The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 247 - 248: Heart Gesture Ceremony
Before coming here, I didn’t expect to encounter a ’familiar face’, Chen Qinghan must have made this decision on a whim.
I actually sensed it too. In any operation I participate in, I almost always run into ’old acquaintances’.
The Rock Miners don’t know me personally, but they recognize Blood Mother people. I don’t even know what characteristics our clan has that would allow them to recognize us at a glance.
Too many coincidences surely hide some inevitability, but as far as I know, no one in our clan has the ability to manipulate all of someone’s encounters.
If it’s not someone from my clan manipulating my every move, then what force is controlling the direction of my every step?
Could it really be the curse Bi Shi mentioned?
Xiao Changfeng nodded, "Alright, let’s send him down the mountain first. Be cautious, and wait for me to call for support."
Chen Qinghan immediately agreed, "We’ll wait here."
Xiao Changfeng seemed to sense something, his gaze at us showing clear unease, and he reminded us not to act rashly. This incident looks complicated, so he took Li Chengming down the mountain.
We waited at the camp for half an hour, made sure they had gone far, then packed up the tent and walked towards the river with a lantern.
The Rock Miners were all standing by the river. I glanced around, and the number hadn’t changed. Seeing me return, they lifted their arms, touched their fingertips at the horn on their heads, making a ’heart’ gesture.
"This is... a salute, showing respect." I saw Chen Qinghan looking puzzled and quickly guessed.
"Should we return the gesture?" Chen Qinghan asked a very sharp question.
"They made a big heart, we’ll make a small one." I extended my left hand’s index finger and thumb, crossed them to make a one-hand heart gesture.
Chen Qinghan believed it, and followed me to make a heart gesture towards the Rock Miners.
This was something I made up, to prevent him from misunderstanding that these miners were my admirers, as it relates to my honor as a symbol against cross-species romance.
——Thank you for your trust and regard. Suddenly, the miner leader sent a thank you note.
Uh... did I guess correctly?
"What’s wrong?" Chen Qinghan saw my expression change and quickly asked.
"Nothing, they’re just expressing their gratitude for our friendliness." I shook my head, dismissing stray thoughts from my mind, and focused on the river.
Li Chengming wasn’t hallucinating; the headless birds he mentioned really existed, and they were now hovering over the river, with wings flapping like gliders, only slightly stirring the air, making a faint airflow sound.
The Tower Clan and the Rock Miners didn’t have such transportation tools, at least I hadn’t heard of any. So these headless birds might be raised by an evil entity.
The miner leader offered a bird for me and Chen Qinghan, jumped onto the lead bird, and the other miners followed suit.
The headless birds then flapped their wings and flew upriver. Their flying sound was quieter than the rustling night wind through leaves, no wonder the police couldn’t trace the miners after searching the woods for days.
The headless birds carried us to a cliff upstream, where the miner leader took out a metal ball, and muttered "Open sesame". The stone wall above the hillside immediately parted, revealing the entrance Li Chengming had described.
Hearing this incantation, I rubbed my chin, feeling it was familiar, as if from Alibaba and the Forty Thieves?
The headless birds lined up and flew into the entrance, and as soon as we entered, a strong stench of corpses rushed into our nostrils. This ’outer chamber’ turned out to be a corpse cave, with corpse oil and wax all over the floor, though the bodies that were originally placed on the floor had now been moved to the walls.
The bodies had been moved, but parts of their ’substance’ remained on the floor, uncleaned.
Moreover, the bodies weren’t covered; Li Chengming must have seen these differently shaped, hideously dead bodies and been scared into consciousness.
The miner leader had great confidence in me and didn’t take us to the room with the pool, but flew straight into the depths of the passage on a headless bird.
The passage connected to a ’Pin’ shaped room, consisting of the morgue, the pool room, and the furnace room opposite it.
Further in, there was still a group of three ’Pin’ shaped rooms, only the second group was larger than the first.
Inside were bunk beds, suggesting they were for the miners, meaning this was the Rock Miners’ dormitory.
The third ’Pin’ shaped set was the largest, and the building’s floor plan resembled a lamppost or a Christmas tree, with an expanding series of ’Pin’ shaped rooms centered around a straight passage, without any turns or branches.
Could it be that the evil entity the miners spoke of is Santa Claus?
But that can’t be right; Santa’s sleigh is pulled by reindeer, not headless birds...
The miner leader had the headless bird land at the end of the passage, in front of the largest room, which had no doors. The interior was lit, so the space inside was plainly visible.
That’s how I saw that the largest room had a nest placed right in the center.
On the way here, the miner leader told me that the creature had an incredible ultimate skill: the ability to speak someone to death.
I’ve only heard of words capable of melting gold, or the death note that could write someone to death, but not anything that could directly speak to death.
The miners had great confidence in me, saying this creature would surely be powerless before the great Blood Mother clan people.
I was made uneasy by their praise; the Blood Mother they spoke of were probably our ancestors, and the Blood Mother clan down to me and Bi Shi lack the capabilities of our ancestors, not just due to a cultural gap, but apparently due to a problem with the source of life.
I asked the miner leader how it recognized me at a glance. It said the Blood Mother people’s bodies emit a red glow, which no other species possesses.
Their eyes really aren’t for nothing, being able to see things others can’t.
So I asked curiously if there was a red glow on Chen Qinghan’s body, and it said no, very firmly.
I’ve already given him blood to drink three times; even if it soaked into his clothes, it should be hard to wash out. How come he only has the aura of my clan but no distinctive red glow?
Though puzzled, I didn’t dwell on it; bloodline inheritance takes time, and it’s still in the incomplete stage now.
The miners didn’t intend to go in with us, but stood at the entrance giving me ’cheers’ messages.
Alright then, their big eyes aren’t for show, but their size is, being too cowardly to handle, and the miner leader explained that they didn’t mean to harm those people, but those people were too nervous, colliding with their claws in panic.
It turns out the shocking ’blood incident’ at the camp was a suicide...
Indeed, the miners’ nails resemble Edward Scissorhands’, scratching their faces would scar them on normal days.
They dare not face the being inside, but I’m not afraid, and went inside with Chen Qinghan.
A head poked out from the nest immediately. The nest was only half a person’s height, made of branches and dry grass, with the innermost layer lined with fuzzy material, though I’m not sure what animal it’s from.
