Chapter 96: Leaping Across the Stone Pillars

While I had been zoning out for just a moment, Chen Canghai had already leapt onto a stone pillar not far ahead. I slowly got to my feet, trying to gauge the distance between me and that pillar. No matter what, I needed a bit of mental prep before jumping.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too far. I didn’t dare hesitate. Clamping the flashlight between my teeth, I shut my eyes and jumped like a toad. I landed with both hands on the stone, hitting it with a dull thud—definitely not a graceful landing.

Chen Canghai came over and helped me up. Thanks to my mental preparation, my legs didn’t go weak this time, and I managed to stand steadily. I glanced over and saw him deep in thought, which struck me as odd. Was he having trouble making a decision?

I turned the flashlight to its brightest setting and swept the beam across the area. In front of us was a cluster of over a dozen stone pillars, now packed closely together. They were nothing like the scattered ones we had seen earlier.

“What’s going on? I didn’t hear any mechanisms move. When did all these pillars appear?” I crouched down and aimed the flashlight at the base of the pillars.

These naturally formed stone columns were tall and tapered—wider at the top and narrower at the base. My flashlight wasn’t nearly strong enough to reach the bottom, and with the surrounding mist, I could barely see anything at all.

Chen Canghai handed me something he had picked up nearby. I turned to look and saw a massive, rusted iron chain in his hands. Strange carvings adorned the links—grotesque human-like faces, possibly totems or symbols with some deeper meaning.

He held up his phone to show me and said, “This is a bridge chain. The original structure of this cave might not be what we’re seeing now.”

That made sense. If he was right, and this chain had once secured a bridge, then the bridge must be long gone. But the fact that the chain had fallen here was strange in itself.

I pointed the flashlight upward. The ceiling above us was clean and bare. But whether in tombs or ancient ruins, the one thing you should never trust is your own eyes. There might still be remnants of the bridge’s framework hidden at either end, just out of sight.

If the bridge had once spanned the upper part of this cave and later collapsed for some unknown reason, leaving the chain here, then this place had definitely been constructed by human hands. After all, there was a flipping stone door.

And that raised a new question. If they had already built a bridge—an engineering feat that required hollowing out an entire cliff—then what was the purpose of this dense forest of stone pillars below? They might be natural formations, but arranged this closely? Something was definitely off.

Chen Canghai picked a nearby pillar and looked ready to jump. I quickly held out my arm to stop him. “Don’t rush. Take a closer look. The pillars ahead didn’t just multiply on their own. Based on my experience, there might be a specific sequence to them. If we go out of order, it could be deadly.”

He looked at me, puzzled, then made a few hand signs. Surprisingly, I understood them: “How do you know that?”

“I’ve studied a lot of ancient tomb blueprints. Whether the contents are valuable or not, there are always things that aren’t meant to be seen. The designers often built in elaborate traps, usually in places you’d never expect—like that flipping door earlier.”

As I spoke, I drew the largest knife from my belt, crouched down, and chipped off a chunk of stone from the edge of the platform. With just one strike, a whole piece came off. I squeezed it—it wasn’t very hard. That struck me as odd. Even the most brittle stone shouldn’t break this easily.

But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I weighed the stone in my hand, tested the feel, then hurled it at a nearby pillar. The chunk hit the pillar, rolled a couple of times, and came to a stop.

Nothing happened.

I rolled up my sleeves. Had I been overthinking it?

Just as that thought crossed my mind, a thunderous rumble echoed from not far away. The ground beneath our feet trembled. Then, without warning, the pillar I had thrown the stone onto collapsed with a deafening crash, shattering into rubble.

I was right! I needed to reassess this whole cave. Whoever built this place clearly never intended for anyone to leave alive.

Time was short. Chen Canghai immediately followed my lead, chipping off stones and tossing them at the pillars. We worked fast, eliminating four pillars in front of us. Only one remained standing directly ahead.

Feeling confident, we jumped onto it one after the other. Then we repeated the process, testing each pillar as we went. Before long, we had cleared a new path.

This method worked well—at first. But by the time we reached the fourth pillar, I noticed a problem. The forest of pillars ahead was getting denser and more expansive. No matter how hard I threw, I couldn’t reach some of the farther ones.

And with so many pillars, we needed just as many large stones. Given our luck, we might end up stripping this entire pillar bare and still not have enough to test them all.

Watching Chen Canghai sweat as he hacked away at more stone, I told him to stop. “This isn’t sustainable. There’s still a long way to go. If we keep this up, we’ll exhaust ourselves. One slip during a jump and it’s game over.”

To my surprise, he actually listened. He set down his knife, sat on the ground, and gestured: “Can you make anything out of this pillar forest?”

I turned around and studied the pillars we had already jumped across. At first glance, it looked like we had been moving in a straight line. But on closer inspection, there were slight shifts in position between the four pillars.

Tomb architecture often incorporates yin-yang and the Eight Trigrams. I’ve studied the basics of the Bagua, enough to recognize the positions, but not much beyond that. Still, my gut told me that the path beneath our feet had nothing to do with the Bagua.

Instead, it resembled something else I was familiar with.

The sweat on my body quickly cooled. Fixing my gaze in the direction I had in mind, I locked eyes on a stone pillar at an equal distance ahead. Then I said, “Canghai, do me a favor. See that pillar about 45 degrees south? You’re stronger than me—throw a rock at it. If I’m right, it shouldn’t collapse.”

Chen Canghai looked doubtful, but he brushed the dust off himself, picked up a chunk of stone we had already cut down, gave it a couple of swings, and hurled it toward the pillar.

I held my breath. The two of us watched intently as the stone landed on the surface of the pillar. We waited—maybe five minutes passed. The pillar stood firm, completely still. Only then did I let out a sigh of relief.

Chen Canghai was stunned. He gestured at me wildly. “That’s unbelievable! How did you know it was that one?”

I just grinned and pointed to the four stone pillars behind us. “The way the pillars we jumped across earlier were arranged looked a lot like the Big Dipper. So I took a wild guess. Didn’t expect to actually get it right.”