Several people's faces were livid. We looked around and the more we looked, the more certain we became. There were our footprints everywhere on the ground. This was indeed the tomb where we found Shunzi's father. The strange thing was, how did we get back?
The tomb passage is straight. When we walked, we didn't turn a corner. Four people and one corpse can prove that according to reason, it is impossible to walk for 20 minutes and return to the starting point. This is simply unbelievable, just like a ghost wall.
The fat man was a little puzzled. He looked at the tomb entrance and said, "Could it be that when we left, we unknowingly went back the way we came? This is fucking weird."
Pan Zi said, "No way. If we had gone back the way we came, it's impossible that all four of us wouldn't have known. As far as I can remember, we had always walked straight ahead. The tomb passage isn't long, and there aren't any forks in the road. There's no reason why we wouldn't have remembered it wrong."
The fat man said, "That's just a ghost wall. Shunzi, is your father joking with us? You have to teach it a lesson. We are doing serious business."
Shunzi was so angry with Fatty: "Stop talking nonsense."
I stopped them. Now was not the right time to argue. I was sweating all over because I felt that the thing I least wanted to happen might have already happened. But I was still not completely sure. I said, "Don't argue. If we want to see if we have really gone back to the way we came, there is only one way. Let's go through it again and see."
Several people looked at each other, and when they saw my expression, they probably sensed something was wrong.
At that time, I was thinking about the expressions of those mummies, that kind of desperate expression. Could it be that they were trapped to death here in this way? Without food, they would return to the original room no matter how they walked. This was too unbelievable. But my intuition told me that I might be right, and the same thing that trapped them to death has now happened to us.
What I have to do now is to prove my premonition, or rather, I want to deny this horrible premonition in my heart, so I couldn't wait to walk into the tomb passage, and the others hurriedly followed me.
Because we had walked this way once and were sure there were no traps, we walked very fast this time. I almost jogged at the front, keeping my eyes fixed on the roads on both sides to make sure there were no forks in the road. I did not turn back for no reason.
This time, we finished the whole run in less than ten minutes. When I felt that I was about to see the end of the tomb passage, I almost kept praying, hoping that my premonition would not come true. But in the end, when I saw the almost identical jade door, my heart suddenly sank and cold sweat broke out involuntarily.
After entering the gate, the fat man rushed up to the golden mountain. Then he knelt down and covered his face. I rushed over and saw six bodies. All the things we had arranged were there... We were back again.
My premonition came true. After making 100% sure that there were no forks or turns, we walked straight ahead and actually ended up back at the starting point.
The fat man was tired from running and panted heavily, "This is a ghost wall, this is definitely a ghost wall. No matter how we go, it is a circle. Both ends of this tomb passage are tombs. We are going to see Shunzi's father this time. Shunzi, you should talk to your father and tell him not to play tricks on us, otherwise we will just leave him here and leave by ourselves."
Shunzi was so surprised that he didn't have time to argue with him. I was also flustered and kept turning around to look at the walls, but I didn't know what I was looking at.
"Calm down! Calm down!" Pan Zi gasped at the side, "Don't panic, Third Master, didn't you say that Wang Canghai's stuff is at best just a trick to create psychological pressure? We must not know this and still fall for it. We must stay calm now. Something must be wrong."
Tell Pan Ziyi. Suddenly, I was enlightened, and I became much more sober. The feeling of despair faded immediately. I nodded and said, "You are right, this must be a mechanism. We have confirmed in the underwater tomb that there is no such thing as a ghost wall. Wang Canghai is good at using clever mechanisms to create a weird atmosphere. If you don't know the details, it is easy to be led by him." As I said this, I rubbed my face hard to get rid of the suffocating feeling.
I was actually saying these words to myself, and I didn't even know what I said after I finished.
When I think back on this moment, I feel that I must have felt that things were beyond my control, and wanted to use these words to remind myself not to give up.
Because when I was walking in the tomb passage just now, it felt so real. I actually had no idea how to use a mechanism to achieve this phenomenon. The first thing that came to my mind was that the tomb chamber or the tomb passage was moving, but this was impossible, and I immediately denied it. We were not walking slowly. If the tomb chamber could move, how fast would it need to move? The tomb passage was even more impossible. We were in it, and as long as there was a little vibration, we would definitely know it. But if the tomb passage and the tomb chamber were not moving, then this could not be explained.
