Iron Bull taucht wieder auf

Kapitel 11

— Chapter 26 - The Strange Tunnel Painting —

Last time I went down the well, I didn't see any monsters, only strange stone tablets. But I heard about monsters from Gu Ye, Yelan, and Long Zui, which I can't help but find out.

Because my mind was constantly racing with intense thoughts, I unknowingly fell behind the group ahead. The bright, dazzling light reflected from the stainless steel casing made me feel even more disoriented. Looking ahead, I saw Tanino and Fujika talking in hushed tones as they walked, entirely in Japanese.

The tunnel was very long, and the four special forces soldiers who were towing the steel cannon were already panting heavily.

Tanino and Fujika suddenly stopped and stared at the tunnel ceiling to their upper left, as if they had made a discovery.

I ran a few steps and stood next to Gu Ye, looking up with him. There, on the steel plate casing, was a simple line drawing, outlining an animal that was neither cow nor horse with extremely thick, stiff lines. The drawing was black, and the lines were about the thickness of a human little finger. As for the level of the drawing, it could only be described as "children's scribbles."

“The painting shouldn’t be here. I didn’t notice it last time I came…” Gu Ye murmured, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. Since taking over the camp, he had entered and exited the tunnel no less than twenty times a day, and he knew everything about the place intimately. His statement that he hadn’t seen it before proved that the painting had just appeared.

Tenga took out a white handkerchief from her pocket, shook it vigorously, and the air was instantly filled with the scent of French perfume.

Gu Ye waved his hand, signaling two special forces soldiers to form a human ladder and use the handkerchief to wipe the strange painting.

In fact, this is an action that everyone would do subconsciously, perhaps just to see if the drawing was an unconscious pattern formed by the natural condensation of dampness.

"You four, continue searching cautiously forward," Gu Ye gave his second order.

Soldiers take obedience to orders as their primary duty, and the four special forces soldiers continued to drag the steel cannon forward without hesitation.

I wanted to follow them forward, because in this kind of sandy tunnel, blindly firing blasts would be tantamount to digging one's own grave, but Tanino grabbed my hand: "Feng, wait a moment, or should we see who put those murals up there?"

His palms were already covered in cold sweat, and his face was alternating between pale and flushed, not serious.

The special forces soldiers acted quickly. The one standing on his comrade's shoulders had already wiped the cave ceiling a few times with a handkerchief and turned back to report, "It can't be wiped off, it's like it's etched on!" His voice was strange and doubtful, because no one would deliberately create a painting at this height.

The cave ceiling is nearly three meters above the ground, a height no one could possibly reach. Indeed, a handkerchief wiped across the cave ceiling did not damage the painting in the slightest.

Tengjia looked up, her delicate nose wrinkling into a dozen shallow lines, muttering to herself.

I dislike people who only speak their native language in public. Only arrogant people are self-centered and lack manners. I would prefer everyone to communicate in English; it's more open and honest.

Tengjia lowered her head, cracking her knuckles hard. Those fair, delicate hands could crack like a strong man's; I deduced that her martial arts had reached the legendary level of "internal essence," certainly no less than mine.

"You, come down!" she said, pointing at the special forces soldier standing on the high place.

“You and I, let’s go up and take a look.” This time, she pointed at me and made the two special forces soldiers squat down against the wall again.

I should feel extremely honored to be so highly regarded by her, but I don't want to accept her kindness, because I am neither Japanese nor a Japanese-hired special forces soldier. I took a step back with my hands behind my back, shaking my head with a "respectfully declining" expression. In such a dangerous ancient tomb, it's not appropriate to chat about romance and fantasy with a girl or let her do whatever she wants; everything should be for the sake of the bigger picture and the most important matters.

She was slightly taken aback, staring at me intently with her large eyes. After a long while, she finally raised her nose and snorted, "Coward!"

I could understand such a short Japanese phrase, so I immediately retorted in Chinese, "Shrew!" This word isn't commonly used in Chinese, and foreigners generally wouldn't understand it. Unexpectedly, she glared at me angrily—

Gu Ye smiled wryly and tried to smooth things over: "Feng, Miss Teng Jia is a top student from Tsinghua University in Beijing, and her Chinese proficiency can be described as that of a standard 'China expert'."

