The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 186: Black Haired Sunbeam Snake

Mine and Che Zhong's first reaction was to copy Longtao and run. This was a life-saving reflex, and we ran more than a dozen paces. When Longtao stopped, we also stopped. Che Zhong and I had almost the same pace and overall reaction time. We glanced at each other, and nearly bowed and became sworn brothers.

I turned to see Longtao staring at the stone plate, and noticed a green liquid started to ooze out from the bottom. We weren't very loyal during our hasty retreat, and forgot to call Bao Sa. He had drank too much wine and wasn't particularly sober, so when he saw the green liquid, and us running away, he just slowly walked over to us.

The green liquid was right on his heels, but he was always one step faster. When he reached a distance of about ten meters, the green liquid finally stopped spreading. He also stopped, turned around, and used his wine bottle to fiddle with the liquid.

At that time, there was a rotten stench that spread into the air, almost like rotten eggs. When I asked Longtao what he had seen, he said, "Snake eggs. There were a lot of eggs in the stone plate that I blew to pieces. They were all snake eggs inside."

Under the sunlight, I saw several black long-haired serpents poke their heads out of the stone plate. It looked as if they were moving very slowly, and hadn't yet fully regained consciousness. I noticed they were as thick as my arm as they crawled out of the plate and began slithering around. They seemed to be afraid of the sun, because they all went into the nearby gaps in the fault, and slithered down the concrete wall.

More of them crawled to where the water jars were, and slithered inside the greasy contents.

I had seen this kind of snake when I was in Tibet, and brought it back to conduct very extensive research. It appeared be a subspecies similar to the sunbeam snake, but this one was very special. The scales of ordinary sunbeam snakes had an extremely strange metallic luster, but they belonged to non-poisonous snakes. This subspecies here, however, was highly toxic.

At that time, the professor carefully studied the specimen I had brought with me, and told me that it seemed to be an intermediate species. This kind of snake seemed very close to cobras, so the red species I had seen before might have been the product of artificially breeding this snake with the Chinese salamander or red cobra. The hairy snake may be the product of breeding some ancient snake that was now extinct in China.

In reality, it was impossible for different kinds of snakes to mate, but the kind of snake I had brought back seemed to be an ancient snake. It was in the last stage of evolution, and a series of breeds that had evolved from it seemed able to mate with it.

This kind of snake was called a hairy snake— or a cat snake— and was considered a kind of cobra. It existed everywhere in Chinese folklore, and its hair and fangs were said to be highly toxic. It could also imitate a cat's cries in order to hunt them.

The legend of the hairy snake also had another feature—it would appear in people's dreams. Even if this person had no idea of its existence, they might still dream about it. The purported reason for this was because the hairy snake emitted a substance. You might not see the snake if you passed by a certain area, but you might still be affected by the substance even at a certain distance.

The tentative name for this species was "Black Haired Sunbeam Snake."

There was no denying the fact that I did everything to find this snake. I felt a chill overcome my body as I realized that this time, I had made the right bet to come to Yinchuan.

I also knew why the stone plate and stone jars were here, and what I would find below.

After discovering something under the mountain depression back then, the Nationalist Party garrison stationed here carried out a covert project. Several decades later, a group of black-clad men arrived, and began to explore or mine this covert project.

This wasn't a huge ancient tomb, nor was it the kind of place you could enter to get something done once and for all. It was a mineral deposit, and the minerals were these snakes.

The area down below should be a snake mine.

I remembered seeing bronze incense burners full of ashes in Motuo, which were used to temporarily store the poisonous snakes while the mining occurred. The water jars and human oil here may have also been used for this purpose.

What Longtao said before should all be bullshit, and what I said may be more reasonable, because I had previously wondered whether the stone plate held the baby snakes of this subspecies.

But the snake mine led all the way to the top of the cement building, which meant it should be the loading place for the mining site. The snake mine hadn't been blown up, which indicated that the mining was suddenly stopped, and the personnel left suddenly.

Maybe it was because they were discovered by Lin Qizhong, so they had no other choice. Or, they had found something else here.

I thought of Lin Qizhong's account. The black-clad men stopped on the dirt road for a very strange period of time, which made it seem like there was some sort of accident.

I was certain that the concrete tower beneath me had to be a tower crane and ventilation system, because the things excavated from the snake mine were too heavy. It was impossible to lift them with a winch.

I patted Che Zhong and said to him, "I agree to your terms. Think of some way to get me down there."

"Three times." Che Zhong said to me.

I spit in contempt, "Fine."

Bao Sa tentatively touched the green juice with his hand, and when he found nothing wrong, he went in. The equipment bag that we had no time to grab before was lifted from the green branches and leaves.

Once we all saw that he was alright, we followed him. We climbed onto the stone plate and were immediately blinded by the smoke, only able to see that the stone plate had been blown into a stone bowl, and the rubble in the middle was full of broken snake eggs. The snake eggs varied in size, and were very strange.

There was no opening to the bottom, and Longtao smiled awkwardly and said, "At least I found something." Bao Sa tied one end of the rope to Longtao's waist.

"Hold on."

We all thought Bao Sa was going to make Longtao be his anchor, and Bao Sa would grab the other end of the rope and plunge gracefully into the abyss.

Longtao felt the same way. He tightened the rope and said to Bao Sa, "Don't be rash, let's discuss it. I can't hold you."

"I can hold you." Bao Sa said. He then grabbed the back of Longtao's collar, jumped off the stone plate, and threw him into the gap at the edge. Longtao shouted and tried to grab the grass roots at the edge, but Bao Sa stomped on his hand, and Longtao fell with a scream.

The rope that had been coiled into a ball was quickly pulled down, and Bao Sa slowly walked by, pulling the rope bit by bit with one hand. We could hear Longtao crying loudly below.

"Do you want to kill him?" I asked Bao Sa, who merely took a sip of wine and said, "This man is a talkative good-for-nothing."

I chuckled, because this could have also been used to describe me before. All I said was: "Be tolerant."

Bao Sa handed me the rope, as if to say, "Do you want to do it?" I smiled and shook my head, secretly cursing this guy for being a prick. But I also had creative ways to deal with him, and once the balance was due, I wouldn't pay him until he came at me with a knife.

He put all the equipment together, fastened the ring to the taut rope, tightened the pulley, and then slid the equipment down the rope with a shout to Longtao at the bottom: "Look out!" The pulley gave a steady whistle, quickly followed by Longtao's scream.