Chapter 1272: Detour
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
A beautiful piece of art was collapsing in front of their eyes. This was a huge loss for human society. Neither Zhang Zian nor the elfins could stand sitting around doing nothing.
The bigger the thing, the more powerful it was when it died. This was much like a whale, except the pyramid was ten times larger than a whale.
Zhang Zian restarted the car and tried to figure out how to stop Peter Lee and the rest. However, they had a lot more people, explosives, and maybe even weapons. Reasoning might not work on them. If he used force by himself, he would definitely lose. He could only seek to borrow the elfins’ power.
Old Time Tea patted his shoulder and suggested, “Zhang Zian, we should not appear directly in front of the other party. If we do not speak the same language, it is very easy to have conflicts. We will surely have to retreat.”
Zhang Zian had also thought of this point. Whether it was through negotiation or brute force, he could not show them all his cards at once.
So he made a slight detour and did not head straight toward the golden pyramid. Instead, he went in sort of a crescent-shaped arc. He intended to go in from the back of the pyramid and catch them off guard.
They traveled south to reach the Devil’s Sea. The area where Peter Lee’s team was working was also located on the north side of the pyramid. As the entrance to the pirate cave of the Great Pyramid was also on the north side, that guided their decision. Their gamble was that the golden pyramid had the same internal structure as the Great Pyramid.
Zhang Zian sneaked around the honeycomb dunes on the south side of the golden pyramid.
The gold-colored outer sh.e.l.l on the south side was less affected by the explosion. Although several fine cracks had appeared, it had yet to collapse, highlighting the superb craftsmans.h.i.+p of the past.
The average annual rainfall here was near zero. Rain and snow, which posed the greatest threat to the building, were basically nonexistent. With no one to disturb the structure over the past thousand years, the pyramid still stood here safely.
“Stop! Something happened ahead!”
Famous was wearing military-grade windproof goggles. They helped to filter ultraviolet rays and allowed the wearer to see better. He poked his head out of the open window in the back seat and looked out.
Zhang Zian wanted to pay attention to the road ahead to avoid driving into a sand pit again. He left the elfins to take care of looking further out, despite them having varying degrees of vision under strong light.
He instinctively stepped on the brakes and asked nervously, “What happened?”
“Look there. What is that?” Famous asked, staring at the side.
Now they knew that the honeycomb-like sand dunes were actually sandstones that had been piled up during ancient mining. There was hope that perhaps it could also contain sc.r.a.ps that were discarded when the pyramid was built.
There was a circle of open s.p.a.ce around the pyramid, about 20 meters wide. There were no sand dunes.
Famous saw it first—few tall pieces of things buried in the yellow sand.
Zhang Zian picked up the telescope. What surprised him was that it was actually a few cars… No, more like a pile of sc.r.a.p copper and iron.
It was a VW82 bucket car that was almost completely buried in yellow sand. There was also a military truck painted in desert camouflage with a black iron cross on the door. Seeing this striking sign, he immediately remembered the bones of the Wehrmacht soldier.
Obviously, as early as at the middle of the last century, an army had secretly visited here. However, with these abandoned vehicles here, it might mean that…no one had made it back home.
The equipment of these soldiers was incomparable with that of the modern expedition. However, perhaps their tenacious willpower had been enough to make up for this shortcoming, especially since they should be carefully selected elite troops.
What unexpected situation had they encountered? Zhang Zian felt it necessary to drive closer and check things out.
“Be careful,” Old Time Tea reminded him. “It may be a trap set by the tomb guard.”
Zhang Zian felt that there was little possibility of it being a trap. What kind of trap could still be in such good condition after 2,000 years? This was not a novel. The barren desert that stretched for thousands of miles was, by itself, the best trap.
However, he was still cautious and slowly removed the aluminum alloy bracket from the roof rack. He a.s.sembled it to form a long stick to explore the structure—he was not worried about traps, but the last encounter with quicksand had really made him feel more wary.
After a while, he decided to move forward, albeit carefully.
“Hey! Look at you!”
Richard, taking full advantage of the fact that it was not too hot yet, spread his wings and decided to land on the roof of the VW82.
The other cars were buried too deep in the sand, with only their roofs revealed above the ground. It would be possible to dig them out, but that would take too much time. But with this car, the sand did not cover it entirely, as it was blocked by the truck next to it. One side of its door was exposed to the elements.
After safely approaching the vehicles, he tried to open the door. It was not locked and took little effort to open.
A dry corpse in a military uniform rolled over and fell face down in the sand.
“Hey! There are dead people!” Richard flew up in shock. “That scared the h.e.l.l out of me!”
“Quiet!” Zhang Zian glared at him. “Do you really need to let everyone know how loud you are?”
The base of the golden pyramid was only about 100 meters long, only a quarter of the size of the big pyramids in Cairo. This meant that 100 meters away, Peter Lee and his team were just around the corner.
Although the pyramid could block their noise, they had to try to stay relatively quiet. Nevertheless, it would be difficult for the sound to travel. In addition, they were setting up their removal efforts to enter the pyramid. Cleaning up the broken gravel generated a considerable amount of sound as well. It was quite unlikely that they would suspect Zhang Zian was on the other side of the pyramid.
Richard closed his mouth.
Zhang Zian endured his nausea and tried not to look at the exposed corpse. He checked it and found no holes in the military uniform. This meant that the person had not been killed by trauma.
There were too many ways to die in the desert. To accurately find out the cause of death of this person, an autopsy was needed. Zhang Zian had neither the technology nor the time. He decided that this person had probably died of illness.
Of course, he couldn’t help but think of the so-called “curse of the pyramid.” Nevertheless, this was not the best time for such thoughts. Voicing it would merely make everyone more uneasy. Even worse, Vladimir might despise him.
He was worried that this person had been poisoned. There could be germs left on his body. He did not dare to touch it directly. Instead, he took the rod and knocked on the dried body to see if he could find any doc.u.ments. Any doc.u.ments could help him find out the purpose of the army.
When hitting around the waist, there was the sound of metal hitting metal.
He carefully lifted up the corpse’s uniform. Underneath the uniform, he found a pistol in a holster.