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墨書 Inktalez
It seems that this young man has some real skills, capable of making a seasoned veteran willingly call him Master.
Zhang Ye searched for a while on the hillside and suddenly stopped in front of a small cave. He pushed aside the weeds and said, "This should be a thief's den; it looks like someone has been here before." He then took out a burlap sack from behind him and released a bag of sparrows. After a while, as the sparrows flew out, Wei Ning approached the cave and sniffed, saying, "Something's off; there's life inside."
Zhang Ye chuckled and replied, "This isn't some valuable tomb that an expert would be interested in. Outsiders wouldn't find it; how could anyone come here? Let's go down and take a look."
Wu Haozi was naturally the best choice to lead the way. He secured a rope and, after a short while, finally reached the bottom. He shook the bell attached to the rope, signaling Zhang Ye and Wei Ning to descend one after the other.
Once they were down, Zhang Ye and the others shone their flashlights around and discovered that this was not a tomb at all; there wasn't even anything related to burial sites. It was simply a straight tunnel, and beside it flowed a silent Yin River, about a meter wide.
Zhang Ye waved his flashlight again and noticed some white bones not far ahead. They appeared to belong to a predecessor. Zhang Ye's vigilance heightened instantly; clearly, this place was not safe.
Leading the way, Zhang Ye moved forward with Wei Ning in the middle and Wu Haozi bringing up the rear as they explored along the Yin River.
However, this long tunnel seemed endless. After walking for over an hour, they had yet to see any forks or doors that could be opened.
Every so often, they encountered more white bones.
What was going on? Was someone setting up a trap?
But here, aside from the river, there were only black rocks that looked almost identical in color—there wasn't even an object to serve as a reference point. The three knew there were ghosts present but couldn't pinpoint why. They continued forward in silence, yet the surroundings remained unchanged; even the initial thief's den had vanished.
"Damn it, this is eerie! It must be the Ghost Wall; I'm sure there's something unclean here. Wei, it's up to you now."
Wei Ning frowned and said, "It doesn't seem like it. If there were something unclean around us, I would definitely sense it. But it doesn't feel like that at all. I think this is something deliberately designed by someone."
Wei Ning touched the black rock wall and continued, "Everything here seems replicated—identical in every way—making it impossible for us to find any reference points. Our flashlights can only illuminate a few meters ahead of us, which gives our brains misleading information. In reality, our legs have slight differences in length; thus our strides vary slightly as well. This creates a step discrepancy, and since there's over ten centimeters between our two feet, it causes our walking direction to veer off course. The paths taken by our feet form two concentric arcs."
Wu Haozi asked, "So you're saying we’ve just been walking in circles?"
"That should be the case," Wei Ning replied. "The person who designed this tunnel must have tailored it perfectly to match our step discrepancies so that we wouldn't realize we were veering off course and thought we were walking in a straight line."
"What should we do now? Staying in the same place isn't a solution," one of them said.
"Have you noticed this river? I've been listening closely, and it's strange; it hardly makes a sound. Isn't that unusual?"
Wu Haozi and Zhang Ye finally noticed the oddity of the river and began nodding in agreement. Wei Ning took out a talisman from his pocket and gently placed it on the water's surface. To their surprise, the paper began to wobble and then sank slowly.
"Something is definitely off," Zhang Ye concluded.
Wei Ning suggested, "Brother Zhang, why don't you try scooping some water with your military canteen?" Zhang Ye nodded, took off his canteen, dipped it into the water, but when he lifted it out, there wasn't a single drop inside.
Zhang Ye was even more puzzled. He pulled out his Luoyang Shovel and submerged it in the water. Despite having nearly ten meters of the shovel submerged, he still couldn't reach the bottom. When he pulled the Luoyang Shovel out of the water, another strange thing happened: it came out completely dry, without a single droplet on it.
"This is really bizarre," Zhang Ye summarized again.
Wei Ning said, "I've heard my master talk about this kind of phenomenon. It's not actually a river; it's a mirror."
"A mirror?" Zhang Ye asked, confused.
"This should be the Suspended Mirror from legends. Its function is to invert everything we see—who would have thought it would appear here?"
"What does that mean?"
"Simply put, we're actually walking upside down right now, with our heads below and feet above, completely defying gravity."
Wu Haozi swallowed hard and said, "So we've been walking backward this whole time?"
"What should we do now?"
"We need to pass through the mirror; that should bring us back to solid ground."
"Can we really go through?" Zhang Ye recalled the scene where Wei Ning's talisman sank, wondering if something so thin could float. If he went down, would he be able to come back up?
"I'm just following my master's advice. It should be fine."
"What if your master is a big fraud? My life could be lost because of his tricks."
"I'll give it a try," Wu Haozi stepped forward and said, "Those who have died here probably didn't dare to take the risk, which is why they ended up as a pile of bones. Since I'm already dead either way, I might as well gamble on my master's plan."
With that, he plunged into the water.
Next, Wei Ning followed suit, and Zhang Ye felt his face flush slightly before jumping in without a second thought.
Just as Wei Ning had said, the three of them felt light-headed in the water but quickly surfaced. When they looked up, they found themselves in an entirely new place.
It was an astonishingly vast space, with the ceiling towering a hundred feet above them and the ground just ten feet below. The cave's roof was illuminated by an enormous everlasting lamp that lit up the entire area. In the center lay a massive white stone resembling Xuanbing, with what seemed to be a person lying on top of it. Surrounding this giant stone were about ten wax figures, each posed differently—some standing, some crouching, some with fierce expressions, while others had their heads bowed. Each figure had a talisman-like object affixed to its forehead.
As the three of them reached the shore and approached for a closer look, they realized that all three figures were made of wax. Each Wax Figure was remarkably lifelike, almost indistinguishable from real people.
What intrigued Wei Ning even more was that the talismans on the foreheads of these Wax Figures were made from black Yama Paper, and he couldn't understand any of the inscriptions on them.
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