The fat guy suddenly said he had thought of something, and we were all taken aback, but we quickly prepared ourselves to hear some nonsense. We had almost gotten used to the fat guy’s unreliability; instead of teasing him every time, we might as well let him ramble on. Besides, sometimes his way of thinking was different from ours, so it wouldn’t hurt to listen.

At that moment, I wasn’t particularly anxious, as we weren’t at a point of total desperation yet. It was just that with these few corpses around, it was hard not to think of some unpleasant things. In fact, for someone like me, facing this kind of intellectual challenge, I even felt a bit fortunate; this was certainly easier than dealing with a bunch of zongzi (sticky rice dumplings).

Panzi shared my thoughts and didn’t take it seriously either. He casually asked the fat guy, “What? Don’t talk nonsense, we don’t have time for that right now!”

The fat guy leaned closer to us and said to Panzi, “You damn well discriminate against me! When have I ever been completely off the mark? This time what I’ve thought of is absolutely crucial.”

Panzi chuckled and replied, “With that little brain of yours, what do you think you’ve come up with?”

This time the fat guy was surprisingly serious. He said earnestly, “Actually, it’s not that crucial. I just had a sudden insight about the mechanisms in the underwater tomb. Think about it; we were overthinking things before, but in reality, how simple is it? I was pondering whether we might be overthinking this time too, and letting the mechanisms in the underwater tomb lead us to preconceived notions. Whenever we encounter something like this, we think the room must be moving or something. Maybe the problem here has nothing to do with this tomb at all; it’s just an ordinary burial chamber.”

Panzi grinned and said, “Nonsense! If it were ordinary, how could I not get out…?”

I could see that the fat guy hadn’t finished speaking, so I waved my hand at Panzi, signaling him to let the fat guy continue.

The fat guy said, “Actually, it’s very simple. Think about it: if this passage and this tomb have no problems at all, but we still can’t get out, then where does the problem lie? It must be with us!”

At this, both Panzi and I were momentarily stunned. I said, “Are you saying that the deadlock here is our own fault?”

The fat guy nodded and said, “Although I don’t know what the problem is yet, it’s likely. I’m thinking, could it be that we have hypnotized ourselves with those wall paintings, or maybe there’s some hallucinogenic gas here, and we’re all poisoned? I know of a type of mushroom that, when eaten, causes the sensory organs to malfunction, making you spin in circles without realizing it.”

The fat guy had previously told me that when he was a child, he saw traps in the forest used for hunting bears that employed this kind of poisonous mushroom. Once the bear was affected, it would just keep spinning in place until it exhausted itself.

I fell into deep thought, and Panzi also fell silent, furrowing his brows as he began to consider the fat guy’s words.

Was it our own problem? If so, the complexity of the situation would be entirely different. However, after a bit of consideration, I felt something was off.

In fact, the fat guy’s statement was quite enlightening; perhaps the truth was close to what he said, but there was a fatal flaw in his reasoning: would we really be like this if we were poisoned? I had experienced poisoning before, and someone who was truly poisoned would definitely exhibit strong discomfort.

As for hypnosis, I’ve never really believed in it because its specificity is too strong. It’s believable that it’s easier to hypnotize someone overweight, but it’s really unlikely for me and Panzi. However, if we return to the realm of strange tricks, it’s indeed hard to come up with anything. In fact, I just conceived about a dozen methods, and among them, two or three architectural structures could completely achieve such a layout. But these methods have very high requirements, meaning there must be absolute prerequisites, such as the three people must act together, and our walking speed must be fixed, etc. Wang Canghai would definitely not design such a low-success-rate trap.

We all fell into deep thought at once. The fat man saw that we stopped talking after listening to him, and he didn’t know what to do, so he pretended to be deep in thought as well. Later, I don’t know how it happened, but the more I thought, the sleepier and more fatigued I became, and I ended up falling asleep.

However, I probably only slept for three or four hours. I was in a daze and didn’t really fall into a deep sleep. I could hear the voices of the fat man and Panzi talking, which woke me up. When I got up, I found they were walking down the same tomb passage again. Shunzi had obviously just run back, panting. Looking at the fat man’s expression, it was clear that the result was still the same, with no progress.

I rubbed my eyes and asked what they were doing. The fat man said they had thought for a long time but had no clue, so they might as well experiment. They had just let one person walk with their eyes closed while another watched from behind, with the two connected by a rope, to see if the person with their eyes open would suddenly turn around halfway through.

I listened, shivering. This was simply a method of experimentation that could drive someone to despair. It was fortunate these few had thick skin; if it were me doing that, who knows if the person on the other end of the rope would still be the same one halfway through.

In the end, the result was still the same. Whether blindfolded or with eyes closed, they both felt they were walking in a straight line, but they still ended up back in the tomb chamber. Since Shunzi had his eyes closed, he found it particularly strenuous, and his face was pale.

The few of us sat back in our seats, all sighing. I told them to save their energy; in fact, such blind experimentation could lead to a breakdown in thinking. Then the situation returned to before I fell asleep, and we started our meaningless discussion again.

