Two people, beaten black and blue by the man in dark glasses, obediently followed him to the edge of the water filtration pool. They were still in the same room as before. The man in dark glasses said that Yang Hao and Liang Wan had ultimately jumped into this pool; if they hadn’t died, they would have submerged and entered the pipes beneath the pool. The spray in the man’s hand was the kind of stone powder that Wu Xie mentioned could restrain the Hydra. They had sprayed two or three crosses on themselves, and after entering the water, they would need to spray again when they came out on the other side, so they couldn’t stray too far from the man in dark glasses.
The rain had stopped, and sitting at the edge of the reservoir, there was a profound silence overhead; the desert had returned to calm. Su Wan’s watch was still running, but it only had the timing function left. He glanced at it and said to Li Cu: “We just survived for 10 hours; there are still 14 hours left until we complete the first day.”
“Take off the watch. If it beeps again, I’ll make you swallow it,” Li Cu replied.
“Don’t worry. The backup power only tracks time now,” Su Wan said.
The man in dark glasses was the first to enter the water, taking off his sunglasses and putting on a diving mask. He turned to Li Cu and Su Wan and said, “This is a dividing line.”
Li Cu and Su Wan looked at him in confusion, and he continued, “Everything you experienced before was something you could handle. When you come up from under the water, it will be another world.” With that, he submerged into the water. Li Cu had long since become numb to such film set dialogue; he spat and shot a glare at Su Wan before diving in as well.
Su Wan shrugged and followed.
The water was cold, and it felt different from when they first fell in. After entering the water, the man in dark glasses turned on his flashlight to the maximum. He shone it around, and they could still see some black snakes, but they remained motionless at the bottom, like sea cucumbers. The stirred-up sand had mostly settled, leaving only some particles suspended in the water.
The beam of the flashlight was so bright that everything beyond its reach was pitch black. The sensation of being underwater made Li Cu feel a chill; the cold water made him increasingly calm, and the fervent anger he had felt earlier gradually dissipated.
Arriving at the entrance, the three of them surfaced to catch their breath, trying to relax the tension in their lungs before taking a deep breath. The man in dark glasses led the way into the cave.
The cave was very narrow. As Li Cu entered, he instantly felt a sense of suffocation; his anxiety caused the oxygen in his blood to deplete rapidly. He struggled to close his eyes, slowly exhaling bit by bit as he crawled further inside.
The pipe was deep, and the man in dark glasses moved quickly, almost like a water rat that had lived in a water pipe for years. Li Cu followed slowly behind, crawling through a sandy section until the pipe widened. They saw the concrete pipe walls, which were roughly fifty meters long. After passing through, Li Cu felt he was not far from drowning.
After fifty meters, in the upper part of the pipe, all his strength was concentrated in his lungs. Holding his breath to avoid inhaling water, he relied on buoyancy to float upwards like a lifeless body.
The moment he broke the surface, he inhaled the largest breath of air he had ever taken in his life, to the point where he felt his lungs might explode. He slowly exhaled, surprisingly tasting a hint of sweetness in the air.
Shaking the water from his hair, he saw that the man in dark glasses had already reached the shore and was waving a glow stick, tossing it onto the ground.
He climbed up, and Su Wan let out a loud shout as he broke through the water’s surface, gasping for air. Hei Xiazi made a “shh” gesture, pulling out a black knife and positioning it behind his waist. “Which one should we look for first?” he asked.
“Aren’t those two supposed to be together?” Li Cu said.
“They won’t be together,” Hei Xiazi pointed to the ground where there were two rows of footprints. In front of them was a T-shaped entrance with three passages leading in different directions; the two rows of footprints had chosen different paths.
“Yang Zi still doesn’t know how to accommodate women,” Su Wan shook his head.
“I’m looking for Liang Wan,” Li Cu said. “You two go find Yang Zi.”
Heijing refused, insisting that the three of them must act together. “Did that girl show you the layout of this area?”
“She said that part of this place has no exits and is built according to ancient design blueprints using modern engineering techniques.”
“Right, do you know what those ancient design blueprints are?”
Li Cu and Su Wan both shook their heads. Heijing squatted down and took out a spray can, spraying dozens of lines onto the concrete floor. Su Wan immediately said, “Qimen Dunjia. Wait, no, you drew it backwards.”
Hei Xiazi said, “Don’t pretend to understand if you don’t. This design must trace back to its origins; it can only start from the I Ching. Without practicing Qimen Dunjia, it is more primitive. We speculate it is based on an earlier version of the I Ching, specifically from the era of the Yellow Emperor and the Dragon Armor. However, you were right about one thing: the entire layout here is reversed. All the feng shui orientations are directed inwards.”
“Inwards? What is inside?” Li Cu thought for a moment and said, “I understand. In the center of this complex is that ancient tomb, which means—”
“Someone doesn’t want whatever is in the ancient tomb to come out,” Hei Xiazi said.
Li Cu thought to himself: It can’t be that they want to trap that thing called the Nine-Headed Snake Cypress, right? Such a thing shouldn’t require such a grand setup.
Li Cu studied the complex lines, which looked like a celestial script on the overall layout. He asked Hei Xiazi, “Does this really have any practical function?”
Hei Xiazi replied, “Such ancient concepts cannot be calculated in modern times. First, no one would spend so much time calculating something that has no value. Second, these concepts lack a logical foundation; without logic, there can be no deductions. Their effects are based on current knowledge.”
Su Wan nodded and said, “Ancient Chinese science is largely referred to as phenomenological science. For example, with explosives, they knew that mixing three substances would cause an explosion, but they didn’t understand why it would explode.”
Li Cu closed his eyes, recalling the phosphorescent patterns he saw in the desert, and said, “There should still be the Nine-Headed Snake Cypress here. I remember one main vein passing through here. Isn’t the root of the Nine-Headed Snake Cypress in that ancient tomb?”
Hei Xiazi shrugged, “I don’t know. This is my first time here. When we were scouting before, we never stepped into this T-junction.” Suddenly, he smiled, as if recalling something joyful, and patted Li Cu on the shoulder. “We have to rely on each other again.”
Li Cu felt a shiver run down his spine as he recalled some of the perverse behaviors of the man in the black glasses. He immediately took a step back. The man in the black glasses swayed as he followed Liang Wan’s footsteps for a few steps, made a gesture to indicate he was keeping up, and then set off in one direction at the T-junction.