Although I kept telling myself that this was a trap, I actually knew in my heart that something was wrong. This could not be explained by a trap. But saying it out loud would still be good for other people, at least it could reduce panic.
But I underestimated Fatty and the others' psychological endurance. Pan Zi was much calmer than me. He wiped the sweat off his face and asked me, "Whether it's a ghost wall or a trap, we have to solve it. What should we do now? Should we go again?"
I gritted my teeth and said, "Let's go again! This time, let's walk slower and feel the movements under our feet or around us. I don't believe there are no loopholes."
So we walked into the tomb passage again, and this time we walked for forty minutes. We knew we had failed before we reached the end because the tomb door was exactly the same and we didn't feel anything along the way.
We went in there several times afterwards, but all ended in failure. I gradually felt the despair of the corpses, and the faces of several people became worse and worse.
I felt that going on like this was not a solution, so after returning to the tomb, I told them not to leave. Since we had come here so many times and had basically ruled out everything, this mechanism must have been designed in a way that we could never imagine.
The fat man was almost exhausted, but he still insisted on going on, thinking that maybe at some point, the old tomb passage would come back, and then we could get out.
After hearing what he said, Pan Zi only said one sentence: "Give up on this idea. There is absolutely no way to get back to that tomb passage."
As he said that, he looked at the dried corpses on the side. The meaning was very clear. Those dried corpses had definitely walked into the tomb passage many more times than us, but they were still trapped to death, so it was useless to walk through the tomb passage, even if we walked through it ten thousand times. We didn't need to consider ourselves so lucky.
The fat man immediately stopped breathing, sat down, and said, "According to what you said, aren't we doomed? These people here must have tried everything. It's useless for us to try again."
Pan Zi said, "Don't think about it. If you think like this now, you might as well kill yourself. Wait until we have done what we can before you think of desperate things. Now, while you still have the strength, you might as well think of a solution."
I remembered the corpse food and asked, "Should we limit the food now? We need to be prepared for a long-term battle. The longer we can survive, the greater our chances of getting out."
Pan Zi sighed and shook his head: "Young Master San, to be honest, we are not as good as them. We don't have much food left. I think we can only eat two meals at most, and we don't care if we are full. I think there is no need to limit the amount. We should eat as much as we need to and stay energetic. I estimate that if we can't get out within two days, we will have no other options. We should use explosives. If explosives don't work, we will just have to wait for others to collect my body."
Two days, I was trembling in my heart. How long have these mummies stayed here? Can we get out in two days? There is really no certainty at all.
The fat man's stomach was already growling, so he asked Pan Zi: "Comrade Cook, can we start eating earlier? I need to deal with the things that are distracting me first, so that I can have the energy to think about other things."
As soon as Fatty said that, we all felt hungry, and Pan Zi had no choice but to light the stove and cook. In fact, the only food we had left was noodles, which were okay when we first started eating them, but they wouldn't last long. Fatty complained that there was no meat, and I said we had frozen ribs, and if you could eat it, Shun Zi didn't mind, so we didn't mind either.
After eating, I felt warm all over and full of energy. Several people started to think about this thing. I recalled the whole process of going down to the underground palace. It was extremely thrilling. I didn't expect that I still felt uneasy after going down to the underground palace. Wang Canghai must have a design purpose for this underground palace. What was it?
The underground palace is in the shape of a Chinese character "U". The spirit hall is in the middle, which is the most strictly regulated place. Wang Canghai would certainly not dare to tamper with it. In other places, the surrounding areas of the U-shaped underground palace are burial pits, burial pits for accompanying burials, drainage systems, and intricate corridors and tomb passages. This means that we are still in the extension of the center of the underground palace.
I tried to estimate the vertical and horizontal distance we had come down, and to determine our position based on my estimate of the size of the underground palace, but this seemed very difficult. We had lost our minds in that underwater drainage tunnel and had no idea which direction our final exit was facing.
While his brain was working rapidly, the fat man, who was also pretending to think about something, suddenly made an expression of sudden enlightenment and said to us: "I figured it out!"