Tomb raiding live stream: Starting as the mute Zhang

The passageway extended forward for about fifty meters, where the slope gradually became gentler. The musty smell in the air was replaced by a damp, slightly fishy odor, like the smell of riverbed silt.

The flashlight beam shone forward, creating a reflection.

water.

At the end of the passage was a naturally formed karst cave pool. The water was pitch black, its surface as still as a piece of black jade. The pool was about ten meters wide, with a smooth rock wall opposite it; there was no path.

There was a simple stone dock by the pool, and a rotten wooden boat was moored there. The boat was half-submerged, with only its bow sticking out of the water.

"Is there no road?" Liu Desheng asked in a hoarse voice.

Lin Guoce walked to the edge of the pool and shone his flashlight on the water. The beam of light was swallowed by darkness before it penetrated less than a meter. He threw a stone; it made a dull thud, indicating the water was deep.

"You want to go diving?" Professor Zhou Xu'an frowned. "We don't have diving equipment."

Xie Linyuan squatted by the dock and reached his hand into the water.

The water was cold, bone-chillingly cold. He ran his fingers through the water, sensing the direction of the current—very faint, but present. The water was flowing slowly, indicating there was an outlet.

He stood up and glanced at the rock wall opposite the pool.

There was a horizontal crack in the rock face three meters above the water. The crack was very narrow, but when he swept his flashlight across it, he could see chisel marks along the edges.

"The entrance is up there," he said.

"How do we get up there?" Chen Man looked at the smooth rock face. "There's nowhere to climb."

Xie Linyuan didn't answer. He walked to the wooden boat and stepped on a plank. The planks were severely rotten and cracked with a single step. But the rope tied to the bow was made of a special material—not hemp rope, but some kind of leather rope that hadn't completely rotted even after being soaked for a thousand years.

He tugged on the rope; the other end was securely fixed to a stone pillar on the dock.

"Use this to swing across." Lin Guoce understood, "But the rope isn't long enough."

Xie Linyuan untied the rope and estimated its length. The rope was about five meters long, while the pool was ten meters wide. He looked at the opposite rock wall, then at the water's surface.

"We need to find a way to leverage resources."

As soon as he finished speaking, the surface of the water changed.

In the center of the calm pool, a string of bubbles rose. The bubbles grew larger and more numerous, as if something underwater was breathing.

Everyone took a step back.

Xie Linyuan gripped the black gold ancient sword tightly.

A bulge rose from the water's surface. A black, smooth back emerged from the water, about half a meter wide, covered with palm-sized scales whose edges gleamed with a dark green glow.

The spine slowly sank and disappeared.

The next second, on the other side of the pool, five meters from the dock, a huge head emerged from the water.

Its head resembles that of a crocodile, but is flatter, with a longer snout and a mouthful of interlocking sharp teeth. Its eyes are a cloudy yellow with vertical pupils. Two short horns are located on its head, entwined with seaweed.

The monster surfaced completely.

It is over four meters long, with a thick, robust body covered in heavy black scales. Its limbs are short and thick, with sharp claws. Its tail resembles that of a monitor lizard, with bony spikes at the end.

It opened its mouth and let out a hoarse roar, spewing foul-smelling steam from its throat.

The live stream chat exploded:

[ID audience: Here we go again?!]

[ID Creature Encyclopedia: What the hell is this?!]

[ID Paleontology: Looks like a prehistoric crocodile, but the horns are wrong...]

[ID Crash: Is this ancient tomb a zoo?!]

The monster's yellow eyes locked onto the crowd on the dock. It paddled towards the dock with great speed, carving a white wave through the water.

Lin Guoce raised his gun.

Xie Linyuan pressed down on his wrist: "The gun is useless, the scales are too thick."

"What should we do then?"

"I'll handle it."

Xie Linyuan walked forward to the edge of the dock. The black gold ancient sword was held horizontally in front of him, its blade pointing towards the water.

The monster swam to within three meters of the dock and suddenly dived underwater.

The water surface returned to calm.

two seconds.

three seconds.

The water below the dock exploded.

The monster's enormous body leaped out of the water, its gaping maw snapping at Xie Linyuan.

Xie Linyuan advanced instead of retreating.

He pushed off with his left foot, lunging forward, and in the instant the monster lunged, he slid sideways, passing under its jaw. His black-gold ancient sword flashed upwards, the blade slicing across the monster's neck.

The harsh sound of metal rubbing against scales.

