The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 218 - 219: Big Bamboo

If tourists discovered this scene now and posted it online, no one would probably believe it. They’d definitely say it’s a video processed to grab attention.

The earthquake shook so violently under the cover of the Golden Net that it was impossible to stand. Chen Qinghan shielded me as we lay on the ground. I thought it was risky; if a big crack opened up, we’d both end up buried together.

Fortunately, the earthquake ended quickly, lasting only about ten minutes. After the intense shaking, the island didn’t sink; not only did it stay afloat, but something sprouted from it.

Chen Qinghan and I dusted ourselves off and stood up, only to see a building appearing ahead.

It rose straight from the ground like a mountain, standing tall in the jungle ahead.

That means the previous shaking wasn’t a real earthquake but was caused by this thing emerging from underground.

Chen Qinghan and I stood in place, looking at the building ahead, our thoughts different.

Chen Qinghan was probably thinking about Chen Xiaonuan. He previously saw her via video, inside some underground building, and the structure that appeared now matched the description he provided, with its surface covered in carvings.

When I saw this building, though, I thought of the owner of the golden coffin—Otuna.

Chen Qinghan had heard the welder shout "Ot" something "na" at Chen Xiaonuan. He heard right, just missed one letter.

He said Chen Xiaonuan seemed to be repairing something. Now it seems she was repairing this structure, which looks like a building, yet also like a spire, its surface carved, lacking doors or windows, resembling a big bamboo shoot emerging from the ground.

Thud—

A dull thud echoed from the sky; the submarine indeed launched a destructive ’weapon’ at the island.

But the Golden Net in the air acted like a beehive, providing absolute protection for the island. With it there, external attacks were like throwing pebbles at a bank vault’s door.

"Hey, what do we do now? Look at this mess! Hasn’t it gotten out of hand?" I worriedly tugged at my hair, wishing I could run over and stomp the big bamboo shoot back into the ground.

"Do you know what that is?" Chen Qinghan looked at me deeply and said, "You’ve remembered."

I nearly forgot; he is an expert in researching my clan’s culture and might have seen this thing in ancient murals.

So when he saw it emerge, his expression wasn’t overly surprised or amazed.

"Just a little bit." I hesitated slightly, then decided to tell the truth. At the bottom of the mine on Victory Island, I did recover some memories, all due to being bumped by that birdman.

"You said you stayed to investigate something, is it this?" Chen Qinghan asked.

"Exactly, for global peace, for love and justice, I intended to find this and eliminate it at the budding stage."

"Those carvings look the same as what I saw in the video; Xiaonuan is inside."

"I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it in murals, but that thing is extremely dangerous. You’d better not go near it." This was one reason I intended to act alone; whether it’s the Big Bamboo or Otuna, both are deadly.

"Where’s the entrance?"

Chen Qinghan seemed to delve into his own world, regardless of what I said, fixated only on finding Chen Xiaonuan!

"There’s no entrance." I knew even a three-year-old wouldn’t believe this, because if there’s no entrance, how did Chen Xiaonuan get in?

But I didn’t want Chen Qinghan to go in and get himself killed. The fact that Chen Xiaonuan could survive inside proves she’s no longer who she used to be.

Chen Qinghan didn’t argue or fuss; he just stared at me, his gaze piercingly intense, exerting pressure solely with his eyes.

When it comes to matters of life and death, glaring at me won’t work. He probably sensed my determination and dashed toward the ’Big Bamboo’, leaving me behind.

"Chen Qinghan!" I shouted, quickly chasing after him.

Some matters he shouldn’t involve himself with; Chen Xiaonuan is truly gone. The one alive now isn’t her anymore.

It was only after leaving Victory Island that I realized something was amiss.

The creature beneath the hive was once the ’ruler’ of the Tower Clan. My clan calls it the Ten Thousand Eyes Demon Beast, and it’s been around for at least a billion years.

With eyes all over its body, it was easily misunderstood to have no mouth, only eyes; in fact, its mouth is hidden among its tentacles. It’s also called the ’Mouth of the Void’; anything it devours is utterly gone without a trace.

Because it only has a mouth but no excretory organs, it doesn’t function like humans, who eat meat and spit out bones.

The consensus in my clan is that what it engulfs is truly destroyed without a trace.

In my memory, there once appeared a peculiar black ship, which I didn’t recollect belonging to anyone. Seeing the watermelon-cutting insignia, I mistakenly thought it was a collaboration with He Su.

Now I’ve completely recalled that it bore the mark of our clan’s renegades, in simpler terms, a group specifically opposing the queen.

Tying this to ancient matters, I actually didn’t want to recall it, so I tried to think through the sequence of events as succinctly as possible.

After the queen died and was buried on Victory Island, her trusted confidants painstakingly selected her burial site, choosing the old site of the Tower Clan and placing the queen’s golden coffin right on top of the Ten Thousand Eyes Demon Beast’s... mouth!

This way, once the hive shield is removed, the golden coffin would fall into the beast’s mouth, vanishing completely with the body inside.

On the surface, it seemed that the queen’s remaining will transmitted her posthumous memories to me at the last moment.

Her body fell into the beast’s mouth and utterly vanished, dead beyond any doubt.

Even the Silver Horned King and the Golden Horned King were present; they were her most cherished ’pets’. Wherever she was, there they would be, like pieces of her heart.

All evidence indicated that Otuna, our queen, was truly deceased...

But my intuition screamed that there was a performative element in this arrangement. You could say that Otuna’s confidants buried her on the demon beast’s mouth out of fear her enemies might find the body and deliberately destroy it out of spite.

However, if that were true, wouldn’t it have been better to toss her into the beast’s mouth from the start of the burial? At least they could have ensured the queen’s ’safety’ with their own eyes.

Even if the confidants wished for the queen’s body to be preserved as long as possible, only opting to activate self-destruction upon external threat, then why didn’t it self-destruct after ’Shield’ hammered away on the island for over ten years? Even when the Golden Horn and Silver Horn were unearthed, there was no reaction.

Excavators and forklifts were deployed, yet I merely touched it lightly. Does there need to be such a stark difference in treatment?

So I pondered whether they wanted me to see the queen fall into the demon beast’s mouth and transmit the posthumous memories to prove she had been lying underground peacefully all those years, and from now on, even her body would be unattainable.

A brilliant maneuver, the Golden Cicada sheds its shell!

Thus, assuming Otuna hadn’t died, where would she go?

Of course, she’d continue her unfinished ’great cause’ from when she was alive, a cause the entire clan opposed, yet she alone wanted to accomplish.

Her intentionally lingering will on the corpse instead triggered parts of my memory; these memories were safe, and recalling them caused no discomfort or headache, perhaps due to exposure to Otuna’s unique energy.