I used a lot of logic to put pressure on Liu Sang, but I didn’t say it very seriously. He remained silent for a while until reason finally overcame emotion. He started talking about some of the things that had happened after they took over here.
Liu Sang had stayed in the tulou the whole time, so after Uncle Two left and Xiao Hua’s rescue team took over, he was in charge of the handover process. When the accident happened, Uncle Two’s team had been divided into two groups. One stayed positive and thought that Poker-Face and Black Glasses had a good chance of survival, but rescuing them would be very difficult. The other group thought that there was only a small probability that the two of them would survive the resurgence. At that time, Liu Sang was in the positive group. He had heard countless echoes in the underground river cavity, which indicated that there were countless air pockets inside. If these pockets could be fully utilized, their chances of survival were very high.
I later learned that Liu Sang heard a very specific number of cavities at that time, which totaled a hundred and seventy-five. He had even calculated how long the air in each cavity could last. When he added all of the cavities up, he found that the air could sustain them for more than a month. His emotions were running high and he was getting desperate right now because that deadline was quickly approaching. But there was nothing he could do.
Based on Liu Sang’s assessment, if Black Glasses and Poker-Face were still alive, then they must’ve been moving from one cavity to another as soon as the oxygen ran out.
Xiao Hua’s whole rescue plan was made in accordance with Liu Sang’s theory. There were also some cavities at the top, so they used physics to pump a lot of air into the underground river’s backflow hole. They hoped that the air would refill those cavities and help extend the possible time for those two to survive.
When Boss Jiao and his team suddenly appeared, Xiao Hua’s first theory was that their large-scale rescue operation made some people think that there was a big tomb here—this theory was correct no matter what the circumstances were—so they had formed a group to go rob it. These people said that they came to help save people, but they really just wanted to find the tomb.
Xiao Hua was very frank and told them about the accident. First, the place where the accident occurred was far from the location of the tomb, so Boss Jiao’s team could go to the mountains to look for it themselves. Second, they were urgently trying to save people, so they couldn’t be disturbed. Otherwise, Xiao Hua’s team would have to kill them.
But Boss Jiao and his team didn’t believe it. As expected, Xiao Hua used the black cloth to hide all the information from those outside and formed a confrontational relationship with Boss Jiao and his team. After three days, Xiao Hua decided to state his position and sent his own experts to catch Boss Jiao directly. But their three bodies were sent back up to the fifth floor the very next day.
Xiao Hua realized at this time that Boss Jiao’s team was full of very capable people. They definitely weren’t random grave robbers and their purpose definitely wasn’t as simple as robbing a tomb. They had to be after something more desirable.
Xiao Hua decided on a plan very quickly. At this time, Boss Jiao had already started buying some of the people on the fifth floor with a lot of money, and the situation behind the black cloth was gradually revealed. Xiao Hua only told a few people about his plan. He used those who had been bought on the fifth floor to spread a false clue to the fourth floor that the entrance to the calling spring was in the mountains.
The people on the fourth floor had really been deceived since Xiao Hua had found a very well-hidden cave in the mountains. They explored the cave at that time and even brought some of those people who had been bought by the fourth floor. Xiao Hua then changed his appearance and went back to Boss Jiao to relay the information. After that, Boss Jiao led his team out secretively. I didn’t know if Xiao Hua had also set off with the team, but he came to the conclusion that Boss Jiao had been fooled. As a result, he was going to seal the cave after Boss Jiao went in and try to negotiate again.
At that time, however, there was thunder in the sky and Boss Jiao didn’t enter the cave. When he returned, he brought more than a dozen corpses back with him. They were all people Xiao Hua had tasked with sealing the cave.
There was a very elaborate scheme, which I only learned about later. All the team members who were supposed to seal the cave were actually people from the fourth floor who had been bought. Xiao Hua’s plan was very clever, since it showed off his muscles and intelligence to the fourth floor. From the beginning, he thought that the plan to seal the cave wasn’t foolproof, but he didn’t expect that the fourth floor would kill his spies. This made him wary of the fourth floor’s perception, and he felt that there was something wrong with Boss Jiao and his team’s behavior. He couldn’t use ordinary logic to communicate and compete with those people.
Because of the previous strategy, Xiao Hua’s next move was very powerful. He took his whole team and snuck into the fake entrance, which emptied out the fifth floor. This made Boss Jiao skeptical: was this entrance the real entrance and Xiao Hua deliberately made him think that it was fake?
MereBear's Translation 