Card Room (Rebirth)

Mo Xuemin replied, “We are walking down a spiral staircase so the needle of the compass has been circling around.”

Xiao Lou thought for a moment before wondering, “Is it circular movement?”

Everyone looked at him and Xiao Lou explained, “Have you ever heard of an experiment? If you blindfold people and have them walk in a straight line on a wide playground, you will find that they are actually walking in a big circle.”

He was activating the voice headset to talk so these words also reached the ears of the six people in the other team.

Ye Qi was stunned. “Is this a ghost wall? Does it exist in reality?”

“Yes.” Xiao Lou nodded. “Biological studies have found that the instinctive movement of any creature is a circular motion. The root cause lies in the subtle differences in the body structure. For example, the length of a person’s two legs aren’t the same. One leg is slightly longer and one is slightly shorter, just like a math compass with a very small difference in its legs. If you walk for a long time then you will be walking in a circle.”

Xiao Lou paused before adding, “Our eyes use reference objects and our brain constantly positions and corrects us so we can walk in a straight line. However, once we are blindfolded and rely on intuition to walk, anyone will walk in a circle. It is the same for birds and other animals. If the eyes of a bird are covered and you let them fly in the sky, they will also fly in a circle.”

Ye Qi suddenly realized. “In other words, right now we are just constantly making a circle on the stairs. The staircase seems to be never ending but in fact, we are hallucinating and actually keep moving in circles?”

“Yes, this should be an illusion of the labyrinth. Otherwise, we have been walking for so long that we should be dozens of meters further underground. The ancient people couldn’t have dug a tomb so deeply.”

Old Mo agreed. “There must be something affecting our vision and making us see an illusion. Our eyes are seeing stairs that go down but in fact, there are no stairs here.”

From an architectural point of view, the foundation of modern high-rise buildings wouldn’t be dug so deeply. The ancient people didn’t have such a high level of technology that they would dig 100 meters underground to build a tomb.

Old Mo raised the compass. Currently, the needle of the compass was pointing to the north. He remembered that when the compass was activated in the secret room just now, he checked the direction and it was the east.

Mo Xuemin took the compass and turned 90 degrees on the spot. The needle on the compass shook for a moment and Mo Xuemin locked onto the ‘east’ position. He found a wall in front of him. The wall was no different from the surroundings. It was covered with blue-gray bricks that had strange cloud decorations on them.

Mo Xuemin walked toward the wall. He reached out his hand and pushed the wall in front of him. The next moment, everyone’s eyes widened. They saw that Old Mo’s arm actually went through the wall! A trace of surprise flashed in Mo Xuemin’s eyes. He continued to walk forward and his entire body seemed to be sucked in by the wall as he disappeared without a trace!

Yu Hanjiang and the others immediately followed. The five people walked through the wall one after another. They were shocked to find that they were actually in a wide room as large as a basketball court!

Xiao Lou hurriedly notified the other team through the voice headset. “Senior Gui, if I remember correctly, the compass was pointing out that the direction of the downward stairs was to the west when you found it?”

“Yes.”

Xiao Lou told him, “Adjust the compass so it is pointing to the west. Then pass through the wall. The wall and the stairs are just illusions.”

Upon hearing Xiao Lou’s words, Gui Yuanzhang immediately turned around with the compass. He positioned himself to the west and decisively led his team members to pass through the wall. His low voice was heard in Xiao Lou’s ear. “It is a room with a large area.”

It seemed that Old Mo’s guess was right. The things encountered by the two teams were basically the same, except that they were in the east and the other team was in the west. The directions were opposite and it confirmed that this was a ‘symmetrical tomb’.

Gui Yuanzhang continued, “I can see six walls, a pill furnace and many strange charms. Is it the same on your side?”