A white mark was left on the scale, but it wasn't broken.

The monster landed, shattering the dock planks. It turned, its tail sweeping across.

Xie Linyuan leaped up, his tail sweeping past his feet and slamming into the stone pillar, sending stone chips flying.

He landed, turned his blade, and stabbed at the monster's left eye.

The monster closed its eyes, the scales on its eyelids blocking the tip of the knife, sparks flying.

The monster slammed down with its front paw.

Xie Linyuan parried with his sword.

The claws struck the blade, sending a tremendous force through him. The wooden planks beneath Xie Linyuan's feet shattered completely, and his body plummeted. But he used his core strength to twist his body in mid-air, kicking the monster's chin with his right foot.

The monster's head tilted back.

Xie Linyuan used the momentum to flip backward and landed on the other side of the dock.

The monster shook its head, its yellow eyes flashing with annoyance. It opened its mouth and spat out a jet of black water.

Xie Linyuan rolled to the side to avoid it.

The water jet struck the rock wall, causing white smoke to rise from it and corroding holes in the stone.

Poisonous water.

The monster charged again, this time using all four limbs and moving even faster. The dock was cramped, and Xie Linyuan had no way to retreat.

He charged straight at him.

Suddenly crouching low at a distance of one meter, he slid along the ground, passing under the monster's belly. He thrust the black gold ancient sword upwards, aiming the tip at the gap in the belly scales.

Ding!

The tip of the knife pierced the gap between the scales, but only penetrated half an inch into the flesh.

The monster, in pain, rolled over.

Xie Linyuan drew his sword and retreated, the tip of the sword drawing out a trail of black blood.

The wound on the monster's abdomen wasn't large, but black blood gushed out, emitting a pungent stench. It let out an angry roar, its scales stood on end, and its size seemed to have swelled up again.

It pounced again, this time without holding back, waving its claws and blocking its escape route with its tail.

Xie Linyuan's eyes turned cold.

He stopped dodging.

He gripped the sword with both hands, stepped forward, and thrust the blade straight into the monster's chest.

The monster closed its claws, trying to grab the blade.

Xie Linyuan twisted his wrist, the blade deflected, and pierced through the gap between the claws, precisely stabbing into the thinnest piece of the scales on his chest.

The blade penetrated three inches into the flesh.

The monster howled in agony, its claws slamming towards Xie Linyuan's head.

Xie Linyuan released his knife and leaned back to avoid the claw attack. He braced himself with his left hand on the ground and swept his right leg high, his heel slamming into the monster's chin.

The monster staggered backward.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Xie Linyuan rushed forward, grabbed the hilt of the knife still stuck in the monster's chest, and pulled it horizontally with force.

The blade sliced ​​through the scales and muscle, creating a half-foot-long wound on the chest.

Black blood gushed out.

The monster went berserk, ignoring its wounds, and charged forward headfirst.

Xie Linyuan drew his sword and dodged to the side, the blade slicing across the monster's neck.

Another wound.

The monster turned around and lashed out with its tail.

Xie Linyuan leaped up, his toes touching his tail, his body airborne, and with both hands gripping the sword overhead, he slashed downwards.

The blade struck the monster's back.

The scales shattered, and the blade sliced ​​into the spine.

The monster's body stiffened, it let out a final wail, collapsed to the ground with a thud, twitched a few times, and remained still.

Black blood gushed from multiple wounds, staining the dock waters black.

Xie Linyuan landed, the tip of his blade touching the ground, the blade stained with black blood. His breathing was steady, though a fine sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.

The dock was deathly silent.

Only the sound of waves lapping against the shore could be heard.

The live stream chat was silent for a full ten seconds, then went completely wild:

[ID audience: ...]

[ID cannot be described: I...]

[ID slow-motion analysis: Six clashes, three slashes, one piercing, one chopping, and one fatal blow]

[ID Swordsmanship Research: That swordsmanship... had no fancy moves, it was all killing techniques]

[ID Biology: That monster...is dead?]

[ID Reality Shock: Is this really human?]

Lin Guoce was the first to regain his senses. He walked to the monster's corpse, squatted down, and examined it. The scales were harder than bulletproof vests, and the muscles were incredibly thick. And that black gold ancient sword could cut through such defenses…

He looked at Xie Linyuan.

Xie Linyuan was wiping his blade. He was carefully cleaning the black blood off the blade with a cloth. His movements were slow and focused, as if the battle just now was merely a warm-up.

