Chapter 55 Unlock the Password

“These chains extending from the bearing affect the mechanism’s controls inside. Only one chain starts the correct decoding, while the others all represent errors.” I counted a total of five chains extending out from there.

I was very surprised because I had never thought that there would be such a mature modular technology in ancient China. The most famous type was movable type printing. Modular technology could be used many times beyond any geographical limits, so the mechanism here could obviously be used anywhere.

I immediately thought of Poker-face. The Zhang family’s ancestors had set up such a clever mechanism considering Sichuan and Guangxi had different geological conditions, weather, and various factors on both sides. It was necessary to ensure that the interconnected mechanisms set up on both sides were stable enough and wouldn’t be damaged over a thousand years.

Since the entire mechanism was for their own children and grandchildren, it didn’t matter which part went wrong first. Any error could cause their death.

If you were an ordinary craftsman, you could only use clever techniques to design mechanisms suitable for both sides according to the respective conditions of the two places. But it was impossible to use such a thing in ancient times because the craftsmen at that time couldn’t figure out what would happen hundreds of years later. As a result, the mechanisms designed according to their respective geographical environment ended up being two completely different things.

But modularization was different. It ensured that you would have the same effect wherever you put it, no matter the environment. This was why KFC tasted the same wherever you went. Movable type printing ensured that a set of typefaces could be used repeatedly and were of high quality.

“So what?” Xiao Hua didn’t understand.

“The ancients had the habit of considering problems from a practical nature,” I said. “For example, with the former printing press, a book had to be engraved with a full page, and it couldn’t be used after it was finished. An ancient publisher was very upset with this and invented movable type printing so that he could fire half of the carvers and keep only a few of the best ones. No one modularizes for the sake of it; the ancients did it in anticipation of a great deal of repetitive work.”

If the craftsmen here used modules, then the only reason I could think of was that they didn’t want to design mechanisms separately for all the links. As a result, it was very likely that all the mechanisms here and those in Guangxi used the same things as this hornet’s nest. If Poker-face knocked on the stones, he might see the same thing as us.

The designers of Zhang Jialou designed everything and made these mechanisms ready before they even chose the building site. In this way, they only needed to select the right place, then smash a few holes and install these modules.

“I kind of know what you mean.” Xiao Hua obviously understood my way of thinking better than Fatty would have. “Fuck, you’ve gotta be shitting me. Are you saying that Zhang Jialou is moving?”

I nodded. “The biggest advantage of modularization is that it can be removed and taken away. If you look at the Yangshi Lei and other traces, the chains here are iron, but only this thing is bronze. It shows that throughout history, the Zhang family’s ancestor’s coffins had been placed in more than one location. The so-called Zhang Jialou will definitely be their final resting place.”

Xiao Hua gave me a meaningful smile, “I found another reason why Granny Huo asked me to bring you. To some extent, you’re also a little knowledgeable shit.”

I grinned, thinking that these words made it sound like he didn’t want me to be here before.

I squatted down and shined the flashlight at the thing, “I think Yangshi Lei is just a contractor. They helped the so-called Zhang family build the Zhang Jialou to house the coffins, but they didn’t participate any further.”

“The designer Lei Siqi’s old age was a matter of the Empress Dowager Cixi’s era. The Jinshan and Yinshan Mountains of the Great Qing Dynasty had already been spent. Lei Siqi’s family was large and had a wide range of friends. Whether they were sponsored by friends or took private jobs, they may have helped the Zhang family build a new ancestral grave.”

“Yes, based on how these ancient buildings were constructed in very strange and inaccessible places, maybe the Zhang family had to find the best craftsmen every time they built their ancestral graves.”

“So, if they were at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, then they might’ve had ties with Wang Zanghai.” Xiao Hua said.

I nodded. It was very likely so long as the family really had such a profound history. And I believed that with the development of transportation, the two places got further and further away from each other. Maybe in the beginning, the cave where the “key” was placed was only a mountain away from the Zhang family’s mass burial site, and then it gradually became a province. After that, it became the distance between Sichuan and Guangxi. If the descendants of the Zhang family were still there, they would probably move abroad next time.

This also explained another one of my doubts: I had been unable to determine which dynasty the things here belonged to. If our theory was correct, then years of renovation meant that some things would leave behind traces of several dynasties, which would basically be impossible to determine.

