Chapter 43 Yangshi Lei’s Mirror Magic

This was actually a very simple trick that originated from Persian magic and used a gem from the western regions. Mirrors made of this gem were dim in the sunlight but especially bright in the moonlight, so they were called moonstones.

The reason for this phenomenon was that this gem could only reflect dim cyan light. If the light was too strong, it would be the same as stone. In other words, the stronger the light, the lower the reflectivity.

The mirror in the water was a light concentrator. When our flashlights shined on the mirror’s surface, the light was vertically reflected to the top of the cave and then reflected by the small lenses around the model of the ancient building to countless moonstone lenses on the wall.

The reflected light of a single lens was extremely weak and almost imperceptible, but the accumulation of countless light rays could make the ancient mirror in the water reflect the appearance of the ancient building above. Since it was the superposition of numerous weak reflection points at 360 degrees, we wouldn’t form a shadow on the mirror no matter where we were.

And since moonstone could only reflect cyan light, the image in the ancient mirror would be cyan no matter what color light we used.

“It’s the principle of a shadowless lamp,” Fatty said. “I’ve seen the Science Discovery Channel. But why did I see everyone in the mirror before?”

“There must be something strange with this model,” I said. “As expected, Yangshi Lei is impressive. This is western technology. With the development of science and technology in the Qing Dynasty, it’s surprising that mechanisms could’ve been brought to this point.”

“What’s it for? The designer must be crazy. Did he do it just to scare people?”

“I can only use these aspects to guess what the purpose of this mirror is here. First of all, this is probably the Zhang Jialou’s lighting device.” I continued, “It’s a lighting system. Just think, the building is deep in the mountains and the site must need a lot of light if such a huge project is to be carried out. They couldn’t use torches, because it would take too much manpower to bring grease to such a remote area, let alone continue construction. These people planned to plant trees nearby, knowing that the wood would be needed for the project in nearly a thousand years. So, they couldn’t have failed to consider the lighting problem.”

I did some calculations and figured that it would take two to three years to complete the construction of this place if they used two hundred people. The lighting during that time couldn’t have depended solely on grease.

I looked up at the top of the cave, “At first, the sun would definitely shine down from the top, so it’s likely that they damaged or hid the lighting mirror set on the top of the mountain.”

When Fatty asked me why, I went to the edge of the cave and said, “It’s often rainy here. Sunshine is the most common, lasting, and unreliable light source, so they must’ve had an emergency light source. These fire channels should be the emergency light sources. When they needed illumination, they would ignite the channels here. So, there must be a passage nearby that sends the firelight into the cave where the Zhang family’s ancient building is.”

When I finished, I waited for Fatty to praise me and tell me that I was good and that my conjecture was impeccable. But Fatty didn’t respond at all. Instead, he looked around at the fire dragon on the wall.

Right as I saw his expression change, I also noticed that the flames on the fire dragon dimmed.

“Has the oil burned out?”

“No, it’s the oxygen that’s suddenly being consumed in large quantities.” Fatty stretched out his hand to feel the air flowing around him. “Damn it, what kind of lighting? This definitely isn’t for lighting.”

I copied him and held out my hand, feeling the air current surging.

“The oxygen here was consumed, so now the oxygen in the cave outside is being pumped in and will form a big pressure difference. It’s like a suction cup. All the holes here that are connected with the outside world will draw in air.”

“But what for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Fatty said. “But I have a bad feeling.”

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

“It’s over,” Fatty said. “Run!”

“What’s the matter?” I shouted. He grabbed me and ran to the exit while shouting, “The air pressure has activated a trap! The mechanism here is all heavy stone, so it has to be driven by air pressure! This place is an air pump.”

I immediately understood, but at this moment, the pool under my feet was suddenly moving. I hadn’t even run a few steps before I realized that I couldn’t stand at all. A slope appeared below me and at the same time, all the water began to swirl. At the last moment, I had a sudden burst of strength and threw myself at the stone beam. As a result, I severely scraped my fingernails and my whole body was thrown into the water, instantly getting caught up in the current.

I was in awe. Damn it, there’s such a trap under this pool?! As soon as I started to worry about how high the drop was and what was underneath, I fell to the ground. My flashlight landed not far from me. Then, the water came rushing down from above, pushing my whole body further onto the ground.

I was overwhelmed. Although the pool above wasn’t deep, there was at least a few tons of water. I kept rolling around, barely able to find a space to breathe in the rushing current.

This state of semi-asphyxiation wasn’t relieved until all the water had run out. I was exhausted. As I vomited and coughed incessantly, all the water in my windpipe was sprayed out, which felt like a relief.

Where the hell was I? My flashlight had been washed far away, so all I could do was wipe my face and look around. But all I saw was darkness. I touched the ground and found that it wasn’t stone, but sand. It had been washed out of a big pit, and I was in the middle of it.

It seemed to be a sandpit.

The fall was only two or three meters high, and I was glad I didn’t fall into a fatal trap as I struggled to get up.

After two or three steps in the flashlight’s direction, however, I felt as if something was wrong.

