I rubbed my face and said to the fat guy, “We need to change our way of thinking about this place.”

The fat guy replied, “Go ahead and change. I’m just going to change my mood first; you change your way of thinking.”

I continued, “All the basis for our current thinking comes from our past experiences. We’ve been through so much that we always link what we see here to what we’ve seen before, hoping that everything is interconnected, right?”

The fat guy nodded, saying that no one wants to spend so much time only to find that what happens here has nothing to do with our previous experiences; the young man just came here to escape the heat and deal with pests or something.

I said, “This way, we skip countless details and crudely establish connections between many things. For example, if I see a lot of frames here, I might think it’s similar to another meteorite I saw before. This forces my thinking from A to Z, without knowing how many points are between A and Z. We end up forming a very poor simplistic way of thinking, which is—because Z is like that, A must also be like that.”

“You college student, get lost,” the fat guy said. “Can you speak in plain language? Who can understand you when you say it like that?”

“I’ll give you an example,” I said. “What if we think the other way around? If the meteorite under Xiwangmu City has holes that were artificially dug and not naturally occurring, then these patterns here wouldn’t indicate holes but rather show where to dig holes.”

The fat guy frowned, and I continued, “This is just an example, but it shows us that thinking like this will absolutely yield no results. We must discard all past experiences and start considering the issue from the essence of this place to avoid going astray.”

The fat guy clearly still didn’t understand, but he said, “If you think it’s right, then go ahead. How do we start from the essence?”

“Start from absolute facts that have already occurred,” I started to get a bit preachy. “The absolute facts we have are few, but there’s one basic confirmation: my blood can flow on these patterns, forming regular designs. This means that the person who carved these patterns used special techniques to make this phenomenon possible. At the very least, those who carved these patterns must have a much deeper understanding of this blood than we do.”

“I agree. But it’s pointless to say,” the fat guy replied.

“Who has a deeper understanding of this blood than we do? Where does our concept of this blood come from?” I pointed to my wound. “The young man from the Zhang family; without a doubt, these patterns are related to the Zhang family.”

“This kind of blood shouldn’t only belong to the Zhang family; you have it too. Aren’t you a Wu? This thing can be acquired later.”

The fat guy made a valid point. I sighed, thinking: Now we know we have a direction for exploration, which is what kind of origin this Qilin blood has and what characteristics it possesses. From there, we can make a second inference. I feel that Zhang Haixing should know something; I can ask her later.

The fat man said, “And there’s more. Your statement so far is basically meaningless.” I replied, “If we think about it in reverse, only those with Qilin blood can enter this cave and see the information displayed by these patterns. Can we then assume that these patterns serve the purpose of identity recognition?”

“I agree.”

“However, for general identity recognition, we could use a more clever method. For example, we could easily create a mechanism the size of a washbasin. Why are the patterns spread all over the cave itself? Such a large-scale project must have a reason behind it.”

“Weren’t you saying that many actions of ancient people had no reason? Maybe it was to showcase their craftsmanship!”

“Such behavior is usually meant to please the rulers. For instance, the Terracotta Army was created to please Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Craftsmen wouldn’t make something too extravagant on their own. Many jade carving masters create incredibly detailed works, but even when showing off, it’s within the scope of what they can accomplish, and they would definitely want to showcase it. These patterns, deep within the mountains, couldn’t have been created by just one person. A group of people worked together to create something exquisitely beautiful, and their purpose must have been to please someone.”

“So, the owner of this place, the master of those craftsmen, is someone who likes intricate patterns?” the fat man summarized for me. “Or perhaps such designs have practical uses. Wait a minute, I need to jot this down.”

The fat man, who believed in poor handwriting, took out his notebook and wrote down the possibilities I mentioned, branching the inference into two directions.

I continued, “If it’s a matter of personal preference, there should be very few people in this world who would go to a place, create a beautiful room, and then just leave. Even if such a person exists, it’s unlikely they would have the skill and capability to do so. Therefore, we can infer that this person built this place not just for fun; there must be a purpose to it, and they would definitely come here often, or even stay inside.”

At this point, both the fat man and I turned to look at the place where the person had shed their skin.

“Bingo, is it this guy?”

“Not necessarily, because this guy has been locked in here and turned into a husk,” the fat man said. “Huang Laoxie even froze his wife. This thing is locked up; maybe it’s actually a beautifully crafted prison. There’s a particularly twisted chieftain here who likes to capture his enemies and keep them locked up to watch them decay.”

“The third fact: the state of this corpse is very abnormal, not like an ordinary corpse. So there are two possibilities: one is that this person was already abnormal; the other is that this person started becoming abnormal only after coming here.”

“That still can’t be proven. Even if we found another corpse, we wouldn’t know how long such a change would take to occur. I think this corpse has been here for a very long time. And at that time, the place was filled with mud. We don’t know if those black substances are the reason for the corpse’s transformation.”

I nodded and suddenly realized that an analysis had led to a conclusion: “Where did the mud come from? Is there any place here where mud could seep in?”

The fat man shook his head. In fact, this kind of sludge clearly isn’t real mud; it resembles some sort of coffin fluid. Along the way, we haven’t seen anything like this, and this place is completely sealed off. This means that the sludge itself was poured in by the people who built this place. Whatever it is, it must have been poured in before the bronze door was closed and then sealed.

Several facts come together: First, once this place was established, it became impossible to enter again. At least, entering is very inconvenient. So it wasn’t built for appreciation or display; it is a one-time use.

Second, these patterns would be completely covered by the sludge, making them unobservable. This also proves that it is a one-time use. But why pour in this sludge? Is this a place for storing sludge? Why build such an elaborate place to store sludge? If this is a storage place, then obviously, the patterns inside must be helpful for storage; otherwise, a warehouse wouldn’t need to be so impressive.

In the history of China, no one has ever built such an impressive warehouse. From any other perspective, this sludge does not exist for storage; it should serve this place.

Third, there is a corpse that has undergone very strange changes, and mechanisms are set up around it.

“This is an ancient tomb,” I said, slapping my forehead. “My God, this is a tomb!”

A sealed space, exquisite interior patterns, a corpse, and mechanisms set up around the corpse. To some extent, this is indeed an ancient tomb.

“Is this sludge coffin fluid?” the fat man said. “Was it poured in to protect this corpse? Then why would the tomb owner lock themselves in?”

I took a deep breath and said, “It’s not this corpse that is buried; it’s what’s inside the corpse that is buried. This is a human chrysalis. Someone stuffed the real corpse inside this person.”

“Then there’s no need to lock it up—damn, could it be…” The fat man jumped up. “Was this human chrysalis still alive during the embalming?”

“They stuffed a dead object inside a person’s belly, locked it in here, poured in sludge, sealed it up, and used a living person as a coffin. For what purpose?”

Of course, it was for that dead object. However, when we saw this corpse, it was empty; the thing inside its body was already gone.