"Mr. Xie," Lin Guoce began, "this monster..."

"A tomb-guarding beast," Xie Linyuan said. "It grew up eating corpse beetles and rotting corpses, and it's mutated."

How did you know?

"The smell." Xie Linyuan sheathed his knife. "Its blood has the fishy smell of corpse beetles."

Professor Zhou Xu'an walked over shakily, looking at the monster's corpse: "This creature... there's no record of it. Another unknown species..."

"There are many more in the tomb," Xie Linyuan said.

These words sent chills down everyone's spine.

Xu Jiashu slumped down in the distance, muttering, "I shouldn't have come... I shouldn't have come..."

Jiang Shouyi stared at the short horn on the monster's head: "Ancient books mention 'water dragons,' with horns like deer and scales like fish... but this thing looks more like a crocodile..."

Xie Linyuan ignored them.

He walked to the edge of the pool and looked at the black blood flowing from the monster's corpse.

The black blood spread in the water, but did not completely dissolve. Instead, it floated on the surface like oil and slowly flowed towards the center of the pool.

As the black blood flowed, the surface of the water in the center of the pool began to swirl.

It forms a vortex.

The whirlpool grew larger and larger, its center gradually sinking, revealing something underwater—

A stone pillar.

At the top of the stone pillar, there was a bronze box.

The whirlpool lasted for about a minute, then slowly subsided, and the water returned to calm. But the stone pillar and the bronze box remained in the center of the water, about six meters from the dock.

"A mechanism..." Jiang Shouyi's eyes widened. "Activated with monster blood!"

Xie Linyuan untied the leather rope from the dock and estimated the distance. The rope was five meters long, and the box was six meters away.

He looked at the half-sunken wooden boat.

Although the ship was rotten, its bow was still floating.

He jumped onto the bow of the boat, which sank but managed to support the weight. He bent down and removed a relatively intact plank, about one meter long, from the boat.

Then he walked back to the dock, tied one end of the leather rope to a stone post on the dock, and the other end to his waist.

"Mr. Xie, you want to..." Lin Guoce didn't finish his sentence.

Xie Linyuan took a running start and leaped into the air.

His body traced an arc, landing beside a stone pillar in the center of the pool. The top of the pillar had only a small foothold, no bigger than a palm. He stepped onto it with one foot, his body swaying, but he quickly regained his balance.

The bronze box was right there at hand.

He reached out and picked up the box.

It's very light.

The lid of the box is engraved with a pattern: a circle with intersecting lines inside, similar to the pattern on the black stone slab, but more intricate.

He opened the box.

Inside is the second thin slice of black stone.

This piece of sheet is larger and has serrated edges, as if it could be pieced together with other pieces of sheet.

He put away the thin sheet and looked towards the dock.

The distance is six meters; jumping back directly would be too far.

He untied the leather rope from his waist and swung the end of the rope toward the dock.

Lin Guoce caught the rope and pulled it tight.

Xie Linyuan used the momentum to leap up, his feet barely touching the water's surface before he swung back to the dock.

Land on the ground and untie the rope.

The entire movement was performed in one smooth motion, as if it had been rehearsed countless times.

Live stream chat:

[ID Acrobat: This sense of balance...]

[ID Mechanics Analysis: Using the water surface for leverage requires extremely strong explosive force]

[My ID is numb: I've given up thinking]

Xie Linyuan took out the second thin slice and put it together with the first one.

Serrated fit.

After the two thin pieces were joined together, the pattern became more complete: the mountain lines inside the circle extended, and the central point now became two points, one above the other.

"This is a map." Professor Zhou Xu'an leaned closer to examine it. "Two dots...represent two locations? We're here, so where's the other dot?"

Xie Linyuan looked at the crack in the rock wall opposite the pool.

"Over there."

"How do we get there?"

Xie Linyuan looked at the monster's corpse.

He walked over and used his knife to cut off several intact scales from the monster's body. The scales were large, light, and had sharp edges.

He then cut off several pieces of leather rope—made from the monster's tendons, which were extremely tough.

"Make a raft," he said.

Lin Guoce understood. Although the wooden boats on the dock were rotten, with these materials, they could be used to make a simple raft.

The group began to work.

Xie Linyuan used monster scales as knives to cut the wood. Lin Guoce and Liu Desheng carried the planks. Jiang Shouyi and Kun Ge tied them together with leather ropes. Wang Yihan and Chen Man organized their equipment.

