Chapter 449: Strangest Sight on Earth

In the next two hours, Fatty gave us a detailed account of their entire journey into the Zhang Family Ancient Building. Fatty's narration was extremely vivid; if I could record it in full, it would make a very fine short story, but obviously I don't have that much time, so I can only record the most critical parts.

The entrance was deep in the mountains over ten li from Demon Lake. But "over ten li" actually meant just one mountain away. Fatty pointed to the cliff opposite the lake and said it was on the other side of that cliff.

This entrance was a stone tunnel that slanted downward into the mountain. It was behind a large tree that grew almost horizontally across the mountain face, its trunk covered in vines. In fact, the gap between the trunk and the mountain was only wide enough for one person, so you had to squeeze into that crevice to find the entrance.

Fatty guessed that this oddly growing tree was specially planted to conceal the entrance. But Old Mrs. Huo said no, because such a tree on the mountain would be more conspicuous. It was more likely that the construction here had caused changes in the rock layers; the tree probably hadn't been like that originally.

The most likely possibility was that nearby construction had loosened the rock and soil here. After the craftsmen left, part of the tree's roots broke off and lay against the mountain rock, but the tree didn't die, and over time it gradually formed this sight.

But they didn't dwell on it, as it wasn't significant. They cut away some of the vines on that tree and finally found the entrance.

After they entered from the entrance, most of the mechanisms they encountered were of a blocking nature, such as extremely thick stone walls. These mechanisms all had very strange ways of opening; they used the passwords we provided to solve them, but after opening them, the passages between each blocking mechanism were very calm, so calm it was unbelievable.

They kept walking inward; the tunnel was so narrow they could barely crawl on all fours. This was clearly a method and habit used in digging grave tunnels. The basic shape of the entire tunnel was square, and there were many discarded, decayed, cracked rolling logs on the floor. Fatty thought they were marks left by locals when dragging coffins.

The change occurred at the third mechanism, the one for which we had provided the wrong password at Four Girls Mountain in Sichuan. Thinking carefully, it was actually very strange, because Fatty said that even if they entered the wrong mechanism, they could still open that stone door. Nothing fatal happened.

Even stranger, as they walked through the entire tunnel, they saw almost no traces of any mechanisms set up inside. This was first noticed by Poker-face, who had deep understanding of all tombs and mechanisms, so his judgment was credible. That is, those door-opening codes seemed to be just decorations; their only function was to move the stone doors.

This was very strange. After all, they had gone to such great effort to set up such a complex password in Four Girls Mountain thousands of kilometers away. Yet when it came time to actually use the password, it was just a decoration. That didn't make any sense. Faced with this situation, they became even more uneasy, because it implied two possibilities. The first possibility was that there really were no mechanisms here, and they had been overly cautious. The second was that the mechanism setup here was beyond Poker-face's experience.

Soon they realized that the situation they encountered was definitely not the first. But whether it was the second, they weren't sure.

They passed through the stone door with the wrong password and continued traveling in the low tunnel for another one or two kilometers, when they noticed something was wrong.

The moment something went wrong, Fatty was the first to see a very strange glimmer of light ahead. He thought they had finally reached the Zhang Family Ancient Building and was extremely excited. But they still had to approach cautiously. That hundred-meter stretch took them almost three hours to grope their way through. Only when they reached that glimmer did they realize everything was not as they imagined—it turned out to be sunlight.

Fatty pushed aside the vines at that spot and walked out. They found that they had actually walked out; outside was a hidden valley. It turned out that the end of the tunnel was also an exit cut into the cliff rock. That feeling I could almost experience myself, like participating in a very cruel talent show, getting first place, only to find the prize was just a certificate.

Even if the prize was a pile of shit, it would be easier to accept than this. By the same reasoning, even if they found the tunnel completely sealed at the end, it would be better than strangely walking out. They crawled out of the cave, climbed along the mountainside to the top, and found they were still near the mountain where the entrance was. Many sights they had seen before. This seemed incredible to them—after all that trekking, they had simply walked out. They thought the stone path that was supposed to lead to the Zhang Family Ancient Building would be like a subway—underground a subway, above ground a light rail—so they decided to keep going.

They searched the mountain for a very long time and found no other entrance. Obviously, if they followed this reasoning, the tunnel marked on the Yangshi Lei map leading to the Zhang Family Ancient Building was almost just a straight stone path. Yet it led to no ancient building at all. Old Mrs. Huo believed this couldn't possibly be a deception; something had to be wrong. They crossed mountains and ridges, returned again to the entrance behind the big tree, and started following the instructions I had written for them.

They passed through each mechanism one by one again. This time the result was even more incredible: they still walked out, but the exit was on a different mountain.

It was at the foot of a mountain, with a very beautiful waterfall beside it.

Something must be wrong somewhere, they told themselves. They also realized at this point that it might be because the password we gave was wrong, leading to this result.

At that time, Fatty also thought of the issue we had considered back in Sichuan—for instance, could it be some kind of error protection mechanism? After all, anyone who opens this ancient tomb could possibly misremember the password. If due to some mistakes in the Zhang family's inheritance, or because of wars or even more social factors, part of the password's family tradition was lost, at least their descendants wouldn't be killed by the ancestors' mechanisms for wrongly triggering them.

Given the customs of relocating graves and group burials in the Zhang Family Ancient Building, there would be a lot of work moving bodies back, so such errors were possible. Therefore, the builders of the Zhang Family Ancient Building must have considered this. Would they have used certain soft mechanisms as a kind of error protection to avoid accidentally killing descendants?

And on the other hand, because the password we provided was wrong, they triggered a mechanism in the tunnel that diverted the original passage to the Zhang Family Ancient Building into another passage, leading them out of the tunnel. That was indeed very possible. But this suspicion was later rejected, for a reason of probability. Old Mrs. Huo said, if that were the case, then this mechanism would be meaningless; everyone could keep trying, and even if wrong, there would be no danger.

It was the same as the mechanism problem I encountered at Four Girls Mountain; it was a logic problem. When I heard this, I almost immediately guessed what would happen next: "The number of times—the key lies in the number of wrong attempts."

"Right!" Fatty nodded. "Damn it, I told them that at the time, but we were helpless. Old Mrs. Huo said, we're all alive, and the stone door can be opened, so that proves the password must be correct. We must have overlooked something while passing through the tunnel. So we turned back again."

It was this return that caused things to change in a way that was impossible to understand.