Chapter 31 Endless Loop

Everyone’s faces turned pale and we all looked around, but the more we looked, the more certain we became—those were our footprints all over the ground. This was indeed the tomb chamber where we found Shunzi’s father before. But it was strange—how did we come back?

The tomb passage was a straight shot, and we hadn’t taken any turns while we were walking (four people and one corpse could attest to that). Plus, logically speaking, we couldn’t walk for twenty minutes and return to the starting point. It was just too unbelievable. This had to be a ghost-hitting-a-wall type situation.

Fatty cast a worried glance at the door leading to the tomb passage before asking, “When we left, did we end up turning back without knowing it? It’s so fucking strange…”

“No way,” Pan Zi said. “If we had turned back, at least one of us would have noticed it. I remember walking in a straight line the whole way. Plus, the tomb passage wasn’t long and there weren’t any forks in the path. There’s no way I’d remember wrong.”

“Then it’s a ghost-hitting-a-wall situation,” Fatty said. “Shunzi, is your dad messing with us? You need to educate him. Tell him we’re just here for business.”

Shunzi immediately became furious, “Stop talking nonsense!”

I quickly stopped them—now really wasn’t the time to fight. My whole body was covered in a cold sweat because I felt as if the last thing I wanted to happen may have actually happened, but I wasn’t completely sure yet. “Don’t be so noisy,” I said to them. “There’s only one way to see if we really came back—let’s go again and see what happens.”

The others looked at each other in dismay. After seeing my expression, they probably realized that something was wrong.

At that time, I kept thinking about the hopeless expressions on those mummified corpses’ faces. Had they been trapped here in the same way? It was true that there was no food among their belongings, but it seemed too unbelievable that they returned to the same room no matter how much they walked. But my intuition was telling me that I was correct, and whatever had trapped them here had now trapped us as well.

What I needed to do right now was prove my hunch—or maybe I wanted to deny the horrible premonition in my heart—so I hurried back to the tomb passage, the others quickly following behind me.

Because we had already walked through it once and knew that there weren’t any traps, we moved quickly this time. I was basically moving at a trot as I stared at the walls on both sides, making sure that there weren’t any forks in the path or inexplicable turns that would send us back to that room.

This time, we ran through the whole passage in less than ten minutes. When I felt that we were about to see the end of the passage, I kept praying that my hunch was incorrect, but as soon as I saw that nearly identical jade door, my heart suddenly froze and I broke out in a cold sweat.

We walked through the door, and Fatty rushed to the mounds of gold. Then he knelt down and covered his face with his hands. I rushed over to take a look and saw six bodies and all the things we had lined up before…we had come back again.

My hunch was correct. We had focused all of our attention on ensuring that there were no forks in the path and that we didn’t somehow get turned around, so I knew that we had gone straight the whole way, but we still ended up returning to the starting point.

Fatty was gasping for breath after all that running, but still managed to say, “There’s no doubt about—this is a ghost-hitting-a-wall type situation. No matter how much we walk, we’re just going in a circle. Both ends of this tomb passage lead to the same place. We’re going to meet Shunzi’s father for sure this time. Shunzi, please tell your father to stop messing with us. Otherwise, we’ll leave him here and find a way out ourselves.”

Shunzi was too surprised to argue with him, and even I was feeling flustered. I kept turning around to look at the walls on either side, but I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be looking for.

“Calm down! Calm down!” Pan Zi gasped out from the side. “Don’t panic. Little Master Three, didn’t you say that Wang Zanghai’s tricks were meant to create psychological pressure at best? Knowing this, we definitely can’t fall for it. We all need to calm down and figure out what’s wrong.”

After Pan Zi said this, I suddenly came to my senses and calmed down, that lingering feeling of despair quickly fading away. I nodded and said to him, “You’re right, this must be a trap. We already confirmed back in the undersea tomb that there’s no such thing as a ghost-hitting-a-wall. Wang Zanghai was good at using clever tricks to create a strange atmosphere. If you’re not familiar with his way of doing things, it’s easy to fall for his traps.” I rubbed my face hard, trying to free myself from that suffocating feeling.

These words were actually meant for myself, but even I didn’t know what I was trying to say after I finished speaking.

(Later, thinking back on this moment, I realized that things were already out of my control and I just wanted to use these words to convince myself not to give up.)

It had felt so real walking through that tomb passage just now that I simply couldn’t imagine how it was possible to use a mechanism to create such a phenomenon. My first thought was that the tomb chamber or tomb passage had moved, but I immediately dismissed the idea as impossible. We had been walking pretty quickly, so if the tomb chamber really could move, how fast was it moving? And the tomb passage moving was even more impossible—as long as we were in it, would have definitely felt even the smallest vibration of movement. But if the tomb passage and tomb chamber hadn’t moved, then it was impossible to explain this strange phenomenon.

