Daomu Biji: Restart

The three of us looked at each other for a long time, but there was no denying the fact that a wall had really appeared in that place.

"What’s your period (1) doing here?" Fatty asked me.

"It’s your fucking period," I retorted as I walked to the rock wall. I found that there was a continuity between the mural and the wall. It wasn’t an extra wall that appeared out of thin air, but the wall of the tomb passage that had suddenly opened like a door. The opened "part" had just sealed the tomb passage, meaning this was a mechanism.

It was just like walking down a corridor and a gust of wind suddenly slammed the door shut, locking you out. If the mechanism was good enough and the pivot point of this wall was in the right position, the tomb passage would be sealed without making a sound.

"Is this the Five Ghosts Transportation ritual?" Fatty looked at me. We all remembered the things Qianjun Wanma had said to us. I patted the wall and found that the rock was very thick. If it was really carried by the five ghosts, then they must have graduated from Lanxiang (2).

I took a deep breath, stepped back, and started kicking the wall. If it could open, then there had to be a structure like a door shaft that shouldn’t be too strong. I kicked it a few more times, but the door still didn’t budge.

Fatty tried pushing it for a long time, but was a little depressed when it didn’t move for him either. Now we were completely trapped and the only way out was this hole.

But I didn’t panic because we already had a way to deal with this situation. There were cracks in the rock and we still had detonators, so this wall couldn’t stop us. I was just a little upset that we had fallen for this kind of mechanism. Considering how this was the most obvious kind of mechanism, it seemed that our skills had really become a little rusty.

"Do you think this hole is a trick to draw us in so we’re trapped to death by the mechanism?"

I shook my head. This kind of tomb-sealing mechanism was very common and had nothing to do with trapping people to death. It was mainly used to close the tomb passage whenever someone invaded. But there would be at least three such mechanisms in such a long tomb passage, so someone could be trapped to death if they ended up between two of them.

We didn’t care too much since we had enough experience and preparation, but Fatty knew something had gone wrong somewhere and was a little displeased. When we went back to the hole to discuss what to do next, Fatty said, "There’s no need to guess what's going on. We'll just go home if we can't figure it out. I'll blow the wall up.”

I touched the words on the stone tablet. Sure enough, I cherished my life too much to make this kind of decision. At this moment, I saw Poker-Face touch the ground. I looked back at the stone wall and suddenly found that it had moved. It was moving so much, in fact, that it looked just like it was sliding on a track. By the time I had looked back at it, it had already moved several feet towards us.

The stone wall suddenly got stuck and I could hear the sound of it grinding against the outer walls of the tomb passage. Its movements gradually slowed until it finally stopped.

We had just breathed a sigh of relief, when the portion of the wall that got stuck cracked violently and then the wall rushed towards us again. At a speed visible to the naked eye, it was slowly pressing towards us.

"We’ll be squished in about three minutes," Fatty cursed.

I couldn’t understand how the stone wall was moving, but I figured this abandoned tomb passage had a slight incline to it. Fatty had just finished cursing when the stone wall suddenly sped up and came right towards us, as if it were coated in some kind of lubricant. Luckily, it got stuck again when it was only a meter away from us.

Both sections of the walls that were stuck cracked violently and pieces of the mural went flying. Poker-Face grabbed me and said, "Go."

Without an ounce of hesitation, I crouched down, lay on my stomach, and started crawling into the hole. Poker-Face lay down and kicked the stone wall with his feet, followed by Fatty.

I kept crawling forward to make room for them, but I couldn’t go any further after ten meters. "Fatty, are you in yet?" I asked loudly.

"My detonator’s stuck," Fatty replied.

Just as he said this, I heard a loud boom, as if the stone wall had pressed up against the entrance of the hole.

****

TN Notes:

(1) He means like your menstrual period. First he said Wu Xie was going through menopause, now he’s saying Wu Xie’s period is here lol.

(2) It’s a vocational and technical college in China that offers courses in subjects like cooking, auto repair, construction equipment operations (mainly excavators), and computer skills (some say computer hacking). More info here but the Chinese version is more in depth.