The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 91: Story

The other man smiled, blinked, and then said to Li Cu, "I know you won't believe me so easily. It really is unbelievable, so just hear me out, and then you'll know why I'm in this situation."

He thought for a moment, and then said: "I'll be blunt. To bring anything out of this place requires a certain kind of preparation. If I don't have any sort of preparation to enter this cave, I won't only be unable to bring anything out, but will also undergo a strange change."

Li Cu shook his head, tired of this guy's way of speaking. He knew that this guy was speaking in a way to get others to empathize with him, but Li Cu was smarter than the average person in this respect, and wouldn't be fooled by the story. He had already been tricked by Wu Xie once before, so he told himself that he would never believe anything that had confusing logic.

The man continued, "Do you believe that the way the world works is completely different from what we understand?"

Li Cu said: "Get to the point. You don't need to change the subject."

The man seemed to want to continue his train of thought, and took out a notebook from his pocket. It was a very old, leather notebook, and he handed it to Li Cu and said, "You can take a look at what I drew first, and judge for yourself. Then I'll tell you why I came to this cave a second time, whether I've been in the cave, and why I still have nothing."

Li Cu opened the book and found that a lot of small objects were drawn with very skillful lines. The drawing style was unlike that of an engineer, because there was a little cartoon sign at the bottom of the completed sketches. This reminded him of a style he had seen before by that illustrator named Dao Dao, but the person in front of him was a man.

Did Lan Ting lie to Wu Xie while chatting with him? Or was there something else there? There were a lot of melodramatic scenes that could have been fabricated, but the various things in the sketchbook slowly diverted his attention from that thought.

The first thing he saw was sketches of many jewels, but they looked very strange. Although the sketches couldn't reflect their luster, it wasn't difficult to see from the angles and method of drawing that these jewels were very delicate, and there were a lot of them. To his untrained eye, most of the drawings looked like they were based on a pile of jewels, and had been drawn from different perspectives.

Li Cu attempted to recreate the scenes from the sketchbook in his mind, imagining himself walking around the large room filled with treasures, and looking for different angles to draw what he was interested in.

After that, Li Cu was flipping through several character sketches, when he suddenly saw one with Wu Xie's face. His heart gave a "thump", but he tried hard to calm himself down and not show it. After he flipped past two more, however, he suddenly stopped. He knew that he couldn't pretend that nothing had happened, because the other party wanted him to see these things.

The face he saw drawn in the sketch book was his own, and there was no doubt that it was Li Cu's face. The Li Cu in the picture was holding a sketchbook, and had a surprised expression on his face. Through the delicate depiction in the sketchbook, he could even see what was drawn in the sketchbook. Li Cu closed his eyes, opened them again, and asked himself, is this a psychological trap? What is he trying to do? But he immediately noticed that the Li Cu in the drawing was carrying a canteen and had a very strange package.

He looked down at himself. The canteen was Liang Wan's, which they had used to collect urine, and the very strange package was the serum bag that had been taken out of Su Wan's pack before. After Su Wan was given the injection, Li Cu conveniently held onto it because he was afraid of forgetting it.

Is this person a quick hand? Did he draw this just now while chatting with me? Li Cu had also learned how to sketch, and knew that such a delicate drawing couldn't be completed in a short time. There was also the fact that he hadn't seen this person take out a sketch book just now, and even if he had, it wasn't like he could draw while chatting and being stared at.

Li Cu closed the sketchbook, no longer interested in looking at it. He then glanced at the man and said, "Please explain."

The other party laughed, "Actually, even if I don't say it, you'll know tonight. But I'll tell you anyways. The last time I arrived here, there was nothing in this cave but a pile of stones. I was very depressed, and ended up drinking a lot that day and falling asleep on the stone. But that night, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was in the city again, poor and helpless, and when I came back to this place again, I met several young people carrying a lot of equipment. These young people entered the cave with me, and that's when I saw that the stones had turned to jewels and gold. From that day forward, as long as my head was resting on the stone, I kept having that same dream over and over again. I slowly discovered that I had a choice in this dream. If I went down alone, then what I saw was still stone. It was only when I went down with these young people that the treasures would be in the cave.

As the dreams became clearer and clearer, I decided to give it a try and come back here. Sure enough, I met you after having entered. I know you may not believe it, but you can look at this sketchbook and see that I've drawn all the scenes from the dream. I remember it clearly. These sketches should alleviate your worries."

Li Cu flipped through the sketchbook, and found that after the pictures, there was a scene of them entering the cave. They saw a lot of treasure upon entering, but the sketches of the dream after that were very simple and untidy.

Li Cu thought for a moment, looked at the man, and then asked, "What's the end of this dream?"

The other side said, "The end of the dream is that we take the treasure out and part ways at the cave entrance."

Li Cu's perception of this person had changed somewhat, because the sketchbook was indeed beyond any explanation he could come up with.

The man took a stone from his backpack and said to Li Cu, "When you go to bed tonight, sleep on this stone. You may have the same dream, and then you'll believe me."

Li Cu took it and brought it close. It was a palm-sized stone that had been taken out of the desert, and had now been brought back again. What a real pain in the ass.

It was at this time that he suddenly heard someone calling him. Li Cu turned around and saw Su Wan emerge from the darkness, holding a flashlight. His mind suddenly felt a little dizzy, and everything around him suddenly became clear. Su Wan's face had been smeared with white powder, and he came to Li Cu's side and said, "I finally find you. Are you alright? You scared us to death."

"I'm fine," Li Cu said. "This man saved—"

He turned and found that the handsome man in front of him had disappeared. There was nothing in front of him, not even the lantern.

"Who?" Su Wan wondered.

Li Cu looked at the stone in his hand, touched his mouth, and then said to himself, fuck, do I have a concussion?