Chapter 161: Escalating Trouble

Fatty suddenly said he'd figured it out, and we were all taken aback, but immediately we were ready to hear some nonsense. We were almost used to Fatty's unreliability; rather than criticizing him every time, it was better to just let him talk nonsense. Besides, his way of thinking was sometimes different from ours, so listening wasn't a bad idea.

Actually, at that time I wasn't terribly panicked, because we hadn't truly run out of supplies. But with these corpses here, it was inevitable that unpleasant thoughts would cross my mind. In fact, faced with this intellectual challenge, someone like me even felt a bit fortunate—it was definitely much easier than encountering a bunch of zongzi.

Panzi thought the same as I did and didn't take it seriously. He casually asked Fatty, "What? Don't talk nonsense, we don't have time for this!"

Fatty came close to us and said to Panzi, "You're discriminating against me, damn it. When have I ever been all over the place? The thing I thought of this time is absolutely crucial."

Panzi gave a dismissive laugh and said, "With that tiny brain of yours? Fine, tell us, what did you think of?"

But this time Fatty was unusually serious and said sternly, "Actually, it's not that crucial. I just had a sudden inspiration and thought about the mechanism in the underwater tomb. You see, back then we also thought it was very complicated, but in reality, how simple was it? I'm thinking whether we've been overthinking this time as well, and we've been preconditioned by the mechanism in the underwater tomb. Whenever we encounter a situation like this, we think about whether the room is moving or something. Maybe the problem here has nothing to do with this tomb chamber at all—it's just an ordinary tomb chamber."

Panzi grinned and said, "Nonsense. If it were ordinary, how could I not find my way out..."

I saw that Fatty hadn't finished and knew there was more to come, so I waved Panzi off and let Fatty continue.

Fatty said, "Actually, it's very simple. Think about it: if this corridor and this tomb chamber have no problems at all, yet we still keep walking out and never finding the exit, then where does the problem lie? It must be with us!"

That stunned both me and Panzi. I said, "You mean this endless loop is because something's wrong with us?"

Fatty nodded. "We don't know exactly what the problem is, but it's close. I'm thinking, maybe we've been hypnotized or suggested by those murals, or maybe there's some hallucinogenic gas here—we've all been poisoned. I know a kind of mushroom; after eating it, the orientation organs get messed up, and you keep walking in circles without knowing it."

Fatty had once told me that when he was a kid, he saw a trap for hunting bears in the forest using this poisonous mushroom. Once affected, the bear would keep spinning in circles until it died of exhaustion.

I immediately fell into deep thought, and Panzi also stopped talking, furrowing his brow as he considered Fatty's words.

Was it a problem with us? If so, the difficulty of the situation would be completely different. But after thinking it over briefly, I felt it wasn't quite right.

In fact, Fatty's statement was quite enlightening, and maybe the truth was close to what he said, but there was a fatal inconsistency: our own feelings. Would people who were poisoned look like us? I wasn't unfamiliar with being poisoned—people who were poisoned would definitely have strong uncomfortable reactions.

As for hypnosis, I had never really believed in it because it was too targeted. It might be believable that Fatty could be easily hypnotized, but it was really unlikely for Panzi and me.

But if we went back to the realm of cunning tricks and mechanical devices, it was indeed hard to come up with anything. Actually, I had just conceived about a dozen methods, two or three of which could completely achieve such a layout with architectural structures. However, these methods had too high requirements—meaning there had to be absolute preconditions, such as the three of us having to move together, our walking speed having to be fixed, etc. Wang Zanghai would definitely not design such a low-success-rate trap.

I suddenly wondered if I was too incompetent. Wang Zanghai was a man from how many years ago, so why hadn't we ever gained any advantage over him? We each immediately fell into our own thoughts, lost in contemplation. Fatty, seeing that after he finished speaking we didn't say anything, suddenly didn't know what to do, so he just pretended to ponder as well. Later, I don't know how it happened, but the more I thought, the sleepier I got, more and more tired, and then I actually fell asleep.

But I probably only slept for three or four hours, and I was drowsy and hadn't actually fallen into deep sleep, when I heard Fatty and Panzi talking and was woken up. Getting up, I found they were walking down that tomb passage again. Shunzi had clearly just run back, panting, and from Fatty's expression, it was obvious the result was the same—no progress.

I rubbed my eyes and asked them what they were doing. Fatty said they had thought for a long time and had no clue, so it was better to experiment. They had just had one person walk ahead with eyes closed, while another watched from behind, the two connected by a rope, to see if halfway through, the person with eyes open would suddenly turn around.

I shuddered at the thought. This method of experimentation was enough to drive one crazy. It was a good thing these guys had thick nerves. If I had to do that, who knows if the person on the other end of the rope halfway through would still be the same person.

But in the end, the result was the same. Whether blindfolded or with eyes closed, they both felt they were walking in a straight line, but both still ended up back in this tomb chamber. Because Shunzi was the one with eyes closed, he walked especially laboriously, his face deathly pale.

