Histoires de fantômes

Chapitre 71

A murmur rippled through the surrounding soldiers, and almost all the flashlight beams shone on me. In an instant, a violent shiver ran through me, jolting me from my daze. The pool was so deep; one slip and I'd be smashed to pieces. In the endless darkness, it felt as if countless greedy eyes were silently watching me, filled with mockery.

Through the earphones, Xiao Yan was tapping away strangely to herself: "Hmm? Where did this infrasound come from? This is so strange! So strange... Can you hear me? Okay, okay! Keep looking at the scalpel's body, OK—his attention is now completely focused on the stone wall, heat, all the heat is pouring into the stone wall... Of course, this process is an exchange of radiation between air, invisible to the naked eye. Wait a moment, let the instruments analyze it and figure it out..."

Assuming that stone wall is the same murder wall that "weathered" Dr. Tang and his companions before the tomb's structure changed, I can't help but have huge questions: "What did Dr. Tang find on the stone wall? What was the scalpel going to do to the stone wall? What does the so-called 'heat radiation exchange' refer to?"

"Aren't you going down? Feng, are you afraid to go down?" Tina pouted and forced a smile in frustration. A pretty girl will always feel frustrated when she finds that her charm is gradually disappearing.

She tried to get around Suren to get closer to me, but this time Suren wouldn't budge an inch and stayed right next to me.

I took a step back and suddenly laughed: "Dare not? What is there for me to be afraid of?"

The tomb fell silent again. The twenty soldiers who had followed were many battle-hardened veterans, but I believed they would never dare to lower themselves to retrieve the gem. Even if Tina offered a high reward, none of them would risk their lives. This was evident in the fear in their eyes.

Suren frowned and objected loudly: "Brother Feng, you know perfectly well that the gemstone hides mysterious and unpredictable power—life is so long, why rush things and act impulsively? So many people have already died, why experiment on yourself?"

Her long hair swayed wildly with her trembling body, as she was so excited, like a group of elves about to dance in the darkness.

“Thank you for your concern, Suren, but I can’t not go… I’d rather be wrong than miss out. I was born to raid tombs. You know? I’d rather pay with my life to unravel this mystery… But don’t worry, I won’t die, at least not until I fully understand the secrets of the Saturnians…”

Suren screamed, "Think about Gu Ye! Brother Feng, think about what Gu Ye said, think about his fate—"

In fact, Gu Ye said the same thing, even more resolutely than I did. And now? His body is buried under the yellow sand, and it will soon dry up and decay into dust, won't it?

I released Suren's hand, walked to the steel cable on the east-west axis, and silently accepted the cable from a soldier. Then, two other soldiers quickly fastened my rawhide safety belt and snapped the steel pulley attached to the belt onto the steel cable that ran through the air.

At this point, if I take a big step forward, I can slide along the steel cable until I reach the intersection of the two cables.

Suren fell silent, staring at me in despair.

"Wait for me, I'll be back." I waved to her, trying to sound casual, even though I was inwardly on edge, I forced a smile onto my face. It wasn't that I refused to listen to her advice; I just couldn't let myself regret missing out.

Tomb raiding is inherently a dangerous profession where one's life is constantly at risk. Thinking back to the days when Brother Yang Tian was able to earn the reputation of "King of Tomb Raiders" in the underworld, he must have experienced hundreds or even thousands of life-or-death crises in his life...

My future is to follow in my elder brother's footsteps and become the immortal "King of Tomb Raiders." Let this "Eye of the Moon" be a testament to my adventures in the world...

In that instant, many things flashed through my mind, and I resolutely took that giant step forward. A sudden, sharp whistling sound filled my ears as I plummeted and slid, a dozen beams of flashlight beams following me like spotlights on a stage relentlessly tracking the dancers' steps. At that moment, I was the center of everyone's attention, my vision filled with countless red runes flashing wildly, until the pulley clanged and struck the north-south steel cable, bringing me to an abrupt halt.

My body swung back and forth in mid-air more than ten times before finally coming to a stop.