My face flushed red. I hadn't expected this girl named Teng Jia to have such an impressive background. I wanted to use a semi-classical Chinese phrase to "poke" her, but—luckily, I was well-mannered enough not to swear in Chinese.

I awkwardly turned my head and stared at the backs of the four people deep into the tunnel, pretending not to have heard what Gu Ye said.

I suddenly had a bad feeling. The four men were advancing too fast; it seemed like only a blink of an eye, and they were already more than fifty meters away from where I was standing. Keep in mind, the wheels under the cannon's support weren't very nimble, which was why four people were needed to pull it. Besides, I had been following behind the group and could have easily gauged the cannon's speed.

To walk fifty meters would normally take at least five minutes. But this time, less than two minutes had passed, and their silhouettes were barely visible.

"Hmm, something seems off?" I muttered to myself. It was a pity I didn't bring my binoculars with me, otherwise I could have discovered something by observing the frequency of their steps.

Of course, nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the ground, walls, or tunnel ceiling. Even the sound of the wind and the air remained unchanged. Yet, my senses shifted. Both the painting above and the four special forces soldiers rapidly disappearing into the distance seemed to be giving me some kind of dangerous warning.

"What's wrong?" Gu Ye's movements didn't seem as agile as the legends suggested. He was slowly stepping onto the special forces soldier's shoulder, while Fujika had already nimbly climbed onto the soldier's shoulder. As the people below stood up, her hand holding the handkerchief touched the cave ceiling.

The ability to predict things with one's sixth sense has existed since ancient times, and its accuracy rate is over 70%, so I have great faith in my sixth sense.

"What's wrong? I just have a feeling—" Unable to answer Tano's question in detail, because even I hadn't figured out where the danger was coming from, I could only turn my gaze back to the cave ceiling.

At a glance, the content of that simple sketch would easily be categorized as one of the most common wall carvings found in the Egyptian pyramids.

Egyptians often depicted composites of humans and animals in their murals, such as the famous Sphinx, a monster with the body of a lion and the head of a human. This painting likely depicts a hybrid animal with bull horns, a horse's face, and a bull's body.

In the murals of the Egyptian pyramids, there are many composite figures of two or more kinds of humans and animals. A large part of them are a hundred times more bizarre than this combination of cattle and horses. However, based on our three knowledge analysis, we found that such a combination has never been found in other murals.

Tengjia exclaimed "Eh!" several times, and quickened his pace as he wiped the cave ceiling.

I stared intently upwards, and it seemed as if the brushstrokes in the painting were gradually expanding, constantly changing and twisting like ripples in water. In an instant, my head throbbed with a dizzying pain, and my eyes stung like needles. I couldn't help but scream and stumble back four or five steps.

Everything before my eyes is becoming like a world in a mirror, drifting further and further away from me.

This strange change made me suddenly scream, as if trying to wake myself from a nightmare. Suddenly, I realized what was wrong. It was space, space—the spatial distance was unknowingly increasing, both between me and Fujika and Tanino, and between us and the four special forces soldiers operating the steel cannon; the distance was increasing at an ever-accelerating rate…

In other words, some force caused the tunnel to gradually lengthen several times over, but the proportion remained the same, so we only felt the sense of depth increasing, but we couldn't perceive it for a while.

“Mr. Tanino, Mr. Tanino—” I shouted.

Tani reached out his hand towards the painting, and to me, his movements became slow and sluggish. This strange sight was quite similar to watching a shark trainer perform in the water through reinforced glass in an aquarium, where every movement was slowed down by the resistance of the water.

Suddenly, I noticed the monster that had been blurring on the cave ceiling begin to move. Its two bull horns lunged at Tengjia's body, and its horse head opened its blood-red maw—

The entire painting is about the size of a medium-sized washbasin. If the animal were to come back to life, it would certainly harm Tengjia.

I suddenly lunged forward, reaching my hands towards the light machine gun on the special forces soldier's chest, as if performing a standard dive. In fact, I felt as if my hands were actually "cleaving through the waves," as if I had truly jumped into a vast, still body of water.

So my movements were also hindered by the water, becoming slow and strange, but my mind was perfectly clear. I spread my arms to the left and right, like water gliding, and in the leaping motion, I broke through the five-meter distance, touched the gun handle, and at the same time twisted the muzzle upward. Before I could aim, I had already fired a string of bullets.