“Forget about that. If you’re so good, can you guess which of these chains is correct?” Xiao Hua asked me. “Or, do we just have to try one by one? There are five iron chains here. If we pull them wrong, we’ll activate the trap above and the pig will be shot into a hedgehog or something, but we’ll be fine here.”

In theory, all we had to do was pull all five chains and go out. But I didn’t know what kind of trap had been set up. If a boulder fell down and sealed us inside, it would be certain death.

“The general password right now will have error restrictions. Only if the errors exceed a certain number of times will there be a penalty program. But the ancients weren’t so kind, and this place hasn’t been used very frequently. So, once a mistake is made, it may be fatal. We have to know exactly which one to pull.”

“What’s the matter, Professor? (1)” Xiao Hua said as he looked at me. “I think I can open a class called ‘Academic Grave Robbery in the Mystic Nine.’ Let you give a few lessons.”

I thought it was kind of funny since I was sometimes really good at being a teacher. This was especially true whenever I thought about something because I always wanted to say it out loud immediately so that others could feel the same way. Fatty’s thoughts were impulsive and there wasn’t anyone else who accompanied me to analyze things, but Xiao Hua could. As a result, I said a little more than usual. I used to think it was embarrassing, but I didn’t think it was a big deal now after I had done it so often.

I looked at the whole hive, lost in thought. After a moment I asked him, “How do you make your rules?”

“How did you put it? Modularization? As you said, I’ve never seen such a thing before. In general, we find the traps that haven’t been triggered yet and then destroy them. Our rule is to see how the mechanism’s control works. So, if we do it my way, we’ll have to knock on this hornet’s nest.”

The whole bronze ball was completely sealed and couldn’t be opened. Moreover, it was full of water and we didn’t have much time to take risks. And that wasn’t even mentioning the fact that after opening it, we might completely destroy the operation inside. It would be just like that time when I was a child and opened my alarm clock and found that the gears had fallen all over the floor and couldn’t be recovered.

Xiao Hua helped me light the way as I tried to immerse myself in the water. I looked at the chains, noting that they were exactly the same. Presumably, neither the mechanism nor the correct chain had been used frequently.

“What do you think? All the dead people we saw above died at the hands of those hairs, and there was no sign of any trap being activated. If that’s the case, either the Mystic Nine did nothing but steal those ancient books, or the traps weren’t very destructive.” Xiao Hua said.

I knew what he meant, but I didn’t dare assume anything right now. “We can’t just guess. What if they really didn’t do anything?”

“Impossible, I know the Mystic Nine and those other people. Unless they met something very, very horrible here and were scared out of their minds, they wouldn’t let anything difficult stop them. But to scare them so bad… I can’t imagine what would do that. The most direct evidence is that there’s so much blood on the iron plate.”

Every time I thought about it, I kept feeling like something was wrong, “It doesn’t make sense. There have to be some terrible measures in place for such a tightly designed mechanism. The ancient password isn’t too complicated. If someone can make mistakes again and again, he’ll soon be able to figure out the correct one, and it would be meaningless to set up such a tightly designed mechanism. But what you said is also reasonable. If it’s just an ordinary control mechanism, the Mystic Nine wouldn’t be scared away. Granny Huo said that there were great changes and heavy losses here. If there are only a few snakes or some bugs or some darts falling from the rocks, it wouldn’t be impossible for them to handle such things on a large scale.”

Xiao Hua nodded: “For example, the black-haired corpse you burned, or even the hair outside. If it’s of that nature—”

“What happened to me in the Qaidam Basin would happen. They may have even burned the black hairs in these jars, then carefully moved them out one by one, sealed them into glass boxes, and packed them to the National Museum. So, any actual threat isn’t a threat to them. Even if a dinosaur killed more than a dozen people here, they would immediately shoot it to death. But almost everything in this cave is intact, so it’s clear to see that they didn’t use any barbaric methods. Why?”

“What’s your conclusion?” Xiao Hua was a little impatient.

“I can only assume some details now. For example, why didn’t they get rid of those jars full of black hair? They had so many people, so much time, and whatever weapons they wanted. They still didn’t do anything with all this, so there’s obviously only one possibility: they didn’t think it was necessary.” I said. “Our elders, these old men, never took these jars seriously.”

