King of Tomb Raiders

Chapter 18

Half an hour later, after calming down completely, Tanino recounted the entire incident in detail—

"When Miss Fujika arrived at the camp, she brought with her twelve copies of the 'Azure Heaven and Yellow Springs Sutra'..."

(Upon hearing this name, my heart skipped a beat, and then raced wildly. This set of scriptures is entirely about mysterious spells for exorcising ghosts and capturing demons. Legend has it that it was brought back by the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang during his pilgrimage to India, and is the most precious set of all scriptures. I'm sure Scalpel, Tiger, and Tang Xin felt the same way I did.)

"After the second failed attempt to go down the well, five more special forces soldiers were lost. Miss was furious and kept flipping through the scriptures, muttering a Chinese character under her breath—" Gu Ye picked up a pen and wrote a character in his palm, a clear "奔" (bēn), composed of three "牛" (niú) characters.

What does this mean? What exactly did Fujika discover?

Subconsciously, I asked myself, "Three 'cow' characters equal 'run'; then what about three 'horse' characters? What character do they equal?" I suspected that Tengjia only realized something after seeing that neither-cow-nor-horse monster on the tunnel ceiling. Of course, in Chinese, there is no character that can be composed of three "horse" characters as I guessed.

"The young lady spent eleven hours reviewing documents, then suddenly stopped, put on a coat, and left the tent. At the time, I was looking up information online and didn't pay much attention, assuming she was just going to the restroom or getting some fresh air. Then, she never came back—"

Tani was no coward; upon noticing something amiss, he immediately gathered everyone in the camp to search for clues. The only reliable lead came from the two burly special forces soldiers guarding the well. They reported that Miss Fujika had gone down the shaft, and that she had received Tani's permission.

"From the time the young lady left the tent to the time we discovered the anomaly, only six and a half minutes had passed. So, I immediately led ten special forces soldiers down the well and chased after them into the tunnel. In the end, we only found the coat that the young lady had worn. The coat was left at the end of the tunnel, and beyond that was unexcavated sand."

He tried to describe the process in plain and concise language, but I can imagine that at the end of the tunnel there was once a red carpet, once a magical stone tablet, once a red ribbon that could speed up the progress of ordinary people, and finally, of course, the most normal one—sand.

During the construction of a semi-finished desert tunnel, the end should naturally be exposed sand.

The Second Part: Underground Horror

— Chapter 10 — Back to the Desert —

"Sand? Overcoat?" I kept repeating those two words. Then, where is she? Where is the living, breathing Miss Fujika? Where did she go? Was she swept away again by that red ribbon, like all the workers and special forces before her, dragged into an unknown space by the illusion demon?

The seemingly simple description actually contains a bizarre plot and unpredictable twists that could easily be made into a thrilling supernatural film. The only troubling thing is that another person has indeed gone missing.

The most composed person was Elder Sahan, who sat on the sofa next to the scalpel, his eyes closed in deep thought, his face showing no shock or horror.

After Gu Ye finished narrating, Sahan slowly opened his eyes and faced the scalpel: "The Illusion Demon has seized enough food. I guess we can take this opportunity to quickly dig and open the Earth Crack Khan Pyramid."

Under such intense scrutiny, everyone tried to keep their speeches brief, since they were not very familiar with each other and belonged to different alliances and factions.

As a result of the meeting, the surgeon stayed behind, and then everyone split into four vehicles and headed to the camp.

I was still in Suren's Humvee, lagging behind the convoy. On the back seat of the jeep were four iron boxes, each about half a meter square, containing the most advanced communication equipment, X-ray detection equipment, and anti-gas equipment that Scalpel could provide, as well as two sets of US military individual combat systems, each costing over a million dollars.

It's better to rely on yourself than on others. Given the Japanese tendency to be stingy, Tanino will definitely be holding back on the use of equipment. We should simply not try to take advantage of him, lest we put our lives in someone else's hands.

Ahead of the Hummer was Lu Jiachan's black Mercedes, which wasn't moving very fast.

Suren pointed to the tire tracks left by the Mercedes and suddenly sighed heavily, "This man is truly unfathomable. From the moment he appeared, I knew that I had encountered the strongest opponent in the world..."

The subtle tire tracks reveal that the Mercedes-Benz uses the world's top-of-the-line all-weather, adaptive tires, providing superior grip on sand, rocks, wet surfaces, and ordinary asphalt roads. In simpler terms, this means the car can perform any challenging maneuver in any terrain.

