Iron Bull taucht wieder auf

Kapitel 49

"You mean, some mysterious people abducted Tenga and brought her into the pyramids, using her as a sacrifice to the heavens, dressing her in these strange clothes..." I thought nervously as I examined the extremely disproportionate figure in the painting. The Mayan murals were also completely disproportionate; the short person looked like a deformed, sickly child, with hands and feet as thin as four malnourished sugarcane stalks, and the strange elbow and knee pads made it look like child's play.

"You could say that."

"Ha, but your theory has a major flaw. How far apart are the cradles of Mayan civilization from the pyramids? Whether in terms of region, era, cultural practices, or ethnic characteristics—the differences between the two can even be compared to the differences between Saturnians and Martians. Therefore, the significance of Mayan rituals can absolutely not be directly applied to Egyptian rituals, right?"

With my knowledge of Earth, I can easily see the crux of the problem. Even if the people on the altar and the people of Tengjia have some similarities in their attire, it is really inappropriate to so hastily conflate them.

Suren smiled, as if she had expected me to say this: "Brother Feng, I have already sent my data and conjectures to an archaeological research institute. We will definitely get a response within forty-eight hours. We are both somewhat familiar with the ancient Egyptian pyramids, but we know very little about the Mayan civilization. Therefore, the experts will provide a reasonable explanation. The question now is, how did these gold sleeves get on Tenga's body?"

She casually switched the scene, pointing to the dazzling golden tube that was wrapped around Fujika's chest.

A girl's body is typically broad-shouldered, with a narrow waist, and a slight protrusion at the hips. Fujika's "standard beauty" figure is even more pronounced. The sleeve was tightly wrapped around her chest, leaving almost no gaps. How did the sleeve get onto her body under these conditions?

Suren pointed out with certainty: "That sleeve has no seams or hidden tenons; it is absolutely a single piece."

"This is really strange. Could it be... could it be..." Some things in reality simply cannot be explained by theory. This matter has exceeded the limits of my imagination—

Part 5: The Cave of Ten Thousand Snakes

— Chapter 1 — The Sudden Earthquake —

In this case, unless the joint of the sleeve was directly wrapped around Fujika's body before it was completed, it would be impossible for it to be so tight.

In other words, the entire process involved some mysterious figures capturing Tengjia inside the pyramid, using unimaginable methods to drape her body in these strange golden garments, and then placing her in a jade coffin, pressing her under large gold ingots—

I chuckled softly, "Sulen, don't you find this process hilarious?"

Suren nodded vigorously: "Yes, it is very funny, but it really happened, and right under our noses."

The strange encounters of Fujika are simply baffling.

As for the strange events in Ahkan town that I recounted to Suren, it was the same. Even with my sharp eyes, I failed to spot where the tiger was hiding, which I truly regret. It's a pity I didn't have a video camera with me. If I had carefully recorded the situation, the two of us could have analyzed it and found some clues.

Suren's first reaction was: "The tiger is hiding inside the camel's belly, and even all the missing people, including Lu Jiacan, Tang Xin, and Song Jiu, are hidden inside. It's just that the tiger is your good friend, which is why it called for help."

I had to immediately point out the absurdity of this argument: "If everyone were hidden inside a camel, putting aside the fact that the camel would die if such a large person were inside—have you ever thought about how the last person who hid would sew up the camel's belly? Would they sew up the incision from the inside of the camel's body?"

Suren remained silent for a long time, her brows furrowed as she stared at the laptop screen.

What I can think of, Tina certainly can too. This question is so absurd that anyone who comes up with my counterarguments will give up on thinking about it further.

All the strange and bizarre things have no answers. Perhaps we know too little about everything on Earth and the various tricks and schemes of martial arts sects. We are just a drop in the ocean, which is why we cannot explain these questions.

“Surren, tomorrow I will suggest to Natura that we release Elder Sahan and use his ‘mind-reading’ ability to read Tengjia’s mind—”

Before I could finish speaking, my feet suddenly trembled, as if it were a premonition of an earthquake. My body swayed, and I involuntarily took a big step back, my knee slamming hard against the edge of the bed.

"Earthquake?" I yelled, and the whole tent shook violently. The laptop on the table slid to the side, but luckily Suren caught it.

The tremor came suddenly and went quickly, lasting only a tenth of a second.

Suren and I were both stunned. For a moment, I felt as if I were immersed in an ice cave, chilled to the bone from head to toe.

