King of Tomb Raiders

Chapter 15

Suddenly, I heard the slow sound of chanting. I couldn't understand the obscure and strange words, but I could tell from the rhythm and tone of each word that it was chanting, because the sound was exactly the same as that of Chinese monks and nuns. Then, I heard the mysterious drumming I had heard earlier in the desert camp.

“Elder—” I began to speak, but a gust of wind blew through my palm. Sahan spoke first, though his voice seemed to come from my palm: “Do not speak. Listen, think, and ponder with your heart, and I will know, and the gods will know.”

Back in the Vatican, a master of telepathy gave me a similar experience; he could hear my thoughts without me even having to speak. Now, Elder Sahan is using a skill similar to telepathy, but several times more advanced than that master in the Vatican.

"Wind, all the secrets revolve around your brother. He's still alive, you know? Listen carefully, you can feel his breath, his heartbeat, his voice... If my magic hadn't been damaged, I could even let you see where he is right now. What a pity... what a pity..."

I could almost hear someone breathing slowly and heavily, accompanied by faint cries for help. However, in a semi-hypnotic state, I couldn't be sure if there was actually such a sound. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept glancing at the starry sky above the room. In the southeast corner of the starry sky, there was a medium-brightness star that was flashing intensely and very rapidly, and its white light was mixed with another red light.

I've seen Mars in space through a telescope; it is indeed reddish-brown, resembling scorched earth, but its red glow is not entirely the same as that of the stars.

"Wind, go save him, go save him, on his journey, through everything, he will finally uncover the secrets of the earth..."

I tried to straighten my back, trying to wake up from the hypnotic state, because I disliked the feeling of being controlled by others. With the help of my mysterious internal energy cultivation over the past ten years, after taking a small step back, my mind cleared, and my hands were freed from Sahan's grasp.

"The secrets of Earth?" I didn't understand what he meant at all.

“Yes, the secret of the Earth!” He pointed back at the globe, where the huge sphere was still rotating slowly in the darkness.

I came here to ask about the "Illusion Demon." Everything that happened in the tunnel cannot be explained by human physics; we can only turn to myths and legends.

I couldn't see the scalpel; in the darkness, an endless, cold wind seemed to be blowing silently, making my exposed face, neck, and hands feel as if they were being cut by a knife.

"Read your brother's diary carefully. If you understand it, you can avoid many detours. My time is running out... not much time left..."

After he finished speaking, the lights in the stone chamber were turned on.

The scalpel stood motionless in front of the sand table, like a clay or wooden sculpture.

Everything that just happened felt like a short, incomplete dream, leaving me completely bewildered. Not only were my doubts unresolved, but many new questions arose. It's better to rely on myself than on others; these are questions that perhaps no one in the world can answer.

Suddenly, Elder Sahan shuddered and pointed towards the corridor: "When you two came over—did you see anything?"

His expression suddenly turned horrified, and he pressed his hands hard on the sand table, digging them deep into the sand. At the same time, four or five thick blue veins bulged on his forehead, undulating and trembling.

"You, you... what did you see? What?" He repeated the same question again, and quickly raised his hand, brought it to his lips, and let out a sharp whistle. His movements were hurried and chaotic, and the sand he raised with his hands flew everywhere, some of it sticking to his lips along with his fingers.

The scalpel snapped to attention, its right hand instantly reaching into its pocket, alert and ready.

"What did we see?" I frowned as I stepped out of the elevator. Besides the staff member with Mori in the lobby, there was only the girl hanging upside down in the corridor. To me, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it; why make such a fuss?

Elder Sahan's face was contorted with more and more veins, as if his skin was thinning and the veins deep beneath his flesh were about to be exposed. He plunged his hands back into the sand, clenching them tightly, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the corridor.

The girl glided in like a silent breeze—no, her movements were more like a wisp of smoke, light and graceful, her gray robe trailing straight behind her like a gliding bat.

Elder Sahan suddenly raised his arm and hurled the sand in his hand at the girl like a rain of petals. His martial arts skills were astonishing; the sand whistled through the air, and the force of this throw was no less than that of a shotgun firing in rapid succession.

The entire stone chamber was filled with this terrifying and powerful hissing sound. The girl's gray robe fluttered, and she gracefully circled half a circle in the air like a glider before landing lightly beside the sand table. At the same time, there was a snapping sound from her sleeves, and two sharp, half-foot-long curved knives popped out from the back of her hands.

The grains of sand weren't aimed at her; they seemed to be trying to kill some unseen enemy in the air.

