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墨書 Inktalez
Zhong Kui's Diary
"What’s going on?" Fatty turned around, eagerly asking.
"The secret passage we've been looking for is right in this compartment," I pointed to the gap about half a meter behind Hole. "The entire compartment has two openings shaped like a '回' character. The inner side of the five rooms outside forms the large opening of the '回', while the Board Wall of the Hall forms the other opening. There must be a hidden door on the Board Wall; as long as we lean against it, we can appear or disappear at will. This explains why Wen Zhan suddenly went missing and why that left hand vanished just now."
"Exactly!" Fatty's eyes lit up. "There must be a hidden door on this Board Wall. We were so focused on the floor and Flower Board that we overlooked the possibility of mechanisms on the Board Wall."
With that, Fatty grabbed his gun and was about to head inside when I pulled him back. "Where are you going?"
Fatty looked at me in surprise. "Why are you stopping me? Aren't you coming with me to find the hidden door in the room?"
"You fool, we've already found the compartment! It must be connected, so we can just go in directly from here," I scolded with a laugh.
I had Fatty load his shotgun with bullets and then ensured all his remaining guns were loaded and ready to fire. In case we ran out of bullets, he could quickly pull out these spare guns from his Spatial Bag.
Once everything was ready, I kicked down the wooden board beneath the Hole on the left side of the Hall, smashing it to pieces with the butt of my gun, revealing a big hole over a person's height. We exchanged glances and both took out our flashlights, securely tying them to our gun barrels before cautiously moving inside.
The compartment was narrow; even I felt somewhat constrained walking in front, while Fatty had to walk sideways. Even then, his belly scraped against the Board Wall, making a scratching sound that was too amusing for me to look back at. I could only hear him loudly complaining about the insane designer of this secret passage, vowing to go out and kick down all the Board Walls.
After moving two meters and turning right, I immediately spotted the entrance to the secret passage ahead in the middle of the compartment—a Dark Hole that resembled a monster's mouth, ready to devour anyone who approached. I quickly informed Fatty, who finally stopped complaining.
As we moved closer and shone our flashlights down, we saw stairs made of Bluestone Slabs leading down. Aside from a small entrance area, the passage below was extremely spacious—about two meters wide and high—with an arched ceiling and very rudimentary walls that were only slightly smoothed out.
I led the way while Fatty followed behind. At first, we mimicked those Special Police officers from TV shows, cautiously advancing with our flashlight-tied guns swaying back and forth. We were ready to pull the trigger at any sign of movement. However, after descending about ten meters without any abnormalities, we relaxed and increased our pace significantly.
We walked down at an angle for over forty meters when the passage turned left again, continuing downward for another twenty meters before turning right once more. After this turn, we saw a large iron door blocking our way. The door was dark and reflected a cold metallic light when illuminated by our flashlights. In its center was a basin-sized circular disk.
Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the disk was divided into three layers: the outermost layer had ten markings labeled 'The outermost layer featured the Ten Heavenly Stems: Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, and Gui, which are used in Feng Shui. The second layer had markings representing the Twelve Earthly Branches: Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, and Hai. The innermost layer displayed the eight trigrams: Qian, Kun, Kan, Li, Zhen, Gen, Xun, and Dui.', which are associated with the Eight Trigrams.
Clearly, this was a combination lock that required arranging these markings in a specific order for it to open.
It was similar to a three-digit combination lock on a safe; it could be 50 or 748—just with numbers replaced by Gan Earthly Branches and Eight Trigrams instead. If we didn't know the combination but wanted to unlock it, we could take some time to try each option one by one.
I lightly tapped on the door with my gun butt to confirm there were no abnormalities before turning around with a smile at Fatty. "Aren't you always bragging about your dexterity? Now's your chance to prove it."
Fatty wasn't one to be coy; he slung his gun behind him and pressed his face against the iron door, quickly spinning the innermost Eight Trigram disk. After one full rotation of that disk, he turned one notch on the middle Earthly Branch disk.
I was somewhat surprised. "Fatty, does turning it this fast really help?"
Fatty listened while laughing, "With this mechanism, as long as all the scales align, it will make a click sound. For example, if this is a digital combination lock, I set the hundreds place to 0, the tens place to 0, and I just need to quickly turn the units place. Assuming the code is 007, no matter how fast I turn the units place, as long as I land on 7, it will click. If there’s no code in this round, I’ll adjust the tens place to 1 and continue turning quickly."