"It's an earthquake!" Suren quickly closed the laptop lid, hurriedly packed it into her suitcase, and stuffed it under the bed.

In the center of the camp, a sharp, urgent alarm blared, and a dozen blood-red warning lights flashed simultaneously. The soldiers on the watchtower, in particular, immediately began broadcasting through loudspeakers: "Everyone, stay at your posts! No unauthorized actions allowed… No one may leave their post, wander around the camp, or stray more than 30 meters from the camp's perimeter. Violators will be shot on sight…"

This somber warning echoed repeatedly over the empty camp.

Suren glanced at her watch and said urgently, "There's no earthquake forecast from the seismological bureau at all—" With her other hand, she took out her phone, quickly dialed a number, and then asked loudly, "The Cairo Seismological Bureau? Please check if there are any earthquake warnings in the area from south of Cairo to the Great Pyramid of Giza?"

The tremor just now came suddenly, catching everyone off guard. However, since everyone was living in tents, there was no risk of being injured by collapsing buildings.

The Rainbow Warriors were capable of handling emergencies. Despite the earthquake occurring without warning, the camp remained completely calm. Even those on the watchtowers remained on high alert, without panicking or running around.

It's important to know that earthquakes this strong rarely occur in the desert, as the sand greatly reduces the transmission of tremors. Unless it's a high-magnitude earthquake happening very close by—"Suren, I think something terrible has happened!"

A thought flashed through my mind, and I vaguely realized intuitively that this strange earthquake was definitely related to the Pyramid of Tulku.

The seismological agency has responded to Suren's inquiry: "Absolutely not, and there has been zero record of earthquakes occurring in the Egyptian desert during this season in the past sixty years."

Suren hung up the phone, gave me a wry smile and nodded, indicating that she agreed with my point of view.

We simultaneously positioned ourselves on either side of the doorway, lifting a corner of the curtain to observe outside.

There was no movement in the camp; all the sentries were lying down, bullets loaded, ready to engage in battle at any moment. The snow-white beams of searchlights and the blood-red glow of police lights intertwined, constantly sweeping across the tent tops, derricks, and open sandy ground.

Strangely, the area around the derrick was quiet, as if deliberately contradicting my deduction.

If a strong earthquake were to occur underground, the derrick would undoubtedly collapse rapidly, triggering a chain reaction that would cause the entire camp to slide into the sand pit. In an even worse scenario, it could cause a widespread "chain reaction of quicksand wells" around the pyramids, turning an area within a five-kilometer radius into a layer of quicksand.

Suren, who also possessed considerable knowledge of the desert, whispered with a pale face, "Please, please, no quicksand wells appear... otherwise we'll all be 'sky-burial' this time—"

The quicksand wells and whirlpools in the desert are the most terrifying and astonishing, often silently swallowing entire caravans of camels, cattle, sheep, and wild animals, turning them into natural graveyards for animals.

I once witnessed a supply truck belonging to the Egyptian military get stuck in a quicksand well. Another military truck that came to the rescue not only failed to save its companion, but was also dragged down by the powerful quicksand vortex and ultimately perished itself.

Fortunately, the tremor only occurred once, and there were no other reactions in the following ten minutes.

Suren let out a long sigh, patted his chest, and returned to the table.

I lifted the curtain completely, which immediately attracted the special "attention" of the searchlight. The cold beam of light shone on me without any mercy. Then someone shouted loudly: "Everyone, do not make any rash moves, do not step out of the tent, or you will be killed without mercy..." I believe that as the beam of light moved, the sniper's gun barrel was also quickly pointed over. This was no joke.

I quickly raised my hands high and slowly backed away, afraid of being mistakenly killed by a cold-blooded and ruthless sniper.

I know that when an excellent sniper is focused on the trigger and his eyes are glued to the scope, his control and sway over the entire battle are almost like those of a god.

I remember meeting a retired U.S. Marine Corps sniper in Italy. His original name had long been forgotten, but his nickname—"Sniper God"—made him an uncrowned king, known for his sniping skills on the Iraq War in the 1990s. He was a fascinating and legendary figure, and I believe he will appear in another of my stories later.

I took two steps back, and the beam of light slowly moved away. Just then, a series of huge tremors began—I could feel the rumbling, rumbling, rumbling sensation coming from the ground.

