Chapter 162: Grave Robbing and Quantum Mechanics

Sitting back down in the treasure chamber, the atmosphere was completely different from before. No one spoke; their faces were an unreadable mix of pale and greenish, and the golden light reflected from the smokeless stove was starting to nauseate me.

No one raised any more questions. Everyone wore a contemplative look, but I knew they were all the same as me—their minds utterly blank.

Things had spiraled beyond our control. Even my earlier assumption that it was a trap no longer held. We had entered an indescribable state. After that simple experiment, any scientific reasoning had been rendered completely useless.

Because no human power could make a bullet bend such a massive corner in just a few seconds.

To explain this phenomenon scientifically, even quantum mechanics might not be enough.

"This is real ghost-blocking!" Shunzi's face was extremely grim. He looked at his father's corpse lying to one side, his expression a mixture of deep sorrow and fear.

I knew what he was thinking then. He had also realized why the mummies among the jewels wore such desperate expressions. Under these circumstances, trying again and again, returning to the starting point each time until their supplies ran out—how could they not feel despair? By the time they died, they must have been utterly defeated, still unable to figure out even the slightest clue.

And we might be the next batch. Soon there would be four more withered corpses here, each wearing the same profound despair, leaving later victims to guess what we were thinking before we died.

The reason I hadn't felt despair or thought that far before was that I believed my intelligence could handle any mechanism or trap. But now things were different. The situation we faced was far, far stranger.

"Should we continue?" After about ten minutes of silence, Panzi asked in a hoarse voice.

No one answered, but several eyes turned toward Fatty.

On the floor in front of Fatty lay the two remaining assumptions we had written down. The third one was a random idea I had blurted out: space folding.

The reason I had suddenly suggested that was because I recalled that moment in the volcanic fissure when Poker-face seemed to vanish for a few seconds right before my eyes. At the time I couldn't understand it, but now it occurred to me that it might really be related to space folding. That experiment we just did was too terrifying—pseudo-scientific. And so my vague, abstract idea of space folding became the most plausible explanation.

If Fatty hadn't listed these possibilities, I would have been so panicked by that experiment that I'd have forgotten everything.

After a long silence, Fatty said, "Alright, we all saw it with our own eyes. No more bullshit. How do we prove the third one?"

"No! There's no need to prove it," Panzi suddenly spoke up.

Panzi saw things very clearly, always cutting straight to the essence. Just now when Fatty was still hoping the tomb passage would reappear, Panzi immediately dismissed it. That was also due to his military background—he never thought with any trace of wishful thinking. So whenever he spoke, I was afraid he would say something true but better left unsaid.

He said, "There are only six corpses here. Let's assume eight people came in originally; then two must have gotten out. I don't know how they did it, but if it's what Little Third Master said about the third possibility, then absolutely no one could get out. So we don't need to consider it. Considering the third possibility is just admitting we're doomed." Everyone felt a chill. Fatty protested, "How can you be sure there were eight? Hell, maybe there were only six from the start."

Panzi sighed and said, "Fatty, don't you get it? It doesn't really matter how many came in."

That couldn't be proven, and arguing was pointless. I thought, "At this point, how many came in doesn't matter for our situation, but it matters a lot for our morale. If two people successfully got out, then our mindset would be completely different. We could think about how they got out. At least we'd have some hope."

So I ignored them and walked over to the corpses to check their notebooks, hoping to find some clue. Maybe someone had written a diary; if they recorded their thoughts or mentioned that someone had gotten out, we'd still have a glimmer of hope.

But when I had glanced through the notebooks earlier, I'd only skimmed them. There were no long passages, just short entries—mostly accounts or brief notes—nothing significant.

I wondered if these people had written anything in their final moments. Maybe by the time they were about to die, they didn't even have a light left; the batteries were long dead, and there was nothing to keep warm. So they huddled together in the dark. If eight people came in, when did the last two go out? Definitely not while they were still lucid. If they were, the others should have been able to leave too. So maybe it was when they were already starving and delirious, no light, total darkness? Two people left without the others knowing? Could the key to getting out be darkness—walking without a light?

A chill ran through me as I thought about it. This was an ancient tomb. Walking through such long, narrow tomb passages in complete darkness—that would be a death sentence.

Seeing me looking through the materials, the others gathered around to help. Sitting there lost in thought was no use; sometimes we needed something to stimulate us.

Remembering the lack of light, I told them not to waste the batteries. We turned off all the flashlights, leaving only the heating stove for illumination. We gathered around the stove, each of us taking one of the three notebooks and a novel. We began to search line by line for clues.

The notebook I was flipping through had elegant handwriting—it must have been a woman's. I flipped several pages. They were filled with names and phone numbers, a list of people to treat to dinner, phone numbers for hotels on Changbai Mountain, hand-drawn maps, addresses, and memos. I saw an entry from 1994 that mentioned she had been sick and hospitalized, with a note to go for a follow-up.

The remaining pages were blank, but I still flipped through them, hoping she might have written something. Fatty said, "Here's a clue." He read aloud: "Today, sold the last item brought out from the sea. Got three thousand. Gave fifteen hundred back to Old Li. Debt cleared. So this guy was a fisherman."

I smiled bitterly and shook my head. I looked at Panzi. His notebook was the thinnest, almost empty. He had already finished reading. Then I looked at Shunzi, who was reading the novel with great interest. He had apparently skipped to the steamiest part just before the protagonist leaves.

Fatty was annoyed. He snatched the book away and cursed, "I told you to find clues, and you're reading porn? Your conscience is totally rotten! Confiscated!"

As he snatched it, the novel fell apart, sending pages flying everywhere.

I cursed, scolding Fatty while I turned on my flashlight to pick them up. Suddenly Panzi said, "Hey, there's a photo here." He picked up a yellowed black-and-white photo from among the papers.