“Eleven mechanisms? Do they have to be in order?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s safer to go in order.” Tang Song replied.
“So, did you write the coordinates on the piano?”
Tang Song nodded: “The first room is used to separate people. As long as one of you touched the mechanism on that coordinate, then the room would change. Unless you held on to each other, you would definitely be separated, which was what I was trying to do.”
After being out in the field a lot, I found that people in this business generally didn’t like to move separately.
I thought about it and lit another cigarette. “Did you get hurt when you were here before?”
She shook her head and gave me a defiant look: “I have pretty good skills.”
I nodded and pointed to the surrounding walls. “Then you’re responsible for destroying all these pictures with me. After that, I’ll tell you my plan.”
“Do you have a plan?” She was surprised.
I nodded, “I have a perfect plan you’ll be satisfied with.”
We went to the lowest room, which was Xiao Hua’s inner warehouse. Based on the design drawing I just saw, I couldn’t figure out where this room was now. Had it sunk into that black shadow that was on the previous design drawing, or was there some other smoke screen? The stairwell was real, however, and so was the picture above, which had to be destroyed first.
There was no mechanism on the bookshelf closest to the stairs, so it was relatively safe. We untied the white cloth from the wares and looked for any tools that could be used. Soon, I found an ancient double-edged sword.
According to the record on the white cloth, this ancient sword came from a riverbed in the southern part of the Taklimakan Desert, and had been unearthed from a merchant’s wooden tomb. The merchant was from the Tang Dynasty and wore an outfit from the Central Plains. He died during a journey and was buried by the local people. His only funerary object was this ancient sword, which had a very dull edge. It may have been the reason why it was discarded, but a discerning person would know at a glance that the sword’s handle was very similar to a copper cipher ring. Turning the ring and putting the specific symbols in a row would activate the machine. I twisted the cipher ring according to the instructions on the white cloth, and a blade poked out from the other end of the handle.
It was a reverse blade that was about half a meter long and made of iron. Such gadgets often appeared after trading with the western regions, and most of them were just skilled craftsmen showing off their skills. They actually didn’t have much historical value, but if one was an isolated product and the only one in history, then it often sold for a good price in the private collection community.
The reverse blade had to be sealed and protected. I could feel the cold edge of the blade after it stuck out of the hilt, and it gave off a very dangerous feeling whenever I looked at it.
If we used this thing to destroy the image on the wall, I estimated that it would take about three days to completely destroy it and make it unrecognizable.
I pointed to the gas lamp outside. “Use this gas lamp, break the lampshade, pull the wick out, and burn the wall.”
“It’s just the two of us for such a big project? What about that guy?”
I said: “Let him rest. Let’s not disturb him. This matter has nothing to do with him in the first place.”
Tang Song went out, and I held her legs so that she could reach the gas lamp. She broke the lampshade and pulled the wick out from inside. The gas pipes were all open lines, and there was a vertical pipeline in the middle of the floor that the pipes of each floor were connected to.
All the pipes had been fixed on the cement walls with retaining rings, so I pulled them out. After that, I asked Tang Song to send a message to Xiao Hua, asking him to turn on the gas lamp switch.
The gas lamps lit up one by one. The lamp light mainly depended on heating the lampshade made of thorium dioxide, so once the lampshade was removed, the flame’s light was very weak. I turned the regulating valve, and the flame became bigger, so I told Tang Song to start burning the wall. I ran to the next floor to repeat the process with another gas lamp.
After doing this for three or four hours, I managed to pull down all the gas lamps on the staircase. The walls were completely blackened on both sides, and Tang Song and I were sweating profusely.
“Done?” She asked me.
I didn’t know if it was done or not, because the gas lights could hardly illuminate the area once the lampshades had been removed. I removed a few lamps, and several floors became dark. I could still make out some fluorescence on the walls, but the lines had been burned beyond recognition.
Even if we missed a few, I didn’t have the strength to deal with them. The whole floor was burning hot, leaving only the picture of the structure behind the bronze door, which I had kept. We walked in front of the picture again.
“What should we do next?” She asked me. We were both holding our injured hands after burning our fingers to some extent during the operation just now.
I looked at my cell-phone. “If we open the mechanism now, we’ll be caught when we go out. Our first step is to make them give up here. There are two ways they’ll do that: the first is that they find the thing they’re looking for; the second is that those who can threaten their plans will never come out.” I took a picture of the wall with my phone. “This picture has been defaced but most of it is still visible. They should be satisfied.” I handed her the phone: “Here you go.”
Tang Song frowned and didn’t know what I wanted to do.
“I’ve been telling you that I studied architecture. The structural diagram just now clearly showed me why the people outside are afraid to come in.” I looked at the stairwell. “Where do you think the gas from the lamps is coming from?”
When she looked at me, I said, “Gas tanks have been buried in all the walls of this stairwell. If there’s a forced entry or exit of any kind… boom!”
All the walls in the design drawing were covered in frames and pipes, and there were ten gas tanks with many sponge-like holes in the middle, so that the gas and air could be fully mixed. Once the gas tank valve was opened, it would only take about five minutes to escape. Once those five minutes were up, the whole stairwell would become a cannon and we’d be goners.
Seven Fingers wasn’t messing around. He was clearly a mastermind when it came to architecture, and it was only with these kinds of settings that he could stand up against the Wang family.
“Do you think it’s good to be alive?” I touched Tang Song’s hair and raised my cigarette in front of her: “Sunshine, rain, warm weather, cold weather, breakfast, beer, various colors, do you find these things valuable?”
<Extra 3.18> <Table of Contents><Extra 3.20>
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Tiffany’s Extra:
MereBear's Translation 
Still have no idea how the layout of this cave building is supposed to look like, I’m just getting more confused every chapter 🥲
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