Yes, we couldn't hear anything, just a silent vibration, as if a huge, furious god was kicking and waving wildly somewhere beneath our feet, as if trying to destroy the entire place.

If it weren't for the sniper's prior warning, the camp would have been in complete chaos by now, with everyone running amok.

The searchlight suddenly went out, and the rotating red light stopped silently, plunging the camp into a brief darkness.

"Brother Feng, lie down!" Suren stumbled over and put her hand on my shoulder. We both fell to the ground at the same time, quickly rolling left and right to avoid the exposed shooting area near the door.

A series of pitiful and terrified screams rang out from the workers' tents on the west side of the camp. Immediately afterwards, a series of hurried and chaotic footsteps came from the tents, heading straight for the vehicle parking area on the north side of the camp.

Yelan's excavation team had three old but reliable Toyota vans available for use. My vision was momentarily "visually vacuumed" due to the sudden disappearance of the bright light, but my keen hearing allowed me to discern that at least six workers had already rushed to the vans, and one quick-handed worker had already slammed open the door.

Suren suddenly sighed, "Oh no!"

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Cairo, she was well aware of the Rainbow Warriors' prowess.

"Pfft, pfft," the sniper fired four shots, and then the beam of the high-powered flashlight enveloped the van. Three bodies lay on the ground, one reclining diagonally in the driver's seat, all wounded in the head, their skulls blown apart—a gruesome sight.

The remaining two workers stood frozen in place, their hands raised high, obediently remaining within the beam of the flashlight.

Snipers' scopes are all equipped with state-of-the-art night vision systems, ensuring they never miss a single movement, even in pitch-black conditions.

Suddenly, the camp became deathly silent, with only the howling desert night wind swirling across the sky.

With this watchtower in place, no enemy within a one-kilometer radius will have nowhere to hide. After all, this is the elite of the Egyptian soldiers, and each one is a master among masters.

"Is it an earthquake? Is it really an earthquake?" Suren lay on the ground, looking at the watchtower at an angle.

Although the tremor was intense, it did not cause any damage to the camp. So how could the generator system have failed simultaneously, causing a power outage in the entire camp?

"Clap, clap, clap—" Someone clapped as they walked out of the tent in the valley and shouted coldly at the soldiers on the watchtower: "Well done! Anyone who tries to take advantage of the chaos in the camp will suffer the same fate as these people!" It was Tina, whose voice was slightly hoarse. Her shadow was stretched obliquely on the sand by the moonlight, like a shadowy monster.

In the eyes of the desert legion, the lives of all Egyptian natives were worthless; killing a native was hardly more difficult than stepping on an ant. Besides, once the body was buried in the sand, there would be no evidence, and no one would investigate. One wonders what Yelan thought upon seeing this scene. Those workers were all recruited by him at high salaries; in the end, the government's labor protection department would likely come after him demanding their return.

The tense atmosphere in the camp did not seem to dampen Tina's arrogance; presumably, her conversation with Natura went quite well, without any irreconcilable conflict.

Tina made another gesture towards the watchtower, and with a whoosh, a green signal flare shot into the sky from the top of the tower, bursting into a green flame with a diameter of three meters, before slowly falling with an extremely beautiful appearance.

The signal was directed at the military vehicles surrounding the camp. As soon as the fireworks stopped, the roar of engines immediately filled the air, and then the headlights quickly shone through to form a brilliant net of light, illuminating the camp from another angle.

Yelan stepped out of the tent and directed the workers to repair the generator sets that had suddenly stopped.

Tina spun around in place, kicked the sand in front of her nervously a couple of times, then turned and walked towards me. Two armed soldiers immediately followed behind her, turning on the flashlights attached to their submachine guns to light her way.

Suren smiled teasingly: "Brother Feng, a beauty has come to visit, I must excuse myself for a moment..." With a light roll, she had already rolled out from under the curtain, and like a nimble cat, she darted to the side and hid in the shadows between the adjacent tents.

Tina walked up to my tent, put her hands behind her back, tilted her head back haughtily, and asked loudly, "Mr. Feng, may we talk?"

I found it somewhat amusing that an unknown nobody like me, mixed in with a group of top experts and government/military officials, had become the center of attention. Dr. James hadn't even fully revealed his true intentions to me before Tina took the initiative to talk to me. But what did I have to "talk" about? Besides my passable courage, I was probably only left with the empty title of "King of Tomb Raiders" left by my elder brother, Yang Tian.

