Chapter 296: Grave Robbery 1: The Manor Officials Tricked the Ghost

After the old man said the three words "Goddess's Tomb", he looked at Zhuang Chen with anticipation.

Zhuang Chen lowered his eyes slightly and was silent for a while before he spoke: "It seems that the painting of "Goddess Flying" was also your work?"

"You like her very much, don't you?" The old man did not answer Zhuang Chen's question directly, but continued in a negotiating tone, "I can give her to you - as long as you can lead us into the main tomb."

"Really? But she is in my hands now." The reason why Zhuang Chen dragged his brother into the room was not only because the hidden exit was there, but also to go back to the room and take the ancient painting with him.

"The 'she' he mentioned... is he referring to that fake ancient painting?" Just like many soldiers like to treat their favorite weapons as female companions, in English, people often use anthropomorphic words to describe something they like, so Johnny, who was originally confused about this conversation, quickly guessed the reference.

"Fake?" The old man suddenly laughed when he heard the word, and then gave Johnny a look that an elder would give to a younger person who was ignorant, "Kid, that is not a fake, but a genuine antique that is over 2,000 years old."

"Impossible!" Zhuang Ni replied subconsciously: He was influenced by his parents who loved archaeology since he was a child, and his brother Zhuang Chen secretly looked after him during the time he worked in the antique shop, so he had learned some basic identification knowledge.

And most importantly, his brother had said before that the painting was probably a replica of an antique by an unknown modern master - antiques are difficult to distinguish between real and fake, but the traces of time can never deceive people.

Before anyone else could react, Sophie, who was standing by and watching coldly, had already laughed out loud at the word "impossible".

Realizing that he had made a fool of himself, Johnny forced himself to suppress the urge to glare at this imposter who had once pretended to be him, and he lowered his head and stood still as if he was being punished.

"Please forgive me for being a young man who has not seen the world." Zhuang Chen took a step forward and looked at the old man with a sharp gaze. "The Zhuang family has retired from society for many years. I am just a small businessman who makes a living by selling legal antiques. I really don't have the ability to lead you."

"Do you think it's your turn to agree or disagree under the current circumstances?!" Sophie shouted.

Zhuang Chen calmly glanced at the young girl who was obviously arranged to play the villain, and shook his head calmly: "Indeed, it is not my turn to choose whether to agree or not now - but have you ever thought that the legendary Zhuang family is not omnipotent?"

"Of course I understand, otherwise, your father wouldn't have had an 'accident' in Nepal." The old man said this killer move very slowly, and the close-up shot's cloudy eyes, which are unique to the elderly, reflected two similar faces that changed their expressions at the same time because of this sentence.

In order to find out the truth about his father's accident, Zhuang Chen had no choice but to make a cooperation agreement with the old man and return to mainland China with his team.

The old man calls himself Keith, and he is the president of a large multinational company. He is currently retired - so he has time to make efforts to make up for the regrets of his youth.

"During World War II, as a soldier of the Allied Forces, I was sent to the border between the Soviet Union and China and was assigned to a raiding team composed of Soviets, Chinese, and other Allied Forces." Keith recalled, "Your grandfather was also in this team at the time."

"At that time, we fought desperately with the enemy every day. Many times, we didn't use the knowledge we learned at all. We just used our survival instinct to fight the enemy to the death."

"That time, we accidentally fell into the enemy's trap. Only a dozen of us escaped out of more than fifty people. We also lost our way and fell into a weathered and dilapidated tomb entrance." The more Keith recalled, the more indescribably complicated his expression became. "You have no idea what we saw after escaping from the traps in the tomb at the cost of many brothers' lives..."

“A miracle of time and space, a place beyond the scope of science and cognition—a place where life and death coexist.”

"There, there is no limit to gravity and body, no concept of time and space, and more than 2,000 years seem insignificant in front of it. The terracotta warriors and horses surrounding the altar are so vivid and colorful that they seem to still be breathing..."

"There are no Terracotta Warriors that fade due to oxidation?" Zhuang Chen was secretly surprised: As far as today's excavation technology is concerned, after the Terracotta Warriors are discovered and excavated, they will begin to oxidize and fade within ten seconds after being unearthed, and within a few minutes they will dehydrate, curl and peel off the maintenance layer, gradually turning into the gray and fluffy appearance of the original color of the clay warriors that the public sees.

Therefore, even though our country has a lot of relevant information, it has temporarily abandoned the excavation plan due to insufficient technology, and will only continue when the technology can be improved to preserve the colors of the Terracotta Warriors intact.

"At that time, we were like backward apes stunned by advanced technological civilization. We stupidly broke into the main tomb chamber, then accidentally disturbed them and were besieged by them. In the end, we could only rely on the voluntary sacrifice of our teammates to barely escape..."

"What are 'they'?" Johnny interrupted in confusion, "Are they...ghosts?!"

"You can say that, but I am more inclined to believe that they are a special form of 'spiritual' life. In the past 2,000 years, their original consciousness has been worn away. They only know to do their best to guard their only goal - the altar."

"If it's so dangerous in there, why do you want to go back?" Zhuang Chen asked slowly.

"Because of the painting 'The Goddess Flying to the Sky'," Keith explained. "I saw a similar mural on the wall before. It looks like a sacrificial ceremony, using some price to awaken the 'goddess' in the altar, and then the 'goddess' accompanies the 'dragon' out of the clouds to bring victory to the war."

"Just like in some traditional Chinese magic, when one cannot defeat the enemy, one asks the 'god' to possess or appear." Zhuang Chen nodded: This kind of practice is not only in China, many ancient countries with glorious ancient civilizations have such legends and stories.

"I didn't want to go back to that horrible place, but after the painting reappeared, I received a message that someone had found a sacrifice that could awaken the 'goddess' and had already passed through the tomb passage and sent the sacrifice inside."