The moment I put my foot down, it sank into the ground. And after three more steps, I found that I was dragged further down.

When I looked down, I found that the pit was full of a type of sand that was too fine to bear people’s weight and I was sinking further.

I immediately reacted—it was a quicksand trap!

The most common trap in ancient tombs was the quicksand trap. It had no elaborate design and just required you to pour a large amount of quicksand around the tomb. And because quicksand was the same as water, the sand would surge back no matter how you dug into it. At the same time, the ancient tomb’s craftsmen would design a turnover board on the floor. So, as long as grave robbers fell onto it, they would immediately fall into the quicksand layer at the bottom of the tomb and soon be asphyxiated.

Ghost said that the channel was very safe, so how can there be such a trap here? I wondered as I lay on the quicksand, distributing my weight so as to decrease the rate at which I sunk. 

I felt around my body, searching for half a day but not finding anything useful. Instead, my eyes gradually adapted to the light here and I saw Fatty not far away. He was worse off than me: he had landed headfirst into the quicksand. His two feet were kicking furiously as he tried to get his head out, but the more he struggled, the more he sank.

I had learned not to despair in this kind of environment. In the past, the more dangerous the environment was, the more I was able to win in the end.

However, just as I was calmly and quickly thinking about the problem, I found that this time was different from before.

This time, I had no time to think.

It had only taken twenty seconds before the sand almost reached my neck. But at this time, I found that I had stepped on something.

Was it the bottom of the quicksand trap?

Whatever it was, it was something hard that had stopped me from sinking. Fatty had finally got his head out with a triumphant shout, so I asked him to come over. He tried desperately to crawl to me but had only made it halfway before only his head was sticking out of the sand and he had to stop.

I was panting heavily as I tried to feel what I was stepping on. What’s going on? I asked myself. Were ancient people so short? Did the ancients not expect modern people to grow so tall, so they dug the trap too shallow?

Impossible. Although I believed that quicksand was the kind of trap that could kill a person so long as it was just a few centimeters above the head, such traps were usually dug very deep just to be on the safe side.

“Mr. Naïve, are you ok?” Fatty shouted from the side as he tried to leap towards me.

“It’s nothing,” I said. I had hardly finished speaking when Fatty let out an “ouch” and stopped moving.

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s something in the sand,” Fatty said. “Fuck, it’s hitting my lungs.” As he spoke, I saw the sand in front of him turn over.

“What the hell? Is it alive?”

“No, it’s hard like stone. I’ll pull it out,” Fatty said. “Shit, it feels a little weird.”

With that said, the sand parted and a horned object emerged. Fatty gritted his teeth, apparently straining under the sand. After waiting for a while, the skull of an unknown animal finally emerged.

“It’s a deer,” Fatty said. “It seems that he was also a poor devil like us.” Then he threw the skull away and moved towards me.

“How could a deer come to this place? Is Santa Claus buried in this building?”

“Maybe it broke in by mistake. There are many more.” Fatty continued to flop around and soon pulled a bone out of the sand. I didn’t know what part it was from, but it was very long like a bone spur. “Shit, there’s quite a lot. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

I was also flopping in the sand like him. It was hard to move my hands, because unlike the sand on the beach, the quicksand here was very fine. The deeper you dug, the stronger it became. Soon, I also felt something hard.

I grabbed the thing, pushed it up bit by bit, and soon a bulge in the sand swelled up in front of me. I gave it a hard push and the bone emerged out of the sand. The first thing I saw was a mass of hair.

I was stunned for a moment and then continued to push it up to the surface until a sinister face emerged from the sand.

It was the mummified body of a man. I saw the faded green army clothes on him and realized that he should be the victim of a grave robbery.

“Hello, Santa Claus.” Fatty finally came to my side. “It looks like this is a mass grave. Don’t look. We have to think of something; otherwise, we’ll become Santa Claus.”

Our method was to use the cloth strips torn off from our clothes to connect the bones from this sandpit and form a bone frame. We then covered it with anything that could be used as a cover in order to make something similar to a sled.

We had to make two pieces so that we could first climb to the top of one piece and then climb to the top of the other piece. In this way, the contact area between us and the sand would be much larger, and we could move forward instead of sinking down.

After we quickly finished, I found that our plan was silly—we couldn’t go straight and could only walk sideways.

Fatty pointed in one direction and said, “Go over there first. We’ll try crab-walking and see how long we can run amuck.”

“Stupid, that’s not a nice thing to say,” I scolded as I lay down on the “sled” with Fatty. He handed me the chassis on one side and I turned to the other side, then we both rolled over and repeated the same process.

The entire way forward, we were really rolling. We rolled and rolled until we suddenly arrived at a place where the sand sank down.

I was shocked and thought, shit, can this quicksand not hold anything with such a large surface area? But it wasn’t quicksand at all, it was rogue sand. I immediately heard a series of sounds that sounded like stones rubbing and crashing against each other under the sand.

<Chapter 42> <Table of Contents><Chapter 44>

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Updated 3/27/2021