The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 83: Sleeping Is the Best Way to Cure Hunger
Jerry moved his lips, wanting to speak, but his mouth was so frozen that he couldn’t get a word out.
I pretended to shiver from the cold, pushing him forward. Those surrounding ’sounds’ finally subsided, plunging us back into a sweet dreamlike state.
We were still a hundred meters away when the passage before us transformed again, and this time, it was a deep pit, an unfathomable abyss blocking our path.
"Can’t wait any longer, we have to get across." Qinghan spoke very slowly, clearly freezing as well.
"There... there’s a... rope." Jerry stuttered from the cold, moving his shoulders, possibly trying to remove his backpack to grab the rope hanging outside.
Qinghan turned on a powerful flashlight. He had just been using glow sticks for light as the flashlight also releases heat.
"A hundred meters," Qinghan stated succinctly.
The pit was a hundred meters long, so jumping across was out of the question, and swinging over was impossible too. We’d have to shoot one end of the rope to the opposite wall, then climb across holding onto it.
Jerry moved his shoulders again and said, "I... I have it."
Seeing that time was tight and the task was urgent, I stopped pretending. I rummaged through his backpack, found the grappling gun, replaced the hook with a suction cup, and shot it at the smooth wall on the other side.
His equipment was impressive; the suction cup gripped the wall securely. I straightened the rope, fixing this end to the wall with another suction cup.
Qinghan took out three red pills and handed one to each of us, saying it was an antidote. This time, Jerry didn’t hesitate and immediately popped it into his mouth.
As the medicine took effect, Qinghan was the first to grab the rope and skillfully climb up.
He gestured for me to give him my backpack too, so he could carry it across and make it easier for me when I climbed.
With two backpacks in front and behind him, he grasped the rope with both hands and swung to the other side.
Although the suction cups could adhere to smooth surfaces, they couldn’t hold as much weight as hooks, so only two people could climb at a time.
However, without equipment, one person’s weight plus a backpack nearly equaled two people, so we could only have one person on the rope at a time.
Fortunately, Qinghan moved quickly; a hundred meters flew by in no time.
Jerry stared in awe, surely wondering if Qinghan was related to Sun Wukong. I gave him a pat to prompt him to hurry up.
"You go first, ladies first," Jerry said, puffing out his chest and making a ’please’ gesture.
I grabbed his belt, lifted him up, and tossed him towards the rope.
"Ah—" Jerry screamed, quickly hugging the rope, clinging with all fours.
Beneath him was the bottomless pit, and the rope sagged under his weight, causing his body to dip below the horizon.
"Climb quickly, or else the mechanism will activate, and the ground will close. You’ll end up stuck in the pit."
"This is murder! Cold, you’re really cold-hearted!" Jerry accused while climbing.
"I saved your life, no need to thank me." If he had hesitated any longer, the creatures in the passage would have awakened.
They were inside the walls. Though nothing seemed to be on the surface, once they awoke, they’d burst through the walls, leaving nowhere to hide in the passage.
At first glance, the walls in this section seemed no different from the previous section, but they were quite different. There was an exit below, well hidden.
The ’signals’ these creatures emitted were very close to me, leading me to believe that the walls here were certainly not as thick as those of the previous passage.
Jerry’s shouting alarmed the creatures inside the walls. Tiny cracking sounds echoed in the passage.
"Stop shouting, you’re waking them up." I warned sharply.
Jerry’s head was facing this way, as he was hanging upside down on the rope, unable to look back at me.
I could sense that he was anxious, eager to climb faster so I could also hang onto the rope for safety.
But his build was cumbersome, and just managing not to fall off the thin rope was taxing enough.
His physical training must not have included how to nimbly climb a rope like a monkey.
"Just hold on, I’ll be there soon," Jerry mumbled, struggling to move forward.
Behind me in the passage, large beetles tumbled down one after another, each as big as a watermelon. Luckily, they had no wings, so I didn’t have to worry about them flying over to bite Qinghan.
"What’s that sound?" Jerry heard the dense rustling noise of the beetles moving.
The large beetles had sharp hooks on their feet, likely very hard, emitting a clattering sound against the ground.
"It’s nothing, just keep climbing." Originally standing at the edge of the pit, I now retreated a few meters. The beetles, drawn by Jerry’s voice, crowded towards this side. Their size made it easy for them to push me right into the pit.
"Why are you backing away? What’s happening?"
When people can’t see, they tend to imagine the worst. Losing sight was akin to losing a sense of security.
"It’s nothing. Something’s trying to climb onto the rope. Move faster, they’re climbing better than you."
The beetles had brains, and a little intelligence. Realizing that crowding toward the pit didn’t land them a feast, they began to climb the walls, performing acrobatics to reach the rope, pursuing the big chunk of meat trying to escape.
Jerry, agitated, became even more rigid. Fear hadn’t triggered his potential; if this continued, he’d be done for.
He was far from Qinghan and closer to me. Qinghan couldn’t help him, so I had to return to the pit’s edge. I picked up one of the beetles and threw it at the ones on the rope.
"Squeak—"
The beetles that got hit fell into the pit, their cries plummeting until they were no longer heard.
"There really is something!" Jerry finally grasped the seriousness of the situation, wriggling forward like a giant maggot.
When he reached the ’other side,’ the passage had already begun to change. The walls moved silently, and within seconds, the pit vanished, too fast for me to get across.
"Uh..." I didn’t even have time to communicate with Qinghan. Seeing another passage open before me, I waved to the beetles at my feet, "Stop chasing. Go back to sleep. Sleeping is the best remedy for hunger."
The beetles retreated into the walls, grumbling about the meat that slipped away.
Jerry’s delay separated me from Qinghan. The endless changes of the mechanism left waiting futile.
I believed that Qinghan would definitely find a way out. I decided to wander around for now and regroup with him later.
The third passage was the ’Sword Forest.’ I dodged the big swords and snapped the smaller ones, taking some effort to get through.
The blades were coated with poison, either black or green, which had survived millennia without evaporating. But since I had no wounds, the poison only touched my skin without causing discomfort—perhaps it expired.
In the fifth passage, I found a backpack and eagerly approached. It looked old, covered in a thick layer of dust, clearly not left by Pete and his team.