"After they made sure the offerings had been placed, they blew up the tomb passage..."

"Then how do we get in?" Johnny was the first to raise an objection.

"You ancient Chinese have a technique called 'Shrinking the Earth into an Inch'." Keith lowered his voice. "In modern terms, it's a technique similar to the wormhole-like space folding. I got separated from my teammates and accidentally took another path."

"When I finally saw the sun again, I realized that I had traveled nearly half of China underground, from the northernmost tip of China to Xijing in the middle..."

After hearing such a strange memory story, Johnny still had a complicated look on his face until he rested in the guesthouse room.

"What's wrong with you?" Zhuang Chen asked softly after noticing that something was wrong with him.

"Am I... a burden to you?" Even though he was a newbie who knew basically nothing, he was asked to go to the tomb with his brother. Even though Johnny was young and ignorant, he could understand that he was the rope used to restrain his brother.

"If you really think so, then you are a burden to me." At this point, Zhuang Chen no longer wanted to hide his thoughts. He patiently explained to Zhuang Ni the long history of the Zhuang family's ancestral kung fu of finding dragons and acupuncture points, as well as the dangers of leading a team to the tomb alone if he encountered difficulties without help.

“You must always remember that in gambling, the winner will always be the ‘dealer’ – and we are the dealer brothers, so we will never lose.”

I never thought that my Chinese name actually contained such a meaning. Encouraged, Johnny nodded vigorously.

The next plot began to accelerate. When the Zhuang brothers and Keith's team arrived at the target village, they rested for half a day and then hurried to the entrance of the tomb passage which had been discovered.

There were many hidden weapons along the way, but they were all resolved one by one by Zhuang Chen who was confident in what was going on, which made Zhuang Ni's eyes full of admiration and pride.

In contrast, the group of people led by Sophie all had mixed looks of admiration and dissatisfaction.

"I was really lucky back then." Although he was an excellent soldier in the assault team when he was young, Keith is now an old man with white hair and beard. He relied on the protection of his small team to keep up with the journey. When he finally saw the destination just ahead, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

This time, under the leadership of Zhuang Chen, the group safely reached the altar at the highest point of the main tomb chamber.

Zhuang Ni, who was asked to follow behind Zhuang Chen, secretly looked at the appearance of the altar: the eternal lanterns made into the shape of clouds surrounded the edge in a circle, the entire altar was engraved with dense seal characters like totems, and a colorful statue of a goddess stood in the center...

The whole scene, except for the looming dragon and the swirling clouds, was exactly like the ancient painting.

The statue of the goddess seemed larger than a normal person, and the carving was extremely delicate. Not only was her face extremely beautiful, but her colorful and sparkling costume was also dazzling. At first glance, it was almost impossible to mistake the fake for the real thing.

When Johnny wanted to get closer to take a closer look at the lifelike patterns on the clothes, he accidentally kicked over a cloud lantern.

These cloud-like eternal lanterns were small and light, no bigger than a palm, and were called “lanterns” but were actually self-luminous stone sculptures resembling night pearls. So, while everyone was attracted by the statue of the goddess and the altar, he hurried to “destroy the corpses and traces” - for some unknown reason, he covered his face and stuffed the cloud lanterns into his trouser pockets.

Zhuang Chen was the only one who noticed his little action. Due to the situation, he couldn't say anything to him directly, so he could only give him a warning look in the end.

Just when Keith ordered his men to disperse and look for the "sacrifice" according to Zhuang Chen's previous method, something unexpected happened.

It was not known what they had done wrong, but the colorful terracotta warriors that had been standing quietly in place suddenly moved. Black shadows flew past at high speeds and surrounded Keith and the others. They then transformed into human-shaped black shadow entities and began to attack them violently.

"You go first!" Zhuang Chen pushed the stunned Zhuang Ni and pointed to another cave entrance, "Wait for me inside the cave over there."

Knowing that now was not the time to think carefully, Johnny didn't say anything and ran towards the cave entrance following his brother's instructions.

Unlike Johnny, who had a smooth life path because of guidance, Keith, who was besieged by the shadow, had lost more than half of his men in an instant. When Johnny glanced at it, Sophie was using her body to block the shadow's fatal blow for Keith...

Without time to worry about sighing or being terrified, Johnny ran desperately to the deep part of the cave that his brother mentioned. In the dim environment, his eyes were wide open to the extreme, staring at the faint light from the cave entrance in the distance.

Not long after, a strange-shaped figure moved towards this side quickly - it didn't look like a human at all.

Johnny was shocked, scared, and sad. He subconsciously took out a cloud lantern from his pants pocket to see what it was...

"It seems I have to teach you a lesson. Don't take things from the ancient tomb casually." When the familiar voice came, Johnny's heart was relieved immediately.

With the joy of surviving a disaster, he stretched the cloud lantern forward, and immediately saw the large ball of colorful things that Zhuang Chen was carrying, which also looked familiar.

The contrast was so great that even though he knew the timing was wrong, Zhuang Ni could not help but feel overwhelmed: "I only took a cloud lantern that was not even as big as my palm, but you brought back the entire statue of the goddess!"

How can you still say that about him?! How can you still say that about him?!

"Can you please look carefully?!" Zhuang Chen was really fooled by his younger brother. He put the "thing" he was carrying on the ground.

"Is it, she... a human or a ghost?" After seeing the situation on the ground clearly, Johnny involuntarily took a step back.

"I am your ancestor!" Before Zhuang Chen could answer, the "goddess" who had faintly woken up on the ground cursed him, then she sat up with her hands on her forehead and revealed her identity with a painful look, "I am the 'sacrifice' sent in by that old bastard Keith!"