I, a cultivator, have ended up in the world of tomb raiding.

Li Yue walked slowly closer and examined the lantern closely.

At the top of the mural in front of us, the entire appearance of the Muchen Pearl is clearly depicted.

The bead is translucent and scarlet, with a spiral pattern on its body resembling the pupil of a human eye, standing in the center.

It is clearly a mural, yet it carries a somewhat mysterious air.

The lower part of the mural meticulously depicts the palaces and pavilions of the Western Xia Dynasty, complete with flying eaves, upturned corners, corridors, columns, and steps.

The composition is clear and straightforward, yet intricately layered, with brushstrokes adorned with powder and gold, resulting in an overall majestic and magnificent effect.

This style of painting is completely different from the delicate and elegant murals of flying fairies that were previously in the hall.

The brushstrokes are bold and intense, and the colors are rich and heavy. Even if Li Yue had no knowledge of calligraphy and painting, he could tell the difference at a glance.

He stared intently at the mural, every word and every stroke of the mural recounting the life and deeds of the tomb's occupant.

This man came from the Western Regions and had a distinguished military career, earning him the deep respect of the Mongol army.

After the Mongol cavalry destroyed the Western Xia, he received military orders and searched everywhere for the traces of the Muchen Pearl.

They excavated several Western Xia imperial tombs and searched through the underground palaces, but ultimately found nothing.

Later, it was learned that the phoenix gall was hidden in the Tongtian Great Buddha Temple in the Blackwater City of Western Xia.

But things are unpredictable. Over the years, the desert winds and sands have changed, and the ancient cities and historical sites have all been buried by the yellow sand, nowhere to be found in the vast Gobi Desert.

Furthermore, an imperial edict suddenly arrived from the army ordering a southern expedition to quell the rebellion, and the matter was completely shelved.

He spent his entire life searching for this rare treasure, and died with regret.

This is a very tragic passage in the book, which is why Li Yue has a very deep memory of this part of the original story.

The Muchen Pearl was never in Blackwater City.

Instead, it lies far away in the tomb of the King Xian in southern Yunnan, hidden in the palace of the King Xian shrouded in miasma, hidden within the meticulously carved body of the King Xian.

The Zaglama people, a lineage of mountain movers, are cursed with red spots on their bloodline and have been dedicated to finding the Muchen Pearl to break the curse for generations.

They explored ancient tombs all over the world, traversed mountains and valleys, and delved into burial sites, exhausting the efforts of generations, yet their clan gradually dwindled.

Young members of the clan died one after another on their search for the pearl, and the clan's lineage nearly died out. They were all misled by these ancient books and murals and could never find the pearl.

Partridge Whistle was like that; he saw the murals in this hall and mistakenly believed that the Muchen Pearl was in the Blackwater Desert.

To break free from his clan's fate and his own curse, he abandoned his status as the leader of the Mountain Moving Clan and became a disciple of the Tomb Raiders. With the help of Elder Chen, he traveled to the Gobi Desert.

In the end, his master, Elder Chen, died tragically in the tomb, and he himself was bitten by a poisonous creature and lost an arm. Helpless, he went to the United States.

Throughout his life, he was never able to see the Muchen Pearl with his own eyes, which became a lifelong regret.

The Zaglama people have been robbing tombs in search of pearls for generations, but in the end, they have come up empty-handed, which is a great regret for the community.

Readers are deeply saddened to see Partridge Whistle, who devoted half his life to the game, end up in such a tragic state.

When Li Yue was young, he read this story and felt a deep sense of regret.

But now he has lived three lives, nearly 150 years, and has witnessed too many vicissitudes of life, joys and sorrows.

Having experienced countless regrets and resentments from close friends and partners, my mindset has long since become much more detached.

Knowing the cause and effect, and understanding all the endings, he only paused briefly in front of the mural, without experiencing much emotional turmoil.

My gaze drifted down unintentionally, and I suddenly noticed a low, ancient tree painted below the Muchen Pearl.

The tree has many intertwined branches, not a single leaf, and its trunk is gnarled and ancient, its shape vaguely resembling the corpse cassia tree under the Danjing well.

He took two steps back and looked again.

The tree's composition is extremely strange, with only thick branches remaining, resembling a huge branch broken off from a large tree, lying quietly directly below the jewel.

When viewed as a whole, the scarlet bead resembles a blazing, blood-red sun, illuminating the Western Xia landscape below.

Beside it stands this withered, strange tree, its meaning obscure and difficult to discern, leaving one puzzled.

Li Yue wondered to himself, could this withered tree-like object also be a treasured artifact of the Western Xia royal palace?

Or perhaps it was something the tomb owner longed for but could not obtain in his lifetime, which he specially painted on the mural to commemorate his life's regrets.

On second thought, the murals were a mixture of reality and fiction, and even the records of the Muchen Pearl were erroneous.

The authenticity of this strange, unidentified tree was impossible to verify, so he simply stopped thinking about it, calmed his mind, and strode towards the inner hall.

As soon as I stepped into the passageway connecting the front and back halls, I sensed a thick, pungent smell of blood that suddenly and silently filled the air.

Li Yue's brows furrowed instantly, a strange feeling rising in his heart, and his gaze suddenly fixed on the dim area ahead.

In his eyes, everything in front of him was completely unobstructed and clearly visible.

In the very middle of the passageway, a dark shadow lay silently, its outline strange and menacing, blocking the way.

The tomb is divided into two sections, with the front hall being relatively small and the rear hall being extremely spacious.

This dark figure was clearly not human; it was small in size and had a long, thin tail trailing behind it, making it look extremely strange.

Li Yue already had a guess in his mind, and he released his divine sense without making a sound.

Upon investigation, no trace of life could be detected from the creature, and the surroundings were deathly silent, with no other unusual sounds.

But this object, lying so abruptly in the middle of the passageway, exudes an indescribable eeriness.

He suppressed his doubts, picked up his miner's lamp, and slowly approached, the dim light illuminating the object completely.

After seeing its appearance clearly, Li Yue was finally able to confirm it completely.

This really is a mountain scorpion.

It was a pregnant female scorpion.

Its body is bluish-black, its carapace is thick and hard like cast iron, its tail is divided into thirteen segments, thick and powerful, and its two giant pincers are as thick as a child's arm.

It looked incredibly fierce, but its sharp stinger hung limply, lifeless, clearly a dead scorpion.

To Li Yue's surprise, the mother scorpion's back was completely split open.

A huge gash ran across the scorpion's entire body, like a gaping, menacing maw.

The crack was filled with tiny, white scorpions.

Many small scorpions broke free from the crack and scattered on the ground.

Strings of them stretched across a small patch of the passageway floor, a sight that sent chills down one's spine.

The mother scorpion, already dead, lay motionless on the ground like a tattered, hardened shell.

He must have died not long ago; his blood hadn't even dried yet.

Judging from the situation, it seems the mother scorpion was about to give birth, and died on the spot after giving birth to her babies.

The baby scorpions broke free from the crack in their mother's back and tried to escape, but for some reason, they all died in the tunnel; not one survived.

Seeing this, Li Yue found it increasingly strange.

Although the scorpion breeding in Ping Mountain is dangerous, such a scene has never been seen before, and it is definitely not an ordinary difficult birth.

The baby scorpions have been successfully born, and the mother scorpion has no obvious external injuries.

It is unknown what misfortune befell her, but she recklessly gave birth in this passageway, only to end up with the deaths of both mother and child.

"One corpse, a hundred lives lost," Li Yue thought to himself.