Histoires de fantômes

Chapitre 32

"Crack—" Almost at the same time as Song Jiu drew his sword, Su Lun's gun was already pointed at his temple, and it was a case of the gun striking first.

Both Su Lun and Song Jiu are extremely skilled fighters. Under these circumstances, everyone understands that Su Lun's bullets will arrive faster than Song Jiu's soft sword.

"Believe it or not, I'll shoot you in the head?" Suren sneered, completely disregarding the murderous aura emanating from Song Jiu.

The tiger turned around, widened its eyes as if trying to see right through me to my heart. After a pause, it said, word by word, "Trust me, you must believe that she won't harm you."

"Hmph...hmph hmph hmph hmph..." I could only sneer.

Tiger snapped his fingers, and Song Jiu's sword was instantly sheathed. Although Song Jiu was prone to impulsively drawing his sword, he always carried out orders without question, which was truly commendable.

"Tiger, are we still brothers?" I stared at Tiger's retreating figure, pondering Tang Xin's words. Besides using Gu poison, what other power could Tang Xin possibly have to control Tiger? Could it be something like the Miao people's "mind-controlling or soul-controlling techniques"?

The tiger stopped, paused for a moment, then suddenly quickened its pace and walked towards Tang Xin's tent.

The third part: The Bizarre Purgatory

— Chapter 13 — Oru the Long-Eared Dog —

“That was a warning.” Suren’s expression was very serious.

"Warning?" I patted the long-eared dog's head to quiet it down. I had already let it sniff the coat that Miss Fujika had left behind in the tent in Tanino, and I believed it would give me a satisfactory answer in the catacombs.

"No open flames?" Lighters, torches, and matches are all open flames, and I don't have any of those on me. Tang Xin's words suggest she also has some knowledge of the tomb's interior.

If I have too many concerns, I might as well do nothing and just hide at home. I led the long-eared dog into the elevator and pressed the down button. Before my gaze dropped below the horizon, I could clearly feel Suren's concerned gaze lingering on me with reluctance.

The long-eared dog was whimpering anxiously, seemingly very uncomfortable with entering the interior of this extremely mysterious underground project.

"Oru, Oru, from now on, I need you to remember Miss Fujika's scent, little guy, it's all up to you!" The long-eared dog's name is "Oru," and it was once one of the top ten in the Rainbow Warriors military dog team. At this moment, it lies nervously at my feet, its long ears occasionally twitching, looking ready for battle.

Meeting the scalpel did nothing to unravel the secrets of the tomb. Especially with the high priest present, we simply didn't have time for a detailed discussion.

As we exited the elevator and entered the horizontal tunnel, Oulu suddenly became excited and sprinted forward, trying to break free of the belt in my hand. I let go of it, and the little guy, head down, ran forward quickly, as if he had discovered something.

Of course, it's perfectly normal for Miss Fujika to have left her body scent here after entering the tunnel countless times. What I overlooked was that Oro's sense of smell is incredibly sensitive; what he smelled might have been traces left by Fujika in the past, rather than the "Thousand Flower Bird" fragrance I needed.

There's nothing we can do but take it one step at a time.

I followed closely behind, always keeping a distance of ten meters from Oulu.

Suddenly, it stopped, let out two uneasy whimpers, squatted on the ground, and looked up with its head tilted back.

There was nothing unusual about the top of the tunnel except for the stainless steel casing and the cables and ventilation pipes hanging in the upper right corner.

"Oru, what did you find?" I crouched down, hoping to get a closer look from its perspective. Unfortunately, there was nothing on the cave ceiling, just a smooth protective shell.

Suren called me over the walkie-talkie: "Brother Feng, what's wrong?"

I slapped my forehead: "Ugh, why didn't we call the dog trainer down with us? At least he'd understand what Oru discovered! Suren, ask him quickly, or if that doesn't work, tell him to just take the elevator down!"

Oulu squatted like a contemplative philosopher, looking up for four or five minutes, then lowering his head, drooping his ears, and humming in his throat, as if pondering some difficult question.

The dog trainer's voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Mr. Feng, Oulu understands human nature. If I follow it, it will get angry and think that people don't trust it. So, please try to communicate with it and trust that it will give you the greatest help."

The dog trainer's broken English reminded me of ignorant farmers in rural Egypt: "Communicating with dogs? Is it even possible to learn that at the last minute?"

I had never owned any animals before, except for the pet dogs I saw at university and the various caged animals at the national zoo. In short, I had absolutely no experience communicating with dogs.

“This place—Brother Feng, calm down, you’d better concentrate. It should be around the spot where you found the hole in the beam of light last time, right?” Suren tried to remind me.

Of course I remember the light beam hole and the strange painting that was neither cow nor horse, but it should have been a few dozen meters ahead.

I straightened up and stared intently at the cave ceiling, hoping to discover another mysterious opening. Aside from the "wormhole theory"—the explanation for Fujika's disappearance—there was no other explanation.

