Le roi des pilleurs de tombes

Chapitre 26

Qunzhi, who always sets off on the most dangerous "first day," enters the room and kneels onto the goddess's bed.

"Where did you go last time?" the goddess asked, stroking his body.

“Syria,” he said calmly.

"Has it been found?"

"……sorry."

The goddess kissed him.

He wanted to cry, but he held it in.

Are you still willing?

"I will never give up."

Trembling, he fired and set off.

4

Men are truly creatures made up of empty talk.

Only three days after setting off, Qunzhi felt extremely regretful.

cold.

white.

On the vast, desolate land, the raging snow froze "temperature" into the most illusory substance in the world.

It was so cold that I couldn't even describe the cold; my neck was so frozen I couldn't lift it.

Every breath of cold air inhaled lowers the temperature in the lungs; every exhale depletes precious moisture. Every step taken brings death closer.

At first glance, the massive ice layers that have existed for thousands of years stand stacked on top of each other, like the presence of gods.

Facing God, one feels not solemnity and kindness, but rather aloofness and harshness, a sense that He can freeze your figure in His holy land at any time if He so desires.

I have been to many places, but none are closer to the Avici Hell in the hearts of the masses than this realm of gods.

The first issue is food.

No matter how well you allocate food and restrain your desires, food will become scarce after the fifteenth day, and you will need extraordinary hunting skills to find something to eat in the freezing cold.

More terrifying than hunger is the feeling of isolation.

A thousand kilometers ahead, a thousand kilometers behind, no one; it felt as if I were the last human being left on Earth. The loneliness of not knowing where I was was amplified a million times by the endless white expanse. Even the largest creature on Earth, the blue whale, would feel like nothing more than a small piece of frozen fish if it appeared here on foot.

Whoosh—whoosh!

The collective wisdom barely managed to lift its head.

Rumble rumble rumble...

The avalanche in the distance once again buried the direction they were heading.

The number of times I've changed direction is countless. Why doesn't the avalanche just happen to me? Wouldn't it be better to simply bury my promise to the goddess and be done with it all?

Every step forward was taken without faith, simply because the cost of retreating was equally incalculable.

Day 20.

The twentieth day, after accumulating the pain of the previous nineteen days.

Facing the icy wind, Qunzhi felt nothing at all; even the physiological mechanisms responsible for generating fatigue had shut down. You could say it was a kind of self-protective mechanism.

While munching on a chocolate bar as hard as a rock, they stubbornly pressed on. The first twenty-three great adventures finally led Qunzhi to a valuable conclusion: as long as they didn't stop, they could maintain their basic body temperature and keep going.

Rest is the beginning of hypothermia and giving up.

Suddenly, a bright red cloud appeared in the vast white sky.

The red clouds slowly descended, their trajectory swaying strangely in the wind, growing larger and larger.

"Has it finally started to hallucinate?" Qunzhi thought to himself, not entirely surprised.

...I don't care, and I'm powerless to care. Even if an atomic bomb were to fall, it wouldn't matter.

Qunzhi walked slowly, but he noticed that the red cloud was falling faster and faster, and he couldn't help but stare at it.

Wait, wait, this red cloud approaching the ground looks like... a parachute?

Just as the group was stunned, the wind blowing across the frozen earth suddenly swelled to three times its normal size, the airflow changed direction, and the red parachute tilted in mid-air, then crashed down towards them with incredible speed.

"Ah... Ahhhhhh!"

I couldn't dodge it!

The group of intelligent beings, who were hunched over, were hit by the parachute with a thud, and their vision immediately began to spin wildly.

The skydiver landed in a close call, rolling around on the ground with the group of people for cushioning before finally coming to a stop.

The red parachute covered Qunzhi and the skydiver, like a rapidly disappearing mushroom. The dazzling spin just now had left the two of them tangled and bound by countless ropes, making it difficult to untangle them for a while.

Damn, that hurts so much.

Despite being in pain all over, Qunzhi took out a knife and cut the tangled parachute lines between the two.

"..." The parachutist didn't die, and didn't seem to have suffered any serious injuries.

The older skydiver was panting with his head down, seemingly still shaken.

Qunzhi, who slowly stood up and forcefully brushed the snow off his body, almost couldn't catch his breath either.

Isn't this just too much of a coincidence?

The skydiver landed in this godforsaken place, a vast expanse where there might only be one other person from Qunzhi within a thousand kilometers. How could this skydiver accurately hit him walking on the ground? Is it lucky? Or unlucky?

Qunzhi sized up his retreating figure, thinking... this unfortunate skydiver barely survived, but he's almost there. Of all the places to jump, he had to land in this cruel, icy wasteland. Without enough food and warm gear, he can forget about surviving more than ten hours.

Save him?

no way.

The food in their own supplies would last at most fifteen days, and they had no intention of sharing it. Preserving their own lives was the most important and only practical thing to do, and the group was prepared to leave no one to die.