During the discussion, someone would always doze off, but fortunately, when one person slept, the others could still continue thinking. Thus, we tossed around one idea after another, proposing and then rejecting them. At first, there were many theories, but later on, the conversation dwindled, and time unknowingly passed by six or seven hours, and our stomachs began to growl again.

Finally, the fat man lit a cigarette, thought for a moment, and said to us, “No, this scattered way of thinking is really wasting time. Let’s write down all the possibilities and then summarize them into a few points. After that, we can directly verify one of them, right?”

I nodded. In fact, by the end, many of the problems we were discussing were repetitive, and we had all entered a state of confusion.

The fat man cleared a space on the ground covered with gold artifacts and wrote down a few numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. Then he said, “Let’s think about how many hypotheses we have now. Everyone recall, not in detail, just the general direction will do.”

Panzi said, “The most likely one is that there are mechanisms.”

The fat man wrote “mechanisms” next to number 1. Then Shunzi said, “Your idea could be that something is influencing our perceptions, like psychological suggestion or hypnosis, making us unknowingly walk back.”

The fat man replied, “No need to get into too much detail.” He wrote “illusion” behind number 2 and looked at me.

I said, “Theoretically, it could also be spatial folding.”

“That’s impossible; it’s too mystical,” Panzi remarked.

The fat man said, “No matter what, if there’s a one in ten thousand chance, we should acknowledge it. We’re just making a memo.” He wrote “spatial folding” behind number 3. Then he added, “It could also be ghosts,” and wrote “ghosts” next to number 4.

“What’s the point of writing this down?” Panzi asked, confused.

The fat man replied, “You guys read a lot; you don’t understand. I haven’t read much, but everything must be written down. There’s a benefit to this; for example, if there are several things, you can handle them together. If you organize it beforehand, you can save a lot of time. We only have two days, right? We need to save some time. By the way, is there a number 5? Does anyone have a number 5?”

I looked at the four points. They indeed covered a range from quantum mechanics to metaphysics, psychology, and engineering. I couldn’t think of a fifth point for the moment. Our previous discussion had mainly focused on points one and two; three and four seemed utterly impossible.

Seeing that we had no reaction, the fat man said, “Alright, let’s first verify points one and two. These two can be tested together.”

“What method will you use to verify?” I asked curiously.

In fact, most of the experiments we could conduct had already been done, but due to the long tomb passage, many experiments had proven useless.

Suddenly, the fat man smiled: “Actually, I just thought of a good method. It might be impossible to prove whether one or two is influencing us, but we can prove that one of them isn’t. Just watch.”

I looked at the fat man, who seemed very pleased with himself, and suddenly felt uneasy. Did this guy have some plan? He picked up a rifle from the ground and said to us, “This tomb passage is about 1,000 to 2,000 meters long, and the effective killing range of a Type 56 rifle is 400 meters, but the bullet can reach up to 3,000 meters. I’m going to fire a shot here and see what the result will be.”

As soon as I heard this, it suddenly clicked in my mind, and I thought to myself: This genius!

If it’s a problem with our own perceptions, then the bullet wouldn’t have any perception. The tomb passage might influence us, but it wouldn’t affect the bullet. If the situation here can still be explained by common sense, then the bullet will definitely disappear at the end of the tomb passage and won’t come back.

The brilliance of this experiment lies in the speed of the bullet. In such a short tomb passage, the bullet can travel the entire distance in 2.3 seconds, without any mechanisms or traps, allowing it to take effect in such a short time.

However, if the situation here truly exceeds the bounds of rational explanation and enters the realm of metaphysics, then the bullet would, like us, make a 180-degree turn in a straight tomb passage, transcending space. It’s simple and beautiful, very much in line with the spirit of science. I feel a bit ashamed that, as a college student, I couldn’t come up with such a method.

But then I thought, this kind of idea could only come from someone like him; it’s the simplest form of logical thinking. To determine whether there is an illusion at play, one must look for something that isn’t affected by illusions. To find something, one should look nearby; considering this in a three-step process, the solution immediately becomes clear and is not complicated at all. I suddenly felt that Wang Canghai might have encountered a rival. Someone as scheming as him would probably fear a straightforward thinker like the fat guy, as any trick would be simplified.

The fat guy said he would do it, and we followed him. He walked into the tomb passage, pulled back the gun’s bolt, and was about to fire into the passage. I hurriedly shouted, “Wait!”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Don’t do that,” I replied. “If—I’m just saying if—this place is truly as sinister as that, then firing your gun would almost instantaneously result in you being shot.”

The fat guy’s expression changed; it was clear that he had previously thought the first and second possibilities were quite large, and he hadn’t considered whether the third or fourth might actually be true. However, after I mentioned it, he nodded, shifted the gun to the side, reasoning that bullets follow a parabolic trajectory, and if the bullet were to come back, it should land just below the muzzle.

We all hid by the door, still unprepared mentally, when the fat guy suddenly fired. A loud bang echoed through the tomb passage, followed by a series of echoes. Almost simultaneously, we saw the tomb door shake violently, sending up a cloud of dust.

My head buzzed, and I thought this was bad. I leaned out to take a look. The fat guy was still in a rigid stance, maintaining his position of firing, but on the door just a few centimeters below his gun, a bullet hole appeared, and the smoke from the explosion had yet to dissipate.