Chapter 472: Yangshi Lei's Mirror Trick

This is actually a very simple trick, and it does originate from Persian magic. In fact, it uses a type of gemstone from the Western Regions. Mirrors made from this gemstone look particularly dull under sunlight, but under moonlight they are especially bright and shimmering, called moonstone.

The reason for this phenomenon is that this gemstone can only reflect a dim, bluish light. If the light is too strong, it becomes like an ordinary stone—the stronger the light, the lower the reflectivity.

This mirror in the water is a light concentrator. When the beam from our flashlight hits the mirror surface, the light is reflected vertically to the top of the cave, and then from the small mirrors around the ancient building model, it is reflected onto countless moonstone mirror pieces on the walls.

The light reflected from a single mirror piece is extremely faint, almost imperceptible, but when countless rays converge, they can reflect the image of the ancient building above onto the surface of the ancient mirror in the water. Because it is the superposition of countless faint reflections from 360 degrees, no matter where we stand, we won't cast a shadow on the mirror surface.

Since moonstone can only reflect bluish light, no matter what color of light we use, the image in the ancient mirror will appear as a bluish light source.

"The principle of a shadowless lamp," Fatty said. "I've seen it on the Science Channel. But then why did I see Little Brother and the others in the mirror?" Fatty said.

"There must be something more to this ancient building model," I said. "Yangshi Lei is truly impressive. This is Western technology. The technological development of the Qing dynasty has already allowed mechanisms to reach this level."

"Why? Is this crazy? Just making this thing to scare people?"

"Right now I can only guess what the purpose of this mirror is here. From several perspectives, this place is very likely the light collector of the Zhang Family Tower," I said. "This is a lighting system. Think about it—the Zhang Family Ancient Tower is deep inside the mountains. Assuming they were carrying out such a huge project within the mountain, the construction site would need a lot of lighting, and that lighting certainly couldn't have been torches, because in such a remote area, bringing in oil would consume a huge amount and become a massive manpower obstacle. These people were able to plant timber a thousand years in advance for a project a millennium later, so they couldn't have neglected the issue of lighting."

I did a quick mental calculation: if two hundred people worked here, it would take two to three years to complete, including logging. The lighting during those two years couldn't have relied entirely on oil.

I looked up. "At first, sunlight must have been able to shine down from above. It's very likely that the light-collecting mirrors set up on the mountaintop were damaged or hidden by them."

As I spoke, I walked toward the edge of the cave. Fatty asked what I was doing. I said, "It's rainy here. Sunlight is the most common, most lasting, but also the most unreliable light source. They must have had emergency lighting. These fire channels should be the emergency light source. When they needed light, they would ignite the fire channels here. There must be passages that can transmit the firelight into the cave where the Zhang Family Ancient Tower is located."

After I finished speaking, I waited for Fatty to praise me, to say I was amazing, thinking to myself that this reasoning was simply flawless. But Fatty didn't react; instead, he stared at the surrounding fire dragon walls.

I saw his expression change, and then I noticed that the flames on the fire dragon walls were all dimming at the same time.

"Did the oil burn out?"

"No, it's because oxygen is suddenly being consumed in large quantities." Fatty reached out to feel the air around us. "Damn it, what lighting? This place is definitely not for lighting."

I imitated him and felt a current of air surging.

"The oxygen here has been sucked out, and oxygen from the outer cave is being drawn in, like cupping, creating a huge pressure difference. All the holes here that connect to the outside will suck in air."

"But what's the use of that?" I said.

Fatty said, "I don't know, but I have a bad feeling."

As soon as he finished, I heard a series of chain-pulling sounds from the surrounding walls, as if some mechanism had been activated.

"We're done for," Fatty said. "Run!"

"What's wrong?" I yelled. He grabbed me and ran toward the exit, shouting, "The air pressure triggered the mechanism! All the mechanisms here are made of stone—too heavy, they have to be driven by air pressure!"

"This place is an air pump."

I understood instantly, but at that very moment, the pool beneath my feet suddenly stirred. After a few steps, I found I couldn't stand at all. The ground beneath me had turned into a slope, and at the same time all the water began to swirl. In the last instant I could still get some leverage, I lunged toward the stone beam. But my nails scraped hard against it, and I fell flat into the water. In an instant, I was swept into the current.

I was shocked: Damn, there's actually a mechanism like this at the bottom of the pool? Just as I was worrying about how deep this drop was and what was below, I had already landed on the ground, with my flashlight falling not far from me. Then the water rushing down from above kept hitting me, pressing my whole body into the earth.

I was battered and disheveled. Although the pool above wasn't deep, there were at least several tons of water. I kept thrashing about, barely managing to find a gap in the current to take a breath.

The half-suffocating state only ended when all the water had flowed out. By then I was exhausted, vomiting and coughing continuously, spraying all the water out of my trachea before I finally recovered.

Where the hell is this now? Wiping my face, I looked around. Pitch black. The flashlight had been washed far away. I felt the ground and found it wasn't stone, but sand. The sand had been washed into a large pit, and I was in the center of it.