I could roughly imagine the scene at that time. They ignored the black hairs, and the jars didn’t show any signs of damage, which indicated that the incident they finally encountered had nothing to do with either one of those things.

By the same token, Granny Huo had said that what had happened here to cause them such heavy losses wasn’t a real threat, and shouldn’t be considered an accident.

Something that could make the Mystic Nine lose on such a large scale wasn’t physical, but spiritual.

The misfortune they encountered must be something they couldn’t understand. There was no defense without understanding.

“They must have prepared everything and then activated the mechanism, thinking they could handle it,” I said. “But whatever happened was too strange and different from what they were expecting.”

Xiao Hua was still confused so I gave him an example, “If you activate the mechanism and then a random arrow flies towards you, you can use a shield to block it. If a zombie is coming towards you, you can sweep it back with an AK-47. However, if something happens that you simply can’t understand, you can’t do anything about it. For example, say you activated the mechanism,” I paused, “and then you disappeared and never showed up again.”

I had heard before that a very strange disappearance occurred in the mountainous areas of Zhejiang. A group of forest rangers disappeared in the mountains, so the government sent people up to look for them. When three more people disappeared, the armed police and masses were mobilized. Others soon disappeared, never to be seen again, and blanket searches yielded no results. The old man in the mountain said that they were taken away by Mountain Granny. Eventually, the troops withdrew and went away.

At that time, if there really was a Granny as big as Ultraman, the grand mountain tours would’ve been wiped out. It was only with unexplainable events like this that it was possible to get people with abundant money and power to flinch.

“Of course, the actual situation may be even more bizarre,” I continued. “Jin Wantang had said that many people who were carried down were covered in blood and all of them ended up dying. But we haven’t confirmed it with the old lady, so we don’t know the real situation and can’t deduce more.”

“All right.” Xiao Hua smiled. “You said so much just to tell me not to rush in and touch the mechanism. I agree. But this doesn’t help our situation, and now you’ve made me too afraid to even try.”

The cold water was stinging the wound on my back and I couldn’t bear it any longer. I took a few steps back and could feel the burning pain behind me. The anesthetic was obviously beginning to wear off. At this time, I saw more than a dozen thinner chains extending out from the hive.

These chains were obviously connected to the final trigger mechanism and led to more than a dozen small holes in the cave wall. I believed that as long as some of the thick chains were pulled, some of these thin chains would surely be linked.

I looked at both sides and immediately realized what to do. It was actually very simple.

For a mechanism, there were only two choices: A was the correct step and the control to start the reward; B was the wrong step and the control to start the punishment.

There were three iron chains here that would be pulled by the bearing on the other side of the sequence, which was equivalent to a three-digit code. Then, the machine frame in this hive would move, pulling the thin iron chains that extend into the cave walls and starting the reward and punishment.

It was very simple. Most random tugs would be wrong and only the right tug would lead to the right sequence. Therefore, as long as we cut off all the thin iron chains, we could carry out endless experiments. We would pull the wrong sequence most of the time, but if we knew which ones were wrong, we could immediately find the correct one.

Although the sequence of one to five numbers was still somewhat cumbersome, this kind of physical work was nothing when compared with modern combination locks.

Xiao Hua flipped me off when I told him. I couldn’t believe he didn’t expect it, so I simply patted him on the shoulder.

The next step required physical strength and careful work. We numbered all the thin chains first, and then carefully broke them with a hacksaw, marking both ends of the chain to avoid confusion.

Then, we tried pulling them one by one in order, exactly the same as what I had said. The result was that most of the thin chains were pulled in the same sequence, with a total of twenty-three thin chains. The order of the pulling punishment was four, five, eight, twelve, and twenty-one.

In the end, we finally discovered a different order from this punishment sequence.

Xiao Hua recorded it, then reattached the chains with mountaineering buckles and tried again.

My heart leaped into my throat as I looked at the thin iron chain instantly being pulled. Then, we heard an ancient heavy sound coming from the cave wall.

It lasted for five or six minutes and then stopped. Xiao Hua and I looked at each other. We were both alive and nothing had happened, meaning we had succeeded. There must’ve been some changes in the stone chamber above.

<Chapter 54> <Table of Contents><Chapter 56>

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TN Notes:

(1) It’s really “Doctor Little Master Three” but that absolutely doesn’t flow, so I went with Professor lol.

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Updated 11/24/2020