Chapter 8: The Fatal Mechanism

  I know what Wen Long is thinking, as a soldier, they uphold the belief in guaranteeing the completion of their mission, and he is also a retired special forces operative, who absolutely believes in his own abilities. But before taking action, someone tells him that he's already dead, which for a strictly trained soldier, is a humiliation.

  The old man then held out his hand to stop him, saying: "It's possible that what he said is only the simplest mechanism. Don't underestimate the wisdom of the ancients; their designs are far more advanced than we can imagine."

  Su Yi said: "Is there really no way?"

  I darted towards Wu Feng while saying, "It seems that we can only gather our current equipment for now. You guys wait for me to figure out the exit of this passage before moving on." As expected, Su Yi's Shadowless Legs flew in the direction I was just at, and I felt proud of my own cleverness.

  Su Yu glared at me with a "huff" expression, implying that I could figure out why she was saying so much.

  The old man's eyes lit up and he said, "Can you figure it out?"

  I said: "Around the age of ten, I tried once, but failed. However, that time I wasn't in this formation, and my confidence was insufficient. Hopefully, I can succeed this time."

  The old man nodded and said: "Great, I hope you can create a miracle." Then he turned his head and said, "Wen Long, you are in charge of distributing the supplies."

  "You can actually do such complex math?"

  I shook my head and said, "This is not math, it's architecture. It's looking at this hole from an architectural perspective. First, I need to take some simple measurements. I need a compass, paper, and pen."

  Wen Long immediately pulled out a military compass from his backpack and handed it to me. I took the compass, just about to start working. My butt was kicked by a flying foot, Su Yi's sneak attack. Rubbing my butt, I found that Su Yi was staring at me with an "you dare" kind of gaze, while the other three were pretending not to see anything.

  I had to rub my butt, enduring the pain as I continued with the measurement and started calculating. Time passed minute by minute, a whole four hours had gone by, and I was still non-stop calculating, which made several people who were idle on the side feel a bit depressed.

  As expected, Su Wei couldn't sit still any longer and said: "How is it? It's been four hours already, and you still haven't finished calculating?"

  "I finished it two hours ago," I said. "I'm rechecking now."

  "What?" Su Yi was furious, "Two hours ago it would have been over, why didn't you say so earlier, can't you see I'm anxious to death? What's the point of verifying again? Isn't practice the only criterion for testing truth? Can't we just walk a circle and know if your calculation is right or not?"

  I did the calculation while saying, "It's still better to be careful. If we make a mistake this time, I'm afraid there won't be a second chance. Even if one of us has a problem in between, it will be troublesome."

  The old man nodded in agreement: "Yes, if someone gets hurt, it'll be even more troublesome. We don't have any medicine in our equipment. But we do have food and water, so we still have some time."

  At this time, I also finished checking, I put down the pen in my hand, Su Yi said eagerly: "Have you finished checking? Can we go?"

  I took a look at the calculation results and moved my neck again. I smiled bitterly and said, "There's something I want to tell you guys. Maybe I calculated it wrong."

  "What?" Su Yi's high-pitched voice again, "How can it be wrong? Didn't you check the calculation?"

  I stood up and stretched my body, saying: "I've counted twice..."

  "Two different results?" Su Feng said hastily.

  I shook my head and said: "The results of both times are the same..."

  Su Yu interrupted and said: "What are we waiting for then? That just proves you're right, let's go."

  The old man glared at Su Yi and said, "If there's anything wrong, just say it. We can all analyze it together."

  I said: "The result of this calculation is the same as the one I calculated when I was ten years old. It's a wrong result."

  The old man said: "How did you know your previous calculation result was wrong?"

  "My dad told me at the time, but he didn't say what the reason was, just that the result was wrong."

  "Wow." Wu Feng chimed in, "If he had said one more sentence back then, maybe we'd have a way out today."

  "After calculating for half a day, it's still back to the starting point." Wen Long said beside him, "Now we can only try walking through it once."

  The old man nodded and said, "We can try it out, but we can't really go in. We can put the important things in our backpacks, tie them up with ropes, and keep throwing them in to see what situation will trigger the mechanism. If it doesn't trigger, we can jump over according to its landing point."

  Now that we have a direction, the efficiency of several people has immediately improved. Our backpacks are professional military equipment, so I emptied out my backpack and stuffed some useless things inside it, making the backpack weigh about as much as a person. Then I tied it up with military rope and brought it to the entrance of the cave that I had specified.

  I looked at the entrance of the cave and said: "If we succeed, there is still a glimmer of hope for us. If we fail..."

  Everyone fell silent, apparently understanding the meaning of my words. The old man shook his head and continued: "If we fail, we'll start all over again. In the worst-case scenario, we can use this backpack to try one hole at a time. After trying these eight holes, there will be a non-lethal opening mechanism."

  "I was busy saying: 'Right, how can you say that reading books is useless? I didn't think of it. If there's a hole in the mouth, I can calculate the correct path. This is equivalent to having part of the answer to a math problem."

  Wen Long couldn't get a word in edgewise, but it was clear he couldn't wait any longer. He gave us a signal with his eyes. Wu Feng, Su Yi and I were responsible for pulling the rope to bring the backpack back. The old man turned on a flashlight and shone it towards the cave entrance. Wen Long grabbed the backpack and threw it into the cave with all his might. The backpack drew a lonely arc in the air before falling into the cave. A "thud" sound was heard as the backpack hit the ground, followed by a faint "click".

  "Wen Long let out a loud roar: 'There's a mechanism!'"

  Several of us pulled the rope hard, and the backpack was lifted up. At this time, many things had flown out from the surrounding walls, shining brightly under the light of the wolf's eyes flashlight, but we couldn't see what they were at all. We just felt that as soon as our hands loosened, the rope should have been cut off by something. And that backpack was cut into several pieces in a burst of "ding" sounds and fell down.