It seemed to be a sand pit.

This fall seemed to be only two or three meters high. I climbed up, grateful that it didn't seem to be a deadly trap.

Just after taking two or three steps toward the flashlight's light, I felt something was wrong.

My foot sank into the ground. After three steps, I was being pulled into the earth beneath my feet.

I looked down and saw that underneath was all fine sand. The sand was extremely fine, completely unable to bear a person's weight, and I was sinking continuously.

I immediately realized—this was a quicksand trap. The most common trap in ancient tombs is quicksand. It has no elaborate design; they simply pour large amounts of quicksand around the tomb. Because quicksand is like water, if you dig into this quicksand layer, unless you remove all the quicksand, no matter how you dig, it's like digging in water—every time you dig, the quicksand flows back. At the same time, the tomb craftsmen would design trapdoors on the tomb floor. As soon as a tomb robber falls through the trapdoor, he immediately lands in the quicksand layer at the bottom of the tomb and quickly sinks.

Ghost Shadow said the passage was very safe. How could there be such a trap? While I was wondering, I lay flat on the quicksand to increase my surface area and slow the sinking, and at the same time I felt around my body.

I felt around for a while but didn't find anything useful. However, my eyes gradually adjusted to the light here. I saw Fatty not far away—he was in worse shape than me, plunging headfirst into the quicksand. Now only his two feet were still thrashing, trying to flip his head out, but the more he struggled, the faster he sank.

In this environment, I had learned not to despair. In the past, the more perilous the situation, the more likely I was to snatch victory from the jaws of danger.

But just as I was calmly and quickly thinking through the problem, I realized that this time was different from before.

There was no time for me to think.

Almost twenty seconds later, the sand had reached my neck. But almost at the same time, I felt something under my feet.

Was it the bottom of the quicksand pit? It was a hard object that stopped me from sinking any further. Fatty also rolled out, shouting loudly. I told him to come over, and he crawled desperately toward me. He only made it halfway before he too had only his head left above the sand and stopped.

I gasped for breath, trying hard to feel what was under my feet, wondering what was going on. Could it be that ancient people were all very short? Did they never imagine that modern people would be so tall, so they dug the trap too shallow? That was impossible. Although I believed that a quicksand trap only needed to bury a person a few centimeters deep to kill them, for safety's sake, such pits were usually dug extremely deep.

"Tianzhen, you okay?" Fatty yelled from the side, splashing toward me.

"I'm fine," I said. Just after I spoke, Fatty let out an "ouch" and stopped.

"What's wrong?"

"There's something in the sand," Fatty said. "Damn, it's poking me in the ribs."

As he spoke, I saw the sand in front of him shift.

"What is it? Could it be alive?"

"No, it's hard, like a rock. I'll dig it out," Fatty said. "Damn, it feels a bit weird."

Then the sand churned and a horn-shaped object emerged. Fatty gritted his teeth, obviously working hard under the sand. A moment later, the skull of some unknown animal popped out of the sand.

"It's a deer," Fatty said. "Looks like it was just as unlucky as us." He tossed the skull aside and continued crawling toward me.

"How could a deer end up here? Was this building built for Santa Claus?"

"Maybe it wandered in by mistake. There's a lot more." Fatty kept splashing, and soon pulled another bone out of the sand. I couldn't tell what part it was, but it was long, like a bone spike. "Damn, quite a few. They're really uncomfortable to lie on."

I imitated him and started digging in the sand. It was hard to move my hands, but fortunately the quicksand here was very fine, not like the sand on a beach that gets more compact the deeper you dig. Soon I also touched a hard object.

I grabbed that thing and pushed it up bit by bit. Soon a bulge formed in the sand pile in front of me. I gave a hard shove and pushed the bone out of the sand. The first thing I saw was a clump of hair.

I paused for a moment, then kept pushing upward. A hideous face emerged from the sand.

It was a dried human corpse. Seeing its faded army-green clothes, I realized it was probably a victim of some grave robbery.

"Hello, Santa," Fatty finally reached my side. "Looks like this is a mass burial pit. Don't stare—we need to figure a way out, or we'll end up as Santas too."

Our plan was to use the bones in the sand to connect strips of cloth torn from our clothes, making a bone frame, then cover it with anything we could to create something like a sled.

We had to make two pieces: first climb onto one, then onto the other. That way our contact area with the sand would be much larger, we wouldn't sink, and we could move across the sand.

After finishing, I realized how stupid this method was. We couldn't move straight; we had to move sideways.

Fatty pointed in a direction and said, "Let's head that way first. 'Let's look at the crab with a cold eye: see how long it can walk sideways.'"

"Idiot, that's not a good saying," I cursed. Then Fatty and I lay on the "sled." Fatty handed me the base on one side, I rolled to the other, and we both rolled over, repeating the process.

We kept rolling forward. Rolling and rolling, we suddenly reached a spot where the sand sank beneath us.