I recalled that the little guy who scared us had a lot of papers in his bag with sketches resembling maps. Perhaps there would be clues on them. At this moment, feeling desperate, I thought about moving forward—there was the Seven Stars Suspicious Coffin ahead, and behind me was a monster that even the dull oil bottle would have to bow to. There was nowhere to go; this seemed the safest place. I sat down on the ground, spread out the papers, and started flipping through them.

One of the papers looked like a design blueprint they made before digging the theft tunnel. It had many ideas written below, especially speculations about the design of the Blood Corpse Tomb. I couldn’t understand it very well; it was written in a very chaotic manner, but I saw a few words like “glazed roof.” It seemed they had put a lot of thought into breaking the mechanisms of the Blood Corpse Tomb. I wondered if they had succeeded in the end.

Then there was another sheet, which depicted something that looked like a claw, resembling a tree but also like a ghost’s claw.

I flipped through the papers again and finally found something somewhat meaningful—a bird’s-eye view of a tomb. I saw the burial passage at the bottom of the lake, and then the place where the Seven Stars Suspicious Coffin was placed, which was drawn very clearly. However, the burial chamber we descended into was not marked, indicating that they had not been there yet. I also saw the theft tunnel I had just crawled through, and the fork in the path was clearly marked. I noticed that if I chose the other opening, it led to a place that was abruptly cut off, with the word “collapse” written beside it.

The meaning was already quite clear; my wish to return to the surface through the theft tunnel had been dashed. Upon looking again, the most bizarre thing on the map was that to the left of where I was standing, there was a burial chamber depicted with no connecting paths, linked to the burial passage by a dotted line, as if this burial chamber existed in another space. I couldn’t help but touch the wall behind me—could there be a secret passage behind this wall?

I carefully observed the wall and recalled the structures of stone secret doors from my grandfather’s notes. Generally, if a mechanism is to remain intact for a thousand years, it must use stone and mercury to trigger it. The trigger device must be a flat slab, and this wall was covered with carved inscriptions. If there really was a secret door, there must be a movable slab, which would have to be located in a very inconspicuous place.

Following this line of thought, I bent down to examine the area where the stone wall met the floor. Sure enough, there was a square connecting stone slab that looked very suspicious. I pressed it, but there was no response, though it felt loose. I pressed again, still no response, so I started to feel uneasy. I stood up and kicked it, and suddenly I heard a rumbling sound.

In that instant, I thought that, like in typical foreign films, the wall would rotate and take me next door, or that it would open like a door. So when the floor beneath me suddenly gave way, I had no defenses at all and fell straight down. This design was not a secret door at all; it was clearly a trap! I silently cursed my luck, fearing I might be done for! I had no idea what was down there; it could be a few bone-sawing steel knives.

In a flash, before I could finish my thoughts, I landed on the floor with a thud. I hadn’t even had time to feel relieved that I hadn’t died when the mining lamp in my hand smashed to the ground with a loud bang, the battery flew out, and the light went out, plunging me into complete darkness.

In the current situation, this miner’s lamp is as important to me as my life. Without light, it would be a dead end in this ancient tomb where there is absolutely no source of illumination. I hurriedly rushed over, wanting to grab the lamp. I remembered the location of the lamp very clearly and quickly found it. The battery should be on the left side, so I reached out to the left and suddenly touched a cold hand.