I nodded. "So you’re treating the outermost scale as the hundreds place, the middle Earthly Branch scale as the tens place, and the innermost Bagua scale as the units place, right?"
Fatty affirmed and continued to rapidly adjust the scales.
While Fatty was turning the scales, I occasionally waved the flashlight behind us to prevent any sudden attacks from the Severed Limbs.
After about ten minutes of turning, Fatty cursed as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, handed me one, lit it up and took a deep puff. He angrily said, "Damn it, is my luck this bad? By combinations, there are ten for the heavens, twelve for the Earthly Branches, and eight for the Bagua. What’s 1018 equal to? Right, that’s equivalent to 108. Two times eight is sixteen; one times eight is eight. So there are only nine hundred sixty combinations. I've turned at least five hundred combinations already and still haven’t hit the code."
I chuckled lightly. "This is tough. For instance, if the code is 999 and you start turning from 001, you naturally have to wait until the very last turn to unlock it."
Fatty squinted at the scales. At that moment, the scales pointed to 'Ji' for heavens, 'Chou' for Earthly Branches, and 'Qian' for Bagua. After looking for about two seconds, Fatty turned to me and asked, "Ghost Brother, do you mean I should count backward?"
I was taken aback for a moment but quickly denied it. "I didn’t say that. Uh... what’s the next combination after 'Ji', 'Chou', 'Qian'? It's 'Ji', 'Chou', 'Kun', right? What if 'Ji', 'Chou', 'Kun' is actually the code?"
Fatty rolled his eyes at me. "You idiot."
Then he leaned against the door in frustration and unexpectedly pushed it open.
Fatty stumbled almost falling over. I quickly stepped forward and pulled him back. Then we both swiftly raised our guns and waved our flashlights around while shouting loudly, "Who? Who's there?"
After shouting a few times and shining our flashlights up and down all around without finding anything unusual, we finally pointed our flashlight at the door and discovered that the circular disk was merely a decoration; there was no lock on this door at all.
Damn!
Both Fatty and I erupted in curses. Was the designer of this secret passage insane? To install a completely meaningless door halfway through and then make a show of putting in a combination dial? What a waste of money on designs that aren't practical—do you hear me?
We continued cursing as we moved forward. Behind this door was a flat passageway with Bluestone Slabs underfoot; however, instead of dirt walls, there were large earthen bricks.
After walking more than a hundred meters, we encountered another iron door ahead. The door still had that Gan Earthly Branches and Bagua scale disk on it. Fatty cursed again and kicked open the iron door.
As Fatty kicked open the iron door, I raised my gun in full alertness; if a wild boar or some other beast charged out, it would be troublesome. As for demons or anything like that, I wasn’t too worried; ever since Grandma Song used Vedic Formation, aside from those few demon kings, there haven't been any demons left in this world.
My worries were unnecessary; nothing fierce rushed out from behind the door. It was still a flat passageway that was even wider than before—almost three meters wide—and instead of earthen bricks on the walls, they were constructed with square Bluestones.
"Wow, it's getting more and more advanced. If there were another door, would it be a golden passage?" As we walked, Fatty shone his flashlight around while chuckling.
"Why don't we just push it open and find out?" I pointed the flashlight at the iron door ahead.
This section of the passage was only thirty meters long, and ahead was yet another iron door, identical to the previous two. In the center of this door was still that disk marked with Gan Earthly Branches.
Just as Fatty was about to kick the iron door, I suddenly felt a familiar sensation emanating from it. This feeling seemed to be an energy I had possessed before, and memories flashed through my mind like lightning: wind... fire... ice... thunder...
Wait, this sensation feels like electricity.
Damn! This door is electrified!
Thinking this, I quickly rushed forward and grabbed Fatty by the collar, pulling him back just as his foot was about to touch the iron door. Due to the force of my pull, we both stumbled back several steps.
Caught off guard, Fatty was yanked back with such force that his shotgun accidentally discharged with a loud bang, the bullet hitting the iron door and creating a deafening noise. Then, a silver electric current crackled and danced around the door for a while before slowly dissipating.
Fatty, who had initially planned to curse at me, was left dumbfounded upon seeing the electric current on the door. After a moment, he stammered, "Damn, if I had kicked that thing, wouldn't I have been electrocuted?"
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