Chapter 32 Fatty’s Enumeration Method

We were all surprised when Fatty suddenly said that he had figured it out, but then we prepared ourselves to hear him spout a bunch of nonsense. By this point, we were basically used to his unreliability, so instead of arguing with him every time, it was better to let him get it out of his system. Plus, sometimes his way of thinking was different from ours, so it wouldn’t hurt to listen.

I actually wasn’t feeling very panicked at this time because we hadn’t run out of food or ammunition yet, but with those bodies lying close by, I couldn’t help but think of all the bad things that could happen. In fact, when faced with this kind of intellectual challenge, people like me actually felt a little grateful because it was much easier to think than deal with zombies.

Pan Zi, thinking the same as me, didn’t take Fatty’s words seriously and casually asked, “What? It better not be your usual nonsense. We don’t have time for that right now.”

Fatty moved in closer and said to Pan Zi, “Shit, you’re discriminating against me. I might have joked around a bit before, but what I’ve thought of this time is definitely important.”

Pan Zi chuckled before saying, “You’re telling me that you’ve thought of something with that tiny brain of yours?”

Fatty was surprisingly serious this time, and said in a stern voice, “Well, it’s not necessarily the key, but it’s definitely important. I was thinking of the mechanism in the undersea tomb just now. You know, at that time, we thought it was very complicated, but it actually turned out to be pretty simple. I’m just wondering if we’re overthinking it this time, and letting ourselves be influenced by the memory of the mechanism in the undersea tomb. Because of that preconceived notion, whenever we encounter something similar, our first thought is that the room is moving. But maybe the problem here has nothing to do with this tomb chamber at all. Maybe this is just a normal tomb chamber.”

Pan Zi grinned, “Nonsense. If it’s truly normal, then why can’t we leave…?”

I could tell that Fatty had more to say, so I motioned for Pan Zi to be quiet and then asked Fatty to continue.

“The matter is actually very simple,” Fatty explained. “Just think, if there’s nothing wrong with the passage or tomb chamber, but we still can’t get out, then what’s the problem? It must be us!”

Pan Zi and I were both stunned. “So you’re saying that the endless loop is occurring because of us?” I asked him.

Fatty nodded, “Although we don’t know what the problem is, it must be something close by. I wonder if we’ve been hypnotized by those murals, or if there’s a hallucinogenic gas here that’s affecting us. I know that there’s a kind of mushroom that can cause disorientation after you eat it, which can cause you to keep walking in circles. But I don’t know if that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

Fatty had once told me that when he was a child, he saw a bear trap in the forest that used this poisonous mushroom as bait. Once the bear fell for the trap, it kept circling in place until it died of exhaustion.⁽¹⁾

After hearing his theory, I suddenly fell deep into thought. Pan Zi also remained quiet as he frowned and began considering Fatty’s words.

Were we really the problem? If so, then this made things so much more complicated. But after thinking about it a little bit, I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t quite right.

Fatty’s theory was actually very enlightening. In fact, it might even be pretty close to the truth, but there was a fatal flaw to his logic—our own feelings. Would poisoned people be acting like we were? It wasn’t like I had been poisoned before, but I knew that people who had been poisoned would definitely show strong signs of discomfort.

And as for his hypnosis theory, I had never believed in such a thing because it was too targeted. I could see Fatty being easily hypnotized, but it was impossible for me and Pan Zi.

However, returning back to the theory that this was all some ingenious trick also made it difficult to come up with a plausible explanation. In fact, I had thought up about a dozen methods just now, among which were two or three architectural structures that could achieve such a feat. But the requirements were too high, and the specifications had to be absolutely perfect. For example, three people must act together, walk at a fixed pace, etc. Wang Zanghai would never design a trap with such a low success rate.

As we all thought about the problem on our own, we settled into a kind of meditative state. Fatty, seeing that we remained silent after hearing him out, didn’t know what to do, so he continued pretending to mull it over. For some reason, the more I thought about it, the more sleepy and tired I became, and I soon fell asleep.