The people standing by the pool held their breath, watching me without a sound or a movement. I took a breath and waved in the direction where Suren was standing. At that moment, Tina took an assault rifle equipped with a scope from a soldier, ready to fight, aiming it at the stone platform beneath my feet. Although she had used reverse psychology to force me to retrieve the treasure, she was also constantly concerned for my safety.

Of course, a single rifle is no match for the terrifying onslaught of those snake formations, but at least she will do something for me, serving as a strong support when I am in the most danger.

I fastened the steel cable in my hand to the intersection of the two steel cables, unbuckled the safety belt, and prepared to let go and slide down.

No one can predict the future, and intuition doesn't guarantee safety at every step. The moment I let go, my fate will be entirely in my own hands. After all, this time I'm only wearing ordinary protective clothing. The high-strength radiation protection suit that Natura provided last time has been corroded by the saliva of venomous snakes and is completely unusable.

Now, I can only hope that the gemstone will stop glowing, which means it will no longer be highly radioactive.

I let go, and my body plummeted downwards. The stone platform holding the gems seemed to pounce on me, as if it would collide with me head-on at any moment. The length of the steel cable was calculated perfectly. When my body was still two meters above the platform, the steel buckle on my belt automatically locked with a click, forcefully pulling me back and suspending me in mid-air.

This sudden stop at such a high altitude sent shivers down my spine, made me see stars, and made my ears ring. I was performing like a circus performer under a spotlight, but I couldn't hear any applause from the audience. Everyone around the pool craned their necks to look down, but not a single person coughed.

I unbuckled my belt, flipped onto the stone platform, and landed steadily. Then, I casually raised my arm to greet the person above. Fortunately, despite being so close to the gemstone, I didn't feel any burning sensation from the strong radiation. On the contrary, I even felt a heavy yin energy in the pool, and my whole body felt a little cold.

I looked up and saw that the blue roof of the tomb chamber looked like a huge pot lid covering the room, almost suffocating me.

"Is it really that simple?" I looked down at the "Eye of the Moon" and flicked out a sharp tactical knife. At this moment, I was wearing ultra-thin asbestos gloves, the highest level of equipment issued to the biochemical troops, which were anti-radiation, anti-corrosion, and anti-burn. I also carried a three-layered cloth bag woven from the same asbestos material, ready to bring this gem back safely.

No one spoke, perhaps to avoid distracting me and affecting the accuracy of my actions.

The six-meter-high stone platform, roughly the height of a two-story building, is a piece of cake for an agile expert like myself. Performing any difficult maneuver on it would be a piece of cake. All I need to do now is take a step forward, crouch down, and pry out the gem. The gem's precise size is about the size of four medium-sized pigeon eggs joined together. The exposed part has a four-sided pyramidal top and a rectangular prism in the middle, radiating a yellowish-crystal-like brilliance.

Perhaps it is precisely this "yellow" color that better confirms Suren's "light bulb" theory. We all know that the inner wall of a light bulb that has been lit for a long time will always have a slightly burnt yellow color.

So I took out my knife, as if I were trying to pry off a light bulb that had lost power, and prepared to remove it.

It was a very simple movement; the gleaming blade quickly touched the base of the gemstone, and suddenly—

"What happened? What's wrong...?"

I saw a mysterious white light, brighter and more abrupt than lightning on a summer rainy night. Then, I felt my body spinning rapidly—perhaps spinning with the stone platform beneath my feet, faster and faster, like being caught in a whirlpool of underwater currents. My head immediately spun, and my heart could no longer withstand the rapid spinning, but I knew I had to lie down and cling tightly to the stone platform, otherwise I risked being thrown off and injured at any moment.

I wanted to scream, but as soon as I opened my mouth, the spinning stopped. Instead of the dizziness and swaying from the high-speed rotation, I clearly saw an entire wall filled with countless display screens. The wall was over ten meters high and stretched endlessly to the left and right.

Almost all the screens displayed a green wavy line that resembled the frequency of sound waves, and no two of the nearly 500 screens were the same.

At this moment, my body was upright, but my cervical spine, lumbar spine, and knees were incredibly sore and numb, as if I had just run tens of thousands of meters, and I felt indescribably tired.

