Chapter 58: We’re No Longer In The Original Place!
Wu Xie still hadn’t realized that Wu Yong was already dead and was still trying hard to listen to what he had said: “What did you say? I, I can’t hear clearly…”
Lin Yan sighed and pulled Wu Xie away from beside him: “He’s already dead.”
Wu Xie recalled what Zhang Qiling had said, that Wu Yong had at most five minutes left, and fell silent.
After a long while, he bit his lip and asked them: “So are we just going to leave him here?”
Although he knew that dying underground while tomb raiding was commonplace, he still couldn’t quite accept losing a human life—not because of the mechanisms and eeriness inside the tomb, but because he was left here due to harm from a companion.
Fatty sighed and came over to pat his shoulder: “Alright, stop thinking about it. Look, we don’t have the conditions here to give him a funeral, right? Do you really want to carry his corpse all the way out of the tomb? Better to leave him here and let his company people retrieve him later.”
At this time Lin Yan voiced his opposition. Fatty and Wu Xie didn’t know Wu Yong was from the Wu Family, but he did: “Forget it. Don’t you guys know what that company of A Ning’s is like? Just based on that woman unhesitatingly pulling one of her own to block arrows, do you really think someone will send him back?”
Fatty and Wu Xie looked at each other, this… yeah, indeed. So what now?
Lin Yan unhurriedly took out the small box A Ning had given him from his pocket and opened it. Under Fatty’s stunned gaze, he swallowed the jade cicada inside in one gulp, then placed the box beside Wu Yong. He looked up and stared straight at the two: “Got it?”
Wu Xie hesitated and shook his head. Fatty shook his head like a rattle drum: “Lin, young comrade Lin, I don’t get what putting that box beside means, but how, how did you just eat that jade? You mean this jade… is for eating?”
Lin Yan nodded matter-of-factly: “What else?”
“No, this… this is impossible!” Fatty was dumbfounded. Lin Yan looked at his life-doubting expression and leisurely walked forward to pat his shoulder: “After experiencing all sorts of supernatural things, how are you still so bad at accepting them?”
He sighed, clasped his hands together toward Wu Yong in silent mourning for a second, then unceremoniously started patting him down.
Fatty was shocked: “What are you doing? Don’t tell me you want to…” The man wasn’t killed by him, but the loot was robbed by him?
“What are you thinking!” Lin Yan saw Fatty’s over-imaginative expression and knew exactly what he was thinking. He unceremoniously rolled his eyes at him: “I’m checking if he has anything special or commemorative on him, like a necklace or prayer beads or something, so we can find his family later and leave it as a memento. Got it?”
With that explanation, Fatty got it, hurriedly nodded, squatted down, and joined him.
Sure enough, Lin Yan pulled a small plaque from an inner pocket. On it… he went silent for a second, and before Fatty could see clearly, he quickly put the plaque into the small box, stood up, exhaled: “Alright, let’s go?”
Wu Xie and the others nodded. Before leaving, everyone except the still unmoving Zhang Qiling silently mourned for a few seconds before departing. When Zhang Qiling passed beside him, his steps paused, and his gaze on the corpse unusually revealed a hint of pity.
That small box ended up in Lin Yan’s bag—this box was originally his. Lin Yan tried to ditch it to Wu Xie by saying it was given to him by A Ning, but failed.
Before entering the Jade Door, Fatty suddenly remembered something: “Hey, do you think this place has only this one exit?”
Wu Xie shook his head first: “I don’t know, but if there were other exits, why wouldn’t Third Uncle contact us after going out?”
Lin Yan, however, nodded: “There should be! This place has other vents, which means there might be other exits!” If he remembered correctly, they definitely didn’t exit from the original place!
Zhang Qiling slowly shook his head. Just as they thought he meant there weren’t any, he spoke to explain: “I don’t know.”
Fatty thought for a bit, then insisted on voicing his idea: “Here’s what I’m thinking. Do you still remember what we did before exiting that door—” He pointed at the door they came from. “What did we do?”
The others all looked puzzled. They didn’t seem to have done anything? The little jar that led the way was already here too.
Fatty rolled his eyes at them, flicked his hair, and pointed at the spare oxygen tank on Lin Yan: “What’s this?”
Wu Xie looked at the oxygen tanks that only he and Lin Yan had on them, and suddenly understood. Before coming up from the well, they had reorganized their equipment and left the empty oxygen tanks in the original side chamber. He and Lin Yan had kept the spare oxygen tanks because Lin Yan had reminded him to pay attention to diving equipment, while Fatty and the others had left theirs in the side chamber, planning to travel light inside and pick them up on the way out.
This had originally been a perfectly normal decision, but Fatty bringing it up now meant he had made some decision.
Wu Xie thought of A Ning who had entered first, had a flash of insight, and asked him: “Fatty, you want to take her oxygen tank?” What a brilliant move! If A Ning didn’t encounter them at the bottom of the tomb, when she came out and saw her oxygen tank gone, see how she’d get back up!
Lin Yan hadn’t thought of this yet; he was only thinking about killing her at the bottom of the tomb and hadn’t considered what if they didn’t run into her. Now Fatty had filled in that gap.
Over there, Zhang Qiling didn’t object either, so the group followed the original path back to the side chamber. But something they didn’t expect happened—
The equipment they had left in the side chamber was all gone!
Although it was just some replacement equipment and unused oxygen tanks, with only three or four usable ones, they were certain there was only one path from the tomb passage to the side chamber, and no one had exited the tomb! So how could their equipment be gone? Could someone have secretly taken it?
Lin Yan stubbornly went to the original equipment spot and knocked around: “Maybe a mechanism took the equipment down?” Wu Xie and Fatty ran to flip through the nearby blue and white porcelain jars nearby—maybe it was in there! Zhang Qiling slowly paced along the side chamber’s walls, as if observing something.
After knocking over the nearby ground and walls once through, Lin Yan with no findings stood up and stretched his sore waist: “Ow, it hurts… It’s really not there? This isn’t scientific. Could someone have come up and taken our equipment? No way?” He pulled out the satellite phone everyone had and checked the signal: “No signal here either. If it was A Ning, she couldn’t notify the outside either.”
He looked along the path from the well mouth to the door. Over there, Wu Xie and Fatty were still stubbornly flipping jars; they’d finished the left side and started on the right. It was clear they found nothing.
“This doesn’t make sense. It couldn’t have just vanished into thin air, right?”
Wu Xie finished the last one and stared blankly at his feet.
“Could it be… a supernatural event?” Fatty proposed what seemed impossible but was the most reasonable guess, earning unanimous agreement from everyone—even Zhang Qiling nodded.
“No!” Lin Yan suddenly discovered something and stopped in the exact center of the side chamber, calling everyone over: “Look at these footprints!”
He pointed at their messy footprints, his expression gradually lighting up with excitement: “I know why. Damn it, we’re not even in the original entry place!”
