Chapter 12: Seven Stars: Door

I turned over those papers again and finally found something meaningful. It was a bird's-eye view of a tomb. I could see the tunnel at the bottom of the lake, and then the place where the seven-star suspicious coffins were placed. It was drawn very clearly. The chamber we had descended into was not drawn, it seemed they hadn't been there yet. I also saw the robber's tunnel I had just climbed through. The fork was marked very clearly. I saw that if I chose the other opening, it led to a place that ended abruptly, with a character written beside it: "collapse."

The meaning was clear: my hope of returning to the surface through the robber's tunnel was dashed. I looked further. The strangest thing on this map was that to the left of where I was standing, with no connecting path, there was actually another tomb chamber drawn. And connecting this tunnel and that chamber was a dotted line, making that chamber seem as if it were in another dimension. I couldn't help but touch the wall behind me. Could there be a secret passage behind this wall? I carefully examined the wall, recalling the stone secret door mechanisms in my grandfather's notes. Generally, for such a mechanism to last a thousand years without rotting, stone and mercury were used to trigger the mechanism. The trigger had to be a flat slab. On this wall were carved inscriptions, one block after another. If there were a secret door, one of these blocks had to be movable, and that block would have to be in a place easily overlooked.

Following this line of thought, I bent down to look at the area where the stone wall met the floor. Sure enough, a square connecting stone slab looked very suspicious. I pressed it, but there was no reaction, though it felt loose. I pressed again, still no reaction. So I got a little impatient, stood up, and kicked it. This time, I heard a rumbling sound.

For an instant, I thought, as in foreign movies, the wall would flip and take me to the next room, or the wall would open like a door. So when the floor suddenly gave way beneath me, I had no defense at all. I fell straight down. This kind of secret door design wasn't a secret door at all — it was obviously a trap! I inwardly cried out that it was bad; I might be done for! I had no idea what was down there, maybe a set of bone-crushing steel blades.

It all happened in a flash. Before I had even finished thinking, I landed on the floor with a thud. Before I could even celebrate not being killed, the mining lamp I was holding smashed on the ground with a crack. The battery popped out, the lamp went out, and I was suddenly plunged into darkness.

In this situation, that mining lamp was as important as my life. Without light, in this ancient tomb where there was absolutely no source of light, it would be a dead end. I quickly lunged over, trying to feel for the mining lamp. I remembered its position clearly and found it immediately. The battery should be to the left. I reached randomly to my left and suddenly touched an ice-cold hand.