They all sat back down in their spots, sighing. I told them to save their energy—actually, such blind experimentation would only interrupt their thinking. Then things returned to before I slept, and we started another meaningless discussion.

During the discussion, someone would always doze off, but luckily, while one person slept, the others could continue thinking. And so, we had one idea here, another there, proposing them and then rejecting them. At first there were many opinions, but later we spoke less and less. Unnoticed, six or seven hours passed, and our stomachs started growling again.

Finally, Fatty lit a cigarette, thought for a moment, and said to us, "No, thinking so scattered like this wastes too much time. How about this: we write down all the possibilities, categorize them into a few points, and then directly verify each one. That should work."

I nodded. In fact, by the end, we had been repeating many points, and everyone had fallen into a state of confusion.

He cleared a stone surface on the ground covered with gold artifacts and wrote down the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. He said, "Let's think about how many hypotheses we have. All of you recall—don't be too specific, just the general direction."

Panzi said, "The most likely is that there's a mechanism."

Fatty wrote "mechanism" under 1. Then Shunzi said, "Your idea: there might be something affecting our senses, like psychological suggestion or hypnosis, making us unconsciously walk back." Fatty said to him, "No need to be that detailed." Then he wrote "illusion" after 2. Then he looked at me.

I said, "Theoretically, it could also be space folding."

"That's impossible, too far-fetched," Panzi said.

Fatty said, "No matter. There's a one in ten thousand chance, so we'll acknowledge it. We're just making a memo." With that, he wrote it down—space folding after 3. Then he said, "And maybe there are ghosts." So he wrote 4: ghosts.

"What's the point of writing them out like this?" Panzi asked, not understanding.

Fatty said, "You two read a lot of books, so you don't get it. I didn't read much, and I damn well have to write everything down. But there's an advantage: for example, if there are several things, you can do them together. If you organize them in advance, you'll know, and it saves a lot of time. Don't we only have two days? We need to save time. By the way, is there a 5? Who has a 5?"

I looked at these four points. They indeed covered four major disciplines: quantum mechanics, metaphysics, psychology, and engineering. I couldn't think of a fifth point anytime soon. Our discussion earlier had actually only covered one and two; three and four were simply impossible.

Seeing we had no reaction, Fatty said, "Okay, let's verify point one and point two first. These two points can be handled together."

"What method are you using to verify them?" I asked in surprise.

In fact, we had already done most of the experiments we could, but because the tomb passage was too long, many experiments were actually useless.

Fatty suddenly smiled. "Actually, I just thought of a good method. Proving whether it's one or two affecting us is probably impossible, but there is a way to prove it's not. Just watch."

I saw that Fatty was smug and looked very confident, and I immediately felt something was wrong—was this guy up to something? I saw him pick up the rifle from the ground and say to us, "This tomb passage is about 1000 to 2000 meters long. The Type 56's effective killing range is 400 meters, but the bullet can travel over 3000 meters. I'm going to fire one shot here and see what happens."

I was immediately enlightened, and exclaimed in my heart: This is genius!

If it's a problem with our own perception, then bullets have no perception. The tomb corridor can affect us, but it can't affect bullets. If the situation here can still be explained by common sense, then bullets will inevitably disappear at the end of the corridor and won't come back.

The beauty of this experiment lies in the speed of the bullet. In such a short tomb corridor, the bullet can traverse it completely in 2 or 3 seconds. No trap mechanism could possibly activate in such a short time.

But if the situation here truly exceeds the scope of common sense and enters the realm of metaphysics, then the bullet, like us, will transcend space in the straight tomb corridor and make a 180-degree turn.

Simple and elegant, very much in line with scientific spirit. I really felt a bit ashamed that I, a college student, couldn't come up with such a method.

But then I thought, this trick could only be conceived by someone like him. It's the simplest logical thinking.

To determine if it's an illusion, you need something that isn't affected by illusion. To find such a thing, you look nearby. With this three-step consideration, the method immediately came to mind; it's not complicated. I suddenly felt that Wang Zanghai might have met his match. Someone as calculating as him might fear Fatty's straightforward way of thinking—any trick can be simplified to the extreme.

Fatty did as he said, and we followed him. He walked into the tomb corridor, pulled the bolt, and was about to fire into the corridor.

I quickly shouted, "Wait!"

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Don't do that," I said. "If, I mean if, this place really is that eerie, then once you fire, almost instantly, you'll be hit yourself."

Fatty's expression changed. Clearly, he had thought the first and second possibilities were most likely, and hadn't considered whether the third or fourth might be real. But after I said that, he nodded and shifted the gun to the side—bullets follow a parabolic trajectory; if the bullet came back, it should land slightly below the muzzle.

We all ducked to the doorway. Before we were mentally prepared, Fatty suddenly fired. A loud bang exploded in the tomb corridor, followed by a series of echoes. But almost simultaneously, we saw the tomb door shake violently, kicking up a cloud of dust.

My mind went blank, and I thought, "Not good!" I quickly poked my head out to look. Fatty was still frozen in his shooting stance, but on the door, about five or six centimeters below his gun, there was a bullet hole. The dust from the blast hadn't yet settled.