I only slept for about three or four hours, but it wasn’t restful at all. I woke up to the sounds of Fatty and Pan Zi talking—they were apparently walking through the tomb passage again. Shunzi was panting heavily, making it obvious that he had just run back. Looking at Fatty’s face, I knew right away that the result was the same, and there had been no progress.

I rubbed my eyes and asked them what they were doing. Fatty said that after thinking for a long time, they still didn’t have any clues, so they decided to experiment a bit. Just now, they had one person walk in front with his eyes closed, while a second person watched from behind. The two were also connected with a rope. They wanted to see if the person with their eyes open would suddenly turn around once they reached the middle of the passage.

I couldn’t help but shudder when I heard this. This was the kind of experiment that would cause people to have a nervous breakdown. It was a good thing these people had nerves of steel and didn’t make me participate—God only knew if the person who reached the middle of the tomb passage and was pulling on the other end of the rope was the same person or not.

But in the end, the result was still the same—whether they had their eyes open or closed, they felt like they were walking in a straight line, but the two eventually returned to this tomb chamber. During the experiment, Shunzi had been the one with his eyes closed, so the walk was extremely difficult for him. Looking at him now, I noticed that his face was very pale.

They all came over and sat down, sighing heavily. I told them to focus on conserving their strength. After all, such blind experiments could end up messing with their minds and make it harder to think. Once they sat down, everything went back to the way it was before I fell asleep, and we began our meaningless discussion once more.

Someone would periodically fall asleep during the discussion, but fortunately, the others could continue thinking even when one person was out of commission. In this way, we put forward various ideas, and then rejected them. There were still many theories at first, but then we gradually started to talk less and less. Before we knew it, about six or seven hours had passed and our stomachs were starting to growl again.

Fatty lit a cigarette, thought for a while, and then said to us, “This won’t do. It’s a waste of time for us to think about it in such a scattered way. Let’s write down all the possibilities, group them into categories, and then verify them ourselves. That should be more constructive.”

I nodded in agreement. In fact, when it came down to it, we just kept discussing the same issues repeatedly, which was driving us all into a state of confusion.

Fatty cleared away a small area on the ground, wrote down the numbers one through four, and then said to us, “Let’s think about some of the theories we have right now. Don’t be too specific. We just want a general idea.”

“It’s most likely a mechanism,” Pan Zi said.

Fatty wrote the word mechanism next to the number one. Then Shunzi said, “You thought that there might be something affecting our senses, such as a psychological suggestion or hypnosis, which was making us walk in circles unknowingly.”

“It doesn’t need to be so detailed,” Fatty said to him before writing the word hallucination next to the number two. Then he looked at me.

“Theoretically, it may be space folding,” I said.⁽²⁾

“Impossible,” Pan Zi argued. “That’s too far-fetched.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Fatty said. “As long as there’s a one in ten thousandth chance of it being possible, we’ll include it. After all, this is just a list to help us organize our thoughts.” Then he wrote “space folding” by the number three and muttered to himself, “Maybe there’s a ghost.” With that said, he wrote the word ghost next to the number four.

“What’s the point in writing it down like this?” Pan Zi asked.

“As people who have read so many books, you wouldn’t understand,” Fatty said. “I don’t read a lot, so I have to write every fucking thing down. But there’s an advantage to this. For example, if you have a lot of things to do, you can write them all down so you know about them in advance, which can save a lot of time. Don’t we only have two days? We need to use our time wisely. By the way, is there a number five? Does anyone have a fifth theory to add?”

I looked at these four points and found that they really did cover the four major academic disciplines: quantum mechanics, metaphysics, psychology, and engineering. I honestly couldn’t come up with a fifth idea no matter how hard I tried. Everything we had discussed so far had actually fallen under the first two categories, while the last two were simply impossible.

Seeing that we didn’t respond, Fatty said, “Ok, let’s verify the first and second points first. These two can be dealt with at the same time.”