I bet that the unassuming car on the outside has a top-of-the-line internal system, just like its owner, Lu Jiachan.

Suren sighed again, gripped the steering wheel with one hand, took out his phone with the other, and dialed a very long number.

I closed my eyes, carefully recalling the monstrous image that was neither cow nor horse. In Chinese characters, animals closely resembling horses include donkeys, mules, elk, and zebras, and their names all invariably use the character for "horse" as a radical. At that moment, my attention was entirely focused on that animal called a "four unlikes."

Suren's call went through, but what she said into the receiver was a long string of Arabic numerals, at least seventy or eighty, before she hung up.

I know it must be some kind of strange code, but I have no intention of listening to it or cracking it.

After the convoy entered the desert, the air immediately became dry. With each breath, it seemed as if countless tiny grains of sand were invading people's nasal cavity and throat with the airflow, causing itching and discomfort.

"Brother Feng, what Chinese character can be formed by four 'horses'?" Su Lun suddenly asked.

Undoubtedly, she had already associated the word "run" that Teng Jia had mentioned with a monster that was neither cow nor horse, and then thought of using "horse" to form a character. Of course, her line of thought would also extend to the "four unlikes".

"Four horses? Haha, without that character, it can only be 'a creature that doesn't resemble anything else'—"

The Père David's deer is a creature that resembles a deer in antlers, a cow in hooves, a donkey in body, and a horse in head. However, over a hundred years ago, the wild Père David's deer became completely extinct.

I chuckled awkwardly, "Could it be...could there be a strange creature under the pyramids?"

This idea is utterly ridiculous, because the Pyramid of Lions is a completely Asian wild animal and simply cannot survive in desert regions. Moreover, how could anyone have brought such an animal from the Asian continent during the time the pyramids were built?

Human imagination is truly boundless and all-powerful. If we can associate a devastating storm over the Atlantic Ocean with a butterfly spreading its wings on the grasslands of Xishuangbanna, China, then what can't we associate with it?

For example, some theories suggest that apes are hybrids of aliens and Earth apes; others suggest that Earth's species extinctions repeat themselves every 300 million years; still others claim that the Great Wall of Qin Dynasty was an alien landing strip… Tens of thousands of conjectures could fill hundreds of millions of science fiction novels, but that's the work of boring tabloid writers. We are tomb raiding experts, normal atheists, and scientists; we don't have time for these pointless "Goldbach's Conjectures."

Suren pressed the play button on the record player, and Jackson's wild screams rang out.

Just now, at the bottom of the villa steps, before getting into the car, Gu Ye asked me if I was interested in the "Biluo Huangquan Jing" (Scripture of the Yellow Springs), and said that he would ask his superiors to see if he could make these scriptures available for me to read.

Thinking of his smug face now makes me feel nauseous.

As is widely known, this miraculous scripture was half-stolen and half-forcibly taken from the imperial library by the Japanese army when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing at the end of the Qing Dynasty. In recent years, whenever the scripture is mentioned, the Japanese shamelessly claim that it was a gift from the Tang Dynasty monk Jianzhen to the Japanese shogunate when he traveled to Japan.

This kind of distortion of the truth is a common trick used by the Japanese, and I can't be bothered to explain it to him.

As the camp came into view, the faint sounds of iron pipes and chains clanging and being dragged could be heard in the wind, indicating that the workers were preparing to resume work.

Suren smiled wryly: "It seems that Gu Ye is determined to develop the Tu Liehan Pyramid, regardless of how dangerous the road ahead may be."

This demonstrates that Japan's rapid rise and prosperity after World War II was inseparable from its relentless pursuit of quick success and unwavering determination. If other Chinese had led the excavation work, the entire operation would have collapsed at the first sign of a crisis. From this perspective, entrepreneurs of every nation should learn from this spirit.

The sense of crisis in the camp temporarily disappeared. The reason the workers were still willing to stay underground was entirely because Tanino had increased their wages twentyfold. Although he was Japanese, Tanino understood the principle that "money makes the world go round," and the simple workers, upon seeing the brand-new US dollars, rushed down into the well to dig without any effort to persuade them.

"Seventy-two hours later, we will reach the outer wall of the pyramid—" In the large tent in the valley, he pointed confidently at the topographical map.

Elder Sahan was now completely useless; he hadn't even been inside the tunnel and was sitting cross-legged in another tent.

Suren and I shared a tent, not for any romantic relationship, but for our safety.

