Then the fat man took a piece of paper from the table. He picked up a pen and began to write. Just by looking at him, I could tell he was using his signature enumeration method.

The fat man said, “First, we need to know where this group of people went. This is a closed temple, located halfway up the mountain, with a snow-capped mountain behind it and the only road leading up the mountain in front. The entire temple is quite large.”

He drew a shape of the temple and asked me if it looked like that. I helped him correct a few details.

The fat man continued, “You see, first, I can be sure they definitely did not go down the mountain, unless they jumped or rolled down, which I don’t think they are that foolish. Second, they took all their equipment with them. If I wanted to give you a scare or create a situation where I suddenly disappeared, I wouldn’t do it this way. I would turn all the lights on, keep them all on, as if we were still chatting, but take all the equipment away. But now, the lights are all off, indicating they didn’t want to confuse you; they don’t mind others thinking they left spontaneously, right?”

I nodded.

The fat man then said, “Since that’s the case, they can’t go down the mountain from the front, and you think they can’t go into the snow mountain, so they must have chosen a path we don’t know about.”

In reality, this reasoning is completely valid.

I continued to nod.

The fat man drew a large circle around the entire lama temple diagram: “This lama temple must have some secrets we don’t know about. It is located at the junction between this world inside and the outside world. This position is inherently strange and may not be as simple as we think. It could be a station designed by the people inside, and there might be some secret passages or hidden rooms here.”

I thought for a moment and found it somewhat reasonable.

The structure of this temple is extremely complex, with so many rooms that it’s overwhelming. Even the people living in the temple only move around in this area; many areas have never been visited. Moreover, this temple is very well designed, not built naturally along the mountain, which means it has undergone some verification in terms of feng shui.

I studied architecture, and I’ve always had this feeling, but after all, this is a lama temple, which is not my area of expertise, so I didn’t dare to say much.

The fat man outlined the rooms of the great lama, the Zhang family, and the Germans, as well as the places where other people lived, and then drew a line: “You see, other lamas live here and here. If the Zhang family wants to discuss issues with the Germans and also needs to pack up quickly to leave, these people cannot be mobilized quickly. The secret passage they use to leave here must be within this activity area, so that everyone can make it in time. We can run a test to see how long it takes to move back and forth in these places, then compare that with the time we were trapped, and we can roughly figure out the possible route.”

I looked at the fat man, thinking his reasoning was very clear, but when he said the word “trapped,” my heart sank. “Trapped.” I glanced at the lama lying on the ground and wondered if that was the case.

“Actually, there are several situations that could resolve all the contradictions in this matter,” I said. “For example, if you put a tiger and a lion in the Roman Colosseum, and the tiger is particularly strong while the lion is particularly heavy, they would carry the tiger and the lion inside, and then also put a gladiator in there. At that moment, the whole Colosseum would be filled with various animals: the tiger, the lion, the gladiator, and many staff members. When they release the tiger and the lion from their cages, what do you think will happen?”

The fat man fell silent for a moment and said, “I understand. You mean they are the staff, and we are… we are the tigers?”

I replied, “Wrong. We are the gladiators. Once the tiger and the lion are released, the staff will of course have to evacuate immediately.” I looked at the window. “The gladiators are dazed in this temple, while all the staff have hidden away. Perhaps the tiger and the lion are watching us from somewhere we don’t know.”

In fact, my speculation seemed a bit absurd, because I felt that if things developed this way, it wouldn’t be very reasonable. The Zhang family, the Germans, and the lama couldn’t possibly be completely in cahoots; otherwise, the time they took to reach a consensus would have been too short.

Maybe there’s another scenario: perhaps when the Zhang family was negotiating with the Germans, the lama suddenly rushed in and said to them, “Run! Something’s about to happen.” So they gathered their wits and decided to run first.

Wait a minute, could it be that this lama was sent to notify us? For some unknown reason, he mistakenly thought we were the tiger and lion, and that’s why he shot at us? I sat up straight, thinking, Amitabha, this is bad. This explanation seems to make the most sense! The act of disguising a handgun is inherently questionable; the most likely scenario is that this lama is simply an amateur who was so frightened that he made such a strange move.

I immediately rushed over to the lama, thinking, Master, I truly didn’t mean to do this.

This time, I was much more attentive. In the words of the fat man, I approached him with a sense of guilt rather than a mindset of treating a prisoner well. As I used hot water to help the lama massage his acupressure points, he suddenly coughed and curled up. I quickly helped him up, and saw the lama open his eyes, looking quite dazed for a moment. When he saw the fat man and then me, his expression suddenly changed drastically. He sat up abruptly, but perhaps I had indeed hit him too hard; as soon as he stood up, he collapsed back to the ground and began to vomit.

After he finished vomiting, I pulled him up again. He looked at me and the fat man and asked, “What time is it now?” He spoke to me in standard Mandarin.

I glanced at my watch and told him that it was about to be fully bright. His face instantly turned extremely pale. He groped the ground trying to stand up and said, “It’s over, it’s over, we’re doomed.”

I was just about to ask him a question when the lama said, “Don’t talk! Quickly, you two, close all the doors and windows. Hurry… hurry… hurry!”

Perhaps it was the sincerity in his tone and expression, the kind of fear that came from the heart without any pretense, that made the fat man and I immediately follow his instructions and close all the doors and windows.

At that moment, we didn’t think much of it, because after experiencing so many things, we all knew that often a person’s expression cannot be faked; it’s almost instinctual. I could almost immediately judge from a person’s expression whether something was real or if there was a conspiracy at play. Of course, this did not apply to the young man; his expressions were too simplistic, and he had too little material to work with.

Once all the windows were closed, the room became very dim, illuminated only by a few lamps, giving it a particularly mysterious atmosphere. After closing everything, the chubby guy walked over and said, “Don’t mess with us. We didn’t mean any harm, but if you try to fool us, you definitely won’t get away with it.”

The lama replied, “In the current situation, everything you see is fake. In at most half an hour, you will realize that things are much more serious than what I have said. If you listen to me now, there might still be a way out.”

The chubby guy glanced at me and curiously asked, “Is there some kind of evil spirit haunting this place? On certain days of the year, they come out at dawn. What could be so powerful that you need to be this afraid?”

The lama said, “What are evil spirits compared to this?”

The chubby guy and I exchanged glances, both not quite understanding. The lama then began to take off his robe, and I noticed that his body was very well-trained, with clearly defined muscles; all the muscle fibers looked like steel bars, indicating that he was a well-trained individual. As he was undressing, he told us, “First, take off your own jackets.”