Oulu suddenly leaped up, landed on my arm, arched its back, and bounced upwards like a skilled triple jumper, landing on my shoulder with a whoosh. Then it leaped up again, landing mid-air above my head. After that, it remained in a crouching position, seemingly using me as a ladder.

I couldn't bother to call out into the walkie-talkie; I could only remain motionless, obediently serving as its stepping stone.

Two workers emerged from the depths of the tunnel, bending over as they inspected the various pipes placed along the side of the road. Suddenly, they spotted me and Ou Lu standing in the middle of the tunnel. They were startled, then quickly covered their mouths and burst into a muffled laugh.

Of course I know I look ridiculous right now, with a little dog blocking the middle of the tunnel.

"Oru, Oru, can you come down now? What are you doing?" I called out angrily in a low voice.

Oulu kept whimpering, probably having made a discovery, but not entirely certain. He then jumped down from my head and continued to slowly advance deeper into the tunnel, sniffing as he went.

I called out to the two workers, "Hey you two, what's the situation inside the tomb?"

They were Yeran's men; I'd seen them before at the camp.

One of the workers, whose face was extremely dark, replied, "The gold has been completely broken down, you know? There's a square hole underneath."

Of course I knew. At that time, the gold had just been broken down into one-eighths, and I had already deduced what would happen next.

"And now? What are the experts doing now?"

Both workers shook their heads simultaneously: "We don't know, we don't know... That cave is so dark. The foreman tried lowering a light down, but even after the line was extended to seventy meters, it still didn't reach the bottom. It must be a monster's lair... So, the people inside are considering whether to permanently seal the cave with stones and cement concrete."

I chuckled: "How many stones would it take to fill such a big and deep hole?"

After laughing, I suddenly realized I was covered in a cold sweat. In my knowledge of ancient tombs, some tombs have wells that extend all the way to the "sea eye," requiring more than three to five years of labor and time to complete.

In ancient China, nobles and royalty often began constructing their tombs at the height of their power, sometimes taking ten or twenty years. To give a less extreme example, the tomb of a prime minister from the Northern Song Dynasty, which I helped excavate, contained a single red paulownia coffin with 150 layers of both lacquer and mortise lacquer. Based on the temperature requirements for applying the lacquer, completing these 300 layers would have taken at least four years.

Therefore, the massive project of connecting the tomb well to the "sea eye" is not just a baseless rumor or a figment of people's imagination, but a real event.

So, where do the wells inside the pyramids lead?

Of course, there is water beneath the desert, or perhaps rock-filled aquifers, or even oil or gas reservoirs. I'm starting to wonder: "What kind of ancient well would the craftsmen who built the pyramids have dug with tools we don't fully understand?"

Oulu shouted loudly, now that he was in the exact spot where he had previously discovered the hole in the beam of light.

At that time, Fujika, Tanino, and I stood in this place for a long time. Oru should indeed be able to smell her scent, but what could Oru see when he stared up?

The way Oulu squatted on the ground really makes people think of phrases like "an old monk in deep meditation".

Our ancestors passed down a saying: "Dogs understand human nature."

Dogs will always be man's friend. No matter how genes and environment change, they will always be the animals on Earth with the most harmonious relationship with humans. It's just a pity they can't speak.

I stroked its head and muttered to myself, "What exactly did this little guy discover? Could it also sense traces of those strange and unusual events?"

At the end of the tunnel, the sounds of unrestrained shouts and laughter could be faintly heard; it must be the soldiers who were breaking down the gold reveling incessantly.

Oulu suddenly sighed, flapped his long ears, and got up to move forward again.

This was the first time in my life that I realized dogs could sigh, just like humans do.

This time, Oru walked all the way to the entrance of the tomb, sniffed around excitedly for a while, and then stepped into the pyramid.

Oru's performance made my emotions fluctuate between high and low, because it might not be able to distinguish the scents that Tengjia left in the tunnel at different times, so the results of such a search were simply unreliable.

Sure enough, as soon as he entered the tomb, Oulu stopped and kept sniffing the ground, but he couldn't find anything. He kept making "whooshing" sounds from his nose.

Taking this opportunity, I carefully examined the "Sun Boat" figures on the six planes of the room, and their prows were indeed pointing north. Another noteworthy point was that all the "Sun Boats" were exactly the same size, as if they had been precisely stamped on with a giant seal.

I scratched my head. Egyptian hieroglyphs rarely depict such precision and meticulousness. If the image of the "Sun Boat" was indeed something the ancients deliberately strived to make meticulous and accurate to the smallest detail, could it represent another hidden meaning?

The "Sun Boat," unearthed beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza, represents the pinnacle of ancient Egyptian woodworking craftsmanship that archaeologists have been able to explore. Everyone who has seen the boat marvels at the incredible imagination of the ancient Egyptian artisans. Some of the carvings on it are even more mesmerizing than Picasso's abstract paintings, and were later widely reproduced in modern paintings and architectural designs, even becoming a striking feature on the Parisian runways.

