The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 242 - 243: Telling Stories Like That Will Get You Killed
But there was nothing upstream, and then an earthquake occurred in the mountains. The rescue personnel believed it was a kind of animal prediction of the earthquake.
"So you think our investigation should focus on upstream?" Xiao Changfeng’s gaze fell on the river surface.
This river flows down from the mountain top, getting steeper as you go up. If the hooved creatures were carrying people back upstream along the river, it would be almost impossible unless it had extra arms. Going up is like climbing a mountain, and you need both hands and feet for that kind of climb. Whether it’s carrying a living person or a corpse, it should be very strenuous.
"The forest area is too vast, and we don’t have enough manpower. We must narrow down the scope and first locate the earthquake’s epicenter, which is on the mountain."
Qinghan is the ’boss’ of this mission. Xiao Changfeng and Gan Quan cooperated well, and the four of us walked up the mountain along the river.
Before coming, Qinghan said that no photos or videos should be taken during work, so without taking pictures, I lost interest in enjoying the scenery and followed him up the mountain sullenly.
The small river was clear, the water gurgled, the fragrance of flowers filled the air, and birds and insects chattered. I couldn’t help but yawn at this scene.
Although the Giant Beast Island was full of crises, at least it wasn’t boring. The mountains and forests here are so safe that they make me want to sleep.
We’ve been walking for almost a day, without encountering a single monster. We finally, at four in the afternoon, set up camp.
Xiao Changfeng noticed my lack of interest and asked whether I found it boring. Speaking with the tone of someone experienced, he said that this job is quite dull, especially in their department, which deals with these kinds of incidents exclusively.
Out of ten tasks, nine turn out to be seemingly abnormal but actually normal phenomena, the kind you could find on educational science programs.
"And the remaining one..." Xiao Changfeng paused, gave a wry smile, revealing one of his canine teeth.
"Is it Minos?" I interjected.
"The remaining one is a life-threatening job, so I often wish all ten were fake."
I can understand that since he suffered a severe head injury during a task, as if going in a circle around the Ghost Gate. Developing a psychological aversion to these bizarre things is normal.
"Then why don’t you resign?" Since he has developed an aversion, wouldn’t it be better to switch jobs?
Xiao Changfeng didn’t reply, glanced at Gan Quan, and shook his head with a bitter smile.
"In any case, there are plenty of times we spend a month in the mountains and nothing happens."
"It’s not what I expected." I looked at Qinghan. He had described their Special Affairs Department as so awesome, I thought they only handled major cataclysms.
"Strange things happen every day. Our job is to filter out those with a big impact and severe consequences for in-depth investigation. However, most are human-related. The rest, you’ve probably seen."
What Xiao Changfeng referred to must be the Illustrated Guide to Strange Creatures of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts, which records the ’true monster’ events he mentioned as being in the minority.
In seven years, working day and night without rest, even if there’s a small number of ’true monster’ encounters, it’s enough to fill a book.
"So who is inside that Dead Sea sarcophagus? The chief of the Hand-Cutting Clan?" I finished flipping through that booklet last night. One entry intrigued me because, for every kind of monster, there was an image, except one page showed only a coffin.
The annotation stated that the coffin was made of human bones, and only used the third section of the left hand’s ring finger bone. The coffin was not small, a meter wide and two and a half meters long. How many small bones would it take to piece together?
Moreover, I thought the human bones seemed more like an outer coffin. There might be an inner coffin inside.
"No one knows. It was first discovered by fishermen. When they were fishing at sea, they saw a box drifting on the water, then their fishing boat sank. Only one person survived, but he lost his mind and kept saying his sister was calling his name from inside the coffin."
"And then?"
"The police investigated and found that man didn’t have a sister, so they concluded he was overly frightened and his mind was affected. Later, when we checked, their old neighbor said his mother once had a miscarriage. It was a girl, but back then, his mother was four months pregnant, accidentally stepped off the stairs. The man was only a little over one year old then."
"So where did you encounter the Hand-Cutting Coffin?" Bored in a tomb, I had developed a habit of passing time by watching movies and reading novels. When feeling bored, I crave a story.
"One stormy night, Gan Lu and I..."
"Ahem." Gan Lu, who seldom spoke along the way, suddenly cleared her throat.
"Oh, Comrade Gan Lu and I took a boat out to sea, went to the accident site to look around, and very fortunately saw that bone coffin."
If I didn’t hear wrong, he tried to say Lulu. I felt puzzled. What’s wrong with this nickname? Is there some taboo?
"And then?" I ignored the issue of the nickname and pressed further.
"The boat sank, and the bone coffin disappeared."
Xiao Changfeng’s story made me itch to know more. I ducked my head, pretending to rummage in my backpack to hide my increasingly creepy expression.
"Huh?" I suddenly looked up. His last sentence reminded me, and an idea flashed in my mind. "Do you think the hooved spirit might have a means of transport too? Maybe something other than a boat?"
People tend to fall into habitual thinking. When mentioning transportation, we think of cars, boats, planes. But there are many things in the world that can serve as transportation. For instance, sea worms are the RVs of sea spiders. They serve as both accommodation and transportation.
Perhaps the hooved spirit doesn’t need to walk on its own. If there’s something airborne that can pick them up, arranged to rendezvous by the river, then even if we searched every inch of grassland in the forest, we would not find their trail.
This flying thing must be large, so it cannot enter the forest to rendezvous. The dense forest trees would block its flight, but the river could serve as an ’air corridor.’
"But no one around here has ever seen such large birds." Xiao Changfeng gestured to show the width of the river.
"If it only comes out at night, seldom moves, and has a secret hiding place, it’s possible that no one has seen it." Qinghan calmly analyzed.
"The forest can’t hide such large birds." Gan Lu spoke, her eyes looking towards the mountain top.
Creatures on the surface are like lice on a bald head; they pose little danger.
However, deep underground, beneath the steep mountains, those creatures hidden in darkness are often shrouded in a mysterious... veil of death, many times leading to death if touched.
"Let’s rest early tonight. Tomorrow morning we’ll go up the mountain." Qinghan took out four self-heating food packs. Since fires can’t be kindled in the forests, all the provisions this time are these kinds of convenient foods.
I heard meat’s expensive recently. I looked at the strips of meat in the lunch box and pushed them all to Qinghan. I, a zongzi who doesn’t need to eat, find eating a waste, and wasting meat even more so.
"What your department says is indeed correct." Xiao Changfeng looked at us with a smile, "A strong alliance, a fancy display of affection."
