Chapter Eleven: The Mechanism Leading Upwards

  After that, neither of us spoke. The old man took Wu Feng to take pictures of all the carvings. In my heart, I kept repeating the myth of Hou Yi shooting the sun that I knew, and the story carved on the wall now. I compared these two stories many times in my heart, no matter how I looked at it, the myth was indeed not very practical, but this story, although theoretically feasible, was only theoretical. Because the things that appeared here were too unbelievable. If humans really had such a weapon, a black hole cannon that could destroy stars, then should our current life be considered progress or regression?

  Wen Long was clearly uninterested in all of this and fiddled with a backpack on the side. I stopped daydreaming and asked, "What are you doing?"

  Wen Long had already prepared and rushed towards me, saying: "Come over and help out, let's take a look at the situation first. If there are any changes in the mechanism, we can think of a way to rush past it."

  I nodded, stood up again, and Wu Feng also came over to help. The entrance was next to the black hole carving, and as I walked past it, I took another look at the black hole, still with that unreal feeling. Wu Feng handed me a section of rope tied to the backpack, Wen Long picked up the backpack and threw it in with force. As the backpack hit the ground, we heard a loud thud, and quickly pulled on the rope, the inside of the cave had already changed. A stone pillar rapidly protruded from the wall, rushing towards the other side, extremely fast, and we could even hear the sound of wind being stirred up.

  "I'm going." I had just said that, and the stone pillar stopped when it was about to hit the wall opposite, and quickly returned to its original position. At this time, more and more stone pillars came out, were retrieved, sometimes two or three, sometimes four or five, some long, some short, but all extremely fast.

  Wen Long was also stunned, then said to me: "Are you sure it's this cave entrance."

  I gritted my teeth and nodded, saying, "It should be right."

  "Damn it!" Wen Long burst out, "What kind of non-lethal device is this? This is going to kill us! Your device isn't even a shield, you can't even block it with a jeep!"

  Wu Feng also looked a bit stunned and asked me: "Are you sure you didn't calculate it wrong? Is there something wrong?"

  "What's going on?" The old man and Su Xi were also attracted by the noise here. At this time, all the mechanisms in the cave had retracted, so we could only repeat the experiment we just did again. No one spoke, they all looked at me. I also looked at them very seriously.

  The old man said to me at this time: "I believe in your calculation results, let's think about how to get through from here." I looked at the old man with grateful eyes. You know, when someone supports you, no matter how old he is, you will feel lovely.

  Wen Long carefully observed the mechanism inside the cave and said, "There's no way to do it, the speed is too fast. With this speed and quality of stone pillars hitting your body, it's equivalent to a small car crashing into you at this speed. None of us here can withstand it, at least I couldn't."

  Su Yi nodded and said: "If Wen Long can't hold on, who else can?"

  I sighed and said: "Let me recalculate again, maybe there's something I missed."

  The dry calculations made me feel a bit crazy, but no matter how I calculated, the final result always pointed to that hole. At first, Su Xi was still loudly guiding the direction, but slowly she lost interest and eventually fell asleep beside me. After a long time, when I raised my head, I found that everyone had already entered the land of dreams, I missed the sleep, at this time there was no drowsiness, only felt that those structures, numbers, squeezed my brain almost bursting. So I quietly got up again and came to the front of those carvings, carefully observing those carvings while recalling the old man's reasoning he told us.

  After turning halfway around, we arrived at the entrance we were about to pass through. Thinking of those unsolvable mechanisms inside, I felt that those structures and numbers began to flow back into my mind again. I couldn't help but quickly shake my head and look towards the carving of the black hole beside me.

  To be honest, it wasn't until I took a closer look at these carvings that I realized the ancient sculptor had already reached the pinnacle of his craft. The black hole carving is incredibly vivid, and to be frank, even if I were given all the materials and asked to draw one, I'm not sure I could do it justice. The way the light around the black hole seems to swirl in towards the center is carved with incredible detail, and the feeling of those stars being pulled into the black hole is also deeply captivating, making you feel like the carving is almost coming to life. And then there's the center of the black hole... my mind just went racing. The center of the black hole isn't completely black. When I first looked at this carving, I only gave it a quick glance and didn't really observe it carefully, and the second time I was completely absorbed in the old man's story, so I didn't notice the details of the carving either. Now that I'm looking again, I see that at the very center of the black hole, there's a small, round stone pillar protruding outwards - just a tiny bit, but it's definitely there. It looks like some kind of button or switch.

