Chapter 417: Stone Shadow: Secret

Xiao Hua gestured to me a couple of times and told me his idea: "The surroundings are covered in relief carvings, and the iron disk can rotate. With only four directions in the reliefs, even without seeing this photograph, randomly pushing the iron disk would easily work out the position in the photo. If this were some kind of secret hint, it would be far too easy to try out, and there's no combinatorial element to it."

I frowned, still not quite understanding, so he continued: "For example, a safe in our house would have at least three digits as the code to be effective. A single digit has ten possibilities from zero to nine, so the complexity of the code is sufficient. No matter what this iron disk is, if its combination with the surrounding reliefs is some kind of password or any measure to prevent someone from quickly activating a mechanism, then it only has a pathetic four possibilities. A three-year-old could try them out effortlessly." He paused. "Then it's actually useless. For example, if your safe's password only has one digit, and it can only be one of the numbers one to four, then it's not a safe, because it's not safe at all."

I flicked the photo with my finger and immediately understood that what he said made sense.

Xiao Hua continued: "Let's assume that the technology of the time could only produce a lock with a single-digit password, and only one of the four numbers one to four could be chosen. How would you make such a lock sufficiently secure?" He looked at me. "Do you know the reduction principle?"

I shook my head. Xiao Hua's tone was very calm, like an old artist explaining a play to someone: "When you don't have enough choices, you reduce the number of times you can choose. It's like defusing a bomb: when you only have three wires, red, yellow, and blue, to cut, you might only be allowed to cut once. If you cut the wrong one, it explodes. So, if what you say is right, we might only have one chance to turn this iron disk. If we turn it wrong, it will likely trigger the mechanism here, and we have no idea what the consequences will be."

As he spoke, he looked at the passage: "Without full certainty and preparation, we can't try easily. A tragedy has already occurred here once, and it could easily happen again."

I was a bit stunned, feeling as if I suddenly didn't recognize him: "Do you always solve problems in this tone?"

He shone his flashlight on the blood-covered iron disk and said, "The guideline for the Xie family when doing things is rigor. That's how I was taught from childhood."

Lord Xie Jiu of the Old Nine Gates was indeed famous for being watertight in his dealings. I thought about it: What was the guideline for the Wu family? My grandfather seemed to be famous for having good connections. Hearing that now, it really wasn't something to be proud of.

"All right, Little Lord Xie, what should we do now?" I slumped to the ground.

Xiao Hua said, "We need to start from the beginning. Everything has a reason. There must be a strict necessity for setting up such an intricate mechanism here. Let's think together, Third Young Master."

Hearing this long-unused title, for some reason my heart gave a twinge, and I felt an inexplicable melancholy. He looked at me, I looked at him, and we both laughed. It seemed the two of us indeed carried many similar burdens.

Both of us fell silent. I found a pack of beef jerky from the food I'd brought and said while eating, "Tell me, how did the descendants of Zhang Family Tower use this mechanism back then? Should we think about it this way: suppose you are a descendant of the Zhang family. Your father passes away, and you need to bury him in the Zhang Family Tower in Guangxi. Let's simulate the entire process."

Xiao Hua said, "I would definitely cremate him secretly and tell them I'd already placed him inside. The Xie family wouldn't do anything superfluous."

I said, "Assuming, let's say a Zhang family person, then how would it go?" Xiao Hua thought for a moment: "First of all, I would definitely receive an explanation. The elders of the family would inform me in a secret setting: we have an ancestral tomb, and I must bury my father in it. However, that tomb has extremely strict anti-theft measures, so I must first go to Four Girls Mountain in Sichuan to find a cave, and inside that cave I can obtain the key to open the tomb."

"That doesn't make sense. In that case, he wouldn't have seen the relief hint in Guangxi. He should have first gone to Guangxi, found the ancient tomb, discovered the relief hint there, and only then come to this cave here to look for the key."

"Could the hint on that relief be: 'Please take a photo here as a souvenir and bring the photo to Four Girls Mountain in Sichuan'?"

I found it not funny at all. I wanted to give a wry smile, but suddenly a shiver ran through me, and I immediately thought of something.

"Photo? That's right, the photo."

I immediately grabbed the photo sent from Guangxi, held it in my hand, sorted out my thoughts, and thought, Oh my god.

This was a very typical preconceived error. People always use various current real-life details as the basis for their judgment, ignoring factors of time and place. We had always believed that the relief in Guangxi was a hint for this place, but back in that era, there was no photography technology in the world.

So, that means it would have been impossible for them to do what we are doing now—sitting here studying the photo from Guangxi. The most they could have conveyed was a hand-copied drawing or simply their own memory. Whether through a copy or memory, there would always be a loss of detail.

Especially with hand-copied drawings; they could easily spread among the people. If information could be conveyed through such copies, it would be very insecure. For an ancient tomb with such complex anti-theft measures, they couldn't have made such a mistake. Moreover, how could they ensure that later generations would bring sketching tools to the tomb? Did all Zhang family members receive training in sketching from childhood, along with a clan rule that they must bring a full set of drawing tools when accompanying the burial?

Therefore, the message conveyed in this photo is not simply the image itself. The meaning it contains should be beyond the image. For example, when the Zhang family people of that time saw this relief, they would likely have a sudden insight and understand the secret within the relief. It's like the cartoon 'The Sheep Below Died'; when others see the picture, they focus only on the two pigeons and a dead sheep, but someone who knows the trick immediately understands the twist in the picture.

Focusing on the photo is useless; we need to understand the meaning of the image in the photo.