"What is it? What is it?" Even in the tense atmosphere, Scalpel remained calm. He was no ordinary person in the tomb raiding world; his skills were extraordinary.

Elder Sahan's muscles were taut, and the gray blanket wrapped around him trembled incessantly. Only after all the sand had settled and the corridor had returned to deathly silence did he slowly, through gritted teeth, utter, "Illusion... Demon..."

The scalpel let out a soft "Ah!" and gave a bitter smile, cold sweat beginning to bead on its forehead.

We paused for about five minutes, the four of us remaining frozen in place, as if menacing demons or vengeful ghosts might burst into the corridor at any moment. Those five minutes felt longer than five hours.

Ignorance is bliss. I've never seen any "illusion demon" and always thought Elder Sahan was just being mysterious and creating tension. There's clearly nothing in the air; if anything unusual were to happen, the staff in the hall would be the first to suffer.

"Elder Sahan, is the danger over?" I smiled casually to ease the tense atmosphere.

Sahan, his face grim, slowly released the sand from his palm and asked in a low voice, "Youlian, have you noticed anything amiss?"

The female disciple named "Youlian" shook her head, twisted her wrist, and the two curved swords disappeared into the sandbox. Even through the huge sandbox, I could still feel the chilling aura emanating from those two blades.

In the desert, almost everyone, men and women alike, carries a scimitar. This weapon has become one of the standard tools for desert dwellers, as indispensable as water, dry rations, and camels. And the scimitar that Youlian possesses is undoubtedly the essence of the finest steel forged through countless trials.

Sahan took a few steps forward, still uneasy, and placed his palm on Youlian's eyes, asking thoughtfully, "Go check it again. I feel like the scriptures in the corridor seem... seem a little off..."

This technique is extremely mysterious; he only needs to touch Youlian's eyes to seem to be able to read what she is seeing.

Now, I dare not equate Elder Sahan with ordinary itinerant sorcerers anymore; his extraordinary abilities far exceed my imagination. So far, those fantastical articles about him are largely true.

The Second Underground Horror

— Chapter 5 — The Invisible Crisis —

Youlian walked out, her gray robe trailing on the ground. She was so thin and withered, she truly looked like a paper effigy. Her hair also seemed gray, hanging short down the back of her neck.

I swallowed hard. She reminded me so much of a giant bat that I almost had a strange hallucination, as if I were facing a gigantic prehistoric creature from an unnamed ancient tomb.

"Feng, you should know that in ancient Egyptian legends, every pyramid hides a phantom demon, who is a servant forever loyal to the Pharaoh."

I nodded. I had already read through all the information about the Illusion Demon.

The scalpel, relieved, withdrew from his pocket, vigorously wiped the sweat from his palms on his shirt, and interjected, "Elder, you said that after the pyramids naturally collapsed or were deliberately opened, the illusion demons would be released to kill those greedy people who coveted the pharaoh's tomb. So, after they've killed them, where do these illusion demons go?"

As he spoke, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and chuckled softly.

The whereabouts of the illusion demons have been the subject of countless interpretations and strange theories by historians and theologians: some say they merge into water vapor and clouds, eventually vanishing into nothingness; others say they hide among humans, attaching themselves to the dark corners of rocks, trees, and other objects, ready to harm people at any time; still others say they are automatically taken back by the immortal Pharaoh and become his loyal servants once more…

These are all fabricated, ignorant tales, merely fodder for idle gossip. No wonder the scalpel laughs.

"They all went to the sea, just as every river on land eventually flows into the sea."

Sahan, his expression serious, pointed at the Nile River on the sand table, pointing straight ahead. I suddenly realized that the sand table wasn't just depicting Egypt and the surrounding African countries. Its content was vast, resembling a flat globe—the world map we see every day.

His finger pointed to a hollow representing the ocean, and he continued solemnly, “There! They’re all there! No one can see them, but I know they’re all there, all there. More than 749,000 illusion demons, they’re all there, the place is…”

I screamed "Ah!" at the same time as the scalpel. He stomped his foot on the ground, while I slammed my hand on the edge of the sand table, sending sand flying everywhere. Only in this way could we release the immense horror in our hearts, because the place name Sahan mentioned was very long. To put it simply, its code name is one that I believe 80 percent of the people on Earth have heard of—the Devil's Triangle.

Yes, it's the world-famous "mysterious death triangle at sea".

I gasped sharply, and at the same time I heard the crackling sound of the scalpel digging into my finger bones.

