Chapter 414: Stone Shadow: Hint from Guangxi

If you represented the relief carving surrounding the iron disk as a straight line, then this large relief would show, at the far left, a "Hou"; in the middle, several people fleeing; and at the far right, a group of ethnic minorities wearing strange clothing. At the very end of the carving were three holes.

What bothered me most was the direction of the composition inside. Looking at the content, even though the Hou was chained to the iron disk, it was still in a pursuing dynamic.

The people in the middle had no right hands and their backs to the Hou, presenting a fleeing posture. And crucially, the image of those ethnic minorities was facing the fleeing people—that is, the ethnic minority blade-wielders and the Hou formed a pincer movement against the people in the middle.

This could be interpreted in many ways. My first impression was: could this be a killing? Two sides, one beast and one group of humans, besieging and killing these people without right hands?

From the picture, that was the most reasonable interpretation, but what was the point of understanding it that way? I really couldn't figure it out.

I was almost certain that such a specific relief carving must be conveying some meaning; it couldn't be mere decoration. Decoration was usually patterns like dragons and phoenixes that could be infinitely replicated and easily gave a sense of unity.

If that wasn't the interpretation, then there were other things to consider, such as: was this an ambush?

The ethnic minority blade-wielders were hiding ahead, and the men without right hands were acting as bait. But if the opponent was a Hou—I don't believe such a creature exists—those blade-wielders probably wouldn't last a second; they'd all be burned to ashes.

Relief carvings were often exaggerated. It was very likely that what they encountered back then was something they couldn't explain, so they substituted a mythological image.

This line of reasoning had no direction. I leaned in to examine all the details of the relief. Thanks to the professional SLR camera, the details were crystal clear.

However, looking closely only brought more disappointment—the relief had no details at all.

If I assumed they weren't continuous, with each piece having its own meaning, then there was no way to analyze it.

No matter how I looked, I could only shake my head, because I didn't even have a direction to think in. Xiao Hua leaned back and said, "This looks a bit like a Thousand-Mile Lock. It seems we might need to go back to that iron disk to get some clues."

I nodded silently. I had heard of the Thousand-Mile Lock—it was a strategy, not a real lock, but a very effective preventive measure. The best way to make the cost of doing something multiply was to keep the necessary components far enough apart. For example, the door at the South Pole and the key at the North Pole. In Norse mythology, slain demons were often cut into countless pieces and scattered across the world, so that any conspiracy theorist trying to resurrect the demon would have to undertake a journey lasting centuries.

But since there was a mechanism to open it, this meant the Zhang Family Ancient Tower was not just a tomb. I speculated it was probably related to their group burial system. Maybe every few generations, according to ancestral instructions, the dead of the Zhang family had to be moved into this ancient tower.

I just didn't know how this was connected to Yangshi Lei. Yangshi Lei evidently had the surname Lei, and the imperial family had the surname Aisin Gioro; neither had any reason to pay for this mysterious "Zhang Family Tower."

On Poker-face's side, he faced an ingeniously locked stone door. The key to opening that stone door should lie in those four patterns, and the iron disk here might be the decoding disk to unlock the information contained in those four patterns. As for the specifics, we could only know once we got back to the iron disk.

After a few days of rest, we had all recovered some strength. Xiao Hua's wound had long since stopped bleeding, and going back didn't pose any great risk, so we started preparing. Remembering that the passage was a huge hassle, and we couldn't travel back and forth frequently, we prepared enough water and food for a week. Fearing that the air circulation inside the cave was too slow, we set up an exhaust fan at the entrance—a threshing machine borrowed from the village by a buddy in Chengdu—and bought a big bundle of wire to connect to the tractor battery under the cliff.

To be honest, my idea was to get a few buckets of gasoline and just burn everything all the way through—finish it once and for all. But in a narrow cave, oxygen burns up quickly, creating an air-lock effect, making it hard to sustain a fire. When we studied architecture, we learned about this. If we used a blower to force air in, the cave would turn into a high-temperature kiln, and the rock structure wasn't particularly stable; we might burn it down.

Xiao Hua could no longer perform his skill of walking on walls. We crawled back to the cave entrance and checked the iron suits. We found that inside Xiao Hua's iron suit, the bloodstains had grown black hair as long as a wrist—clumps of it. The ground where blood had dripped was also covered. Everywhere there was even a trace of blood, black hair had sprouted. This stuff was just like fungus.

I shook out the one I had worn; it was mostly fine. The places that had come into contact with Xiao Hua's blood were infected, but the rest was clean.

Xiao Hua said, "With my blood present, there's nothing to fear. You can just walk in like that without a problem. I'll wear the iron suit and carry you over."

But the iron suit was already extremely heavy. Carrying me on top of that was absolutely impossible. Plus, the cave height was very low; we couldn't even stand upright, and carrying someone would be even worse. After going back and forth, Xiao Hua came up with an idea.

