange. "Judging by the year of manufacture, Naïve, maybe you're the bootleg, while he's the original."

Wu Xie looked at Fatty and said, "Fatty, I can't take this kind of joke. You'd better say it again."

"Give me a break," the fat man said. "You're still being so dramatic at this point. Your third uncle's device is either a knock-off or the original, and you're using it just fine, aren't you?"

He then looked at Zhang Haike, wanting him to agree, "Right, high-quality replica?"

The fat man seemed to have gone crazy from being alone with a pile of corpses for too long; when he opened his mouth, he didn't spare anyone.

Zhang Wuxun silently moved to the tree, intending to go up and see what was going on, why Dan hadn't moved for so long.

Wu Xie, feeling slightly vulnerable after being struck in the chest by an arrow, pointed at Fatty and mouthed, "I hate you." Then, steer the conversation back to the main point, "It's known that two 'Wu Xie's' have appeared here before me, one old and one new. The photos were taken by the old 'Wu Xie.' So, who brought these fake Wu Xie's corpses here? Was it the new 'Wu Xie'?"

"The timing is wrong," Zhang Haike said.

He gave a brief explanation of why the timing didn't match up. Wu Xie concluded: "There was a ghost hiding in the shadows who had been spying on our movements. It placed these seven mummies here in advance. This is the only way to the snake mine."

“That means that ghost knows a lot about what will happen and what will happen along the way.” After saying that, the fat man pointed at Zhang Haike and said rudely, “What’s wrong with your Zhang family members? Why are they all so disobedient and turning into usurpers?”

Zhang Haike was speechless after being choked by his words.

Soon, Dan and Zhang Wuxun climbed down from the tree empty-handed. Facing the gazes of the crowd, they said, "The body is gone."

The fat man stood up abruptly, his face ashen. "What's going on? Could it be that the corpse-carrying ghost has been hiding here, eavesdropping on our conversation?"

“It doesn’t look like it.” Zhang Wuxun shook his head. “Although the body is gone, his head is still there, abandoned at the corner of the stone path inside.”

"I saw it. It was grabbed and violently twisted off by some non-human creature. The break was clean and rough, and the skin was twisted to pieces."

Clearly, this is not something an ordinary human could do. Even Zhang Haike and Dan, who have undergone special training, could at most use great force to snap all the cervical vertebrae and ligaments in one twist, but they couldn't simply twist off a corpse's head without using sharp instruments or the "tomb-splitting" technique. (End of Chapter)