I had no idea where I was until someone appeared to my side, staring at me with a puzzled look, which made me look away from the screen.

"Youlian? You're Youlian?" My intuition was still sharp, and I made the judgment immediately. It was just my intuition about certain people I'd seen before, but this person's appearance was clearly completely different from Youlian's. She wore a white robe, her jet-black hair was tied with a white ribbon, hanging loosely over her shoulders, and her eyes were large and bright, with clear black and white, and each gentle blink emitted a shimmering light that made one's heart tremble.

“You are not Youlian—but…but you feel like she is…”

I was a little confused because I "felt" that she was Youlian—human intuition exists independently of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, and often hits the nail on the head, reaching the depths of the soul—but Youlian's appearance would never become so charming.

The person's long eyelashes fluttered gracefully, and she raised her fair, jade-like hand to touch her face, smiling as she asked, "Even if my appearance has changed, you can still recognize me?"

This statement undoubtedly acknowledges that she herself is Youlian.

I gasped, speechless. The previous Youlian was sleazy, gloomy, feigning deafness and muteness, utterly detestable, but the one before me was breathtakingly beautiful and poised. Even the world's top Korean plastic surgery couldn't transform someone like this overnight, could it?

In front of such a stunning beauty, any man would feel inferior; I even felt uncomfortable breathing.

She waved her sleeve, still smiling, "You really are different from others. The Great God has doubted your Earthling identity at least twenty times..."

I withdrew my dull and presumptuous gaze and looked around. Apart from the television wall, the empty hall was completely bare. If I wasn't mistaken, this should be another burial chamber, and inside the pyramid of Turkham. The same hieroglyphs were inscribed on the floor, walls, and ceiling, and I could also discern the damp, chilly smell in the air—a smell I'd only ever encountered inside the pyramids.

"Where is this?" I couldn't help but ask, though my mind was already overflowing with questions. Facing this unfathomable Saturnian, Youlian—if she really did have an Earthly name, "Youlian"—I felt time and again how insignificant the power of Earthlings truly was.

"This is... well, a space inside the pyramid, you could call it 'the secret chamber of the great god Tu Liehan' for now. Because of your relentless and reckless digging, you also attracted the shadow of the Illusion Demon, so after some time, this flight base had to rely on a powerful explosion to retreat back into the depths of the Earth's core. That's how you Earthlings are, always arrogantly and recklessly excavating the surface of this poor planet, trying to find something from the limited depth of the Earth's crust..."

She waved her hand gently, and suddenly a long row of stone benches appeared in the empty tomb. On the sides of the benches were countless stone platforms arranged in a crisscross pattern—or rather, "stone coffins," because without exception, a mummy lay in the grooves on each platform. She counted them roughly, and there were as many as two hundred.

The stone benches and platforms appeared inexplicably, neither emerging from below nor falling from above, but appearing out of thin air without warning. It was impossible to imagine where they had been hidden before—"Is this...four-dimensional space? Or something else? You...Saturnians...what exactly are you plotting on Earth..."

According to existing data, a pyramid can only contain one pharaoh's mummy, and at most the bodies of queens or princes who died young. It is impossible for such a large number of mummies to be densely packed together.

I took two steps forward and stopped beside the nearest mummy. Just like the shroud issue I had discussed with Tina, the khaki linen wrapped around this mummy was almost brand new. Its body hadn't completely shriveled up, and it was at least over 175 centimeters long.

Such a magnificent underground landscape seems to be comparable only to the underground tomb of the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang in China, except that the Terracotta Army tomb contains mummies, while the Terracotta Army tomb contains standard clay sculptures.

"Intent?" Youlian (let's just call her Youlian for now, perhaps she doesn't have a name, only a purely digital code name) smiled bitterly.

On the TV wall in front of me, most of the sound waves suddenly changed, and then a serious-looking old man appeared, wearing the same wide white robe, facing me across the stone platform where the mummy was placed.

That was Elder Sahan, a centenarian revered as the spiritual leader of the Egyptians. However, his appearance hadn't changed much, except that his gaze was even more profound, as if he could see right into the depths of my soul.