I visited that ship several times, and upon comparing it again with my memory of the "Sun Boat," I discovered that the ship in the murals had seven more things added—seven gems. Let's call them gems for now, because those seven things were neatly inlaid on the bow, all displaying a silvery-white color, like huge stars in the night sky.

The third part: The Bizarre Purgatory

— Chapter 14 — The Deep Ancient Well —

The seven gems are arranged in a very clear spoon shape, which even someone without astronomical knowledge would recognize as the way the Big Dipper is distinguished.

Egyptian astronomy was highly developed; the oldest astronomical charts and images of primitive spacecraft have even been found inside the pyramids. Therefore, discovering the Big Dipper on the bow of a ship is not a sensational or strange occurrence.

Suddenly, a thunderous applause erupted from the depths of the tomb, mixed with frantic shouts in Egyptian.

I looked up at the brightly lit area in the center of the tomb and couldn't help but smile bitterly: "Gold can indeed drive people mad, even if it doesn't belong to any of them."

The only owners of the gold can be Egypt and its president; Gu Ye and the others can only watch helplessly.

I remember asking Su Lun to check Gu Ye's information, but she hasn't mentioned it yet. I guess there's no news yet?

It seemed to be some kind of "telepathic connection" at work; the moment my thoughts landed on Suren, her voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Brother Feng, have you found anything?"

I gave a silent, bitter smile: "No, it seems Oru has no clue about Fujika's whereabouts and is trying to find out. However, I think this time it will be a wasted effort. Have you found anything about Tanino?"

Suren smiled worriedly, "No, but my good friend has already hacked into the Pentagon's intelligence system and is investigating. I believe we'll have results soon. Actually, there's another person's information that's even more worth investigating. I'm worried..."

In a flash of inspiration, I interjected, "Another person? You're looking for—my brother, the scalpel?"

I disagree with Suren's suspicions about the scalpel. A scalpel is a scalpel; it can never be impersonated or transformed by another person. A master like him, while not invincible or immune to all poisons, would find it difficult to outmaneuver anyone.

Besides, in my eyes, the scalpel doesn't seem to have changed much, does it?

Suren sighed deeply and replied succinctly, "You guessed right! The data will tell us everything. Stay in touch. Things are getting increasingly complicated. Besides you, I can't trust anyone else anymore—"

After saying these words, Suren seemed to realize her abruptness and suddenly became shy.

Being trusted by Suren is naturally an honor for me, but I always thought her suspicions were just overreactions.

She relayed the dog trainer's words: "If nothing is found, bring Oru back..." Just then, Oru suddenly started barking wildly and charged forward, startling me. Because a meter-wide ditch stretched between the adjacent tomb chambers, what if it fell in—

Immediately put down the walkie-talkie and ran forward with Oulu, shouting, "Wait! Wait..."

Oru, as expected of a famous dog in the Egyptian army, completely ignored the deep ditches, leaped across them, and ran much faster than me.

Five seconds later, I was already in the central burial chamber.

No wonder the soldiers cheered just now, because the last piece of gold was also cut open, and eight huge gold bricks, each two meters long, one meter wide, and one and a half meters high, were laid flat on the ground, emitting a mesmerizing golden glow under the fluorescent lights.

Tina appeared in my sight, her once heroic face now showing signs of fatigue, as she directed the engineering team to continue cutting the gold bricks.

Oulu's cries startled everyone, for as soon as it jumped into the central burial chamber, it darted to the well, wagging its tail and barking fiercely.

That deep well was indeed a two-meter square, deep "square well". Within five meters below the wellhead, the visibility dropped to zero, and nothing could be seen.

"Mr. Feng, why did you bring this dog down?" Yelan was very dissatisfied.

Egyptian customs regarding the dead and burials are very similar to those of the Chinese. They both strongly dislike letting furry animals into cemeteries or tombs, because such an unintentional act is believed to cause "corpse explosions," turning the dead into terrifying zombies.

Oulu continued to howl wildly, circling the well opening, almost sticking his head into the well.

I chuckled teasingly: "What? Are you afraid the mummy will explode?"

Yelan's face changed drastically, and the workers standing nearby were equally ashen-faced. This was the Pharaoh's sacred tomb, and native Egyptians were most wary of making such jokes in front of the Pharaoh. However, there was no Pharaoh's coffin to be seen, not even the slightest evidence of his existence.

I patted Oulu's head to calm it down, lest its deafening barking fill the entire tomb. So, what had it discovered? Could it be traces of Tenga?

We stood with our dog closest to the wellhead, surrounded by soldiers and workers who sneered at us as if they wanted to make a fool of us.

Under everyone's watchful eyes, I lay down, body on the ground, sniffing intently like a highly professional drug-sniffing dog. Tengjia had never entered the tomb before; Oulu's unusual barking proved it had found traces of Tengjia near the well. Would my sense of smell have been able to detect anything?