Daomu Biji: Restart

"Burn rhinoceros horn?" I wondered aloud. Burning such a thing in an ancient tomb… do you want to see ghosts? And why burn it in this exact spot?

An image suddenly popped into my head of a basin full of rhinoceros horn wax slowly burning in this lonely underground hole. No one could see the light from this position except for those who climbed into this passage.

There were distance markers inside the hole and a warning—or last words—outside of it. I took a deep breath and shouted, "Fatty, let me pick your brain."

"Little Brother is closer to you, can't you ask him first?" Fatty scolded back.

I cursed, "Cut the crap. I have something to discuss with you. I see something now.” I then proceeded to describe everything I saw.

"What’s behind the bronze basin?" He asked.

I took a look with my lighter, but it was just more of the dark hole without any noticeable differences.

But it had to be different. This was the end of the yin markers and there was a bronze basin with rhinoceros horn candles in it. No matter how you looked at it, this place was different and very special.

When I told Fatty about the situation, he remained silent for a moment before leisurely saying, "Shall we enumerate? Think about it first, why would someone carve a distance marker in this tunnel?"

It wasn’t unusual to carve a marker like this, but it was normally carved in the opposite direction. "This reversed carving is like a countdown,” I said to him. “It means that whoever entered this hole only wanted to go as far as seven yin."

"Then they should’ve carved it normally. Wouldn’t carving it from one to seven be more convenient? Rather than saying they carved it in reverse, I think the only possibility is that they actually carved it the normal way."

"What's right and what's wrong is all messed up here." I didn't understand, so Fatty continued, "In other words, the engraver started to carve the distance markers from this position. Our entrance was his destination. This was his starting point. His trajectory was opposite ours."

I thought there was some truth to this statement, but there were too many things that didn’t make sense.

"When do you use distance markers?" I took a deep breath, "Think about it. What do we draw distance markers for?"

"Long jump?" Fatty replied.

In fact, distance markers were used almost everywhere in building systems, but this hole was something that had formed naturally. The most likely reason to carve distance markers here was to measure the length of this tunnel.

But the markers were reversed and didn’t even measure the whole tunnel. They only went as far as seven yin, which meant that this theory wasn’t valid either.

"This is a warning," Poker-Face suddenly said.

If he hadn’t said something, I would’ve thought there was no one between me and Fatty.

I had to pee so bad that my brain was out of sorts, but I managed to ask him, "What do you mean?"

Fatty seemed to understand and shouted, "This is like marking an exit on the highway. It tells you there are still a hundred kilometers, then fifty, and so on. It tells you that you’re gradually getting closer to an exit. If you miss it, you can't get out."

I was surprised, but quickly realized that they were right.

But highways were set up like this because they only went one way and it was impossible to turn back. So, if you missed this exit, the next one would be hundreds of kilometers away.

I broke out in a cold sweat and said to myself, don’t tell me…from this point on, we can't get out of this hole? Is there an exit right in front of us?

If the next exit was a hundred kilometers away, then we were basically dead. But I didn’t see anything on the wall here besides this bronze basin.

Since the exit behind us had been blocked and we couldn’t get out, I had been crawling forward the whole time without ever thinking about going back.

"Fatty, try and see if you can climb back!" I called to him.

"Shit, have you been going the wrong way?” Fatty asked. “Can’t you be fucking smarter?"

"Just try crawling a few steps," I said.

Fatty let out a curse and then I heard him panting before he suddenly shouted, "Fuck!"

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

I became nervous after waiting for a while with no answer. I wanted to crawl back and shout louder, but Poker-Face caught my foot and stopped me. Then, I heard Fatty cry out, "There are people everywhere behind us!"