No. 62: Shadow's Counterattack (1)

  Inside the stone chamber, candles were burning, and the candle holders were made of some unknown skeletal remains, with a very strange shape. The wax dripped down and fell on the pale white bones, creating a terrifying scene.

  After Ren Ping left, I sat down on the simple bed in the room. Looking around, this room was very simple, with a bed, a table and chair, and a wardrobe. The bed had a very plain cotton-padded quilt, the table had the four treasures of the study, several books were scattered on the desk, thread-bound hand-copied vertical version, under the lamp there was a small bag, inside which was a set of exquisite dissecting knives.

  I flipped through the books on the desk and found that they were several medical books, and underneath them was a complete set of "Mo Jing". I took a deep breath, this is a genuine ancient scientific work, with mechanics, acoustics, optics, algebra, geometry and all sorts of things. The owner of this room must be a studious and erudite person. Actually, after I came in, based on my first impression, I guessed that this was probably the temporary residence of Ren Ping Sheng.

  If it's as he said, the outside is heavily guarded, then this must not be an ordinary cave, and it must have been carefully designed. In other words, this must be an important hidden point of Tianjing Gate. Although the room I am in now is simple, Ren Pingsheng must have stayed here for a period of time, otherwise, who would leave so many books in a hotel room?

  After going through all these things, I feel extremely tired and my mind is a mess, so I simply lay down on the bed. This bed is quite hard and not comfortable at all, and I don't know how to sleep until dawn, this damn Ren Ping Sheng is really thick-skinned.

  I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling (which was actually a rough and uneven cave roof), quietly resting and accumulating strength. I won't just sit here waiting to die. The people of Tianjing Gate are all birds and beasts from what I've seen so far; otherwise, my male god wouldn't have risked his life to escape. Ren Pingsheng is a moody person, and the fact that he didn't kill me this time doesn't mean he won't try next time. If I were to meet other people, I'd be even more dead meat.

  It's better to die under a trap than to live like this. Besides, it's not certain that you'll die anyway, the main character has never died from traps!

  I started recalling the main types of ancient mechanisms in martial arts novels. Alas, modern times have already had research on ancient mechanisms, and those diagrams are drawn so specifically, I've even seen books about it in libraries. At that time, I actually looked down on such books! Back then, I thought to myself, "I'm going after handsome guys, not tomb raiding, what's the point of learning this stuff?"

  Alas, it turns out "a book is useless if it isn't read at the right time" - this sentence was meant to be used here.

  I racked my brains and the only ancient traps I can recall are the rolling shutter, iron chain suspension stone, crossbow chaotic shooting, and wall squeezing in from both sides.

  In short, the control messages of these traps are usually not on the ground, but on the walls. As long as you walk carefully and don't stretch out your hands randomly, the chances of escaping alive are still very high.

  I lay there for a while, feeling rested and my mood had calmed down, so I took a deep breath and sprang out of bed like a carp jumping out of water.

  I first picked up the scalpel on the table and cut off a piece of black fabric from Ren Pingsheng's cloak to make a headscarf. Ye Liuyue's hair was very long, and I had never cut my hair in accordance with the ancient rule "the hair and skin are gifts from parents". So now it's very inconvenient. I had to use modern techniques to tie up the long hair behind my head into a large bun, and then wrap it all up with the cloak headscarf.

  Then I put on a mask over my face. I believe that now my appearance must be very ugly, but life and death are at stake, beauty and ugliness are external things!

  I opened Ren Ping's cabinet and carefully checked it, as a result, I found two very useful things from inside.

  One is a map, the terrain map of this cave and the location map of this cave in the mountains outside Luoyang. Although there is no record of the distribution of mechanisms on the map, the exit is available, which belongs to the lifesaving level. There is another thing with a strange shape, I believe ordinary people don't know what it is for when they get it. But my brain has modern scientific and cultural knowledge after all, I fiddled with it for 30 seconds and was delighted to find that it was actually a compass.

