The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 140: Flowers Blooming from Bones

My guess shocked Qinghan and Professor Liu. If there really was an "alternate path" at the point they disappeared, invisible to our eyes, they must have gone down that path.

That’s why the two groups didn’t encounter each other on the journey thereafter. Of course, the alternate path they took must be far from us, which explains why we didn’t hear any sounds made by other people in the jungle.

Both of them fell into deep thought and then began discussing my speculation.

As soon as I heard their discussion, I felt my eyelids getting heavy, so I quickly wandered around the area. The clearing in the forest where we were was about the size of four football fields.

The perimeter was surrounded by towering ancient trees. Although there were trees in the clearing as well, only a sparse few.

Occasionally, there was a cluster of red wildflowers, extremely bright in color, among the tall wild grass and unknown wildflowers in the clearing.

The other wildflowers were either white, blue, or yellow, with very pale colors. Therefore, a cluster of bright red wildflowers among them was quite eye-catching, and these red flowers tended to cluster together, unlike other wildflowers that grow scattered.

I approached to carefully observe and found that these red flowers seemed to be arranged in some pattern.

After looking at several clusters in a row, I felt a slight twitch in my heart, thinking that this place was too normal, which instead appeared abnormal.

Though the shapes of the red flowers differed slightly in arrangement, each cluster formed the shape of a ’human.’

I went back to the riverside to borrow a shovel from Professor Liu. They asked me what I was going to do, and I said to dig a grave.

Qinghan immediately stopped his discussion with Professor Liu and followed me to where the red flowers were.

I pointed them out to him. "See these shapes, a person lying in a big letter ’X,’ and over there, lying on the side."

Qinghan carefully identified their shapes, which was not hard to do since they were particularly obvious.

"You suspect there are bodies underneath?" he asked.

"Uh-huh~" I placed my shovel beside the wildflowers without directly digging them.

I dug a pit on the side and then gradually removed the soil beneath the red flowers.

The roots of the grass were exposed, and since the shovel head was large, I switched to using a small branch to gently scrape it away.

"Look, there’s indeed something here." I pointed at a piece of yellow hard material that was revealed.

This thing looked like a stone at first glance, but it was actually a bone, a withered bone that had turned yellow after being buried underground for a long time.

The red flowers’ roots grew on the bones, truly embodying the saying "flowers growing on bones."

The red flowers seemed like wild grass in the field; if you didn’t specifically look for them, you’d think there was nothing special about them, just like the wild grass.

But if you paid special attention, you’d find them everywhere. There were at least a dozen clusters of human-shaped red flowers around us.

Looking further away, you’d see even more. The deceased here did not appear terrifying, even showing in a beautiful form.

But the more it’s like this, the more it indicates this is a Death Land, fundamentally no different from other places.

Professor Liu came over, put on gloves, cleared away the flowers growing on the bones, and after pulling out the roots, he studied the bone in his hand attentively.

It was a piece of human arm bone with many tiny holes, a scene that would definitely freak out someone with trypophobia.

Qinghan and Lu Xiaodao took over my work and also cleared out the remaining bones.

Moreover, they took the bones to the riverside, rolled grass into brushes, and cleaned the bones thoroughly.

Professor Liu said this person was first of all, not poisoned to death, and there were no fractures or other injuries from tools or weapons on the bones.

This adult male skeleton had an intact neck bone, meaning he wasn’t strangled to death either.

Aside from that, there were many other possibilities for this man’s death, such as abdominal injury, excessive bleeding, a sudden illness with untimely rescue, or even being scared to death.

In conclusion, I think using the elimination method isn’t very helpful to us. Qinghan stared at the bone for a long while, "These flowers are growing from inside the bones."

Fortunately, he didn’t have trypophobia, so he could stare at the bone with its dense little holes for quite some time.

"The root structures from top pressing down, and from inside out drilling, would create two different types of cracks." Qinghan gestured as he explained.

One is cracking from pressing upwards and another from pressing downwards, the resulting cracks are indeed different, but the root differences are so slight they aren’t easy to spot.

Qinghan had just gently caressed that piece of bone with his fingers, possibly relying on his keen sense of touch.

So what does this prove?

Following Qinghan’s words, Professor Liu continued, he believed that these flowers not only grew from the inside of the bones but also started growing when the people were alive.

His statement was even more startling—what kind of metaphysical story is it for a person to grow grass while still alive?

Professor Liu rambled on a lot; I tried my best to understand. He roughly meant that these flowers relied on fresh blood to nourish and grow, something related to the bone marrow.

I scratched my chin, "These flowers only exist here and nowhere else, meaning they only bloom when they got here!"

From the shape of the red flowers’ arrangements, it could be seen that when these people fell down, their poses were varied. They didn’t lay down in preparation, perhaps walking and suddenly falling down, hence the big letter ’X,’ straight line shape, and man-shaped forms, even twisted like pretzels.

"Not necessarily, seeds germination, plant growth takes time, maybe it was triggered in the previous dangerous area and only showed symptoms here." Professor Liu said.

I looked at my own hand, the Gu Worm on it had already stopped moving, and I didn’t feel any other discomfort.

"Perhaps they ate something," Professor Liu thought for a moment and then said.

"Ah? Rabbits or fruits?" I looked at the three of them because only the three of them ate the two things I mentioned.

"This place easily makes people drop their guard, after running around the jungle exhausted, reaching here you’d surely be tempted to rest, eat, and drink to replenish energy, or even take a nap." Qinghan calmly speculated.

"Sleeping?" Something seemed to click with Professor Liu as he surveyed the nearby clusters of red flowers.

"That’s it, these people were sleeping." Professor Liu gestured at the distances between the clusters of red flowers.

"They weren’t particularly close but not far either; if we continue digging down, perhaps we might find something else."

We followed Professor Liu’s words and continued digging down, and indeed we dug up a moisture-proof mat.

This thing buried in the soil doesn’t easily rot, so it’s more intact than the bones.

People walking wouldn’t attach a moisture-proof mat to their back, preparing to have something to fall onto when they collapse.

So the existence of this thing indicates that these people were initially lying on the grass sleeping and then grew grass in their sleep. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Judging by the decomposition of the clothes on the corpses, these people should have been dead for several years, but whether they were the group of friends of Professor Liu’s was still undetermined.

Because we didn’t find any identification or backpacks or such items.