  I took a deep breath, looking at the others, who had similar expressions. Wen Long patted his chest, probably relieved that he hadn't gone in himself. Wu Feng was still holding onto half of the rope, standing there stupidly, unable to react for a moment. Su Yi, although standing behind, was also frightened out of her wits.

  I had mentally prepared myself for such a result, but I didn't expect that the mechanism here would have such power. The bright light flew for half a minute before stopping, but strangely, there was no sign of anything left on the ground from earlier.

  We all stood there in a daze for a long time before the old man spoke with a slight stutter: "This mechanism, it seems like it can be recovered and reused."

  I said: "The worst case has happened, this broken mechanism, if we step on it again, will it still be triggered?"

  Wu Feng thought for a moment and said: "Then, did you see clearly what it was just now?"

  Everyone looked at me, apparently they didn't see clearly what it was just now. I thought for a long time and said: "If my idea is correct, that thing should be a circular disc with polished edges all around, but I don't know what material it's made of."

  Su Wei loudly retorted: "Are you kidding? How can you see clearly?"

  I explained: "Actually, in some books at my home, there are records of the existence of this thing. In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, this thing even became a formidable weapon. It is said that this weapon can cut through anything, and what's more frightening is that it has an automatic target locking function. After cutting through the target, it can automatically return to the user's hand. If used by someone who doesn't know how to use it properly, they might even end up cutting themselves. In history, the only one who could wield this powerful weapon was Nezha, a general under King Wu of Zhou, and this weapon is called the Qiankun Circle."

  Wen Long sneered and said, "These are just myths, how can they be true? Besides, if such a thing really existed, what would be the point of making guns and cannons? This thing is even more powerful than a heavy machine gun."

  The old man shook his head in disagreement and said, "It's not like that, Wen Long. You know, there are too many things that our current science can't explain. Moreover, there were many things in ancient times that cannot be made with modern methods, and this is probably one of them. Now we really have no way out, from now on, all supplies will be rationed." After finishing speaking, he turned to me and said, "You are the only hope now."

  Everyone else was staring at me in silence, and my head immediately swelled three times bigger. I'm now responsible for several lives, including my own, so all I could say was: "I'll do my best."

  The old man patted me and said, "Let's have dinner first, after finishing eating, take a good rest. Today has been tiring, maybe your brain isn't working well either. After resting, we can calculate it carefully again. Don't worry, we still have time."

  Dinner was no longer possible, as water was much more precious than food, so we could only dry-chew compressed dried rations, which were really hard to swallow. Moreover, the supply of water had also decreased significantly, and originally, the old man had specially approved me to drink more, in order to get better results, but I refused.

  After waking up and having breakfast, the time afterwards was much simpler. I repeatedly calculated the wrong building problem, Wen Long carefully redistributed all the materials again. Fortunately, we were all equipped with gear when we came down, so there was still enough food, just a bit of water tension, but barely enough to hold on. Wen Long even gave each of us men a bottle and asked us to collect our urine. We roughly estimated that in this situation, food and water could last for about ten or more days. Of course, that's assuming I can really calculate the exit. If I ultimately fail, then maybe we'll just have to wait until thousands of years later to see if we can be unearthed. During my calculations, no one else dared to disturb me. When I glanced at them, they were playing cards.

  I silently cursed in my heart, this calculation has failed again. Su Yi, on the other hand, was feeling carefree and loudly said to Wen Long: "You can't deny it if you lose, go do a headstand, haha, we're going to play cards."

  Wen Long snorted coldly and said, "Let's get into position, who's afraid of whom?"

  The two of them were chattering away when the old man walked over, probably seeing the worried look on my face, and said: "Don't worry, if we go at our current pace, I estimate it'll take three days to get out of this place. You've still got seven to ten days to do your calculations."

  I sighed and said, "It's tough. I've calculated it twice just now. The results are the same, still wrong. Now I'm thinking about it, maybe I made a common sense mistake, but I just can't figure out where I went wrong."

  The old man shook his head and said: "Just thinking about it won't work. Can you think of any hints when you were calculating before?"

  I carefully recalled the calculation at that time and said, "It seems that there is indeed one. When my father confirmed that I made a mistake in the calculation, he said that I was making an error. He said that the maze has a convenient way to walk, but we don't often use it, but it can find the exit path the fastest."

  The old man thought for a moment and said, "Then how do you usually get out of the maze?"

  I said, "If we go in one direction, for example, if we always walk along the right side, then we will necessarily find a way out of the maze. This method may take some time, but it can guarantee that we will get out. However, now there are deadly traps here, and this method is absolutely impossible."

  Wu Feng walked over at this time, inserting a sentence: "If I were to walk through the maze, I would generally climb on the wall and then go out directly from above. But this broken place, we are underground, where is the wall?"

  Su Wei saw that no one was fighting with her for the right of way, so she came over and heard our conversation. She said: "I'm not that stupid, I usually walk from the exit to the entrance, this way I can find the entrance very quickly, and this road is absolutely correct."

  I was thinking about how to solve the problem in front of me, and when I heard Su's words, it seemed like a thread of inspiration, so I quickly asked: "What did you just say?"

  Su Yu was taken aback for a moment before saying: "Search from the exit to the entrance, that way you can find your way quickly."

  "I slapped my thigh and said, 'Damn it, this is right! This is how I should have done it. I was too hasty earlier. We are now at the center of the Hundred Eyes Heavenly Formation, so my solution to get out of here is to head towards the exit through the middle path. But doing so would go against the fundamental principles of building this maze. You're really a genius, we're saved! This time we're really saved!"