I went out to greet her, stood in the moonlight, and silently watched her.

Tina's expression was very cold, revealing neither joy nor sorrow: "Mr. Feng, you are a smart man, of course you know what Lu Jiacan's disappearance means for our Egyptian government."

I shrugged, stroked my chin, and smiled wryly. Of all the countless small countries on the African continent, who doesn't dream of unifying the world, crossing the Red Sea, sweeping across Eurasia, and achieving global dominance? But dreams and reality are always far apart. If Egypt's air force had made rapid progress, it might have been able to secure a strong position for expanding its power—Lu Jiacan's disappearance, of course, signifies the temporary shattering of this dream of hegemony.

“So, all our remaining hopes rest on the ‘Eye of the Moon’ or the ‘super weapon,’ do you understand?” She looked at me with a condescending and aggressive gaze, like a queen reprimanding her courtier.

I spread my hands, avoiding her gaze: "General Tina, are all of this irrelevant to me?"

The beam of the searchlight swept over Tina's head, bathing her entire body in a holy silvery-white light.

I can't fathom her heart. One moment she's all smiles and seductive glances, the next she's ruthless and merciless, treating human life like dirt—her actions only remind me of the ruthless female demons of ancient martial arts worlds. Although I'm not a chivalrous hero who hates evil, I certainly don't want to associate with a girl like this.

"Irrelevant? No, it's relevant! And very relevant!" She smiled confidently, as if everything was under her control.

I laughed silently, expressing my protest through silence.

"Mr. Feng, everything inside the Pyramid of Tsar belongs to the Egyptian government. If you're prone to forgetfulness, I suggest you carefully read the Egyptian government's 1975 decree on the protection of antiquities. It contains incredibly detailed explanations for any excavation project involving the pyramids and the Pharaoh's relics. For example, the 'Blade of Salvation' you obtained..."

She smiled smugly, because she had caught me "stealing state funds".

The watchtower was indeed not just for show; it seems every action the military takes is based on actual combat needs, with absolutely no waste of resources. Suren and I thought no one knew about the Golden Sword, but it turned out our secret had already been exposed.

I was speechless and listened as Ren Tiena continued, "It doesn't matter that you took Cheney's check; his money isn't clean anyway. If you're willing to cooperate and work for the Egyptian government, you'll be our good friend. Not only will we not pursue the 'Blade of Salvation,' but the government will also reward you very generously—one hundred million US dollars is nothing! As long as you find the 'Eye of the Moon' and the 'super weapon,' the government's entire fifteen billion in military supplies for this year can be awarded to you. Fifteen billion, are you satisfied?"

1.5 billion? Of course I'm satisfied, but this astronomical figure is likely just a mirage, something that will disappear after I see it a few times.

Tina's words reminded me of the elusive Dr. Cheney. What on earth did he go off to with Yelan's workers?

I went back into the tent, took out my binoculars, and peered towards the top of the pyramid to the west.

The golden sword comes from an alternate dimension at the top of the tower. I wonder if Dr. Cheney might be able to use this sword to find another exit into the pyramid? Such a massive structure wouldn't have just one exit; even a fool would consider that. In my opinion, it would at least have a back door, ventilation shafts, observation holes, safety passages, and channels for receiving energy from the heavens and earth, etc. Roughly estimated, there are more than ten portals that can accommodate a single person.

Currently, we haven't found a single entrance to the Pyramid of Tsar; they just made a hole in the pyramid out of thin air, which is quite ridiculous.

The top of the tower was quiet; there were no people moving about, nor any unusual lights or shadows.

Tina's demands were too high. Not to mention the "super weapon" that only exists in unfounded legends, they hadn't even found a clue to the "Eye of the Moon" that was clearly recorded in the ancient books, and they still didn't know where that gem was.

"Mr. Feng, if you agree to the cooperation, I have a contract for you to sign..."

I abruptly interrupted Tina: "What if they disagree? Will the Egyptian government immediately order me to leave the excavation site? If so, I'd be more than happy to accept it—"

Tina spoke in a tone ten times harsher and colder: “Leave? No—no one is to leave the camp until the gems and weapons are found, including the corpses!” She swung her right arm forcefully, emphasizing her words, and her eyes clearly showed disdain and mockery.

I now understand that the reason Tengjia was roughly thrown into that tent and not allowed to leave was not because of the special transport vehicles in Cairo, but because of Tina's military orders.