"The Saturnians' science and technology are a million years ahead of Earth's. What do you think their intentions are? We Earthlings are only fit to be servants of the gods, respectfully serving them, because only they can accelerate Earth's development until one day we truly understand Earth itself..."

Sahan's tone was full of reverence for the Saturnians. Although he had once been Youlian's master, it was unbearable to hear an Earthling so belittle his own kind.

I slammed my hand on the stone platform and shouted, "Enough! Earthlings are so despicable, aren't you one of them? If you're so high and mighty, just kill yourself right now and be reborn as a Saturnian in your next life!"

After changing her appearance, Youlian became completely Asian, with a virtuous and sweet East Asian girl in terms of looks, figure, and demeanor. In particular, the faint smile on her face when she spoke was a signature expression of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean actresses who have made it in Hollywood in recent years.

“Feng, you’re right. Many people before you, after witnessing the unattainable level of technology on Saturn, voluntarily requested to join our ranks, and so—” She reached out and pointed to the mummy corpses all around her, and continued calmly: “In this way, they can be reborn, and then, after a complex transformation, they can completely shed the inferior traits of Earthlings and become Saturnians.”

"Haha—" I laughed out loud twice, thinking she was just joking.

"The man in front of you, if you were to hear his name, you might have heard of him—Stephen Tang, an American of Chinese descent, whose footprints have covered the Northern Hemisphere, who has trekked across Lop Nur four times, and is revered by the people of Xinjiang as the 'God of Tianshan'..."

I was taken aback and took a half step back, truly startled by Youlian's words.

Stephen Down is the greatest lone tomb raider of the last thirty years. It is said that he once ventured alone into the ancient Loulan Kingdom, which was buried in the northwestern desert, and stole two ancient swords belonging to the Loulan king. The swords were purchased by the British Museum for a record-breaking $200 million and are now displayed in Queen Elizabeth's drawing room.

"During his final crossing of Lop Nur, he discovered our spaceship and, overjoyed, requested to enter our conversion program. If all goes well, four years from today, he will reappear on Earth as a Saturnian, omnipotent and omniscient, revered as a 'god' by Earthlings. You see, we Saturnians are on Earth only to transform ignorant 'humans' into noble 'gods,' with no intention of harming Earth. On the contrary, it's to promote Earth's rapid evolution so that one day we will become the masters of the solar system..."

Although Youlian's voice was pleasant, every word she uttered filled me with indignation: "He's Stephen Tang? I doubt it. Anyway, he's dead. Say whatever you want!"

Stephen Tang disappeared six years ago. If he can only be reincarnated as a Saturnian four years later, the entire process will take ten years. Who can make up for those wasted ten years? Besides, how could a martial arts master already revered as the "God of Tianshan" completely abandon his true nature for a few words from a Saturnian?

"Wind, I know you don't believe me, but I have no need to make you believe me. Whether you believe me or not, it won't cause any loss to our research. Never mind, we'll send you back so you can continue being a down-to-earth Earthling. Now, it's time for us to embark on a new voyage. Farewell!"

On the other side of the stone bench, a wide metal wall suddenly appeared, with a strange map embedded in it. The illustrations and language markings were completely different from the maps we usually use, and all the horizontal and vertical lines were golden yellow, with some lines even constantly shimmering.

"Wait, listen to me. Don't try to portray yourselves as so noble. You're just trying to escape the illusion demon's attack. You're just a bunch of cowards who hide underground when you have no other choice, aren't you?"

In Sahan's secret chamber, I witnessed firsthand their immense fear of the Illusion Demon, as if the "Illusion Demon" were the most powerful ruler of the planet.

If I wasn't mistaken, these aliens who portray themselves as incredibly powerful actually have their most formidable natural enemy on Earth: that "illusion demon." Sahan once described in detail the theory that "the movement of the illusion demon forms wind." Now? Is the illusion demon closing in, about to break down the door?

The map slowly began to move, gradually expanding into a hemisphere resting against the wall, displaying many quadrangular pyramids on my side. I could guess that these represented the various pyramids of different sizes within Egypt.