  If I'm not mistaken, the direction recognition tool at that time should be a compass, which is a large disk-shaped spoon in history textbooks. But what I found was very small and delicate, only as big as a watch dial, and it indicated directions with a pointer. If this was also made by Ren Ping, then this person is really too terrifying, everything he makes is epoch-making.

  I carefully studied the map, which is my strong point. I'm not only good at reading it, but also drawing it, and my sense of direction is super strong. Soon, I found the nearest route from this stone room to the exit.

  Unfortunately, the recent road may not be the safest.

  I opened the mechanism of the stone room and indeed went out unimpeded, without seeing any shadow of Ren Ping Sheng or anyone else, which made me feel even more uneasy in my heart.

  Sure, here is the translation:

  As expected, he had walked less than 50 meters when his pants suddenly fell down with a loud "thud".

  I'm sweating bullets. The trap in front of me is a pitfall with a wooden board under the surface of the ground, which opens layer by layer downwards, and at the bottom is a huge hole filled with sharp blades. This bloody obvious trap is just like the kind that often appears in TV dramas - a chain-reaction flip-board trap.

  Anyway, it's going down, and it must be a porcupine tile. The mechanism of this trap is usually on the ground, triggered by stepping on it. But I didn't step on anything, okay?!

  Luckily my reflexes were excellent, and in the moment the trap was triggered, I had already sensed something was off, immediately doing a backflip, rolling awkwardly on the ground, barely avoiding it. The sharp blades in the pit reflected the light of the torches, shining with a cold glint, making my back feel numb.

  I cautiously made my way around the trap and then barely avoided a falling iron weight by rolling away just in time. If this were following the typical dog-blood melodrama plotline, I'd guess that the next mechanism would be a hail of poison darts.

  As expected, after turning a bend, arrows started pouring down from the top of the cave like rain. I had already spotted a good hiding spot and quickly dodged into a narrow slit in the wall of the mountain cave, just one person wide. The arrows outside scratched against the ground with a "scraping" sound, making me wince in pain.

  But how could I have imagined that there would be such an unnatural crack on the wall of this cave?

  The arrow rain has not stopped yet, I feel the wall behind me suddenly move, I endure

  I couldn't help but let out a loud "ahh" as my body followed suit and fell backwards. In the process of losing my balance, I vaguely saw the wall behind me, which seemed to be painted with a dazzling five-color pattern, like the revolving door in the lobby of a five-star hotel, suddenly spinning around and sweeping me inside.

  Alas, the secret room! And there's still a light on inside. I thudded to the ground with a bang, lying on my back and staring up at the sky, yet somehow still having the presence of mind to think: entering a secret room in such an unexpected way usually means discovering something extraordinary, doesn't it?

  In an instant, something incredible happened. A cluster of bright and shiny arrows shot down from the top with computer-like precision towards my lying position!

  Ah! My mind only had time to think "ah", my voice didn't even have time to come out, and my body couldn't move at all. I didn't even have time to think "this is the end".

  Everything went black before my eyes, and I felt like the world was spinning around me as I rolled over a few times. Is this what it feels like to return to modern times? Why does being shot by an arrow feel like I'm rolling around on the ground? And there's even a smell of dirt rising up around me! What the heck is this ancient arrow made of, why does it feel like a stone slab pressing down on me?! It's also dripping water, hot and warm, drop by drop onto my neck.

  "Datang Chang'an Evening News Column: 'Good Heart and Clear Weather'"

  Author: Today is the third day of haze, this air is really something! Wearing a mask to go out, I feel cute~! Alas, when can I see clearly five meters away from living things?

  Ye Liu Yue: Dear reader, under the clear sky of Great Tang Dynasty, do you now understand why I always carry a mask with me and take out two at once? Masks, the essential item for human survival in the 21st century, are your first choice for both home and travel! Did you wear a mask today?