The Lost Tomb Vol. 1

Chapter 65: Escape the Trap

As soon as I thought about it, I suddenly remembered who Xie Lianhuan was. The Xie and Wu families actually turned out to be related, probably a cousin's cousin on the maternal side. As the saying went, everyone had a cousin three thousand miles away. Although I wasn't very familiar with them, I knew that they were also a grave robbing family with a long history. And among those in my Uncle Three's generation, he and Xie Lianhuan had a close relationship. I only remembered seeing him a few times at most, but Grandpa would often mention the Xie family whenever he scolded Uncle Three, saying that our Wu family would never be able to raise our heads in front of them again all because that child Xie Lianhuan died while following Uncle Three!

Now that I thought about it, if Xie Lianhuan really did die like this, then it wasn't surprising that my old man wouldn't let me hang out with Uncle Three. As it turned out, Uncle Three had a dark past.

Fatty was still pushing me from behind, which pulled me from my thoughts. Knowing that I couldn't waste time thinking about it anymore, I gritted my teeth and moved a few steps forward. A dark opening appeared in the layer of bricks on the ceiling and Fatty gave a happy shout. In fact, I could tell by the red scratches on his front and back that he had almost reached his limit. The granite walls had rubbed his skin so raw that it looked like he had just taken a Turkish bath. I honestly wasn't much better off and didn't have any strength in my legs, but there was no need to rush now that we had made it here.

Poker-Face calmly climbed into the hole first, kicked the two walls to make sure the tunnel was stable enough, and then pulled me in. But Fatty was a bit more troublesome—I couldn't pull him up by myself so all I could do was watch as he gave a fierce shout and then pushed himself up with all his strength. He ended up scraping a large chunk of skin off his back during the process, but he finally made it.

After we all regained our footing and looked down, we couldn't help but feel alarmed—there was now only a narrow gap left between the two walls. I didn't even dare to think about what it would've been like if we hadn't managed to escape in time. Even if we had found the grave robbers' tunnel just a few minutes later, we wouldn't have been able to climb in.

Sure enough, as long as you didn't give up hope, the heavens would find a way.

I raised my head and looked up to find that the grave robbers' tunnel had been dug vertically upwards to a height of about one person before it turned and angled eastward. I figured it was connected to the grave robbers' tunnel above. My legs were feeling weak and I knew that I couldn't hold out for much longer so I urged Poker-Face to hurry up. The three of us managed to climb to the section of the tunnel that was sloped but I was so exhausted by this point that I had to stop and lean against the wall to try and catch my breath.

At this time, we heard the sound of the stone walls slamming together come from below. I let out a long breath, massaged my tight calf muscles, and tried my best to relax. I had been so tense and nervous just now, but after calming down a bit, I felt a little dazed and ended up yawning. Fatty leaned against the wall of the tunnel, his face ashen and his body covered in bloody scrape marks. "I'll remember this for a long time," he said in between gasps. "Mark my words, I should lose a few kilos when I get back."

This tunnel that we found ourselves in had been dug very skillfully, which meant that this Xie Lianhuan wasn't an ordinary person after all. I looked around with my flashlight and found that the whole tunnel zigzagged upward. From an architectural standpoint, this was done so that even if a small-scale collapse occurred, there wouldn't be a great deal of danger. But if you tried to save energy and dug a vertical tunnel upward, then in the case of a collapse, all of the bricks above would fall down and slam into you with the force of a piledriver.

Fatty finally caught his breath and asked Poker-Face, "I say, Little Brother, what the hell is going on here? Why was everything fine when you took this passage twenty years ago but we almost got flattened just now? Did you pick the wrong door?!"