The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 438 - 328: Pausing the Advance
Some of the things in her backpack have already been used, so the bag is saggy. Whether there’s anything else inside is obvious at a glance; there’s not enough space to hide a person.
"Are you sure it’s not an illusion?" Mike came in again, "We didn’t hear any sound."
"Very close, it was calling right behind my head," said Doctor Du with a peculiar expression.
Ordinarily, people wouldn’t get close to the back of someone’s head to talk. Either they have secrets they don’t want others to overhear, or they’re trying to intentionally scare the person ahead.
Neither of these possibilities is valid between Doctor Du and me. We have nothing secret to discuss, nor would I try to scare him in this kind of environment.
"Did Little Fu hear anything?" Qinghan asked me.
"No, no one was there." I shrugged.
We are so close together, if someone could fit in the middle, it would have to be a photograph.
"Stay alert, illusions may occur." Mike seriously reminded us.
But when he said that, I chuckled a bit. If a wolf appears, we can prepare to fight, but what do we do when an illusion comes? Blow up our own heads?
Qinghan decided to temporarily halt our progress and retreat into a building by the street. A large space was actually unsafe since we were few and could not defend it well, so Qinghan chose a small house.
Amidst the tall buildings, it looked like a child; inside, there were stone shelves on the walls and a counter.
It seemed this small house might have once been a kind of ’mini-mart’, with doors both at the front and back, but only a window beside the front door.
The corridor lay between the front and back doors, allowing the guards to see each other. Qinghan assigned Mike to guard the front door and me to guard the back.
Doctor Du, who just experienced an ’illusion’, was resting inside. Although Qinghan didn’t explicitly say it, his comforting words carried the implication that she didn’t experience an illusion.
In other words, Qinghan didn’t consider the sound Doctor Du heard and the touch she felt to be illusions.
Since it wasn’t an illusion, there could be danger in the fog, that’s how Qinghan saw it, which is why he called us into the house to stay.
Qinghan didn’t use a foreign language to speak with Doctor Du. Were it not for Mike’s partial understanding of ’implicit’ Chinese language, he might have argued with Qinghan again, as he was adamant that one of us was beginning to hallucinate.
Last time, their team was almost wiped out due to hallucinations. So, the area of psychological shadow for him might already cover his entire mind, and without strong evidence placed before him, he wouldn’t believe Qinghan.
At this moment, I heard a commotion outside the back door. So I quietly moved to the door and gestured to Qinghan, indicating to them to keep quiet first.
The room quickly fell into silence. Holding my hook stick, I quietly moved outside; the back door’s panel had rotted away, leaving just a doorframe, hence the need for someone to keep watch.
Once outside, the alley behind was very narrow, possibly a place to store rubbish. Located at the dead end of the alley, someone squatted on the ground with their back to my position, shoulders slightly shivering, head bobbing, making loud biting noises.
Though I couldn’t see his face, I recognized his clothes and the familiar background. We queued every day and the back of everyone in the team was familiar to me.
"Wang Le?!" I called out his name; his body froze, indicating he heard me.
He slowly turned his head, and his body followed suit, his eyes bloodshot, mouth smeared with filth, hands holding a bunch of writhing insects. Evidently, he was just chewing on those things.
Earlier, he had hidden half a bottle of water on the road, now eating insects alive. When we parted, the food in his backpack was enough to sustain for several days, yet not long after, why had he run out of supplies?
"Wang Le?" Huang Zaijiang heard me call Wang Le from inside, darted out, and upon seeing Wang Le’s appearance, hurriedly stepped forward, knocking aside the handful of insects.
"Old Huang, what are you doing? I worked hard to snatch those scallions and sea cucumbers!" Wang Le was momentarily stunned, then reacted irritably.
"Are you crazy? What is this?" Huang Zaijiang harshly stepped on the insects on the ground, grinding them with force.
"Ah - you’re the crazy one, this is a waste!"
Huang Zaijiang grabbed Wang Le, shaking him vigorously, seemingly trying to wake him up.
But Wang Le easily shook off Huang Zaijiang’s hand, since the latter only had one arm to exert force, so it was easy to break free.
"Why did you come so late? All the good stuff got snatched by others." Wang Le mentioned not the sea cucumbers, finally shifting his focus to us.
