CHAPTER 349: CHAPTER 348: NIGHT RAID

After returning from Andong, Wan Chu’er rested for a day at the hotel without going anywhere, just playing with her laptop in her room all day.

The next day, she set off again and started to tour around the President Mansion and other president-related places like an ordinary tourist.

That night, after bidding goodnight to Yan Hui at eight o’clock and returning to her room, Wan Chu’er changed into a black tracksuit and started to pack a black backpack she took out from her suitcase.

She waited until after midnight before she opened the window and climbed out. Their floor was the eighth, but this was no challenge for Wan Chu’er, who was agile and fit, reaching the ground in less than two minutes.

She made sure to avoid the surveillance cameras on the road and after walking for about twenty minutes, she jimmied open a black car parked on a secluded roadside.

Wan Chu’er started the car quietly, not turning on the headlights, and like a fish slipping into the sea without a trace, drove off into the darkness.

The car traveled out of town into the suburbs, and after an hour’s drive, she arrived at the foot of a wild mountain. She took out her laptop from her bag, tapped on it for a while, and after putting away the laptop, hid the car in the overgrown grass and then agilely made her way into the mountain.

After climbing for about half an hour, Wan Chu’er arrived in front of a luxurious marble architectural complex. This complex, entirely built from marble, had a square, an altar, columns, statues, steles... This was the cryptic family tomb complex of the president.

Beneath the night, it was ominously terrifying.

On the northwest corner of the square, there were two houses which were now darkened, and Wan Chu’er knew two Tomb Guardians lived there.

She took Night Vision Goggles from her backpack, put them on, and taking advantage of the night, sneaked silently near the houses. She found the electrical box and cut off the power to the surveillance system, then she approached the windows of the house and, listening to the steady breathing inside, blew some knockout smoke in to ensure they slept heavily.

After waiting a few minutes, she then ran towards the buildings in the back.

She had searched all the marble buildings, groping around twice, and finally found a mechanism under one of the stone lions around the altar.

An entrance slowly opened on the altar, like a wide-open monstrous maw in the dark night, sneeringly facing Wan Chu’er, as if waiting for her to willingly enter.

Wan Chu’er hesitated for a few seconds before quietly flitting over. The entrance led underground, with steps descending, the lowest point too dark to see.

She only looked down for a few seconds before she stepped down, and when the Night Vision Goggles became ineffective later, she carefully refrained from turning on a light, relying almost entirely on her sense of touch to move forward.

Counting the steps silently in her heart, by the time she reached the thirty-fourth step, her hand touched a metal door. She stayed perfectly still for a while before carefully turning on an infrared light.

The door before her, made of solid iron, did not have any gaps and was secured with a large lock. It seemed that there was something significant beneath this altar, and it reminded Wan Chu’er of the altar she had found in a cave.

Wan Chu’er reached into her backpack and pulled out a small tool kit, taking a piece of wire from it and inserting it into the keyhole, fiddling until the lock opened.

She gently pushed open the door revealing a gap. She didn’t act rashly but first looked inside through the Night Vision Goggles, and what she saw made her break out in a cold sweat. Five living creatures appeared in the night-vision imagery.

Wan Chu’er immediately pressed herself against the wall, not daring to move an inch, and after a long two minutes, when no sound ensued, she switched to a regular miniature flashlight to get a clear view of the inside.

There is a universe of secrets hidden here, the space is extremely large, at least as tall as a two-story building, with a huge altar in front. The scale of this altar is even larger than the one above.

The images she had just seen were emanating from the altar. In the center of the altar stood a human-shaped stone statue, in front of which lay a coffin. Around the coffin and statue, there were five wooden cages, each containing a person.

The people inside the cages lay motionless on the ground. Viewed from afar, they were all skin and bones, exceptionally frail. If not for the slight rise and fall of their chests and their faint breathing, it would be easy to mistake them for dead.

Wan Chu’er hesitated no longer and darted into the space. She ascended the steps of the altar and after seeing the situation above, she was stunned.

This is the Five Elements Human Sacrifice!

They were sacrificing living people to the dead in the middle coffin.

This was too cruel and inhumane!

A surge of anger welled up inside Wan Chu’er. It was ignorance, a cruel and inhumane treatment of human life.

These five were barely breathing. Wan Chu’er didn’t know what to do with them. It’d be better if Yan Hui or Jiang Kechu were here; perhaps they would know what to do.

She walked onto the altar with a heavy heart, not daring to glance again at those unconscious in the cages, and headed straight for the statue. Usually, a statue represents the person being sacrificed, and there would be inscriptions related to the sacrificial rites on it.

Wan Chu’er moved behind the statue and sure enough, she saw dense text carved into its back. Most of the characters were in Chinese. After being taken aback for a moment, she then realized that the traditional culture of H country was inherited from Huaxia culture.

The place was truly gloomy and the smell was unbearable. She hurriedly took out a camera and snapped a few photos, capturing the text on the statue, before turning to leave immediately.

As she passed a wooden cage, a crumpled piece of paper suddenly fell out from inside.

Wan Chu’er’s heart almost leapt out of her chest. She was actually quite afraid of such ominous places, her nerves and attention taut, a single rustle could scare her to death.

The dirty, crumpled paper made her flee towards the iron gate like an arrow released from its bow, desperate to escape.

As her foot touched the steps, an idea rose in her heart. She forced herself to stop and turned to look at the cages on the altar once again.

The people inside the cages remained curled up motionlessly on the ground; the torn piece of paper lay silently a hand’s distance from the cage.

After much hesitation, Wan Chu’er returned to the altar. She stared intently at the unrecognizable figure in the cage and cautiously used the tip of her dagger to pierce the paper.

With the paper in hand, she didn’t even look at it but threw it straight into her backpack and quickly left the place.

She activated the mechanism beneath the stone lion, watching the entrance slowly disappear before her heart calmed down slightly.

Wan Chu’er then went to the Tomb Guardian’s room, stormed in, and took photos of numerous documents before making her way back the same route, running down the mountain. After finding her car, she rushed to the hotel, returned the car to where she found it, and by the time she climbed into her hotel room, it was already 4:30 in the morning.