"Elder...you're not joking, are you?" I tried my best to make my tone light. If these words came from anyone else, I would have just taken them as a joke and never taken them seriously. However, every word spoken by Elder Sahan was worth listening to carefully and thinking about.

The rumors about the Devil's Triangle are enough to fill ten thousand thick nautical logs, but I don't want to go into detail.

The scalpel then asked an even more important question: "Elder, more than 749,000? Where could there be so many? All the pyramids on Earth combined only amount to that many—more than 740,000, absolutely impossible! Absolutely impossible!" He stomped his feet on the ground a few more times, as if to strengthen his confidence as he said these words.

Indeed, even if you include all the Mayan pyramids, underwater pyramids, Mexican pyramids, and other ancient structures similar to pyramids on Earth, and put them all together, there are less than 10,000. So where does the claim of 749,000 come from?

Sahan gave a cold laugh, his expression strange, as if he were laughing at our ignorance.

I exchanged a glance with the scalpel, still feeling that Sahan's words were nothing but baseless speculation and a deliberate attempt to mystify.

"There's a saying in Chinese Buddhist scriptures: 'A grain of sand contains a world, a flower contains a Buddha-land,' right?"

I nodded silently. It was one of the verses of the masters that Chinese Buddhists often recited, but what did that signify?

"So, what about the 'countless as the sands of the Ganges' that Indians love to use when quoting scriptures? You can't be unfamiliar with that, can you? In the long river of history spanning tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions of years, how many magnificent buildings and cultural relics have been weathered and eroded, ultimately turning to ashes and drifting away with the wind? That is what the ancient Indians used to describe as 'countless as the sands of the Ganges' in human history..."

As Sahan spoke, it suddenly dawned on me—"The Egyptian pyramids we see today are not the only ones that have existed since ancient times! Before recorded history existed, or even before humans appeared on Earth, who knows if tens of thousands or even hundreds of millions of pyramids existed? If we push Earth's timeline forward infinitely, the number of pyramids could be estimated to be countless?"

In this sense, the number of illusion demons doesn't need to be counted carefully; it can be any number from zero to hundreds of millions, or even beyond hundreds of millions.

"Is this... real?" I also grabbed two handfuls of sand, letting the yellowish-brown grains slowly slip through my fingers.

Sahan coughed lightly, recited another difficult Egyptian phrase, and then solemnly pointed to the sand table, saying word by word: "Actually, in the ancient Egyptian texts, there was no desert. At that time, what covered this land was lush green trees and long rivers, and there was also a boundless ocean, no less than any of the four oceans in scale."

"Haha, haha!" The scalpel chuckled dryly, then vigorously wiped his face. "There are thousands upon thousands of Egyptian legends. According to Elder Sahan's explanation, I'm afraid everything will become a reality that can be traced back to its origins?" His face was somewhat pale, and coupled with the cold sweat that had been pouring down his face, the wiping left behind layers of streaks on his face.

Elder Sahan ignored his sarcasm and waved his arms: "Wind, think about your name! How is wind formed? Everyone knows that physicists say 'wind is formed by the movement of air,' that's right, it's because the movement of air forms wind—but why doesn't anyone ask, what is the purpose of the air movement?"

I was bewildered: "Why does air move?" The physics definition of wind is rather vague. According to the definition, wind is formed by the contrast and interaction between high-pressure and low-pressure zones. But if I pressed further, why are there high-pressure and low-pressure zones in the first place?

Such a recurring question is impossible for anyone to answer clearly. Even if you dragged Einstein out of his ancient grave and gave him the world's most powerful Deep Blue computer as a query tool, he still might not be able to answer this series of seemingly simple questions.

I looked at Sahan, who smiled calmly: "It is the movement of the illusion demons that creates the wind. They cause land breezes to flow from the land to the sea, and sea breezes to flow back from the sea to the land. At times, the battles, mergers, and coalesces between the illusion demons create unimaginable storms, tsunamis, and underwater earthquakes on the sea..."

"Ha ha!" This time, the scalpel's dry laughter wasn't as loud. Before Elder Sahan, this over-a-hundred-year-old Egyptian sorcerer, we two seemed as ignorant as infants.

There seemed to be some kind of sound coming from the corridor outside. Elder Sahan turned his head and looked at the star that was still flashing rapidly in the southeast corner of the ceiling. He punched his chest hard, making a loud "thump" sound.

"What is that...which star is that?" My knowledge of astronomy and astrology isn't very advanced, so I couldn't immediately determine the angle and position of the star.