  I reached out to touch it, and the small button seemed to be movable. Just as I was considering whether to press it or not, a voice came from very close behind me: "What are you doing?" I was startled, and with a burst of strength, my hand pressed the button all the way in.

  It was Su Yi speaking from behind, she had woken up. Seeing me spacing out over here, she quietly came over to scare me. I was startled by her, but what scared me even more was that after the button was pressed, a series of "clicking" sounds came through, not loud, but enough to wake up the old man and the others. Immediately afterwards, another change occurred.

  The ceiling above us seemed to have undergone some change, and then nine of the ten spherical plants gradually dimmed their light, getting darker and darker until they turned completely black. Only one was still emitting a faint silver glow, and this plant happened to be right above the hole we were about to break through.

  "What's going on?" came the old man's voice, as it had already darkened over there, so they could only see a faint shadow by the weak light emitted from this cluster of plants.

  Wen Long turned on his flashlight and shone it upwards, saying: "How did it turn black?"

  I saw nothing else happening, so I plucked up the courage and said: "Maybe it was me who pressed that button, causing this situation."

  "What button?" Su Yi asked me on the side, and I only felt that she had already hugged one of my arms. She also discovered it at this time, and hurriedly let go, saying "I was startled just now, startled."

  I didn't respond again, pointing to the button towards the center of the black hole. Su Wei leaned against the wall and looked carefully, saying: "This button seems to be moving."

  I was also startled and rushed over, imitating Su Fu's actions, and looked down to see that the button was indeed being slowly pushed up. The old man and a few others had also walked over by this time. I told them about what had just happened, and the old man carefully observed the button, but since the light was relatively weak at this point, he couldn't see very clearly. He said: "Wen Long, get me a flashlight."

  No response, turned around, Wen Long was gone, the old man shouted loudly: "Wen Long."

  But then we heard Wen Long's voice coming from the cave we were about to pass through, saying "I'm here." Then we saw Wen Long's tall figure appear at the entrance of the cave. Only then did a few people breathe a sigh of relief.

  I looked at Wen Long in surprise and said, "You entered that cave without getting hurt?"

  Wen Long chuckled and said, "I heard you say that you pressed some button, and at the time I thought it might be the switch to close this mechanism, so I went in to try it out. I walked more than 50 meters inside before a stone pillar started popping out slowly, but it was so slow that even a snail could dodge it. That's when I heard the old man calling me, so I came back."

  The old man said on one side: "Wen Long, you can't be so reckless next time. What if something happens?"

  "Wen Long said, 'Old man, which time did I not take the lead? Besides, this time I was also afraid of encountering a situation, so I proceeded cautiously and slowly. That's why I had only just walked out about 50 meters. If I were running, I estimate that we would have reached the next cave by now.'"

  The old man didn't say anything, apparently Wen Long was telling the truth. At this time, Su Yi said: "Don't you feel a bit brighter than before?"

  We looked up and found that the round balls on our heads had slowly regained their brightness. The old man quickly glanced at his watch. After a while, the light was fully restored, and when we turned back to look at the button, it had returned to its original state. The old man looked at his watch again and said: "Ten minutes, this switch should be able to turn off the mechanism and let people pass through." Su Yi rolled her eyes at me, implying that I was right after all.

  "I let out a sigh and said: 'Who would have thought that the ancient people were so cunning, designing a switch to turn off the mechanism? If you really didn't know about it, you'd think you're done for this time.'"

  The old man said: "Yes, and the hearts of these ancient people are also chilling."

  "What's with the heart calculation?" Wu Feng said, "Old master, what have you figured out again? Why are you bringing up heart calculations again?"

  The old man looked at me and said, "The distrust in the team, to be honest, when I found out that this mechanism was deadly, I also had doubts about the calculation results. Fortunately, you few are either people I've watched grow up or children of my old friends, so I understand your temperaments. Otherwise, if it were others, there would definitely be mutual distrust. If that's the case, combined with being trapped for a long time, I'm afraid we'll all go our separate ways in the end, and maybe not even one person will stay."

