The surrounding area is all rocky, smooth and shiny, with some parts obviously smashed by people. This should be the last struggle of their lives. I regret coming here. I said to Cha Wenbin: "We will end up like them, leaving behind only white bones that are discovered and trampled at will. But I ask you for a favor, if it really doesn't work out, shoot me with one bullet, I don't want to wait for death."

  Zha Wenbin leaned against the wall and said with a smile: "I've never thought I'd die, listen to how wonderful this bell sounds."

  "Did you hear it again?" I doubted that Cha Wenbin was talking nonsense, what kind of dog fart ringtone he kept mentioning, I even thought if he was led here by someone else, in that case, wasn't I really doomed!

  "Wen Bin." I quietly walked over and said to him: "Lend me a lighter for a use."

  He was stunned for a moment, but still handed it to me. Just as he took his hand back, I suddenly reached out and grabbed his hair, pulling several strands out with force. He yelped in pain and covered his head, glaring at me furiously: "What are you doing?!"

  I didn't bother with him either, took those few strands of hair and poked them into the lighter, a whiff of burnt smell accompanied by "hiss" sparks burst forth.

  I waved the burning hair in front of him, shouting in a tone similar to that of an old shaman: "Come back, Wen Bin; come back, Cha Wen Bin!"

  He slapped me on the hand with a loud smack and shouted: "What are you doing? Are you summoning spirits or what?"

  "Right, aren't you already stupid? There's ringing all day and night, I think you're 80% possessed by a ghost, that's an illusion, do you know what an illusion is?! I said again with some resentment: "This method was taught to me by my grandfather, Wenbin, I'm trying to save you, hurry up and wake up, we'll be trapped to death in here!"

  Zha Wenbin looked at me with a bad temper, his expression seemed to think I was an idiot. He laughed as he looked at me. I thought, this time it's estimated that I will be dealt with, but he said: "Don't worry, I'll definitely take you out."

  I raised my head and measured it with a lighter, the top of my head was about five meters high. I think if this method is useful, these people would have gone up with ladders long ago and wouldn't have died here. What makes you, Wen Bin, look so confident?

  "You're wondering why I'm saying this, aren't you? Think about it yourself, why are you still alive? We fell into this mass grave, with so many corpses and the stench that's been brewing for so long, the oxygen here should have been depleted, leaving only toxic air. The fact that we're still alive means one thing: the air in here is circulating, and where there's circulation, there must be an exit. From what I know, a tomb of this scale takes decades to build, with craftsmen working tirelessly day and night for years on end. Did they not know that when the project was completed, it would mean their own death?"

  "So, experienced old craftsmen will always leave a secret escape route for themselves in the tomb. This is an unwritten rule that has been followed since ancient times. You and Fatso went to dig up some graves a few days ago, you should know that there are still several imperial tombs in China that have not been visited by anyone, and it was impossible to damage them from the outside with external force in the past. Almost 80% of the tombs were looted because people found the secret escape routes left by the craftsmen."

  "I said: 'That's not necessarily true here either, otherwise they wouldn't all have died here.'"

  "You're wrong, they are here and they're smart. So many people can't run together, it's destined that only a small part of them can escape, but when they caught people back then, they shouldn't have thought to catch the ones who shouldn't be caught together."

  I saw him speaking fluently, but I was still very suspicious: "Who?"

  "Ancestor Zhang's former residence!" Cha Wenbin pointed at the wall behind him and said to me: "What is this?"

  He took my lighter and shone it on that wall, I vaguely saw a picture, this picture was quite strange, it was painted as a five-sided circle, somewhat like the shape of a screw cap. Zha Wenbin said: "Do you still remember when you went to Shaanxi with Fatzi? Wasn't there someone named Ding at that time?"

  "Yes, I heard from Pangzi that his name is Ding Shengwu. He's the big shot of all underground transactions in Shaanxi. How did you know about this?"