The scalpel smiled calmly: "That's not a star, or rather, there isn't even such a star on the astronomical chart. Elder, what do you say?" He was trying to save face. Among the Earth's tomb raiders, he was a leading figure, and he certainly valued his reputation and face.

Elder Sahan quickly said to me, "Jingsunara, Jingsunara—wind, remember this name, remember it, remember it forever!"

A few sharp clanging sounds of curved blades striking the stone wall suddenly rang out. Then, Youlian, trailing a grey robe, appeared at the entrance of the corridor, the curved blades on her wrists flashing with light as she rapidly swung them in mid-air. Egyptian swordsmanship was similar to Western fencing, consisting mostly of practical cutting, slashing, and thrusting movements, completely lacking the flamboyant, performative elements of Chinese swordsmanship.

Within four seconds, Youlian made at least forty attacks, averaging more than ten strikes per second. The entire stone chamber was filled with the sound of the two curved blades slicing through the air. Indeed, the blades were only cutting into the air; she was as if she were wrestling fiercely with the air itself, because the corridor was now completely brightly lit, and there were truly no enemies worth fighting.

"Elder, what is she doing?" Scalpel asked in surprise, his hands flying into his pockets simultaneously. At this moment, Youlian's speed in drawing her knife exceeded the firing rate of a gun, so even if Scalpel wanted to help her, there was nothing he could do.

After Sahan hurriedly finished speaking, he stared blankly at the star without saying a word or moving.

Suddenly, the star went out, ceasing its frenzied twinkling, becoming as calm as an ordinary pebble in a shallow stream. Youlian's blade also stopped moving, slowly turning at the entrance of the corridor towards Sahan.

These changes came quickly and went just as fast, and in the blink of an eye, calm returned. The only difference was that Elder Sahan remained silent, like a statue carved from a giant stone.

Youlian moved forward step by step, her arms hanging down, the blade of her scimitar gleaming coldly under the lamplight. Her eyes held a fierce, chilling murderous intent. It was the first time I'd realized that someone with gray eyes could be ten times more sinister than a normal person when their gaze turned menacing. At the very least, the moment I met her eyes, a layer of goosebumps rose all over my body, a feeling of extreme discomfort spreading from my throat to my stomach.

The Second Part: Underground Horror

— Chapter 6 — Master of Special Abilities —

"What on earth happened?" the scalpel cried out.

Elder Sahan had regained his senses and slowly placed his hands on his heart, his expression devout, as if he were paying homage to that star.

Youlian stopped at her feet, her face filled with deep confusion. She gritted her teeth and withdrew the curved blade from her wrist with two sharp "snap" sounds.

"It's okay, it's okay... relax... relax..." The scalpel had already moved in front of Youlian, blocking her way.

What I find most bizarre is that after Youlian fought against thin air alone, the direction she turned to approach was likely the silent Elder Sahan. "Why? What is she trying to do?" I was very puzzled. If we think about it more deeply, if there really are illusion demons that appear and disappear without a trace, then Youlian's attack on thin air just now was probably to resist the rapidly approaching enemy.

So now, where is the enemy? Where is the illusion demon?

I stared intently at Elder Sahan, hoping to spot a flaw in his demeanor amidst the sudden chaos and subsequent calm. Anyone with a modicum of imagination would know about supernatural theories like "possession" or "soul transference." What I feared was that the incredibly powerful illusionary demon I imagined had already infiltrated Elder Sahan's mind.

"I'm fine, everyone don't worry." Elder Sahan lowered his arms, straightened his back, and pushed away the scalpel blocking his way.

"Youlian, what did you see? Is it an illusion demon?" He smiled, reached out, and covered Youlian's crown.

The scalpel suddenly cried out, "Wait, wait!" It swiftly approached, grabbed Youlian's arm, and jumped back to avoid Sahan's hands.

The action he took was exactly what I wanted to do, because judging from Sahan's strange behavior just now, we have every reason to suspect that his body and mind have undergone some inexplicable change.

"Youlian, tell us... where is the Illusion Demon?" The scalpel practically roared at Youlian's face.

Youlian looked even more bewildered, her gray eyes staring blankly ahead, seemingly oblivious to the scalpel's roar.

Given the current situation, both Scalpel and I are masters of Eastern martial arts. Even if Elder Sahan is controlled by the Illusion Demon, the two of us working together should be able to escape the stone chamber successfully. However, I don't want to start running away for no reason. I still want to figure out the Illusion Demon and how to enter the interior of the Earth Crack Khan Pyramid through the desert tunnel.