Chapter 161: The Abandoned Research Institute

I huddled in the corner as the world returned to silence once more. I crouched there, eyes shut, waiting for a long while, but no monsters came rushing out. Only then did I slowly move my backpack aside, trembling as I swept my flashlight toward the source of the noise.

Under the reflection of the beam, I saw porcelain shards scattered across the floor. The ceramics in this burial chamber were all placed in niches carved into the stone walls. There was no wind here; without someone moving them, there was absolutely no way they could have fallen and shattered on their own.

At that moment, something moved in my peripheral vision. I saw a flash of white behind the hollowed-out carvings of that empty niche. Through my adventures over these past few days, I had developed a sort of conditioned reflex regarding human movement. If a living person entered the space, I could instantly distinguish whether it was a human or something else.

In that instant, I realized immediately: that was a person.

“Hey! Who’s there! Who is it!” I shouted. The sound of running footsteps rapidly receded. Without a second thought, I clicked on my flashlight and waded through the water to investigate. Only a human would run with that kind of hunched-over posture.

That corner was filled with various porcelain and earthenware jars; several were discarded in the niches and on the floor. They didn’t look particularly valuable. I couldn’t tell if they had been submerged in water for too long or if the craftsmanship was just poor, but they were dull and lacked any luster.

I quickly kicked the porcelain shards aside and poked my head toward where the vases had originally stood. Peering through the decorative openwork, I was surprised to find a massive space behind the stone wall. This burial chamber and the one behind it seemed to be two rooms side-by-side, separated only by a constructed stone wall. The person who had just fled must have been hiding behind the carvings. When he moved, he had knocked over a waist-high porcelain vase.

I had caught a glimpse of him, and I was certain it was a person. But this was an underwater tomb. Aside from our initial group, no one else should have descended into this stretch of sea—unless this mausoleum had another entrance besides the one guarded by the Tomb-guarding Beast.

The person’s actions just now clearly suggested a guilty conscience. The moment I shouted, he had bolted. In a tomb where security was non-existent, there was no telling how long he had been crouching behind those vases. I wondered if he had overheard the conversation between me and Bai Shenxian. If he was one of Liang Si’s men, things were about to get ugly.

Regardless, I had to find this person, find out what he was up to, and determine whose side he was on. The moment I realized I had been eavesdropped on, my fear suddenly vanished. The flashlight beam was narrow and the interior was pitch black, so I couldn’t see much. For now, it seemed the only way to get to the other side was to smash through the wall.

I circled the chamber with my flashlight. There were no other paths. Aside from these two small, window-like decorative openings, nothing else led to the opposite side. I crouched down, selected a sturdy earthenware jar to stand on, and drew my machete. I used the hilt to hammer at the hollowed stone pillars, hoping to shatter them.

Who would have thought that while they were stingy with the funerary goods, they had made the pillars quite substantial? The carved stone was incredibly tough. After hammering for ages, I only managed to knock off some stone dust, which splattered all over my head and face.

I had no choice but to hop down from the jar and rethink my strategy.

Thinking back, that person had fled so decisively. Once he realized I’d spotted him, he hadn’t hesitated for a second. This suggested he was extremely familiar with the space next door. If he was that familiar with the layout, he likely wasn’t one of Liang Si’s men.

I looked up at the turtle carved into the stone caisson ceiling, and an idea struck me. Bai Shenxian had said that while I was under the influence of the Yandao, I had circled the chamber, tapped on a specific brick, and found the mechanism to open the caisson.

Finding a mechanism hidden inside a wall brick was rare. Was it possible that this was a mechanism room?

Mechanism rooms were rarely seen in architectural history. In ancient times, only a few specific organizations had the ingenuity to build them—usually secret service or assassination organizations. These places were rarely recorded in history; even the most famous “Sticky Pole Bureau” was officially described only as an agency responsible for the Emperor’s entertainment.

Hidden information isn’t hard to find if you have the right connections. Fortunately, my grandfather had many such connections in his early years. I had once found the structural diagrams for this specific type of mechanism room in a collection of rubbed ancient texts.

Old tomb raiders usually called chambers with these features “Juehu Cages.” The name implied that while the structure looked simple from the outside, it contained too many hidden tricks. The things hidden in the cracks and wall cavities were as intricate as a fish trap. One wrong step and you’d be caught like a little fish or shrimp, wiped out entirely—trapped one by one.

But these tricks wouldn’t work on me. I had studied almost every known tomb structure in existence. I tossed the jar aside, pressed myself against the wall, put my ear tight against the bricks, turned off my flashlight, and closed my eyes to listen.