Xiao Lou’s eyes swept over the space. This spacious and empty room had a size of around 100 square meters. Unlike the dark environment outside, this room was brightly lit. The whole room was shaped like a hexagon and there was an Eternal Flame Lamp hanging at each of the six corners. All six lamps were lit so they could clearly see inside the tomb.

The middle of the tomb contained a high, bronze medicine hut that was over one meter tall. A strange green smoke was coming from it. Everyone immediately covered their mouths and noses vigilantly.

Yu Hanjiang frowned. “Is it poisonous?”

Xiao Lou analyzed it. “It should be non-toxic or else most of the challenger teams who can’t think of the principle of the ghost wall would be poisoned to death by the smoke while walking down the stairs. We walked down the stairs for five minutes and our bodies didn’t feel uncomfortable.”

Yu Hanjiang thought the same. “It seems that this smoke is the cause of our hallucinations.”

Just now, they had walked down a flight of stairs to enter this tomb. However, due to the influence of the smoke, they experienced a visual illusion. They were actually walking in circles around this secret room, which was why the compass pointer kept spinning but what they saw was a spiral staircase leading into the darkness. Fortunately, everyone reacted quickly to the illusion and relied on the correct position of the compass to get rid of it.

Tang Ci released the mechanical ants to explore and they walked quickly around the space. The ground was fine. The mechanical ants didn’t encounter any traps that caused them to fall into pits or trigger sword-like mechanisms.

Everyone went to the medicine hut with confidence and observed carefully. Six charms were pasted on the bronze medicine hut and the surrounding six walls were also covered with charms. There were too many charms. They covered almost all the walls, making it look strange.

Xiao Lou didn’t understand the meaning of these charms so he asked Teacher Gui through the voice headset. Gui Yuanzhang’s response was also, “I don’t understand them.”

They were almost like ghost paintings. The medicine hut was the most common hexagonal shape with charms of different colors attached to each side. The room was constructed to be hexagonal. The six walls were covered with strange ghostly symbols while colorful, hideous masks hung from the ceiling. The entire room looked like a place where religious believers performed ceremonies and it gave them the chills. Still, such a layout easily reminded Xiao Lou of the opening method for some mechanisms.

Xiao Lou suggested, “Look at the six walls first to see if there are any hidden mechanisms. If there is no hidden grid in the walls, the mechanism should be connected to the medicine hut in the middle. My guess is that by rotating the medicine hut so that the charms on each side correspond to the charms on the six walls, we can open this room.”

After all, the medicine hut had six walls and the room also had six walls. There were charms on both the medicine hut and the walls. Rotating the medicine hut to correspond to the charms on the wall was the most reasonable mechanism. Everyone walked separately. In front of the six walls, they tapped and pressed on the bricks gently with their hands.

The results were soon reported. “There are no hidden mechanisms.”

It seemed the medicine hut was the answer. Everyone set their sights on the medicine hut in the center.

Liu Qiao carefully examined the six charms on the medicine hut and compared them to the charms on the walls. “The charms on the wall are different from the ones on the medicine hut. In addition, the charms on the medicine hut all have different colors. What do these charms mean?”

Xiao Lou walked to the wall in the upper left corner.

He found that the strange patterns on the charms on this wall resembled animals such as pigs, cows, horses and sheep. Due to the blood-red strokes drawn on yellow paper, the patterns were a bit distorted. They densely covered the wall so he couldn’t distinguish it for a while.

It was confirmed after a closer look that this wall indeed had a variety of animals. The second wall had evil ghosts with teeth and claws. The third wall had some strange scenes with doors drawn on many charms.

The charms on the fourth wall had the shapes of men and women. The men and women were dancing and the movements were very similar to those seen on the stone doors. It was like the dance that ancient people performed during sacrifices. The fifth and sixth walls were full of symbols that were hard to determine what they were.

Xiao Lou touched his chin thoughtfully. Six walls, a hexagonal pill furnace and charms covering the walls…

What exactly did it mean?

Proofreader: Paranoid Kitten & Fictional Reality