Chapter 2: Tomb-Raiding Storyteller! Starting Fifty Years Ago!

"Picking up where we left off."

"The Old Master of the Wu family of the Pingsan Sect suddenly heard a shot ring out from inside the cave."

"Then he heard his father shout, Sanya, run!"

"At that moment he felt the rope go slack, and the dirt rat the crowd had just lowered into the cave to scout shot back out with a whoosh, as though something was still hanging from it!"

"By then the Old Master of the Wu family had no time to think—he grabbed the dirt rat, turned, and ran!"

"He ran more than two li in one go before he dared stop."

"He pulled the dirt rat from his chest and looked—and let out a scream. The dirt rat hadn't snagged anything; it had only snagged a blood-drenched severed hand."

"And he recognized that hand. It was unmistakably his second brother's! By the look of it, even if his second brother wasn't dead, he was crippled for life!"

……

In Jingcheng, on the stage of Sanqing Garden in Dashilar.

A young man in a long gown, every gesture steeped in old-world manner, sat behind a low table telling his tale.

The young man's name was Zhang Lin. He had only just transmigrated to this Parallel World not long ago.

Bound to the Storyteller System, he suddenly discovered that this world differed slightly from his original one.

In this world, archaeology was wildly popular—practically a national pastime!

The authorities not only encouraged civilian forces to join the ranks of archaeology, they also periodically livestreamed the excavation of any major tomb they discovered.

All of this was because the history of Xia Country in this world suffered terribly from missing records.

Left with no choice, they could only search those ancient tombs for the lost fragments of history!

Over the course of several hundred years of development, civilian archaeology had produced master after master.

Some could even completely surpass the official archaeological experts!

Any such master, once they surfaced, was almost always recruited by the authorities and given an official identity.

But among the civilians, there still remained certain families and factions who disdained cooperating with the authorities.

They were accustomed to being the elite of the archaeological world!

The common folk felt both curiosity and reverence toward these mysterious families.

But without exception, they knew very little about them!

Even the authorities had few channels through which to obtain the full information on these ancient families.

And tomb archaeology was Perilous; sometimes, even with the authorities' advanced technology, success was not guaranteed.

As for casualties, that went without saying!

Every time a major tomb was encountered, if no one died, the public almost felt it wasn't quite right.

But those ancient families were a completely different story.

They seemed to possess certain closely guarded secrets that ordinary people could never learn.

When exploring tombs, they not only reaped more than others, they were also far better at avoiding danger.

In time, this group became the uncrowned kings of the underground world!

After transmigrating and learning all this, Zhang Lin's mind instantly began to race.

This was practically heaven lending a hand—letting him, through the Storyteller System,

tell everyone the tales of the Nanpaibei Sect, the Mojin and Faqiu, the Banshan and Xieling, the Laojiu Sect, the Guanshan Taibao, the Zhang family, the Wang family, and even the foreign tomb-raiding ace Lara and treasure-hunting master Ben Gates!

So Zhang Lin, who had successfully auditioned at Sanqing Garden, was unlike the other old-school pingshu performers who told the familiar tales of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and the Legend of Ji Gong.

Instead, he opened a brand-new book, which he called "Tomb-Raiding Legends"!

When he first began telling it, hardly anyone bought in.

They all jeered that it was boring—but that lasted only until they heard the opening of the Grave Robbers' tale.

It began fifty years ago at Old Changsha's Biaozi Ridge, where four grave robbers started digging up a Blood Corpse Tomb.

Only then did every listener realize they had struck gold.

This young man in his twenties before them was actually telling the legendary tales of those uncrowned kings of the underground!

This was precisely the stuff everyone had always dreamed of hearing.

First-hand material that could never be found in any document or program!

So Zhang Lin, who had only just told an opening yesterday, had already become the talk of Jingcheng's archaeological circle.

Today, Sanqing Garden was packed to the rafters, and tickets had been scalped to astronomical prices.

Anyone with a shred of sense, having listened to others' transcriptions of Zhang Lin's performance yesterday, understood that this young Mr. pingshu performer was not talking nonsense!

He really did have the goods!

Before today's story began, some people could not help but discuss yesterday's plot.

"You missed out big time not coming yesterday. This Mr. Zhang told the opening yesterday—just the opening alone was enough to set your heart racing!"

"Exactly! Mr. Zhang said that among those four grave robbers, a few were from the Wu family of the Pingsan Sect within the Laojiu Sect. The moment they appeared on the scene, they used a Luoyang shovel to punch a hole and brought up some bright red earth."

"The Old Master Wu's father only had to take one look and a sniff of that soil to declare there was a Blood Corpse Tomb below. What a nose on that man!"

"Judging by the name Pingsan Sect, there must also be an Upper Three Sect and a Lower Three Sect? But just one man from the Pingsan Sect already has such a command of archaeological knowledge—who knows what kind of immortal figures the Upper Three Sect must be?"

"Still, what exactly is this Blood Corpse Tomb? I've never heard of it before."

"Not only that—those few men had barely crawled into the hole when something went wrong. We still don't know what happened."

"Stop guessing—Mr. Zhang is here. Let's listen carefully!"

Zhang Lin looked down at the sea of faces below, a faint smile playing across his lips.

…….