The surroundings fell silent. Soon, I heard a tiny cracking sound from a component inside. This underwater tomb dated back to an early era when machinery hadn’t even become a formalized system. Generally, structural components didn’t incorporate metal yet; mortise-and-tenon joints made of wood or stone were most common. Over time, no matter how advanced the preservation techniques were, it was hard for wood not to make a sound.

Once I confirmed it was a mechanism room, I knelt and began feeling along the bricks near the corner. There had to be a path leading next door, and the connections in a Juehu Cage were most likely arranged starting from the four corners.

After feeling around for a bit, I found a funerary vase that felt out of place. I tried to lift it but found it wouldn’t budge; it was bolted into the floor tiles. I tried twisting it left and right. The moment I turned it an inch, I heard a massive, rumbling sound of machinery operating inside the wall. I gave it another half-turn, and in the darkness, something suddenly appeared directly in front of me.

I stood up and clicked on my flashlight. A flight of stone steps winding downward had appeared before me.

The appearance of these steps was truly baffling. I had imagined the room next door might have the exact same layout as this one, but I never expected a staircase leading down!

I didn’t rush in to investigate. First, I switched to a handy short blade, moved the flashlight to my left hand, and tightened the buckles on my backpack. The person who had bolted seemed very agile. If he was hiding down there waiting to ambush me, I needed to be fully prepared.

Once everything was ready, I took a deep breath to steel my nerves. Gripping the knife, I descended a few meters down the stone steps. As soon as I got down there, I noticed something strange.

On both sides of the stone steps were metal railings.

I clamped the flashlight between my teeth and ran a hand over the copper rust on the railing. I was stunned. What? How could these be modern-style wrought iron railings? Was this a joke? I suddenly felt like I was being played.

In the moment I froze, the stone door behind me suddenly let out a sharp click. By the time I turned around, it had already automatically closed, leaving only a sliver of a gap. I rushed back up and tried to pry the door open, but it was clearly impossible. This solid stone door had to weigh several tons; it was absolutely impossible to move by human strength alone.

I let out a frustrated sigh and looked toward the ceiling. I saw a nearly identical stone platform positioned directly above me. The platform was narrow, perhaps once used for a lintel or something similar. If someone was a martial arts expert, that width was just enough to land a foot.

From that height, one could peer through the carvings into the space I had just left.

Just who was this person, and how was their kung fu so good? There didn’t seem to be any prodigy in our team capable of jumping two meters high.

I leaned against the iron railing, feeling like my head was about to explode. With no way back, I couldn’t just sit there. I had no choice but to keep following the stone steps down with my flashlight. After descending for a short while, I reached a corner that opened into a flat area. The floor was made of concrete, and the walls were even coated in white paint.

These things gave me a sudden, fleeting illusion of returning to real life. I had to constantly remind myself that I was here to explore an underwater tomb, following the trail of the Tomb-guarding Beast. Still, these modern elements provided a rare sense of security; at the very least, they were much better than the ghostly, supernatural burial goods found in the tomb.

I walked down the stone steps and stopped at a turn, sweeping my flashlight across the surroundings.

This was a modern building in every sense of the word. The doors were the old-fashioned wooden type with handles, and the walls had originally been green before being painted over with a layer of white. Now, that white paint was peeling away in mottled patches, leaving white flakes scattered all over the floor.

But the place I had been before was undoubtedly a tomb. So what was this place? The stairs connecting to the Juehu Cage were newly built. Someone had constructed a modern building like this at such a depth underwater… but for what purpose?

I picked a direction at random and continued forward. Soon, the questions in my heart found an answer on the wall.

Four eye-catching characters were painted in red on the corridor wall ahead: “Strive, Seek Truth!”

It fit my impression of those earlier years perfectly. I’d heard that after the founding of New China, research was being conducted secretly in various places. These words immediately brought those projects to mind. This was most likely an abandoned underwater research station from years ago. But what exactly were these researchers studying?

Could they have been studying this underwater tomb?

If predecessors had built an underwater research station just to study the adjacent tomb, even if it were a secret operation, there should have been some records of it. Yet the Nine Rings project was a large-scale archaeological undertaking conducted through direct cooperation between the Five Masters and the higher-ups.

With a project of this magnitude involved, wouldn’t they have checked the archives? Did Fourth Brother and Tian Yuqing really not know about this? Or perhaps Fourth Brother was hiding something from me, but he hadn’t expected to be taken out before even entering the tomb, nor had he expected me to come down alone, let alone be swept here by the current to stumble into this building by sheer luck.

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks and tilted my head, feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

No, wait a second. How exactly did I get in here?