Chapter 342: End of the Tunnel

The generator for the hydropower station had been air-dropped but Xia Lei could not do it personally for the White Hun Tribe. Who knew how long it would take for him to finish and be able to go home. There was also the danger of discovery by the CIA.

But the tribe had the equipment and the 2,000,000 US dollars Xia Lei had given them, so it was very easy for them to build a small hydropower station. Lives could be sold for money in Afghanistan, much less technical staff with relevant skills. 

Besides, they just needed to dig a small water channel, build a dam there and install the generator set, then open the side channel into the main channel and get the water flowing to set up a hydropower station. It wasn’t very complicated. 

Xia Lei talked to Szlamy about the way to build a hydropower station in bed but she wasn’t even thinking of it; she nodded and agreed. She wasn’t using words to speak because her little mouth was busy with something else… 

The next morning, Szlamy led a large group of women to test the guns and Xia Lei went to the ruins alone. He brought a horse this time, and all the equipment he needed. 

Xia Lei’s digging speed increased quite visibly with the digging equipment Bureau 101 had provided. He dug diagonally and left some of the dirt in the pit, then made a ramp. The rest of the dirt was piled outside of the pit. 

He dug five metres that day, and the pit had a tunnel extending from it which one could bend over and walk into. The tunnel he had dug was also rather carefully made, wide below and narrow on top in a triangular shape. Digging like this let the walls on both sides of the tunnel become a sort of support and avoid collapse. 

Xia Lei put down his shovel in the tunnel and used the light from his helmet to shine on where he wanted to dig with his tools. The digging tools were not as good as a shovel but it was good for probing at layers of soil, otherwise they wouldn’t be indispensable tools for tomb raiders. 

He pulled out the nearly-round digging tool and grew excited when he saw the dirt that came out. 

The end of the dirt sample was black, and it was grey-white at the head. It was also denser than the dirt at the end. The grey-white dirt was man-made, not a natural dirt layer, so this meant that he was close to his goal! 

Xia Lei held his excitement in check as he put down the digging tool and looked at the wall of dirt before him. His left eye twitched, calling out the power of his X-ray vision. 

He had actually been using his X-ray ability in his three days of digging to look for his target under the dirt. He had to look through layers and layers of dirt, and the rocks in the dirt too. This required a lot of effort and he could only see up to two metres through the dirt; it was not enough. That was why he was using his X-ray ability every time he’d dug to a certain depth, and he continued digging when there was no result. 

He quickly saw something about two metres right in front of him this time. There was a stone slab in the dirt. Xia Lei pushed his X-ray sight further and saw more stone slabs. They were vertical and positioned side-by-side; it looked like a man-made stone passage.   

‘What’s in the passage? Where does it lead?’ Xia Lei was curious and he tried to look through the stone slabs but was unsuccessful. The stone slabs were exactly two metres away and he was unable to see beyond them. 

Xia Lei stopped using his X-ray vision. He picked up the shovel, ready to dig further. 

“Xia! Where are you?” Szlamy’s voice came from outside the pit. 

“I’m inside,” replied Xia Lei. He then crawled out and realised that the sky was getting dark. 

“Dug anything up?”

Xia Lei shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Dig tomorrow. It’s getting dark. Time to go home and eat dinner,” said Szlamy with a smile. “I slaughtered a goat. It’s stewing in the pot. We can eat when we get back.”

“Why slaughter a goat? That’s too extravagant.”

“You’ve been working so hard these past few days so I wanted to get you more nourishment. You know, I don’t want you to be too tired.” Szlamy grinned wickedly. 

Xia Lei knew what she was hinting at, and it made his legs and waist feel a little achey. There was a saying which went ‘women are fields and men are oxen, and there are only tired oxen but no field tired of plowing’. This saying fit his current situation to a tee. Up against an unreasonable person like Szlamy, this ox was already getting a little worn out. 

Xia Lei chucked the shovel into the tunnel and didn’t bother putting the other tools away. He climbed up the ramp he’d made. 

“It’s fine if I leave the things here, right?” said Xia Lei. 

“No problem. No one will come here.” Szlamy hung onto Xia Lei’s arm. “This is our sacred grounds. If anyone other than you dares to come in here, he’s dead.”

“Good, then I’ll leave the tools here. It’s too troublesome to drag them here again tomorrow.” Xia Lei chatted with Szlamy as they walked, slowly leaving the ruins behind. 