An hour later, a simple raft was completed, about three meters long and two meters wide, with scales used as a base to increase buoyancy.

Xie Linyuan pushed the raft into the water.

The raft floated very steadily.

"Four people at a time," Lin Guoce arranged. "Mr. Xie and I will go ahead to scout the way, and the rest will split into two groups."

Xie Linyuan and Lin Guoce jumped onto the raft and used sharpened wooden poles to propel themselves towards the opposite bank.

The water was calm, the monster's corpse floated in the distance, and the black blood had completely spread.

After rowing to the rock face on the opposite bank, Xie Linyuan grabbed onto a protruding rock face to stabilize the raft.

Lin Guoce looked up at the crack: "How do we get up there?"

The crack is three meters above the water surface, and the rock wall is smooth.

Xie Linyuan stood up from the raft, took two steps back, ran and jumped, gripped the edge of the crack with his fingers, pulled himself up, and crawled into the crack.

He threw the leather rope through the crack.

Lin Guoce grabbed the rope and climbed up.

The two found their footing in the crevice. The crevice was wider than they had imagined, wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Ten meters forward, they encountered downward stone steps.

"Second batch!" Lin Guoce shouted towards the other side of the river.

On the opposite bank, Kun Ge, Chen Man, and Wang Yihan boarded the raft, while Liu Desheng poled it.

The raft was halfway through.

Bubbles rose again from the center of the pool.

Not just one place, but several.

Liu Desheng's expression changed: "There are...there are monsters?!"

Xie Linyuan stood at the mouth of the crevice, staring at the water.

More and more bubbles appeared.

Then, seven or eight smaller, black-scaled heads emerged from the water. They were only half the size of the previous one, but there were many of them.

It is an juvenile.

Smelling the blood, they swam toward the monster's corpse and began tearing at the mother's body.

They also became interested in the living people on the raft.

The two juveniles turned towards the raft and swam over.

"Row faster!" Lin Guoce roared.

Liu Desheng struggled to pole the ball.

But the raft wasn't very fast.

The two juveniles approached, only two meters away from the raft.

Xie Linyuan untied the leather rope from his waist and tied a slipknot at the end.

He aimed and threw it.

A leather rope was looped around the neck of a young animal.

He pulled hard and tightened it.

The juvenile was strangled and struggled, but Xie Linyuan was extremely strong and dragged it towards the rock wall.

Another juvenile took the opportunity to pounce on the raft.

Kun Ge screamed.

Xie Linyuan drew the Black Gold Ancient Blade with his left hand and threw it out.

The blade spun, flew ten meters, and precisely pierced the juvenile's eye, penetrating its skull.

The young animals became limp and sank into the water.

The one that was trapped was still struggling.

Xie Linyuan secured the leather rope by wrapping it twice around the protrusion on the rock face, then jumped into the pool.

He landed on the baby's back, grabbed its short horn with his left hand, and punched it in the back of the neck with his right fist.

Three punches.

The neck bone was fractured.

The larvae stopped moving.

Xie Linyuan pulled out the Black Gold Ancient Sword, swam towards the raft, and pushed it to speed up the journey to shore.

The three people on the raft scrambled ashore and grabbed ropes hanging from a crevice to climb up.

Xie Linyuan went up last and retrieved the leather rope.

Inside the crack, everyone collapsed to the ground, still in shock.

In the pool, the larvae were still tearing at the mother's corpse, and the water was churning.

The live stream chat exploded with comments again:

[ID's heart can't take it: This is too exciting...]

[ID Counter: The Second Monster, Seven Larvae]

[ID Ecosystem Thinking: This Ancient Tomb Has a Complete Food Chain...]

[ID Strength Assessment: The guy in black... is invincible]

Xie Linyuan leaned against the rock wall, examining the Black Gold Ancient Sword. The blade was intact, only stained with blood.

He wiped the knife.

The movements are very slow.

His eyes were very calm.

It's as if everything that just happened was just an ordinary occurrence.

Lin Guoce looked at him and took a deep breath: "Mr. Xie, who exactly are you?"

Xie Linyuan looked up.

Under the hood, his eyes were in shadow.

"The gatekeeper," he said.

Then he turned and walked toward the stone steps deep in the crack.

The group silently followed.

No one asked anymore.

Because the answer is no longer important.

The important thing is that he can get them out alive.

Or, delve into deeper secrets.