Chapter 110: The Lotus Statue

The light of the fire-starter flickered in the stone passage. I stood alone before the stone wall. I didn’t know the exact time, but it felt like a long while had passed. I had felt all around the seams of the stone wall, and there was no doubt it was a single, solid piece. Its surface was smooth, with no signs of mechanisms or grooves.

Guangtou had picked up a stick from somewhere and was tapping it against the ground out of boredom. The contact between the stick and the floor created a rhythmic clicking sound.

I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat, yet the tapping of that stick felt like a death knell, reminding me that if I couldn’t solve this, we would be trapped forever in this sunless underground—or perhaps killed first by that old bastard behind me.

Guangtou grew impatient and barked, “Hey! Kid! Can you move this door or not? Stop wasting time! At this rate, all the good treasure in the underground palace will be snagged by someone else!”

He Yu rolled over and scrambled up from the ground beside me. He leaned in close to my shoulder and asked, “How is it? Any leads?”

I frowned, crouching down to run my hands along the seams of the wall once more, only to scrape off a layer of stone dust. I shook off my hand. It was fitted so seamlessly that I had no idea how the wall operated, let alone how to move it.

Realizing I genuinely had no clue, I gave He Yu a subtle shake of my head.

Qiao Sangui was sitting on the ground behind me. He gestured for Guangtou to help him up. Seeing him rise, I turned around and said, “I haven’t found the mechanism yet.”

Guangtou tsked. “So you’ve been standing here thinking for half an hour and came up with jack shit?! Third Master, I think this kid is stalling on purpose. He wants his relative to get into the underground palace first and reap all the rewards!”

Qiao Sangui didn’t signal for him to shut up this time; his stance was clear. He coughed a few times and suddenly grabbed my collar with one hand. He Yu tried to intervene but was immediately pinned down by Tian Xiaoqi.

Qiao Sangui pulled the Mauser C96^[1] from his waist and aimed it at my head. “Gan Ji, I don’t need dead weight in my team. You should know that. If your only function is reading maps, you won’t last until the end.”

Guangtou understood Qiao Sangui’s meaning instantly. He kicked me to the ground. I rolled once before being pinned firmly against the stone wall. My nose began to bleed from the impact, and at that moment, a peculiar scent mixed with the smell of rust drifted into my nostrils.

“Fuck your grandmother, Qiao Sangui! Third Master Liu treated you right when he was alive, and here you are trying to kill a descendant of the Five Masters! You scoundrel! You beast! If you dare kill him, I’ll trade my life for yours!” He Yu cursed, somehow breaking free from Tian Xiaoqi’s grip. But as he tried to crawl over, several men rushed forward and pinned him back to the ground.

Qiao Sangui tossed the gun to Guangtou and said to me, “Don’t worry, I won’t take your friend’s life just yet. He’ll still be useful once we’re inside.”

“What do you say, Third Master? How about we tie him to this wall? There aren’t many spots to place blasting caps here anyway, so why not let him make himself useful one last time when we blow the wall?” Guangtou chuckled.

They were going to blast the wall.

I carefully sniffed the scent, and a distinct memory flooded into my mind. Before I realized it, I burst out laughing. Blood was still streaming unchecked from my nose, running into my mouth, but I kept laughing.

At the sound of my laughter, the noisy clamor around me instantly fell silent.

Guangtou slammed my head against the wall. “What are you laughing at? Knowing you’re about to die, how can you laugh like that?”

My face was pressed flat against the stone wall. Guangtou possessed immense strength, but even as the rough stone scraped my skin open, I forced my head around to glare fiercely at Qiao Sangui behind me. My expression at that moment must have been terrifyingly warped, because even Qiao Sangui frowned at me, a rare sight.

“If you’ve got the guts, go ahead and blast it,” I said. “Blast this wall, and you can kiss this underground palace goodbye. Not a single one of us will leave here alive.”

Guangtou flew into a rage. “Is this kid insane? Third Master, what kind of crazy talk is he spouting out of nowhere?!”

Qiao Sangui reached out and yanked him back behind him. The pressure on me suddenly lifted, and my legs buckled, nearly bringing me to my knees against the stone wall. But I forced myself to stand, leaning on the wall as I casually wiped the blood from my nose with my sleeve.

“Why can’t we blast it? What did you notice?” Qiao Sangui walked over to me, his tone dead serious.

I lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar. Several of his men surged toward us at once, but Qiao Sangui held up a hand to stop them.

I gave Qiao Sangui a thin smile and said, “Looks like my value just went up a bit. I’d bet that if I die, not a single one of these good-for-nothing fools in your crew can get you out of this maze. You’d better think carefully about whether you still want to treat us the way you did before.”

Qiao Sangui froze, as if my words had hit right on his actual concerns. I caught him out of the corner of my eye casting a glance at Guangtou behind him. After a brief pause, his expression relaxed, and he looked up at me with eyes full of both cunning and laughter:

“If you want to be Qiao Sangui’s friend, you’ll need the skill to back it up. Now tell me, what did you just discover?”

I ran my hand along a crevice in the stone wall, coming away with a layer of fine, sand-like grit on my palm. I brought it close to smell it carefully, then touched a bit to my tongue, spitting it out as soon as I caught the bitter taste.

“Saltpeter,” I said, clapping the dust from my hands. “The deposit at the base of this wall is clearly much thicker than at the top. There is likely a path paved with saltpeter behind this wall. What’s on the wall might just be a thin layer, but if you use explosives, the sparks will fly onto that path. The resulting fire would consume all the oxygen in here in an instant.”

I turned back with a smile. “So, if you blast the wall, we can all suffocate to death together right here.”

Hearing this, Tian Xiaoqi quickly called for her men to completely extinguish the fire-starters in their hands and switch to the flashlights they carried. The stone passage flickered between light and shadow as I turned sideways toward Qiao Sangui.

Qiao Sangui walked forward a few steps and wiped some of the grains off the wall. He didn’t seem able to make out the smell, so he had to lick it and spit it out as well. Once he confirmed it, he asked me in confusion, “How did you smell that?”

He Yu stepped over to my side, glaring at Qiao Sangui with bloodshot eyes, looking as if he might tear into the old man at any moment. I held him back with one arm.

The old man held all the power right now. Leaving aside the fact that we were completely outnumbered, we also needed his men to help us navigate out of this maze. Whatever happened, we had to swallow our pride for now and avoid a total fallout.

So I said, “The earthy smell of normal soil is different from stone, and dry soil gives off a different scent from wet soil, to say nothing of saltpeter, a raw ingredient for gunpowder. If you spent enough time hanging around vegetable gardens, you’d quickly learn to tell the difference between soil and stone.”

Qiao Sangui fell silent, lost in thought.

An idea had just struck me, and I couldn’t be bothered to wait for his response. I pulled He Yu through the crowd of lackeys and walked off to the side. Tian Xiaoqi trailed behind us, likely afraid we were plotting something, but I ignored her.

I counted seven shrines in my head, then brought He Yu to a halt before the seventh one. Shrines were oddly sparse along this stone passage. Whether it was because the underground palace had been sealed in a rush or for some other reason, some shrines were left empty, hastily finished without even filling out all the statues.

“What is it? What are you doing? Do you have an idea?” He Yu’s eyes suddenly lit up.

I nodded. “A little one, but there’s one last thing I don’t quite understand. I need your help.”

“What is it? Tell me!”

I pointed toward the identical headless statues inside the stone shrines. These were slightly different from the ones outside. While they also sat atop lotus pedestals, their arms weren’t resting neatly on their laps. Instead, both hands held another lotus flower high above their heads.

“Does this pose have any special symbolic meaning?” I asked him, mimicking the statue’s posture.

He Yu stepped forward, sticking his rear out as he examined them closely. “This style is definitely unusual. I can’t say for certain if there’s any special symbolic meaning, but if we compare them to the previous statues…”

“I think,” He Yu paused, “with the lotus held about an inch above the head, the status of the lotus might be even higher than that of the statue itself. So you could say this statue isn’t emphasizing the headless body, but rather the lotus in its hands.”

Hearing that, I asked, “Did that lifting posture carry any special meaning in the past?”

He Yu thought for a moment. “In my understanding, lifting something up mostly means ‘presenting’ or ‘offering.’ Like a courtier presenting a treasure to an emperor, kneeling on the ground and raising the item above his head. If we get a bit more abstract, maybe it represents divine authority? Or patriarchal power? Or something else…”

“Power?” I asked.

“You could say that.”

I looked at the shrines on the wall and pondered for a moment. Suddenly, everything clicked, and I smiled.

“I think I know how to move this wall.”