A figure crept out of a patch of forest after Xia Lei and Szlamy left the ruins. Her head was wrapped in a black hood and she wore tight-fitting black clothes. She had curves in front and back and was tall with long legs; she was sexy. Her face couldn’t be seen but she was not Afghan judging from her height and figure. She seemed like a caucasian, or an Eastern European. 

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The woman approached the pit cautiously, and looked back at the direction in which Xia Lei and Szlamy had gone before she sneaked into pit to rifle through the things there. She let out a disappointed sigh after a brief search and spoke into a mini communications device. “Nope, the compass is not here. He took it with him.”

A male voice came from over the communications device. “Forget it. Come back - don’t loiter. Be sure to erase all traces. He has matured and will find out.”

The woman laughed dryly. “I told you he wouldn’t leave the compass. He’s not some forgetful little child.”

“Right, how deep did he dig?”

“The downward pit is about three metres deep, and the horizontal tunnel is…” The woman drew close to the tunnel and shone her torchlight in it. “The tunnel’s about five metres long but it’s empty. It’s unknown how much deeper he’d need to dig. I think he’d be hard-pressed to find an answer too.”

“All right, I got it. Come back.” The man cut communications. 

The woman did not leave immediately. She took out a camera and took photographs of the tunnel Xia Lei had dug, then went up to the surface and took more of the pit and its surroundings. She meticulously erased all traces she’s left behind after she was done taking photographs and disappeared in the night. 

In the tribe, Xia Lei was also holding a camera provided by Bureau 101. He was taking photographs of the ancient book. 

“Why take pictures? It’s a tatty old book.” Szlamy then said offhandedly, “I’ll give it to you if you like it.”

“Really?” Xia Lei was touched. He already knew its contents but he wanted to bring it back so that Ning Jing could have a look at it. She was an expert in this field and she might even glean something he didn’t know or find some leads. He was delighted that Szlamy was going to give the book to him, of course, since the actual thing was better for study than photographs. 

“What’s there to ‘really’ about? Everything in this house is yours, including me. Why wouldn’t I bear to part with a book which no one even reads?” Szlamy spoke like an overly-generous person. 

Xia Lei laughed. “I’ll accept it then. I’ll send it back when I’m done studying it.”

“Anything you want. Take photographs of me.”

“Take photographs of you?”

“Yeah. I’ve never had one taken in all my life.” Szlamy blinked her large eyes at Xia Lei. “Take naughty pictures of me. You too. I’ll keep those pictures for myself.”

Xia Lei was speechless. 

Szlamy’s hand-stitched pyjamas slipped soundlessly to the wooden floor. She was a sexy little doll, all white and naturally beautiful. 

Click. Click. Click. The camera flashed in the wooden house of eroticism, and Szlamy moved from pose to pose… 

Early next morning, Xia Lei rode a horse to the ruins again. He jumped off the horse’s back when he got to the pit, then massaged his aching waist. A wry smile spread across his face. ‘Hope I finish digging today. If this keeps on I’ll get worn out. She’s a like a juicer.”

Xia Lei tied the horse to a stone and went into the pit. As he got ready to enter the tunnel, his gaze fell upon a section of the ground next to the tunnel entrance. 

There was a faint trace on that section of ground, and it looked like a footprint from some animal. 

Xia Lei filled with alarm. His left eye twitched and the print on the ground was enlarged and made crystal-clear. 

His left eye saw not only the print but the grains of sand and spaces between the sand. 

He soon stopped using his eye, and his grew sombre. ‘This is most likely a person’s footprint, and it was deliberately erased, just not completely. Szlamy didn’t come down into the pit yesterday, so who was it? Could it be someone else in the tribe? If it is, then there would definitely be footprints on the ramp, but there isn’t.’

He thought it over but could not reach a conclusion and put the matter aside. He entered the tunnel and struck at the dirt with his shovel. 

He did not think about the footprint anymore but knowledge of it made him go on guard. He used his far-sight vision whenever he brought dirt up to the surface to scan his surroundings, but he didn’t discover anything. 

He got through the last two metres of the tunnel after two hours, and a stone slab appeared at the end of the tunnel. 

What was behind the stone slab? 

Xia Lei drew close to the stone slab, and his X-ray vision silently bore through the stone...

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