Part Six: The Divine Appearance Revealed

— Chapter 12 - The Final Battle —

The sound waves on the TV wall vibrated rapidly, showing many protruding peaks. If analyzed by Earthling instruments, that would represent a sudden high note, which could be interpreted as someone shouting loudly.

Sahan's face darkened: "Wind, in order to warn you not to enter the pyramid, Youlian was forced to speak. Our location has already been detected by the Illusion Demon's shadow, and they are outside right now..."

One of the gray screens on the video wall suddenly lit up, displaying a scalpel-like face with clenched teeth. The former gentleness was long gone, replaced by an indescribable malice and frenzy.

“The shadow of the illusion demon has already invaded his mind. Once it breaks in, a battle is inevitable. You know what? Earthlings under the control of external forces are no match for Saturnians and will definitely be annihilated. However, when the scalpel's physical body is destroyed, the shadow can escape at any time, and only the innocent Earthling substitute will die…” Youlian explained to me with regret.

I stared at the video wall and suddenly asked, "You are all just slaves of the Saturnians, including Youlian, right? And you are willingly creating mummies here, just to create more slaves for the Saturnians, right? Right?"

I rushed towards the TV wall, waving my hands frantically. The scalpel was my older brother's best friend, and the only family member who had raised and cared for me for the past fifteen years. I would never stand by and watch him die innocently in the battle between the Saturnians and the Illusion Demons.

“There’s no other way, Feng, I don’t want to do this either. But once the power of the Illusion Demon expands to the point where it can control all the energy on Earth, then the future fate of Earthlings will not be any better than that of modern-day domesticated poultry and livestock.”

Like an enraged beast, I rammed my shoulder into the TV wall. It was a pity there were no guns around; otherwise, a hail of bullets would have reduced even the tallest and widest TV wall to rubble.

"It's no use, Wind. These things aren't something any one person can decide. If you want to curse, curse the fate of the entire galaxy, the entire universe. They, all those lying here, joined the Saturnians' transformation plan precisely because they foresaw the tragic event of the illusion demons enslaving Earth in the future. If you're willing, join us now, like Bancha, Master Dry Butterfly, Cheney, and Stephen Don before..."

Youlian listed many names, at least ten of which were prominent figures in the European archaeological world. After their mysterious disappearance, everyone assumed they had met with an accident during tomb raiding, but no one could have imagined that they had actually entered a pyramid controlled by Saturnians. However, among all the names, there was absolutely no mention of Big Brother Yang Tian.

The TV wall was incredibly sturdy, but suddenly it generated a strong rebound force, striking my shoulder and sending me flying more than three meters through the air before I landed solidly on the ground.

The horizontal waves on the screen gradually calmed down, and Elder Sahan whispered, "Wind, go out! The great god Tu Liehan is about to get angry. If you don't want to die, leave now."

The hemispherical map split to the left and right, revealing a golden sword hilt.

I recognize it; this is the "Savior's Blade" that Cheney bought from me for a hundred million dollars. However, the golden sword is now stuck in a narrow gap, like a solid gold key in a keyhole.

"Feng, until we meet again, take care!" Youlian reached out to grasp the sword hilt.

Suddenly, a figure shot over like lightning, grabbing the sword hilt before Youlian could react. The figure swiftly drew the sword and swung it five times over Youlian's head.

In this tomb, it seemed that any place could become a hidden passage for entry and exit. At the very least, when this person rushed in, there was no prior warning, not even a sound of footsteps. He suddenly jumped out, seized the sword, and started slashing people. Then, he held the sword with both hands and raised it high above his head.

The sword had changed; its two-foot-long blade, body, and back were now covered with scales the size of a thumbnail, which bristled out.

Youlian collapsed, her bright red blood slowly flowing along the hieroglyphs on the ground, quickly soaking her white robe. I began to suspect that she was also a member of Earth, because since she could bleed and get injured like an ordinary person, she must be just an ordinary person of flesh and blood.

I don't know what the physical structure of Saturnians is like, but at the very least, they shouldn't be able to get hurt by swords on Earth.