Chapter 470: Mystery in the Ancient Mirror

Fatty was right. At this moment, the basic knowledge I had learned before was crucial. Many people, if they didn't understand basic physics, would only pay attention to how the building appeared in the mirror.

But I knew that the most bizarre aspect of this mirror was not here at all.

For a mirror to reflect something, it needs a light source. Without a light source, the mirror has no reflection points.

But the ancient building in the mirror was shrouded in a pale cyan light. This light was not from our light source, but a light source emitted by the ancient building itself.

The light source came from inside the mirror.

That is to say, as long as I turned off the flashlight, the only light source in the entire cave would be this cyan light. The cyan light would shine through the mirror, casting a blue gloom all around.

But when we first entered, the cave was pitch black. No light radiated from the mirror at all.

"Turn off the lights," I said to Fatty, and immediately turned off my own flashlight.

The entire cave suddenly went dark. According to normal physics, at this point the cyan light in the mirror should have become the main light source.

But now the entire mirror went dark instantly, and the cave became absolute darkness. Only the glow-in-the-dark logo on Fatty's flashlight was glowing.

"Click." The flashlight turned on again.

Shining the light on the mirror again, the inside was still as we had seen before. The bleak ancient building was as silent as a fossil.

Fatty asked me what I was doing. I roughly explained my theory to him. He couldn't understand it, but he understood the purpose of my experiment, so he said to me, "Just give me the conclusion, Tianzhen. Don't stand on ceremony with an illiterate like me."

"This means this phenomenon has nothing to do with the propagation of light. As long as a light source shines on the mirror's surface, it activates and displays an image.

But as far as I know, ancient China did not have photosensitive technology.

In ancient Chinese records, mechanisms that used light to activate generally relied on animals' phototaxis; they were short-lived mechanisms, usually handicrafts used for amusement."

I said, "It's a good thing ancient China didn't have this technology, otherwise in ancient tombs you'd have to grave-rob in the dark—lighting a torch would trigger the mechanism and wipe everyone out."

"You might as well have said nothing," Fatty said, stroking his chin. "Aren't you just telling people that this damn mirror is awesome, and you don't have a clue how it works?"

"That's different. I'm reasoning backwards from the principles, which can save a lot of unnecessary lines of thought. Let me think. I believe a great proletarian warrior won't be defeated by supernatural forces. Every phenomenon has a natural phenomenon behind it."

His words annoyed me a bit, so I told him to shut up.

"You stole my line," Fatty muttered. "Fine, you think. I'll light one up." With that, he shrank back onto the beam and lit a cigarette.

I chuckled. Finally, I had gotten one over on Fatty. Thinking this, I turned my gaze back to the mirror's surface.

To be honest, I really did think this mirror was incredible, but based on my understanding of some ancient Chinese craftsmanship techniques, it must still be comprehensible to us.

Some skilled craftsmen in ancient China had craftsmanship that reached a level of uncanny workmanship, but they were still craftsmen, not true gods or ghosts.

Therefore, what our eyes see often seems like a miracle, but when explained, it often boils down to just four words: "trick of the eye."

First, I needed to consider: if I were to make this mirror myself, what method would I use? I slid my flashlight across the mirror's surface.

Watching the points of light, I suddenly thought of an experimental method my teacher once mentioned during lab work.

A phenomenon must have a starting point and an ending point. Sometimes the starting point and ending point themselves are not important; what matters is how the starting point reaches the ending point. By constantly changing parameters and carefully observing the changes, you can learn many clues.

Back then, Fatty and the others had used this very method to enter this place through that strange stone path.

I raised my flashlight and began to twist the light's aperture. Before, we only had two parameters: bright and dark. Now I wanted to see how the mirror changed from brightest to darkest.

Fatty turned off his flashlight to cooperate. I slowly dimmed my flashlight, and immediately noticed that the cyan light inside the mirror was also slowly dimming, and the degree of dimming matched my flashlight's dimming exactly.

I then slowly brightened the light source, and the cyan light in the mirror also slowly brightened.

I couldn't help but smile. My earlier judgment about the mirror's sophistication vanished instantly. I immediately said to Fatty, "See, it's not that magical. The cyan light in this mirror is just the light from our flashlights. When our flashlights are bright, the inside is bright; when our flashlights are dim, the inside is dim."

