Tomb Raider: I Am Hu Bayi's Cousin

Chapter 703 The Disappearance of the King of the South Sea!

"What the hell do you call this a language???"

Wu Xie, the blind man, and the fat man were all shocked, pointing at the figure in astonishment.

"...I am the King of Luo Yun Kingdom in the South Sea. You lowly commoner, why do you not kneel and pay homage to me?"

The figure opened its dry eyelids, revealing two...dark, empty eye sockets.

More than two thousand years have passed. Although this thing's form of existence is a bit off, such a fragile thing as an eyeball has long been rotted away by the relentless passage of time.

Also worth mentioning is that the figure's speech had a strong coastal dialect flavor; after all, how many years has Mandarin been around?
It was only at the academic conference on the standardization of modern Chinese held in 1955 that the standard for modern Standard Chinese was clearly defined as "taking the pronunciation of Beijing as the standard pronunciation, Northern dialects as the base dialect, and exemplary modern vernacular literature as the grammatical standard."

In other words, the ancient king had no idea what Mandarin was.

Outside, a thick, ominous black cloud obscured the sky, and everything in the world seemed to be shrouded in darkness a hundred times deeper than the night.

Strangely, lightning flashed continuously through the dark clouds on the horizon, yet no thunder rumbled, as if...

It was as if the thunder had been intercepted halfway by some mysterious force.

At the same time, the "mother stone" that Hu Ming always carried with him, which came from the "Emperor Qin Shi Huang" sculpture, suddenly began to heat up.

"Everything we have comes from the gift of the Mother Stone, and all our magical powers are bestowed by the Mother Stone. Now, the Mother Stone has gradually withered and faded, but it still possesses certain magical powers."

“You will need the mother stone one day, Hu Ming, believe me.”

These were the last words the First Emperor uttered before he left that day, bathed in bronze light, his figure disappearing like a painting erased by an eraser.

"Why be a riddle person of all things? Why not just say what you mean directly? Riddle people are the most annoying!"

"Speak if you can, and shut up if you can't. Is it okay to keep people in suspense? No, it's not!"

Hu Ming took out the mother stone and murmured to himself in a low voice with a melancholy expression.

"I hate the process of solving puzzles. I'm just an ordinary person. I only like the feeling of relief when I find out the answer."

Hu Ming added.

"Although I don't know what you're thinking, I have to remind you that Qi Er has some ideas about you, or more accurately, about the stone in your hand."

The blind man poked Hu Ming in the lower back, offering a gloating reminder.

Hu Ming's voice was too soft; even he, who was closest to Hu Ming, couldn't hear it clearly. But it didn't matter; blind people weren't particularly curious anyway.

All he knew was that the unusual zongzi in front of him was very interested in what Hu Ming was holding.

"What do you mean 'Seven Ears'? Show some manners! This is the King of Luo Yun Kingdom in the South China Sea, okay? In his eyes, we're just lowly commoners, okay?"

Hu Ming rolled his eyes, put away the still scalding hot mother stone, and glanced at the figure clumsily rolling out of the coffin.

"In the eyes of the Zhang family, throughout the past thousand years, apart from those incredibly powerful emperors of China, which other weak emperor wasn't a puppet?"

With all his memories restored and all his burdens lifted, the young man seemed to become more witty and sarcastic as a result.

However, it must be said that the Zhang family is incredibly arrogant in this regard.

How dare this nobody from some backwater region act so arrogantly and like an emperor in front of Zhang Qiling?
The young man's black blade was already itching for a strike. If he were more emotionally charged, he might have said to this self-important king: "You think you're so great, huh?"
"Wow, this guy's awesome! The Zhang family is amazing!"

The blind man opened his mouth, offering a perfunctory straight man response.

then
"But the Zhang family is still gone. Their ancestral hall has been ransacked more than once."

The foul-mouthed fat man picked up on the half-sentence the blind man hadn't said.

"...No, Fatty, you're still the best!"

The young man turned his gaze to the fat man, and the blind man sincerely praised him.

"The Divine Stone!"

"You lowly commoner, where did you obtain this sacred stone? It belongs to the gods; how dare you, a mere lowly commoner, touch it?"

The King of the South Sea spoke in his dialect, which Hu Ming, having done some research on the dialects of the southern coastal areas, could roughly understand. This is what he was saying.

With its eyeballs gone, heaven knows how this thing managed to obtain external image information.

The others also understood the meaning to some extent. Apart from the blind man, they all knew the origin of Hu Ming's stone.

"...Naive. I have a feeling that your third uncle has led us into another bottomless pit. Damn it, Wu Sansheng is definitely not a good person."

The fat man sighed softly.

How could something that could be related to an ancient being that has existed for millions of years be simple?
"I always had a feeling that Uncle Three's true identity was actually an NPC in an online game who gave out main quests, and we were just playing..."

Wu Xie scratched his head, and said uncertainly.

"God? Thor?"

Hu Ming had no idea which remote, hidden deity this was.
"Even so, they're nothing more than manipulated puppets, yet they call us lowly people? They're giving you too much face!"

Hu Ming drew his sword, his face cold.

He never expected to get any information out of this man. First, after all, he used to be a king and was used to being high and mighty.

Secondly, this series of changes had already made Hu Ming keenly aware of something, and that was enough.

so.
After a long period of calm, a muffled clap of thunder suddenly rang out, and at the same time, Hu Ming made his move.

Like lightning that rips through the sky before thunder, Hu Ming left an afterimage almost in the dim light, his bronze-gleaming sword slicing lightly across the surface.

*Smack...*

Hu Ming held a withered head in his hands, weighing it up and down like a ball.

"That's it? Nothing special. Is this the esteemed King of the South Sea?"

He casually tossed it aside, and the headless, desiccated corpse swayed twice before collapsing to the ground in resentment.

Amidst the tremors of thunder collected from the bell's mouth, the headless mummified corpse seemed to still be struggling and twitching, but in the end, it still fell to the ground unwillingly.

Strangely, seemingly due to the demise of the King of the South Sea, the thunder subsided abruptly and eerily.