The “Dull Oil Bottle” finished speaking and ignored my follow-up questions, quickly running down the steps. I sensed a glimmer of truth and was unwilling to let it go, so I hurried after him.

The mist at the bottom of the pool was continuously rising. After walking just ten steps, I entered a dense fog, and visibility dropped sharply. At first, I could still see the fat guy’s silhouette, but after a few more steps, all that remained visible ahead was a small point of light from his flashlight. The fat guy, being bold, took three steps at once, quickly leaving me far behind. By the time I descended just one level, I could no longer see the light from his flashlight.

I started to panic a bit. I was now surrounded by swirling mist, and I could only see less than half a meter in front of me, behind me, or to the right. This unclear visibility was even more uncomfortable than being in absolute darkness.

The vertical distance between the surface of the pool and the bottom wasn’t long. After a while, I heard the fat guy calling from below, “I’ve reached the bottom!”

I heard the sound of his feet splashing in the water and hurriedly ran down a few steps. Suddenly, my feet felt cold as I stepped into the water. It turned out that not all the water had been drained from the bottom of the pool; there was about a foot of standing water, which explained why I couldn’t see clearly from above.

I took a moment to observe the area and realized that I was almost at the center of the fog, where visibility was even lower. As I felt my way along the wall of the pool, I heard the fat guy call from the left, “Watch out for the water below; there are holes where water is coming in. Don’t step into them!”

I cautiously probed with my foot and found that there were indeed bowl-sized pits both in front and behind me. It seemed I had to be extremely careful while walking here. Just then, the fat guy emerged from the fog, waving his flashlight and urging me to follow him.

I nodded and followed him into the water. After a few steps, I suddenly saw several black silhouettes ahead, unsure of what they were. The fat guy had clearly seen them already and wasn’t afraid at all. He called for me not to dawdle, so I walked over with him and discovered that they were four stone monkeys, each more than a person’s height, squatting on stone pedestals and facing in different directions, seemingly praying for something. I recognized them as the “Dinghai Stone Monkeys,” typically found submerged at the bottom of ponds to ward off evil spirits, so their presence here felt normal.

I felt relieved and took a few more steps inward, only to see a large green stone tablet over two meters high standing between the four stone monkeys. The “Dull Oil Bottle” was shining his flashlight on the tablet, examining it closely.

I walked over and asked him, “So, what do you think? Does this remind you of anything?”

He pointed at the base of the tablet. I looked and saw several lines of small script carved into it. The fat guy couldn’t understand and asked me what it said. I replied, “These lines tell us that the owner of the tomb built a celestial palace, and the door to that palace is inside this stone tablet. If you have a connection with it, the door will open, and you can ascend to the heavens through it.”

The fat guy looked at the stone tablet and said, “What kind of door is that?”

I explained, “This phrase is somewhat like Zen sayings; everyone interprets it differently. Its original meaning doesn’t imply that there’s a literal door inside the stone tablet. It might mean that the content on the tablet could be hiding something.”

The fat guy retorted, “Damn it, is there any ‘content’ on this tablet? I can’t read a single word!”

I looked up and saw that the front of the stone tablet was completely bare, polished to an extraordinary shine, almost like a piece of jade, yet there wasn’t a single word on it. I was puzzled and said, “It says here that it will only open for those with fate; since you have no fate with the heavenly palace, of course, it won’t open.”

The fat man spat and sighed, then bent down to feel around in the water, muttering, “It doesn’t matter if I have no fate with the heavenly palace; as long as I have fate with the Mingqi (spirit objects), that’s enough.”

I turned to look at the gloomy oil bottle; his face looked very bad. I asked him a few questions, but he ignored me, just staring intently at the stone tablet as if he were looking for something. I found it strange—a plain slab, after all; I didn’t understand what he was so focused on.

At that moment, the fat man clapped his hands. I turned around and saw him pull up a diving mask from the water, saying, “Looks like quite a few people have been here.”

I walked over and said, “When my third uncle went out, he didn’t have any diving equipment on him; these things might belong to him. See if there’s an oxygen tank.”

As soon as I finished speaking, the fat man had already fished out a crushed oxygen tank from the water. He tried it out, but it seemed unusable, so he tossed it back into the water, saying, “It’s all just junk down here. I really went through so much trouble to come down here for nothing. I think we should head back up quickly; who knows when this water will rise again, and we won’t have time to escape.”

I looked at the water level and thought the fat man made a valid point, so I walked back to find the gloomy oil bottle. To my surprise, he wasn’t there. I called out a few times, but there was no response, and my heart suddenly sank.

This guy is like a ghost, often appearing and disappearing unexpectedly; I really hope he hasn’t vanished again.

Thinking of this, I hurriedly signaled to the fat man to search around. Although the fog was thick, this place wasn’t large, and after circling around twice, we finally found him sitting in a corner of the pool wall, staring blankly ahead. The moment I saw his expression, I sensed something was wrong; the calmness he usually had was gone, replaced by a look of almost lifeless despair, making him appear like a corpse.

I quickly asked what was going on, and he looked up at me, speaking in a voice barely audible, “I remembered something from twenty years ago—”