Chapter 469: Ancestor of Miluotuo

What made my hair stand on end was that the thing was too huge—a massive fleshy ball, pitch black with no facial features. All we could see was that its body was covered with something like black cats, like a giant moist fleshy ball plastered with black fur.

Only half of it was peeking over the edge of the entrance, like a shy person secretly watching me.

Before I could get a closer look, Fatty yelled, "Damn it, run like hell!" and the flashlight beam turned away.

We practically stumbled and crawled deeper into the tunnel. After a few steps, there was another vertical turn, and suddenly we burst out into a cave.

Fatty shone his flashlight and saw a pool inside the cave. He dashed over a few steps, then turned back and said to me, "Right here, look at the mirror!"

I had no time to look; I noticed there was a stone door at the cave entrance and immediately said to Fatty, "Help me block this first!"

Fatty came over and together we pushed the door shut with all our strength. After it was closed, he asked me, "What the hell was that thing?"

"The ancestor of the Miluotuo," I said, thinking that nothing is surprising in this place.

We waited behind the door for a long time, but there was no movement from the door.

"The ancestor is still reasonable," Fatty said, and wanted to open a crack to look. I quickly pulled him back: "No, maybe the ancestor is old and slow."

We both crouched behind the door, pressing our ears against it, but there was no sound from the other side.

"What now?" Fatty asked.

I thought to myself that we had only seen its head; the passage was very narrow, and I didn't know if it could get in—maybe it was stuck at the entrance—so I said, "Stay put and adapt to changes. If it's behind the door, we're not sure we can kill it. Let's wait and not move for now."

Fatty thought for a moment: "Fine, then come with me. Let me show you something strange I saw."

I glanced at the door, then followed him along the stone beam deeper inside. Soon he shone his flashlight into the water, and I immediately saw the scene he had mentioned.

It was a huge mirror, six or seven meters wide. When the flashlight shone down, I suddenly saw the ancient building inside the mirror, deathly white, but not as clear as Fatty had described—many details were indistinct.

The Zhang family ancient building in the huge mirror underwater was as still as a painting. The entire building was bathed in a dark blue-green light, with no sign of any flashlight flickering.

Fatty pointed to a spot and said, "Right here. Earlier I saw them resting here."

Now there was nothing there—let alone seeing anyone else, not even a flashlight beam.

Could their lights have run out of power? I thought, but I knew that was unlikely.

Poker-face and the others had two types of flashlights: besides the standard "Wolf Eye" lights, they also had hand-crank dynamo flashlights.

Although these flashlights couldn't match the "Wolf Eye" in range and intensity, they had no battery issues—as long as you had hand strength, you could use them for thousands of hours.

This setup aimed to maximize lighting time: using the "Wolf Eye" during exploration, and the hand-crank flashlight during rest and camping.

This hand-crank flashlight also had a reserve battery; you could fully charge it in the time it takes to jerk off, and it would last forty minutes to an hour.

With this allocation of power sources, plus spare batteries, glow sticks, and cold flares, we could extend the exploration lighting time by more than a hundred times, making it no problem to stay in the cave for ten days or half a month.

When the shopkeeper explained the hand-crank flashlight's battery to Fatty, Fatty joked that if you calculated by the time it took him to jerk off, he could overcharge the flashlight. "Look how quiet it is inside. Little Brother and the others couldn't have been dissolved by strong alkali, could they?" Fatty muttered. "That damned freak was right—we're too late."

I shook my head and said, "I won't give up until I see evidence that they're dead. Even if they've dissolved, I'll find their bones and bring them back."

Besides, the real situation might be that they're deep inside the building where we can't see them, or they've turned off the power.

Because they can do a lot even with just these cold lights."

"Makes sense. That old hag is pretty stingy," Fatty said. "Maybe their situation is bad and they can't be bothered to jerk off to charge the flashlights, or they're just sleeping."

"So let's not overthink it now. You study this mirror first, Comrade College Student. You've seen a lot, so give it a diagnosis. I really feel it's too damn eerie."

I walked around the mirror a few steps and noticed it was fastened to the stone beam with steel nipple-like rivets. Its overall shape was like a round fan.

The mirror was entirely made of steel, with gleaming brass that shone like polished gold leaf, and its sides were curled up. In fact, it looked more like a huge water basin submerged underwater.

Or, I thought more aptly, it looked like a giant hotpot. The edge of the mirror was carved with patterns of hundreds of beasts. The style made it impossible to date, but it was clear they weren't cast—someone had carved them with silk-thread fine engraving.

If the surface weren't so smooth, I would think this thing was more like a bronze water basin than a mirror.

I ran my fingers over the carvings and quickly realized my first impression was wrong.

This thing wasn't steel; it was a gilt bronze mirror. I don't know what material the mirror surface was, but it had been plated with extremely smooth gold leaf, allowing it to maintain such high reflectivity for so long.

It was right up my alley. Gilt wares were my specialty.

The craftsmanship of the mirror surface was breathtaking. If you stood above the water, the mirror's smoothness almost merged with the water's surface.

When you moved in the water, the ripples would cause the underwater mirror to ripple too. These ripples, reflected by the flashlight onto the surrounding cave walls, made the entire cave seem to undulate—a very gorgeous and dreamlike scene.

I dove to the bottom and used a waterproof "Wolf Eye" to look at the back of the mirror. On the back of the mirror were over a dozen huge mirror knobs, forming a massive star chart. In the center of the star chart were many ancient seal-script characters, densely packed, and I had no idea what they said.

The outer edge had many patterns similar to the Eight Trigrams, enclosing all the other patterns within.

I dove back and forth several times, trying to make out the content of the ancient seal-script characters, but I soon realized it was impossible. The brushwork used for these ancient seal-script characters was particularly strange.

I found them very difficult to identify, only able to recognize words like Heaven, Earth, Fortune, Longevity, Spring, and Stream. But it was hard to connect them into a coherent passage.

I surfaced and climbed onto the beam, having already confirmed that the mirror itself definitely had no hidden mechanisms. The mirror was only as thick as a palm, leaving little room to install any machinery.

If there was anything suspicious inside, the only possibility would be that the mirror contained a huge LCD screen connected to surveillance cameras at the Zhang family ancient building.

But judging from the mirror's antiquity, it should date back to before the Ming and Qing dynasties. Not only was an LCD screen impossible, even glass mirror lenses had not yet appeared.

This object was largely an antique, just like those bronze mechanisms discovered in the cliff cave of Four Girls Mountain. They were all brought out from the previous Zhang family building.

The hard fixtures couldn't be moved over, and the soft fixtures couldn't be swapped out often—after all, many techniques could no longer be replicated, which was understandable.