A burst of brilliant sparks erupted from the muzzle as the bullets grazed the special forces soldier's nose, striking the painting. As expected, the bullets disappeared into the stainless steel casing like mud sinking into the sea, disappearing into the distant void, just like when I hit the stone tablet last time. Fortunately, the bullets stopped the strange painting from further deforming, and it came to a standstill again.

"Wind, what are you doing? Are you crazy?"

Gu Ye was the first to react and scolded him fiercely.

His face, movements, and expressions all returned to normal, and he became that arrogant and overbearing Japanese tomb raiding expert again, pointing at the painting on the cave ceiling and shouting: "This kind of unique painting could potentially push back the history of humankind in Egypt by thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Its archaeological value is immeasurable. You idiot..."

He straightened his neck and swallowed the word "pig," his face turning bright red. He stretched out his left hand and carefully stroked the ancient and strange strokes.

I slowly straightened up, gently patted the special forces soldier on the shoulder, and said with a cold smile, "Sorry, friend, you must have been frightened!"

The smoke from the shooting hadn't even cleared when everyone on site noticed the anomaly deep inside the tunnel. The special forces soldier in front of me exclaimed, "My God, they... they've gone so far... so far?" As he shouted, he turned to the powerful walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder and called out, "Jacques, Jacques, the situation has changed, please respond, please respond..."

There was no echo; only the desperate echo of his voice drifted through the tunnel.

Volume One: The King of Tomb Raiders

The First Egyptian Tomb

— Chapter 27 — A Sudden Crisis —

This communication equipment has a straight-line communication range of up to five kilometers and was one of the main communication tools used by the US military in the Iraq War. The entire tunnel was less than 500 meters long, and I could hear it perfectly well. I knew that something strange had definitely happened, and judging from the direction the four special forces soldiers were heading, it seemed that they had already spread out to a distance of nearly one kilometer. I could only vaguely see their backs.

"Binoculars, give me binoculars—" Gu Ye shouted. Unfortunately, everyone thought that the battle in the tunnel was close-quarters combat and had not prepared any binoculars.

Gu Ye jumped down and ordered the special forces soldier: "Go quickly, catch up with them, then turn around and retreat first!"

The order itself was not wrong, and the special forces soldier continued to yell into the walkie-talkie while running forward.

I pinched my chin and nervously watched his legs. For the time being, there seemed to be nothing wrong. This special forces soldier was running at a very normal speed and was in a ready-to-fight posture, with his hands holding a light machine gun horizontally.

"What exactly happened...?" Fujika looked down at me from above, his large eyes gleaming coldly.

I know she's blaming me for firing blindly, but she doesn't want to say it outright.

“I think there’s something strange about this mural. We’d better get out of here, otherwise I’m afraid—” Before I could finish speaking, I was interrupted by Tengjia’s cold snort: “Chinese people, no guts, cowards as mice!”

Hearing her speak those few fluent Chinese sentences, I suddenly burst into laughter, while simultaneously glancing back at the road I had come from. In this situation, maintaining a clear escape route was paramount, but in the straight tunnel, the intense lighting made visibility blurry, making it impossible to determine if the escape route had undergone any strange changes.

"Miss Fujika, didn't you notice that the mural had changed a bit?"

"Hahahaha..." Tengjia laughed arrogantly, pointing at me with his slender index finger: "Feng, you don't even know about the Cubist school that's popular in the West? This is just a painting technique that adds some kind of three-dimensional element, which will produce a lifelike three-dimensional effect from a certain angle, humph!"

She tilted her head back and continued wiping the paintings on the cave ceiling with her handkerchief.

Even if I'm ignorant, I'm not completely unfamiliar with Cubist works, but this is in an underground tunnel in the desert. What artist would have the time to paint this on the cave ceiling?

Gu Ye stood beside me, gazing thoughtfully into the depths of the tunnel, when he suddenly asked, "Feng, what did you just discover? Why did you suddenly fire?"

I suddenly remembered the strange drumming I heard in the middle of the night. Could it be that even these strange changes were something only I could see, and no one else knew about?

