The room behind the end of the passage was large. Wider than the dungeon in their backyard. Since it was spacious, it might be more appropriate if they called the room a hall. The hall was in the shape of a hexagon. On each side was a door leading to another passage. The door was just an empty hole. There were no doors that separated the hall from the passages behind. So a total of six doors in the hall. A large circular stone about eighty or ninety centimeters in diameter was located right in the center of the room. The boulder was about half a meter high. The surface of the stone is flat. Yihshyong and his friends immediately drew near to the big rock.
"At close range, this rock looks like a huge bench." Jenqyih shone his flashlight on the rock face. "There's no way this is a table."
<
"This is very much like the situation in the ancient stories in the novels I used to read when I was a teenager." Yihshyong stretched out his hand. He rubbed the surface of the stone bench.
Jenqyih laughed. "You mean fantasy adventure stories that tell of the existence of the secret underground passages?"
"Yes. But I don't mean just a secret passage. More specifically, the scene or the part where the story's main characters went underground and found large, heavy objects."
"Like this big stool?" Shannchyuan asked.
"Yes. Like a bench this size or the stone table in the basement of our backyard. I've read a few stories whose scenes are similar to the situation we're in now. The authors of the stories never explained how large and heavy objects, such as this stone bench, got underground. How do people get it down? Then how to bring it all the way to this hall? It was impossible to transport a rock of this size by hand alone. There must have been certain tools that people used to move this stone here. To be able to load stones of this size, the tools they use must be huge. The problem is, tools that are so big obviously can't fit in the passages we've been through."
Shannchyuan nodded. He then inched away from the stone bench. He highlighted the door holes in the hall wall.
"They never explain that in their books?" Jenqyih half laughed when he asked the question.
"Never! Maybe they couldn't explain it themselves either. So they left it entirely to the imagination of the readers."
"I'm sure there are also authors who have really thought about everything related to the background from the location and settings in the scenes in their books," said Jenqyih.
"Indeed, I have heard that there are also one or two authors who explain in great detail to readers. But usually, readers cannot read their lengthy explanations."
"You mean the editors cut that stuff down because they thought it's verbose and unimportant?"
"I guess so. Not all readers hate that sort of thing. There are also some readers, like me, who want everything explained."
"Dahge, what do you think?" Jenqyih turned to Shannchyuan.
"About what? About the events in the fantasy novel? Or about the events we're going through?" Shannchyuan asked back.
"About this boulder that seems to serve as a bench. How did people put it here?" Jenqyih asked while drawing a big question mark in the air.
"To be honest, I don't know either," Shannchyuan replied with a laugh. "There are always things that are really hard to explain."
After saying that, Shannchyuan approached the stone bench. Yihshyong and Jenqyih followed behind him. He then sat down on the large stone bench. His two friends, without hesitation, also followed what he was doing.
Shannchyuan rested his butt on one part of the stone bench. "Besides the passage we came from, there are five other passages here. We don't have enough time to explore all those passages. Which one do you think we should enter?" As he asked, he shone his flashlight again into the halls on each side of the hexagon.
Yihshyong and Jenqyih did not immediately reply. They looked at each other.
"It's up to Dahge." After about five seconds of silence, Jenqyih finally spoke up, while Yihshyong just nodded.
"Then we'll choose the one in the opposite direction from the one we came from earlier," said Shannchyuan.
<
The three of them got up from the bench right away. Walk towards the hallway whose entrance was directly opposite the entrance of the hallway they came from. Just like the previous passage, it was also quite wide. Even though the passage's entrance was only a hole that was one meter wide, the inside was wider, which was about two meters. With the hallway's ceiling height of about three meters, they could even swing without constraint. They could hold their hands up high without worrying about touching the ceiling. In fact, if they wanted to, they could also freely jump around in the hallway. But of course, they didn't do that. At least not that time. Maybe someday, when the situation and conditions they felt were more relaxed.
The passage was very long. Besides winded, the surface's contours of the path fluctuated. Luckily, they weren't carrying heavy things. Almost twenty minutes later, they arrived at the end of the hall. Yihshyong breathed a sigh of relief. But soon, he realized that perhaps something else was waiting for them there. Things that were most likely no less surprising than the things they had already experienced.
The end of the passage was like a dead end. There was nothing on the wall in front of them. Shannchyuan highlighted the walls to the left and right at the end of the passage. There was also nothing there. Shannchyuan then took a few steps back. He highlighted the walls on the right and left, a few meters from the end of the hallway.
On the wall to the right, about two meters from the end of the hallway hung a metal candle holder. Not very high, only about a meter and a half from the surface they were on. There was no candle attached to the candleholder. Shannchyuan shone the candleholder with the flashlight he brought with him. Even though there were no candles there, the candle holder looked quite clean. It seemed that someone had touched it often.
Shannchyuan turned off the flashlight and put it in his trouser pocket. "Please point your flashlights at this chandelier." Having said that, he stretched out his hand. He fumbled for the metal candle holder. After fumbling for about half a minute, he tried to move it. It turned out that Shannchyuan could tilt the candleholder to the left. After he tilted the candle holder about fifteen degrees, suddenly, there was a very subtle rumbling sound. It was more like a hum. The left wall, which was about two meters from the end of the hall, moved to the right. Slowly, the wall kept moving until it stuck to the wall on the right. The left wall was opened.