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

“There are several lines of text here,” the fat man suddenly said, squinting as he peered closer at the lower right corner of the mural. “What does it say? I can’t read a single word.”

Wu Xie shook his head after just one glance, saying he couldn't understand it and that it looked somewhat like Tibetan script.

“This is ancient Tibetan script,” Dan, who had been silent all along, explained.

The fat man turned to look at him, exclaimed "Oh!" and laughed, "What a coincidence! That's why people say everyone has their own area of ​​expertise."

"What exactly does it say? Teacher Dan, could you translate it for us?" the fat man said, gesturing with his chin.

Dan read it carefully from beginning to end, and after a few seconds of deliberation, said: "This simply explains why the Ge Que and Qiong people want to eat the incarnation of the Queen Mother of the West. It says that the body of that incarnation was the flesh of a deity that fell to the mortal world from the plate when the Queen Mother of the West was entertaining the immortals at Yaochi. Eating it will grant you longevity."

The fat man smacked his lips and said, "Not as good as the peach pit of the stable boy."

"It's fake." The others scoffed.

Dan continued, "Although the claim is false, the effect is real. After consuming the incarnation, the lifespan of the Gequnqiong people was indeed extended, and their appearance was almost frozen at the time when they ate the flesh of the immortals."

"Later, a wandering Taoist priest came to this place, made a deal with the chief, and took the immortal meat. He led several Goguryeo and Qiang people to travel over mountains and rivers to present the immortal meat to the emperor at that time in exchange for wealth and status."

But their good fortune didn't last long. Six months after leaving their territory, the bodies of the Gokuqiang people underwent a strange transformation, gradually turning them into monsters devoid of human intelligence.

Just then, the warriors sent by the emperor to meet the sorcerer arrived, killed the monsters, and then arrested the sorcerer on charges of plotting regicide. They forced the sorcerer to lead the warriors to the territory of the Gouqiang people, and then led their men to wipe out this small tribe that was spreading sorcery.

"That's it?" The fat man felt utterly bored, as if he had just taken a sip of tea that had been brewed more than ten times, and even that it was left overnight.

Dan nodded. "Then it was just like what we saw in the murals."

So what exactly did the Goguryeo people create?

"Just looking at the so-called benefits and side effects of immortal flesh, it's somewhat like corpse beetle pills."

Wu Xie racked his brains and analyzed, "In the last thousand years, which should have been during the Northern Song Dynasty, alchemists dared to openly offer the art of immortality, which means that the emperor at that time must have been extremely obsessed with alchemy and the like, and the people below followed suit."

With that, everyone knew which emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty he was referring to.

And that samurai who made a stunning entrance—his skills and behavior were utterly bizarre.

"Could that warrior be a member of the Zhang family in disguise?" Wu Xie rubbed his stomach, feeling like he had discovered a blind spot.

The fat man broke off a piece of food for him and mumbled, "Chew, chew, chew... that must be it."

The Zhang family's spies intercepted the alchemist's message to the emperor. They wouldn't allow any secrets about immortality to be exposed to those in power, so they ambushed and killed the alchemist along with the Ge Que and Qiang Qiong people.

Zhang Wuxun clapped his hands to bring everyone's attention back.

"Our next goal is to find the cave depicted in the mural. Everyone, let's rest here for now. Zhang Haike and I will look for the mechanism first."

"It's time to take a break." The fat man broke off another piece of individual rations and stuffed it into Zhang Wuxun's hand. "Here's a wooden fish, have a bite to tide you over. I'll cook you a big meal."

Wu Xie deftly took out the beef sauce and pickled vegetables and arranged them, while also prying open three cans of meat.

Dan picked up the dried corpses that were rolling on the ground and stacked them up one by one. The two fat men took out a smokeless stove and set up a pot to cook noodles in the space he had cleared.

Zhang Wuxun and Zhang Haike carefully examined the mural left by the Zhang family from top to bottom, and soon they discovered something strange.

The foot of the Qilin that suppressed the Ghost Eye made a slightly unusual sound when struck. Zhang Wuxun carefully felt around with his fingertips for a while, then took out his dagger and made a shallow cut along the crack in the stone brick. Soon, he pried up a small brick the size of a palm, revealing a dark hole that could only be passed through by one hand.

Zhang Haike pressed the lamp against the edge of the cave entrance and peered inside. What he saw were dozens of crisscrossing silk threads, with a dozen sharp blades weaving through them in a regular pattern.

“An enhanced version of the eighteen strings.” He rubbed some brick dust on his hand with his fingertip to confirm, “The mechanism is new; it looks like it was set up when the clan leader left.”

Zhang Wuxun tilted his head and gestured inside, looking eager to try, "I'll do it."

Zhang Haike stopped him, looking at him earnestly, "I'll do it."

Zhang Wuxun stared at him for a few seconds, swallowed the words he was about to say, took the flashlight from his hand, and whispered, "Be careful."

Zhang Haike smiled but didn't say anything. He unzipped his jacket, exposing his right arm, rolled up his sleeve to his elbow, wiggled his fingers a few times, and then put his hand into the hole.

The inner workings are a complex web of silk threads and a shuttle that can cut through iron like mud. Moving one thread affects the whole thing. Only by finding the most crucial silk thread can the mechanism be solved.

Zhang Wuxun used his finger to lightly cover the lamp head to avoid the glare affecting Zhang Haike, and he held his breath and waited quietly.

Two minutes later, Zhang Haike's tense expression visibly relaxed. He let out a long breath, pulled his hand out, and saw a cut on the back of his hand that was slowly oozing blood.

"A close call, but no real harm done." He looked at the bleeding vein and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I guess I'm still getting rusty."

Zhang Wuxun said nothing, but raised his hand and ran his thumb across the back of Wuxun's hand. The faint silver light at his fingertips vanished in an instant, as if it were an illusion.

When he withdrew his hand, Zhang Haike looked down and saw that the wound had disappeared.

"Snap—"

The mural suddenly trembled, and the entire wall slowly rose up.

The commotion alerted Wu Xie and the others, who gathered around.

"You two found the key so quickly, Fatty's noodles haven't even boiled over yet."

The fat man bent over with his butt sticking out and looked into the gap peeking out from beside his feet.

The moment the lamp posts inside came into contact with the air, flames shot up, and one oil lamp after another lit up like a torch being passed on.

"Hey hey hey~" The fat man cried out as the stone wall rose to his calves and then stopped moving.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you discriminating against us fat people?"

Wu Xie chuckled and put his arm around Fatty's shoulder. "How many times has this happened? I'm telling you, Fatty, you need to be more careful."

The fat man pouted and pretended to be unhappy. "If you ask me, you craftsmen who make mechanisms really need to keep up with the times. How can you expect people to adapt to tools? You should expect tools to adapt to people."

Zhang Wuxun followed up on his words, saying, "Perhaps the young man left in a hurry, and due to the limitations of the environment, he managed to create a door with difficulty."

He sniffed after speaking, feigning ignorance, "What's burnt?" (End of Chapter)