I pressed Tanino about the attack on Suren, and he, of course, flatly denied the existence of the "Hidden Mist One-Sword Style." Therefore, we have reason to believe that those cold-blooded ninjas had been lurking around the camp with some kind of tacit approval from Tanino.

Only fifty-five hours had passed, and by dawn on the third day, the tunnel had been completed.

For the workers, the completion of the project meant receiving a large sum of US dollars. Everyone was cheering and jumping for joy, constantly throwing hard hats, shoes, and water bottles into the air to celebrate the final victory.

At that time, Suren and I stood side by side at the tent entrance, coldly observing the revelry of the crowd in front of us.

The night was cold, but the workers' enthusiasm remained high, and they didn't calm down until two hours later. The nameless terror that had hung over the camp for the past few days had been forgotten. They knew that after getting the money from Gu Ye, they could head straight to Cairo the next morning and indulge themselves to the fullest.

"Actually, with the tunnel open, the project is only one-third complete, isn't it?" I sneered with a contemptuous tone.

The outer walls of the Pyramid of Tsarist Russia are extremely difficult to breach, and countless people have made relentless attempts to conquer them. In the end, those people are all buried in the sand, while the pyramids remain standing intact.

I turned to face northwest, gazing at the Great Pyramid of Giza, which scientists had already explored halfway through. Many people have mysteriously lost their lives trying to enter that magnificent structure. Records clearly indicate as many as 140 people, including scholars, tomb raiders, surveyors, biologists, and many unsuspecting workers who touched or moved items from the tombs.

Undoubtedly, the pyramids harbor some mysterious entity that can kill people at any moment. Whether it's deadly germs or the Pharaoh's curse, those who die can never be brought back to life.

Tomorrow, once we open the Pyramid of Tulku, will it unleash some kind of murderous demon?

“Brother Feng, this time is different. You’ve used your connections with NASA and obtained the blueprints and raw materials for building the Mars drilling rig—now, this unparalleled drilling rig is on its way from a mysterious military base in the central Pacific Ocean to Cairo. Tomorrow will be a historic moment…”

Suren crossed her arms, appearing extremely excited. Clearly, she was very interested in excavating the Pyramid of Tulku and had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Looking due west from here, the above-ground portion of the Turkhan Pyramid is small and simple, unable to openly receive the admiration and worship of tourists from all over the world like its siblings.

I've always felt that its existence is completely different from other pyramids, large and small. The results of X-ray detection show that its strange burial chamber structure, with 361 rooms on each level, has never been seen before in the history of pyramid excavation.

Some have even joked that the Pyramid of Tsar is not a proper Earth building at all, but rather a spacecraft that crashed onto Earth from another planet.

The Second Underground Horror

— Chapter 11 - The Mysterious Gold Medal —

"Brother Feng, should we... should we go down the well and take a look?" Suren suddenly became interested, pointing towards the brightly lit well opening, his face flushed with excitement. The revelers had long since dispersed and returned to their tents to sleep; only two special forces soldiers carrying submachine guns stood guard at the well opening.

"Isn't it unnecessary? Wouldn't it be better to go down the well with Gu Ye and his group first thing tomorrow morning?" I still have lingering fears about that tunnel that had been causing so many problems.

"No, I want to go now and see if there are any discoveries before drilling begins."

I was startled, because the shadow of Tengjia's disappearance had not completely faded from my mind. Suren's current behavior suggested that her thoughts were being controlled by something mysterious; otherwise, she wouldn't have rashly requested to go down into the well immediately. Her forehead was gleaming with a faint sheen, her cheeks were as red as the most perfect Fuji apples on a branch, and her eyes shone with a bright, piercing light.

"Suren, are you alright? I suggest you go back to your tent, have a cup of coffee, and sleep for another four or five hours. We can wait for Gu Ye to let us know when to go down the well before we proceed, okay?"

Her chest heaved, and she whispered excitedly, "Brother Feng, if the entrance to the pyramid really opens tomorrow, then tonight will be its last night on Earth intact. Going down the well to search will have immense commemorative significance. But wait, you're too scared to go, I'll go by myself..."

This tactic of provocation didn't work on me, but I wondered what force had made Suren so agitated? Was it like my last adventure, where she also heard the drumming and the summoning voice on her own?

"Suren, what did you see? What did you hear?"

