Chapter 205

I woke up when Fatty splashed water on my face and found that I was on some stone steps, darkness a mere breath away.

The stone steps were exactly the same as the ones on the upper floors. They should’ve been covered in wooden stairs like the ones before, but they had decayed until only the stone beams were left. There was no railing and the space between the beams was very wide, which made every stride very painful. If you made even the slightest mistake, you would fall down.

They were charging the flashlights with a hand-cranked generator since all of the cold fireworks must’ve been used up earlier. Everyone was sweating profusely, and I found that even I was sweating. This place was very warm—no, I should say that it was very hot.

I looked up. It was completely dark overhead and I couldn’t see the top at all. I looked down. It was also completely dark below and I couldn’t see the bottom.

“What floor are we on?” After waking up from my deep coma, my body felt well rested and my lungs didn’t feel as painful as before. But it seemed as if a few pieces of my lungs were missing, which wasn’t particularly comfortable.

“I haven’t been able to figure it out,” Fatty replied. “We’ve been walking on this floor for seven hours, but haven’t reached the bottom yet. We really can’t carry you anymore.”

I looked at Poker-Face and asked him, “What did you mean by that? Why didn’t you let me say what I wanted to say?”

I was feeling a little angry, but Poker-Face suddenly said very quietly, “I’ve heard too many similar words before.”

I was stunned, but then I suddenly realized that things like last words were meaningless to someone who was practically immortal. Throughout his long life, he must’ve heard countless last words. For people like us, our last words were actually a summary of our life, so they were very important and sacred. But for him, they were merely the last words of people he had some experiences with, and whose lives were too short.

In fact, there weren’t that many different types of people in the world. After experiencing so many things, I found that there were about a dozen different types out there. Even in ordinary social relationships, it was very difficult to find someone who shared the same birthday as you. In a multinational company that employed twenty thousand people, the president would issue greeting cards to hundreds of people in the system every day. It was true that people didn’t fit into just one type of group, but it wasn’t like they were infinitely complex, either. If you lived long enough, you would see people with the same character appear again and again in your life. If you didn’t want to be bored, you would have to constantly change yourself.

So, were there categories of last words just like there were categories of people? Even if my last words were meaningful to me, were they just something that fell into a common category? Was that why Poker-Face chose not to listen to them at that time?

It was such a tragedy.

Black Glasses laughed on the side, gave the generator’s hand-crank a hard shake, and then said to me, “Do you know what the final outcome is of those great last words?”

I shook my head, and Black Glasses said, “They’re forgotten.”

I wanted to refute, but Black Glasses continued, “You haven’t seen that many dying people, but I have. Those who are dying should strive to live well in the present. Healthy people like to sacrifice today in hopes that there will be a better tomorrow, but in fact, every day is unique. You have to take it seriously.”

“Why do you all have the same mindset?” I covered my face and cursed in my heart, knowing that what I wanted to say meant nothing to them. Although it didn’t sit well with me, I also knew that they were right.

They were all saying that there was nothing significant about death.

I got up and followed them down. “This level is ridiculously high,” Fatty said. “We don’t have any cold fireworks, so we can’t measure the distance now. But if it goes on like this, my head’s going to be spinning and I won’t be able to walk to the end. If we continue, we’re going to fall down eventually.”

“Is it thundering above?” I asked.

No one answered at first, but Fatty eventually said, “Even if it was, we’re so deep that we can’t hear it.”

I asked Fatty to explain in detail. All three of them were smart, but when it came to knowledge and memorization, Black Glasses wasn’t as good as me. Fatty said that when they went down to the pool, they saw that the small, shell-like bugs in those children’s corpses had eaten the Daolu General’s body until only a layer of skin was left. They explored the passages on both sides of the bridge and found that there were bronze reeds covering both passages like snake scales. These bronze pieces were very sharp, and seemed fill the passages that split off from the main ones in all directions like a maze.

They got lost and eventually came to this tower. Even though this tower wasn’t the same as the one before, it picked up counting where the last tower left off. Fatty guessed that this tower was segmented. After we reached the lower section, we’d have to pass through various complicated tunnels filled with bronze reeds until we entered another section that was buried deep underground. This section of the tower was many times longer than the previous levels, and this particular level seemed to be infinitely long. I wondered if there really was a “bottom”.

My feelings were indescribable, but after thinking about it, I said, “It doesn’t sound like the typical structure of a tower.”

“You’re the one who said it was a tower,” Fatty argued back.

“Black Glasses, you should be able to figure out what kind of structure this is,” I said to him.

Black Glasses looked at me and suddenly raised his brows, “You mean to say that this tower…”

“It’s a huge musical instrument,” I said. “This is a huge sounding device.”

<Chapter 204><Table of Contents><Chapter 206>

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I was bored, so here’s an extra chapter lol. I’m such a dork. I should get a hobby (but that means you all would be screwed over hehehe). This chapter seems kind of fitting with that short extra I did last night if you all haven’t read it yet, “Remembrance–Zhang Qiling“.