  None of us said anything, the old man made a lot of sense. Although I felt that everyone suspected my calculation at the time, since Wu Feng and Su Yi were all grown up from childhood, Wen Long was also a very reliable guy even though it was our first meeting. So at that time, there was no such discomfort of being suspected. But if it were someone else, with my personality, I might have just walked into that hole to be the test subject myself, and that would have been really fatal.

  The old man clapped his hands a couple of times to attract our attention and said, "Since we've found a way to get past it, there's no need to rush. It's still the middle of the night, so everyone should get some rest. When we wake up, we'll make another attempt."

  I knew the old man was taking care of me, because they had actually already slept for a while. I said: "No need, I'm so young, sleeping less won't be a problem, let's see how to rush over instead."

  The old man patted me and said, "Don't think it's nothing. In this heavily guarded place, if one person falls behind, it's very likely to harm everyone. So when we should rest, we will rest. We have enough food and water, so we're not in a hurry."

  I knew the old man was right, so I seized the time to rest quickly. Since there was nothing else to worry about in my heart, I soon fell into a dreamland.

  "Lazy cat, wake up." I slowly woke up from my dream, and in the midst of my blurry consciousness, I felt like someone was slapping me on the face. When I finally became fully awake, I realized it was Su Yi who was slapping my face left and right. The force wasn't very painful, but it wasn't comfortable either.

  I quickly got up and looked at Su Yi with a complacent face, saying: "Sister, would you mind not using this method that feels like a slap in the face to wake me up next time? Even if you use cold water to splash me awake, it's okay."

  Su Yichong made a face at me and said: "Okay, next time I'll use cold water."

  I made another naive mistake, I know that girl is definitely a person who does what she says. The old man and the others had already prepared everything, I saw that their backpacks were all packed up and ready to go, just waiting for me. I was too lazy to entangle with Su Yi again, so I quickly washed my face in the water pool.

  This time the order of the team changed. I was arranged to be the first, holding a charging flashlight, then Lao Yezi, Su Yi, Wu Feng, and finally Wen Long at the end. Wen Long's words were absolute, just calling for the slow runners to run first, so as to ensure that the whole team is advancing together. I went, originally in the whole team, I couldn't even outrun an old man who was almost sixty and a little girl younger than me. My self-esteem suffered a severe blow, it was like being hit by a high-speed train directly into my heart. The only thing that made me feel slightly balanced was that Lao Yezi didn't wear a backpack.

  I pressed the button, and those plants changed again. After they had completely transformed, I rushed into that dark hole. The flashlight only allowed me to see a little bit of the road ahead while running quickly, but the real light came from the wolf-eye flashlight held by Wen Long. At first, we didn't see any stone pillars popping out on the wall, but slowly, some stone pillars had already popped out, though very slowly, like slow motion in a movie. The only difference was that in this slow motion, we were still running quickly. I knew it was the reaction of the mechanism button slowly popping up, and my feet moved even faster.

  After running for another stretch, those stone pillars had completely popped out. Wen Long's voice sounded from behind, saying: "I feel like it's getting harder and harder to walk."

  "I exclaimed rapidly: 'These stone pillars have completely popped out and will slowly retract again. When they pop out again, it's the speed we saw before.'"

  "Wen Long let out a loud roar: 'Speed up! I don't know how much farther ahead we have.'"

  No need for him to say, I've already used up all my strength, but those stone pillars are really in the way, jumping up and down, making it impossible to run normally. Like this, after passing through another section, the stone pillars started to retract, and the road became much easier to walk on, so I gritted my teeth and accelerated again. The speed at which those stone pillars retracted was clearly much faster than when they popped out.

  A bright light appeared ahead, I knew we were about to pass through this entrance. I sprinted out of the entrance in one breath, and when I turned back, everyone except Wen Long had already rushed in. At this moment, a stone pillar at the entrance suddenly popped out with great speed, Wen Long made a forward dive, passing through the gap above the pillar, and the sound of triggering mechanisms echoed inside the cave.

  "Lucky it was me who took the fall"