Dragon Raja: Reboot

Chapter 75 Sword Sheath (Part 1)

"May I ask what you gentlemen are discussing? What Odin?" Jiang Liu was completely bewildered, his small eyes filled with great confusion.

"It's nothing," Lu Mingfei said. "You said before that you like to travel all over the world? And you've been to quite a few cemeteries?"

"Well, it's for work, it's for work." Jiang Liu said awkwardly, knowing that their line of work didn't necessarily have a good reputation.

"Brother, how much of the Tomb Raider Chronicles do you think is true and how much is false?" Lu Mingfei asked politely.

"Holy crap! You watch that stuff too?" Jiang Liu slapped his thigh, his face full of surprise. It turned out that this guy was not only a fan of Ultraman Tiga, but also a fan of the novel!

"That stuff is pretty realistic, but I feel the author is a bit conservative. Some of the tombs are truly mysterious, far more mysterious than anything described in the novels. At first, I guessed the author was probably an industry insider, but after finding out he wasn't, I started thinking about kidnapping him one day, taking him down into a tomb, and then locking him up there to write a good book... cough cough, just kidding, I'm a decent person, I don't do kidnapping!" (Note)

Jiang Liu had been speaking with great enthusiasm, but the conversation abruptly ended, leaving him with an awkward smile, inadvertently revealing his true thoughts...

"It's alright, just pick a few tombs that you find most mysterious and talk about them." Lu Mingfei waved his hand.

"The most mysterious thing?" Jiang Liu's eyes were dazed, and a look of lingering fear immediately appeared on his face.

He swallowed hard, shrank his neck, and whispered, "There are still a few things I don't understand. To put it bluntly, most of the strange things in the cemetery are hallucinations. Powerful tomb owners will arrange hallucinogenic plants in their tombs. What you see is just your imagination. Usually, you can be self-sufficient with an oxygen tank or something, but the remaining 20%... well, that's inexplicable!"

"Have you ever heard of zombies coming back to life?"

Jiang Liu asked cautiously, afraid that the other party would think he was fooling them.

The three exchanged a glance and nodded in unison.

Jiang Liu slapped his thigh, still shaken: "This thing really exists! On my second mission, I went to Peru and entered an ancient tomb following the clues given by my employer. This mission required me to obtain a golden mask, with a reward of one million US dollars! I had never seen so much money before. Back then, I was young and fearless, so I went straight to the depths of the tomb and found the mask on the face of the tomb's owner. I lit some incense, bowed, and then went up and took the mask off."

"At first, nothing happened. I even chuckled to myself, thinking that all this talk about zombies coming back to life was just for kids, and that all the monsters and demons had been smashed long ago... But before I could take a few steps, I heard a long, drawn-out gasp!!"

"That's the kind of inhalation!" Jiang Liu took a long breath, then said, "But it's so long! How long can an average person inhale? Even if they take it slowly, it'll be at most a few dozen seconds, right? But that thing inhaled for several minutes!"

"Wait, excuse me for interrupting." Lu Mingfei raised his hand, puzzled, "You just stood there dumbfounded for several minutes in this situation?"

Jiang Liu said with a mournful face, "My legs gave way! I crawled out, and there was a downhill section where I rolled down it myself!"

The three nodded in realization, their expressions complex.

"Have you identified the source of your breath?" Chu Zihang asked.

"It's confirmed!" Jiang Liu whispered. "I looked back, and it was the tomb owner! His chest started to rise, as if air was gathering there, and his whole body was making eerie cracking sounds, like his bones were moving. I was climbing and looking back at the same time, afraid that if I turned around, that guy would be standing right behind me!"

Lu Mingfei urged, "And then?"

"Even after I crawled out of that ancient tomb, the tomb owner's breathing didn't stop, and the sound could still reach my ears!" Jiang Liu said, his eyes twitching. "I was so scared that I ran away in the middle of the night. Later I heard that a bloodthirsty beast appeared in that place... You understand, right?"

The three men nodded slowly, their expressions serious.

"You're the one who released that beast," Chu Zihang said in a low voice.

"But I really didn't know!" Jiang Liu said with a wry smile. "If I had known it was like this, I would never have wanted that million dollars!"

Lu Mingfei shook his head and said, "You're just a gofer at best. Even without you, there will be another brave soul. The real creditor is the client. Don't worry. Continue. What other strange things are there?"

"And...and...oh right, there was another commission to go to a pyramid in Egypt that was buried underground. The target was a gem embedded in the head of the tomb owner. The main thing was that the pyramid was too strange. It seemed to be inserted into the ground upside down. The deeper you went, the narrower it became. In the end, I had to climb down. After I dug out the gem, the tomb owner had already weathered away."

"Another time, in England, the client asked me to dig out a sword sheath from the bottom of a lake. It took me ten days to finally find that scrap metal sheath. The weird thing was that after I found the sheath, as I was swimming upwards with it in my hand, I suddenly heard countless shrill screams of women. Luckily, I don't have a heart condition."

Jiang Liu pressed his chest, looking lingering fear.

Lu Mingfei asked in a strange tone, "You said you dug up a sword sheath at the bottom of a lake in England?"

"Yes, it's a scabbard."

"Where's the sword?"

"A sword?" Jiang Liu was stunned for a moment, then shook his head and said, "I didn't see it. The client only requested a scabbard, not a sword."

"Do you remember the last mailing address for these items?"

"The jewels and scabbard are from Denmark, but the gold mask... is from the United States."

"Do you have a specific address?"

Jiang Liu shook his head and said, "They wouldn't give us their real address."

Lu Mingfei nodded and swiftly and cleanly knocked Jiang Liu down with a chop to the neck.

In the instant before he fainted, Jiang Liu's eyes were filled with confusion.

"Senior, have you contacted the school yet?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"No, we've been in a no-signal area up ahead," Chu Zihang said in a deep voice. "I can contact the school now; we need to get our stories straight."

"A unified message?"

Chu Zihang glanced at Lu Mingfei and explained, "For example, with the last dragon, we need to explain how we escaped from its clutches."

Lu Mingfei innocently replied, "I scared him away; we didn't fight."

"I believed it, but this reason wasn't convincing to the school."

"Alright, alright, it's up to you, senior brother!" Lu Mingfei raised his hands to show his firm agreement with all of his senior brother's decisions.

"Jiang Liu will be handed over to the school, as for that dragon..." Chu Zihang pondered, "We can say that it suddenly turned around and left with an anxious expression."

Lu Mingfei's eyes widened. "Damn! Senior brother, your explanation is even less reliable than mine, isn't it?"

"But that was a dragon that was suspected to be a first-generation species." At this moment, Chu Zihang was as calm as his mentor Schneider. "In this situation, for a first-generation species to crush us would be like crushing a few ants... Common sense! If you see ants on the road, would you deliberately go up and crush them? So we cannot use human logic to explain their actual behavior. They can do anything, without needing a reason."

(Note 2)

1: This is August 2010, and the tomb raiding story wasn't finished yet, haha.

2: This reference corresponds to the end of Chapter 28: "But they are bad people, and anyone who opposes the Secret Service is a bad person." Schneider shrugged and said, "Bad people are capable of anything; they don't need a reason."

(End of this chapter)