Fatty, who could also see clearly from the beam, nodded. "Our flashlights can go through this mirror and shine into that building?"

I shook my head. Although our flashlights were "Wolf Eyes" that could blind a person with direct illumination, it was impossible for them to light up such a large building.

I still couldn't fully deduce the real situation, but since the light problem in the mirror was this simple, I felt that the other aspects wouldn't be too difficult either. Second Uncle taught me: look at the purpose of everything. From the purpose, you can deduce many aspects that you wouldn't think of from a direct approach. That was the most useful lesson I learned from the older generation.

I rubbed my legs, numb from the cold pool water, and began to think about the purpose of placing this mirror here.

"Do you think this mirror placed here has anything to do with feng shui?" I asked Fatty.

Fatty thought for a moment and said, "Some household feng shui uses Bagua mirrors, but this one is way too big. If this mirror were hung on a balcony, it could shake planes out of the sky.

You'd be watching planes fall from the balcony all day long. An Airbus today, a Boeing tomorrow—how lively."

"First you fly a plane, then you shake it—are you hooked on airplanes or what? We don't have time. Think seriously."

Fatty took a few last drags, stubbed out the cigarette butt, tossed it into the water, then lit another one. "If I could have figured it out, I would have ages ago, and then I would have charged into the ancient building."

We'd have rescued the young man and the rest of them by now, and we'd be eating Peking duck in Beijing. Instead, we're here sucking on cigarette butts. You do some thinking—don't rely on me.

"Aren't you the feng shui master? Why ask me?" I said to him.

He shook his head. "Hell, there's no way I can handle this deep stuff. Besides, back then you didn't know anything, so I could talk nonsense. Now that you've gotten smarter, I have to be more careful."

I thought to myself, Damn, so all that stuff you said earlier was bullshit. Fatty went on, "I don't think studying feng shui will help. Feng shui—if you get it, you get it at a glance."

"If you don't get it, you'll stare until you're blind and still not understand. If you really want my opinion, I can tell you that my first reaction was that it was a reflection from above. But look up there."

He pointed the "Wolf Eye" flashlight toward the ceiling. The cavern's vertical depth was very deep. You could see it was full of rubble up there, but not very clearly.

I pulled out a cigarette, snatched Fatty's lighter, lit it, then stuffed his lighter back into his pocket. I followed his flashlight beam as it swept back and forth across the ceiling.

"There's nothing up there but rocks. That's why I think, hell, this building really is inside a mirror."

Fatty stepped onto the mirror in a couple of strides. "If the image in the mirror were reflected from up there, walking on the mirror would block it. But it doesn't."

"Compared to you college types, even though I'm not educated, I understand basic principles."

I looked at the rocks above, then at Fatty posing around on the mirror, back and forth several times. I felt that what Fatty said was absolutely correct, but something seemed off to me.

Maybe it was because there had been so much deception and scheming around me lately that I'd developed a sensitive intuition for flaws in things. I suddenly felt that this cave wasn't rigorous enough.

It was like a magic trick. Speaking of magic, the most impressive kind is street magic—performed right in front of you with no cover.

A master magician often seems to have supernatural abilities. That's the ultimate.

Then there's stage magic. But many of the basic routines in stage magic require fabric drapes or boxes. The principle is to make people think that using fabric or boxes doesn't change the impossibility of the trick.

But because we know most magic is illusions and traps, a smart person will immediately realize that the trick must be behind the fabric or the box. It's just cleverly designed—we just don't know how.

Right now, it feels like stage magic. If the craftsmen who designed this place wanted to prove that the Zhang Family Ancient Building is inside a mirror,

then shouldn't they have chosen a lower cave roof? That way, all we'd have to do is look up and we'd see that the ceiling couldn't be tampered with either.

But this ceiling is too high to see clearly. We basically judged that there was likely nothing up there,

just rocks. But the height makes me think that if there's even one ten-thousandth of a chance, the mechanism must be hidden on the ceiling of the cave.

Because our surroundings are too obvious—there's no other possibility.

So the possibility must be somewhere we haven't seen yet.

Of course, maybe it's just my momentary illusion. If someone told me, 'You have to expose the stage magician's trick, or you'll lose your friends,'

the first thing I'd do is kick over the magician's box to see if the trick is inside.

"We need to climb up and take a look," I said to Fatty.