Although I kept telling myself that this was a mechanism at work, I already knew deep in my heart that something was wrong. Truthfully, this couldn’t be explained as the work of a mechanism, but it was better to say that it was so that the others wouldn’t panic.

But as it turned out, I underestimated their mental fortitude. Pan Zi, who appeared much calmer than me, wiped the sweat off his face and said to me, “Whether it’s a ghost-hitting-a-wall or a mechanism, we still have to solve the problem. What should we do now? Should we try the passage again?”

I clenched my teeth, “Yes, let’s go again! But this time, let’s go slower and see if we can feel any movement under our feet or the surrounding walls. I refuse to believe there aren’t any flaws.”

So, we walked into the tomb passage again. It took us forty minutes this time, but we already knew before we reached the end that we had failed because the tomb door was exactly the same and we didn’t feel a thing along the way.

I don’t know how many times we walked through that passage, but they all ended in failure. Everyone’s faces became paler and paler, and I gradually started to feel the same sense of despair we saw on those corpses’ faces.

I knew that we couldn’t keeping doing this, so after returning to the tomb chamber again, I told the others not to leave. Since we had gone through the passage so many times just now, we had basically ruled everything out. This mechanism must have been designed in a way that we’d never expect.

Fatty was so tired that he was on the brink of collapse, but he still insisted on going again. He thought that maybe at some point, the original tomb passage would come back and then we’d be able to leave.

After hearing this, the only thing Pan Zi said was, “Forget it. That tomb passage will never come back.”

As he spoke, he glanced at the dried corpses lying off to the side, the meaning of his gaze all too clear—those corpses must have walked through the tomb passage many more times than us, but they were still trapped here. This meant that it was useless to walk through the tomb passage, even if we tried ten thousand more times. We couldn’t rely on luck to get us out of this, either.

Fatty suddenly heaved a big sigh and sat down, “So you’re saying we’re doomed? These people must have tried everything but they’re still here. We can try as well, but it’ll be useless.”

“Don’t think like that,” Pan Zi said. “If you do, then you might as well kill yourself now. Wait until we’ve done everything we can before falling into despair. Right now, it’s better to think of a way out while we still have enough strength.”

I remembered how the corpses didn’t have any food, and asked, “Should we limit the food now? We should be prepared for a long-term battle. The longer we can live, the greater our chances of getting out of here.”

Pan Zi sighed and shook his head, “Little Master Three, to tell you the truth, our situation is actually worse than theirs was. We don’t have much food left—probably enough for two meals at most—but it’s not enough to fill our stomachs. I don’t think we need to limit it. We should eat as much as we can in order to maintain our energy. If we can’t get out within two days, then I say it’s time to use the explosives. If those don’t work, then all we can do is wait for someone else to collect our bodies.”

Two days…I felt my heart clench. How long did these corpses stay here before they died? Could we really make it out within two days? I honestly wasn’t sure.

Fatty’s stomach was already growling, so he asked Pan Zi, “Comrade cook, can we have dinner early? I need to get rid of this distraction first before I put all my energy into thinking about other things.”

As soon as Fatty said that, we all realized how hungry we were as well. With no other choice, Pan Zi lit the portable stove and started cooking. In fact, the only food we had left was thin noodles, which was fine when we ate it, but it wouldn’t keep us full for long. When Fatty started complaining about the lack of meat, I told him that there were quick-frozen ribs nearby. Pan Zi and I didn’t care, so as long as Shunzi didn’t mind, he could eat as much as he wanted.

After eating, we felt warm all over and more energetic, so we turned our attention to figuring out how to escape this place. I recalled the whole thrilling process of reaching the underground palace, but who would have expected that the situation would still be uncertain once we made it? Wang Zanghai must’ve had a specific purpose for designing the underground palace like this, but what was it?

Underground palaces were usually shaped like the Chinese character 回, with the coffin hall in the middle. In feng shui, the coffin hall had the strictest design standards, so Wang Zanghai wouldn’t dare to tamper with it. The outer part of the underground palace was where the sacrificial pits, drainage system, and intricate network of tunnels and tomb passages were located, so that meant that we were still in the outer part of the underground palace.

I tried to estimate the size of this tomb and then calculate the distance we had covered when we came down in order to get a rough idea of our location, but it seemed very difficult. We became disoriented after taking that tunnel at the bottom of the canal and ended up losing our sense of direction. God only knew what direction that tunnel we came out of was facing.

While my mind was hard at work, Fatty, who was pretending to think of a solution, suddenly made an enlightened expression and said to us, “I’ve got it!”

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