However, having been tormented by loneliness enough, the group at least wanted to say a word to this crazy skydiver...

After saying that, he turned and left.

Having not spoken to anyone for a long time, Qunzhi held a knife and warily watched the parachutist sitting on the ground.

"call"

The older skydiver looked up, his tired eyes colliding instantly with the collective wisdom of the group.

Qunzhi frowned slightly. Why did this skydiver, whom he could never possibly know, look...somewhat familiar?

The skydiver looked utterly astonished, his mouth agape and his finger pointing at Qunzhi's nose.

"Lin Qunzhi?"

The fact that these three words came from the skydiver shocked Qunzhi so much that he gripped the knife in his hand even tighter.

But very quickly, Qunzhi knelt down and stared at the skydiver's face at nose level.

"You...you are..."

Speechless, Lin Qunzhi couldn't bear to stand by and watch this stranger die. There was nothing he could do.

The elderly skydiver sighed and gave the young polar backpacker a deep hug.

“I am you, and you are me… Lin Qunzhi.”

5

On the frozen earth, the two Lin Qunzhi walked side by side.

Unaware of the situation, Lao Lin Qunzhi dragged his slightly slower steps, taking a half-step lead.

Filled with intense curiosity, Kobayashi Qunzhi slowed down slightly, naturally cooperating with another "self".

Although they were both puzzled by each other's appearance, how many incredible things were there? The two did not say another word. Their rich experience in adventure told them that in the freezing cold, every word they spoke was a waste of energy. If they wanted to have a serious conversation, they could wait until they found a cave where they could stay overnight.

Five hours later, the snowfall subsided slightly.

"?" Kobayashi Qunzhi pointed to a low cliff nearby, suitable for simple camping.

"Hmm." Old Lin Qunzhi nodded. It was indeed a good acupoint that could keep out the cold wind.

Working seamlessly together, the two set up the camp with an efficiency that could not even be described as "very tacit".

Ironically, it wasn't the younger Lin Qunzhi who helped the older Lin Qunzhi, but rather the older Lin Qunzhi who provided the younger Lin Qunzhi with ample food supplies. The older Lin Qunzhi even managed to start a fire using utensils the younger Lin Qunzhi had never seen before.

The two sipped hot cocoa, freshly brewed by a high-tech brewing machine. The warm taste revitalized their frozen teeth and tongues. This wasn't just any ordinary hot cocoa; it was a super-concentrated, high-calorie next-generation nut beverage, providing the basic energy needed for a ten-hour non-stop walk.

"You guessed right, I just set off." Old Lin Qunzhi grinned. "Fully equipped, even the parachute came in handy, otherwise I would have crashed to my death right from the start."

Xiao Lin Qunzhi had long noticed that Lao Lin Qunzhi's left eye was covered with a layer of grayish-white, probably because he was blind. He must have faced many more difficult and desperate situations in the future. And it was precisely because of this that his elderly self had the idea of preparing such a comprehensive set of departure equipment as a parachute.

"Why... do you have a way to travel to the 'past'?"

Kobayashi asked a very basic question: "Did you use any special methods?"

“I don’t know either. I met you as soon as I landed, and it was only when I met your younger self that I realized I had actually traveled to the ‘past.’ How did I do that? It’s the same person, our shared goddess,” Old Lin Qunzhi said contentedly, taking a sip of hot cocoa. “Hey… how old are you now, my past self?”

"I'm thirty-one years old now." Kobayashi Qunzhi held his hot cocoa, enjoying its mellow aroma. "So, how old would you be now, my future self?"

"I'm probably fifty-three years old," Old Lin scratched his head. "Thinking about it this way, I've returned to the Arctic from twenty-two years ago. I've been to the Arctic three times before, but I never expected this Arctic to be so different!"

"The Arctic? So this is the Arctic..."

“I vaguely remember the route you took today, but I can’t recall the details. I just kept going forward, detouring when there was an avalanche. Ha, anyway, I didn’t die.” Old Lin Qunzhi sighed, “So time travel is possible even in terms of the starting point. Actually, this possibility should have been considered earlier…”

That's true.

What Lao Lin Qunzhi thought of, Xiao Lin Qunzhi just thought of as well.

...What was the name of that bastard who fell to his death from a great height on the playground many years ago? Gan? Gan what?

If that bastard who mysteriously disappeared and whose name he forgot was actually transported by the goddess's vagina to the days before his disappearance... and then "departed" from a great height, then it would be perfectly reasonable for that bastard to fall to his death on the playground.

Especially the bastards before and after the departure are still at the same point in time, just like the current situations of the two Lin Qunzhis, both of whom are intertwined. The entire explanatory framework gradually emerges.

“So that’s how it is, that bastard…” the two Lin Qunzhi said in unison, then looked at each other and smiled.

Even the best of friends have aspects they can't understand each other, but that doesn't really apply to these two.