“How are we going to verify them?” I wondered.

In fact, we had already done most of the experiments that we could do. This was because the length of the tomb passage made it pointless to carry out other experiments.

Fatty suddenly smiled and said, “Actually, I just thought of a good way. It’s probably impossible to prove which of these two theories is affecting us, but there’s still a way to prove that it’s definitely one of them. Come with me.”

He looked very smug and confident, which suddenly gave me a bad feeling—did this guy have something up his sleeve? I watched as he picked the rifle up from the ground and said to us, “This tomb passage is about a thousand to two thousand meters long. The kill range of a Type-56 rifle is four hundred meters, but the bullet can travel as far as three thousand meters. I’ll fire a shot from here and see what happens.”

As soon as I heard this, I suddenly felt enlightened and thought to myself, what a genius move!

If the problem was occurring because something was affecting our senses, then the bullet would totally be fine. It didn’t have any senses or feelings, so the tomb passage couldn’t affect it like it might be affecting us. If this situation could be explained by common sense, then the bullet would inevitably disappear at the end of the tomb passage and wouldn’t come back.

The best part of this experiment lay in the speed of the bullet. Not only could it completely travel the length of this tomb passage within 2.3 seconds, but it could do so without setting off any traps. After all, no trap could activate in such a short amount of time.

But if the situation really did go beyond the scope of common sense and entered the realm of metaphysics, then the bullet would transcend space and make a 180-degree turn in the straight passage, just like we did.

It was a simple and beautiful solution, one that conformed to the spirit of science. I was a little ashamed that I, a college graduate, didn’t come up with the idea myself.

But when I thought about it again, I realized that only someone like Fatty could come up with such a method. After all, it only required simple logical thinking.

To determine whether the cause was a hallucination, it was necessary to find something that wouldn’t be affected by such a thing. And in order to find that thing, you had to look nearby. As soon as this three-step process was considered, it was only natural that this method came to mind. It really wasn’t that complicated at all. I suddenly felt that Wang Zanghai might have met his match. Even though he was a cunning man, in the face of Fatty’s single-minded way of thinking, any tricks he came up with would turn out to be very simple.

True to his word, Fatty got up and walked towards the tomb passage, the rest of us following behind him. Once he reached the door, he pulled the bolt back on the rifle, and got ready to shoot.

“Wait!” I quickly shouted at him.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Don’t do it like that,” I said. “If—and I mean if—something strange is really happening here, then you’ll end up shooting yourself if you fire like that.”

Fatty’s face turned pale. He obviously believed that the first and second points were more likely, and didn’t even consider the fact that the third and fourth points might be true. But after hearing me out, he nodded and moved his gun to the side—based on the new trajectory, if the bullet came back, it should hit somewhere below the muzzle.

We all hid behind the door, not even having time to mentally prepare ourselves before Fatty fired off a shot. A loud bang went off in the tomb passage, followed by a series of echoes. Then the door suddenly shook violently and a cloud of dust flew into the air.

Realizing that something was wrong, I quickly stuck my head out to take a look, my mind buzzing. Fatty was standing there frozen in the firing position, smoke from the gunshot still hanging in the air. About five or six centimeters below his gun, I could see a bullet hole in the door.

<Chapter 31><Table of Contents><Chapter 33>

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TN Notes:

(1) I couldn’t find anything on poisonous mushrooms that can cause this, but apparently listeriosis (a sporadic bacterial infection that affects a wide range of animals, including humans and birds) can cause animals such as sheep to walk in circles. Since the brain is affected, the animals are initially depressed, disoriented, and have a lack of appetite. They may propel themselves into corners, lean against stationary objects, or circle toward the affected side. That’s why it’s also called “circling disease”.

(2) Space-time folding is a physical concept of non-flat spacetime, related to wormholes. Info here. It can also refer to the fictitious method of faster-than-light travel whereby the space-time continuum is “folded” (often used in science fiction novels). Info here.