  "Shaanxi's Ding family is a notorious tomb raiding clan, and their specialty is finding dragon veins. It's said that the Ding family has a burial map in their possession, which marks the locations of almost all the tombs of kings and nobles from the Shang Dynasty to the end of the Ming Dynasty within China's borders. In Hunan, there's another family called Zhang, about whom I know very little. All I know is that they're the best architects, and since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Zhang family has been responsible for building mausoleums for emperors, until the Tang Dynasty. It's said that when the Qianling Mausoleum was completed, the head of the Zhang family at that time was buried with the emperor, and from then on, the Zhang family no longer built tombs for emperors. However, they still left a mark in the mausoleums - this five-pointed copper ring. Every tomb they built had a secret back door."

  After finishing this conversation, I was completely shocked. Is this still the Zhang Wenbin I knew? Every word he revealed made me feel too unbelievable. In my memory, he was just a rural child who was taken away from school by his master at the age of seven to recite scriptures and seek Tao every day.

  "How did you know?"

  His face twitched, and I saw a painful expression. He touched the pattern on the wall and said, "In those years when I was there, I had seen this pattern more than once." When he said that, he stopped again, then grabbed my shoulder and said, "Anyway, you have to believe me, if there is this pattern, there must be a back door."

  From the fleeting glance in his eyes, I read the information of pain and unease. Once I also wanted to know what happened to him during those years, but he was like a dumpling cooked in a teapot, you can't pour it out no matter how hard you try.

  "Come here," Zhang Wenbin yelled, and I walked towards him, stepping on the rattling human bones. On another wall about two meters away, a second five-pointed ring pattern appeared. Zhang Wenbin took out an inkstone from his bag, disassembled it, and pulled out a thread. He threaded a copper coin onto the thread, then aligned the two ends of the thread. I held the copper coin and retreated backwards until the coin and the thread in Zhang's hand were taut.

  Then he marked the position where the copper coin stopped with a small red thread, and then he said to me: "Press this line with your finger on the upper left corner of the pattern, it can't be biased, only that position belongs to Zhang's family."

  After I confirmed the position, I did as instructed. Zhang Wenbin led the way to the other side, and when he reached the middle, he lit a candle on the ground, with a copper mirror behind it. Then he walked all the way to the first pattern we found and shouted at me: "Pull straight, use force to burst out."

  At this moment, a very magical scene occurred. The burning candle on the ground was exactly behind the copper coin hanging from the ink line, and at this time, the shadow of the copper coin illuminated by the candlelight was projected onto the copper mirror on the empty wall to my right, and the copper mirror projected this light onto the wall opposite it.

  I don't know if everyone has done a scientific experiment called "pinhole imaging" when reading books. The copper coin hole projected onto the wall was enlarged into a bright square dot, and Wen Bin exclaimed with some excitement: "It's right there, remember? That's where the craftsman left the secret passage!"

  I had never thought that the wisdom of our ancestors would reach such a realm, what I admire even more is that this person who is of the same age as me has such broad vision and profound knowledge. He simply rode on my neck, used his hand to push against that wall lightly, "whoosh" sound, that piece of stone wall which originally seemed to be flawless slightly caved in, then "crack" sound, a stone the size of a washbasin fell down, revealing a hole.

  He first went up and drilled inside, after a short while he had already poked his head out again and stretched out his hand saying: "Come up!"

  With a push and some effort, both of us entered the secret passage. I couldn't help but admire the designer of this passage again; they had installed a small mechanism at the entrance. A groove was carved along the edge of the low-key entrance, so when an external force pushed against the stone, if too much force was applied, it would be blocked by the frame inside and could not be opened. The cutting of the stone's seams was exquisite, every detail perfectly matched. The friction between the sealing stone and the groove was enough to support the stone hovering above the groove for five seconds. This meant that you had to use just the right amount of force to push the sealing stone inward, about the thickness of a workbook, and then pause for more than five seconds before it would automatically fall into place. What I found even more ingenious was that from inside, one could lift the sealing stone back up and reset it. This kind of design could only be described as "divine craftsmanship".

  Lying in this secret passage, I let out a long breath. Looking at the time, it was exactly 5:00 AM. According to the current season, there were at most forty minutes before dawn broke. Cha Wenbin looked at me and said, "I'm afraid we won't have a chance today. Who knows where this secret passage leads? If it goes directly outside, we'll have to wait until tonight to come again."

  I looked at this guy with a calm face and sneered: "Finally decided to pause first?"

  "No, I'm afraid that dog outside has reached its limit. If you don't send it back for treatment now, it will be too late."