I instinctively grabbed her wrist and gazed westward. Suddenly, another untimely question popped into my head: "Why did the scalpel start digging here? When choosing the location of the shaft, if it had been placed appropriately between the Tsarikhin Pyramid and the Great Pyramid of Giza, wouldn't it have been possible to have options on both sides, heading south to the Tsarikhin Pyramid and north to the Great Pyramid of Giza from the same shaft?"

According to excavation data disclosed by Egyptian authorities, the excavation of the Great Pyramid of Giza can be considered to have reached about one-third of its completion. In fact, based on the published cross-sectional diagrams of the underground burial chamber, any expert with basic tomb raiding knowledge can deduce that there are at least three more layers of underground structures in the vertical direction of the burial chamber, extending nearly a thousand meters underground.

If the foundation is unstable, the superstructure will certainly not be able to withstand the onslaught of hurricanes and sandstorms; this is a truth that any desert architect understands.

Based on architectural principles, to reconstruct a similar structure near the Great Pyramid of Giza, its foundation, using cast-in-place concrete piles, would need to extend at least 800 meters underground. Therefore, we can roughly conclude that "the portion of the Great Pyramid buried underground cannot be less than 500 meters deep."

No one would dare to build such a massive structure on the surface of the desert sands. The ancient Egyptians were highly advanced in mathematics and architecture; surely they understood this principle?

"Brother Feng, I'm fine!" Suren shook off my hand.

Suddenly, a cigarette butt flickered in the shadows beside the tent, revealing someone who had been crouching there eavesdropping on our conversation.

"Who?" I hissed irritably.

The man stubbed out his cigarette, walked out with a hunched back, and smiled ingratiatingly, looking up at the man: "Mr. Feng, it's me, Long."

Before he even got close, I was already feeling dizzy from the strong smell of his cheap liquor. He was still wearing that tattered work uniform, with a liquor bottle sticking out of the large left pocket—a typical look of a sleazy drunkard.

“Mr. Feng, we’re leaving the construction site tomorrow. I came to see you and have something to show you. Maybe you’ll be interested?” He raised his dirty right fist and shook it, indicating that there was something in his palm.

"What is that?" I covered my nose in disgust. I always avoid unkempt drunkards and have no desire to have anything to do with them.

He shook his fist again and sniffed loudly.

The special forces soldiers at the wellhead noticed the commotion and shone their powerful flashlights over, but after recognizing me, they quickly moved the beams away.

"Speak quickly if you have something to say, and show me what you have. I don't have time to listen to your nonsense." My attention was still focused on whether Suren's emotions would escalate further. People like Long only care about money; swindling money with strange and unusual items is their most common way of making money.

I stomped my feet on the ground. The temperature in the desert at night was extremely low, and I felt that my feet, which were wearing leather shoes, were in danger of freezing. I just wanted to drag Suren into the tent as soon as possible and crawl into my sleeping bag to warm up.

However, when Long reluctantly opened his palm, my eyes suddenly lit up, and Suren blurted out, "The Emperor's Golden Token? Where did it come from? Where did you find this thing?"

It was a square white metal plaque, about an inch in size. On the upward-facing side, a blooming cherry blossom was engraved, with the character "cherry" (樱) written in fluent Japanese next to it. Japan is the only "cherry blossom country" on Earth, and its cherry blossom varieties are the best in the world. The variety engraved on the metal plaque, with its petals turned outwards and shaped like a seven-pointed star, is called "Heaven's Gift Flower" (天赐の花), which was cultivated and appreciated exclusively by the Japanese Imperial Family, and is therefore known to the world as the "Emperor's Flower" (天賊の花).

The dragon clenched its fists quickly, chuckled, and remained silent with a lewd grin.

I've dealt with him once and know that only US dollars are effective in getting him to talk.

After I handed over the first hundred-dollar bill, Long finally spoke: "Last night, during the final stage of the tunnel construction, while I was clearing debris from the site, I struck the outer wall of the pyramid with a pickaxe and suddenly discovered it in a crevice."

It was indeed strange to find Japanese imperial family items so deep underground, but I didn't connect it to anything else. Suddenly, I heard Suren's teeth chattering, and her hand turned around and gripped my wrist tightly.

"What's wrong? Are you cold?" I asked worriedly, afraid that she might be possessed by some kind of "dirty thing" or have some strange illness.

Suren shook his head, his face pale, and weakly gestured for Long to continue.

Long successfully obtained the second hundred-dollar bill and continued, "It was attached to a chain deep in a crevice. I was in a hurry, so I pulled hard, and the chain broke. I only got this token. Strangely enough, as soon as the chain broke, it quickly fell into the crevice."