Chapter 81: Are These Two Guys Beasts?
Fatty finished messing with that dried corpse and staggered over to sit by the backpack, raising his voice to ask: “Young comrade Lin, do you have any more food?” Before Lin Yan could answer, Wu Xie asked him doubtfully first: “Didn’t you just eat? Are you hungry again?”
Fatty shook his head: “It’s not that I’m hungry again, okay? I’m just a little hungry. Mainly, we’re almost up there, no need to carry all this anymore, right? Better to eat some first to lighten the load. Don’t you think?”
Wu Xie thought about it and agreed it made sense. They’d been working up there for almost an hour. Zhang Qiling had only gone up a third, while Lin Yan had already passed more than half. He raised his voice and asked: “Why don’t you two come down, eat something, rest, and then continue?” Fatty chimed in repeatedly: “Yeah, yeah, let’s rest first. Then we can switch shifts later!”
Before Zhang Qiling could react, Lin Yan jumped down first: “Sure.” He looked Wu Xie up and down: “We can switch shifts, but you don’t need to, Wu Xie. After all—” He glanced at Fatty, then at Wu Xie, looked at Zhang Qiling, then back at him. The meaning was obvious.
Wu Xie’s face heated up. He knew he was the weakest of them all—at least in terms of strength. He rolled his eyes at him: “Go on, go on. I’m on the knowledge path. Even if you guys climb to the very top, won’t you still need me to take a look?”
Lin Yan smiled without saying anything. After sitting cross-legged, he dumped all the jars out of his bag at once. Fatty’s eyes went straight.
“Good grief, you brought… 1, 2, 3… 12, 13. How many did you bring down here?” He looked incredulously at the pile of jars in front of him. This was at least three days’ rations, right? Not counting fresh water, these alone—if the four of them ate sparingly—would last three or four days!
Once all the jars were out, Lin Yan and Wu Xie’s backpacks visibly shrank by at least half. Picking them up, they were at least seven or eight pounds lighter. Lin Yan smiled at him: “Of course. This is called being prepared. Remember the Lu King’s Palace? If I hadn’t scavenged some rations before going down that time, we might’ve really starved inside. Even if we didn’t starve, we were on the verge of passing out from hunger—where would we get the strength to run? So this time before coming down, I specially asked the crew to buy some. See, now they’re coming in handy.”
Fatty thought of his own pack and nodded in agreement. Sigh, too bad about the bomb and equipment in his bag. Who knew if he could recover them next time.
At that moment, a shadow appeared in front of the three sitting in a incomplete circle. Zhang Qiling sat in the empty spot and extended a hand toward Lin Yan: “Meat.”
This… according to his character, shouldn’t he act all aloof like a master and say he didn’t need any? This was truly unexpected! Lin Yan’s eyes widened. Perhaps the surprise in his eyes was too obvious, so Zhang Qiling pursed his lips and explained: “Too much stamina consumed after going out.”
With those words, he had already excluded himself from the group using oxygen tanks. They instantly understood the reason, and three meat jars appeared in front of him: “Here!”
Zhang Qiling paused, took one, then picked a vegetable one from the rest, and silently opened it to eat.
Wu Xie glanced behind him. A Ning was still in that dazed and silly state, her posture barely changed: “Should we give her some to eat? She won’t starve to death, right?” Only then did Lin Yan and Fatty remember—they’d eaten something earlier, but A Ning hadn’t had a bite. When they discovered A Ning, her backpack was already gone.
But A Ning didn’t look like she could eat anyway. Fatty shook his head: “It’s not that I don’t pity the fairer sex. It’s just this woman has too much prior bad behavior. What if we give her something to line her stomach, she regains strength, and screws us over later? You know, once we exit the tomb-robbing hole, we’re in the sea. If she screws us, who do we complain to if we drown underwater? Better to let her stay hungry—as long as she doesn’t die. Once we’re on the ship, their company people will take care of her. None of our business.”
Wu Xie thought about it, looking troubled: “Doesn’t that mean we’ll have to give her an oxygen tank later? Does she look like she can breathe on her own?”
Lin Yan thought for a moment: “Like you said, this is only ten meters underwater. Can ten meters cause someone to choke to death on the way up?” Fatty quickly calculated in his mind: “A few minutes to go up ten meters. No accidents, timely rescue, she should survive? Anyway, we’ve already brought her this far. Let her fend for herself on this. If she survives like this, she’s lucky. If she dies, she deserves it.”
Wu Xie felt this was too cruel for a girl. Besides, A Ning wasn’t bad-looking, and her dazed, silly appearance evoked pity. But thinking of how A Ning had used him as a shield… Heh, can’t afford a black widow. Let her fend for herself!
He thought of himself before the first tomb dive with Third Uncle. Comparing mindsets now, he was stunned to find his heart had hardened a lot. He used to know that Second Uncle, Third Uncle, and the entire Wu Family were grooming him as heir. Grandfather had deliberately exposed him to Wu Family matters as a child. But the ruthlessness needed as family head—he had never understood or achieved it.
Now, he could calmly face the fact that a weak woman might die in front of him. Uh… was A Ning weak? Anyway, he hadn’t actively killed anyone, right? For her, that was already good enough. If it were Wu Sansheng standing in front of A Ning now, she might be dead the moment he saw her.
He still had a long way to go.
In the blink of an eye, they were full. Fatty shook his fat, and Lin Yan could even see the waves of flesh on his abs from the slap… He picked up the entrenching tool under the pillar, circled the pillar, and grinned: “Young comrade, these obviously deeper pits were chiseled by you, right? Clearly prepared for Fatty Ye. Thoughtful, thoughtful.”
Lin Yan smiled and nodded. With Fatty taking over, he was happy to rest. From entering the tomb, these dozen hours—chased by sea monkeys, climbing tomb-robbing holes, burning the Forbidden Woman—he was exhausted holding out this long. After handling his share, he moved to the shadow by the adjacent pillar, using his backpack as a pillow to lie down. Wait, no—he still had that little hat on his head. Better not crush it! So Lin Yan sat up against the pillar instead, awkwardly adjusting to a somewhat comfortable position: “I’ll sleep a bit. Call me when you’re done.”
The instant his eyes closed, his already overtaxed mind sank into darkness.
Watching Lin Yan fall asleep instantly, Wu Xie shook his head with a wry smile. He couldn’t sleep yet. Fatty would probably reach the top soon; he needed to go up and check the treasure ceiling. Many treasure ceilings had anti-theft measures—flowing sand for days after digging was normal. This was the milder kind. Some had sulfuric acid poured in; once dug open, no time to dodge before corrosion.
Now they could only hope this treasure ceiling’s anti-theft was the milder type, so they could still get out.
Then he heard Fatty’s surprised voice: “Damn, this hard to chisel?”
Fatty chiseled twice, only scraping off a bit of the pillar’s surface skin. Now he knew how hard it was for Lin Yan and the others to chisel footholds here. He looked horrified at Zhang Qiling still eating and Lin Yan already asleep, practically cracking up: “I thought my strength was enough. You two… absolute beasts—simply not human!”