I took a deep breath to calm my turbulent emotions and pointed at the running special forces soldier: "Look, isn't his pace slowing down?" As I expected, the man was running forward at a "slow motion" pace, looking from a distance like a comical moonwalk.

Gu Ye glanced at it a few times and shook his head: "Feng, your words are getting stranger and stranger. I don't understand what you mean at all."

His expression was very serious, not like he was joking. I understood completely: near the Pyramid of Tulku Khan, only my vision and hearing had changed; everyone else was completely unaware. So, why was that? Could it be caused by some mysterious rays inside the pyramid?

A huge change occurred suddenly in the instant I lowered my head in thought. I heard Tanino and the special forces soldier who was forming a human ladder to support Fujika shout at the same time: "Ah, ah, ah, what is that..."

Deep inside the tunnel, a red carpet suddenly appeared—not a carpet, but a soft ribbon that resembled one, sweeping out from the deepest part. My first impression of it was that it resembled the flowing sleeves of a young female character in Peking Opera, suddenly unfurled with a whoosh, then flipped back into place with a flick of the wrist.

The strange red "water sleeves" rushed towards them at an extremely fast speed. In less than a second, they had already wrapped up Steel Cannon and the five special forces soldiers, and continued to roll forward with a surging and powerful force.

Da da da, da da da—

The light machine gun on the special forces soldier's chest suddenly roared, firing half a magazine of bullets, the spent casings clattering and bouncing on the ground.

This lethal weapon created by humans seems to be effective only against its own kind, and is completely useless in the face of this blood-red "water sleeve".

Tanino cried out in alarm, "A tongue! The monster's tongue! That's the monster's tongue!"

The light machine guns continued to roar, their deafening gunfire echoing through the tunnel. The water sleeves retreated temporarily, arriving quickly and withdrawing even faster, and the depths of the tunnel immediately returned to an astonishing stillness. However, the people and cannons that had been advancing above had all vanished without a trace.

Gu Ye covered his mouth tightly, as if only in this way could he prevent himself from screaming.

The special forces soldier was drenched in cold sweat, staring at the spent cartridge cases scattered on the ground, his mouth agape in an "O" shape.

This was truly the most terrifying and thrilling experience of my life. If those red water sleeves really were the monster's tongue—then everyone was swallowed up by the monster?

I wanted to laugh, but all the muscles in my face were stiff, and I couldn't muster even the slightest smile.

Only then did Miss Fujika lower her head, look down at her feet, and demand, "What happened now?"

The three of us men stared at each other, speechless with astonishment. We simply couldn't believe what we'd just witnessed.

"A...a monster...swallowed...the people in front of us..." The special forces soldier swallowed hard, stammering as he finished the sentence. His finger stiffly moved away from the trigger, indicating that he was still relatively clear-headed, doing so to avoid accidental discharge.

I tilted my head back, my stiff neck bones creaking and grinding. Just then, I saw the painting change for the second time: the bull-horse monster opened its massive jaws and snapped at Tengjia's raised hand. Behind the monster, a brilliant beam of light suddenly appeared, shooting straight upwards.

My mind went blank for a moment, and before I could even tell if it was a hallucination or reality, I lunged forward, crashing into the special forces soldier in the waist and sending him flying more than two meters away. The human ladder had collapsed; logically, the people on top should have fallen with a thud, but now Tengjia's arm was caught in the monster's bite, leaving him hanging helplessly in mid-air.

At the same time, I fell to the ground, using the momentum to grab the light machine gun. With a strong pull, the sling of the light machine gun snapped with a crack. I rolled on the ground, used a "Dragon Twisting Pillar" move, and jumped up like lightning. I pointed the gun at the bull-horse monster's head and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

In fact, I've come to regard it as my most dangerous enemy.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! After six bullets were fired, before the spent cartridges even hit the ground, I had already grabbed Tengjia's right leg and pulled him down with all my might. Fortunately, the monster was weaker than I had imagined; I only felt a slight resistance before pulling Tengjia down, causing him to fall next to the special forces soldier.

My finger remained on the trigger, the crosshair still aimed at the top of the bull-horse monster's head.

I doubt this monster will give me time to reload, so it's best to save some bullets.

Before Fujika could even speak, he sprang to his feet with a thud as soon as he landed, displaying remarkable skill.