I would put on a gas mask and the iron suit and go in first. As I walked, I would set rock anchors in the cave ceiling and hang a slide rope. This way, once someone pulled the rope, anything hanging on the slide rope would move forward. Since he was very light, he could be pulled across this way. When I heard this, it was a solution born of necessity, so I followed suit. The rock anchors below were hoisted up, and Xiao Hua helped me into the iron suit. He seemed to find it amusing and patted my iron suit with a thud. Amid his encouragement, I walked into the cave, feeling that this guy was essentially just as unreliable as Fatty deep down.

I used a rock hammer to drive the special rock anchors into the crevices of the cave ceiling. I had studied structural engineering and knew about triangular load distribution, so I planned to drive three or four anchors at each spot. Even hanging a sumo wrestler would be no problem.

It took about three hours to finish everything. My hands were numb, and I encountered no more crises. At the end of the cave, the iron disk was just as we had left it. There was even a faint sound of metal striking coming from underneath the disk, but it was no longer violent—it sounded like something hanging was being blown by the wind and hitting an iron door.

I took off the iron suit and found myself drenched in sweat, as if I had taken a bath. Then I pulled Xiao Hua in. We set up a mining lamp for light, piled up some firewood at the cave entrance, and poured gasoline on it to prevent any sneak attacks from the hair. Together, we placed the food and liquor we had brought onto the iron disk and immediately began comparing the disk with the photos.

Both of us wore gas masks. This time we didn't lose our voices, but the masks were extremely heavy and made our necks very uncomfortable. Xiao Hua suggested we make this quick.

The thing carved on the stone wall in the photo was indeed this iron disk. All the patterns matched perfectly. However, around the iron disk, there were none of the three sets of patterns seen on the stone wall in the photo.

The iron disk was slowly rotating clockwise. Xiao Hua knew that architecture and machinery had many things in common, so he asked, "What now?"

I thought to myself, with any mechanical device, you first need to figure out how it works. I asked him to help. I first tried pushing with the disk to see if it could accelerate. I found that pushing it clockwise was very easy—obviously nothing was activated clockwise. Then I started pushing counterclockwise, and immediately felt something wrong.

As soon as I pushed, I felt the disk catch some resistance—a very, very heavy force, but not a dead stop. It felt like winding a spring. I pushed with all my strength, almost using every bit of power I had. The disk began to turn counterclockwise, and at almost the same time, a continuous dull sound of chains came from beneath the disk.

Unfortunately, I only managed to push it about fifty degrees before I ran out of strength. No matter how hard Xiao Hua and I strained—veins bulging—the disk wouldn't move another inch.

But I knew very well it wasn't stuck; we just didn't have enough strength. I took a deep breath, almost let out a roar, and strained forward with all my might. But all the sound was muffled ridiculously by the gas mask. In the end, my foot slipped and I lost my footing. Xiao Hua alone didn't have enough strength, and the iron disk immediately spun back clockwise.

"You'd need an ox to do this," Xiao Hua said, leaning against the cave wall, gasping.

My ankle was almost twisted and hurt like hell. I thought to myself that if Fatty were here, I wouldn't have to do this heavy lifting.

However, neither of us suggested calling someone up to help, because the feel of it just now wasn't entirely about insufficient strength. The main problem was that the iron disk had no good purchase points—it was smooth, and the patterns on it had been polished so slick that there was no way to get a grip. If we had a lever, things might have been different.

So we took out those long, narrow tools to see if we could wedge them in anywhere. After searching for a while, we found that the entire iron disk had no spot that could provide leverage. Though it was covered in patterns, the patterns were too fine and nothing could catch on them.

I thought back to everyday experiences. The current situation was like facing a water bottle with hands too greasy to twist it open.

The simplest solution would be to increase hand friction—wrap it in a towel or something to get a better grip. There was no towel here, but we could use our clothes.

So I was about to take off my clothes to check the texture of the fabric, looking for any rough spots, when Xiao Hua suddenly noticed something off. He pointed at my clothes and asked, "What's that?"

I looked down and saw that the parts of my clothes that had rubbed against the iron plate were all black.

"Paint chipping?" I grumbled in a muffled voice, then looked at my palm and found it covered in black as well.

But it wasn't paint — it looked more like particles of coal dust. I found it strange; could someone have smeared coal dust on it? I shone my flashlight on my palm, pinched the stuff, and realized it wasn't coal dust either. These particles were flaky, but when I rubbed them between my fingers, they became very fine. Then it hit me — I thought I recognized this kind of particle.

I shone the flashlight on the iron plate. With the naked eye, you couldn't tell that there was a layer of something covering it, but when I scraped it with something sharp, I got a flake. I crushed it with my fingers, let out an "Ah," and said to Xiao Hua, "This is bad — it's blood."