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墨書 Inktalez
Our relationship now is one of unspoken discord and distrust, yet there remains a thin veil between us, a fragile barrier that neither of us dares to break.
Perhaps it’s better to avoid trouble, or maybe the time isn’t right; we might still need that final straw to break the camel's back. But this feeling of pretense and evasion is truly unbearable!
Third Granduncle Master directed the light towards the west wall, which remained unchanged, standing at a perfect ninety-degree angle to the horizon. There was not a single place to find footing on that wall; it stretched high into the unseen depths of darkness, aspiring to reach greater heights than the public trial. There was absolutely no "way out."
However, Third Granduncle Master had a point. If this person hadn’t found a way, how could they have ended up fifteen meters away in the Quicksand Layer? Surely they didn’t just swim over?
Swim?! Wait—“Could it be… possible to swim over?”
As soon as I spoke, everyone turned to look at me from all directions, confused by my words. Only my junior brother snapped his fingers: “ Senior Brother, you’re on the same wavelength as me! I was just thinking that! Since we can swim down from the oil, why can’t we swim across the Quicksand?”
My junior brother has a straightforward mind; he often thinks of things that others wouldn’t dare to consider or simply wouldn’t think about at all. It’s usually when we find ourselves in dire situations, having exhausted all options, that the most primitive and simplest solution comes into play.
To my surprise, I found myself thinking along the same lines as him this time.
Everyone understood what we meant now, but their expressions turned perplexed, looking at us as if we were mad.
Old Qiao dismissed us entirely as if we were joking: “Swim over? Ha… do you even know what Quicksand is? In 169 years, during an earthquake, liquefaction created Quicksand at Jamaica Loyale Port that swallowed a third of the city and over two thousand lives. Did those people not think about swimming? Did they just sit in the Quicksand waiting for death?”
My junior brother raised an eyebrow and nonchalantly replied, “What if they really didn’t think of it?”
The words of my junior brother lacked any persuasive power, yet I felt a strong conviction that "swimming across" was indeed the right and only way forward.
However, this was merely a feeling, devoid of solid evidence. No one would believe it, nor would anyone dare to take such a risk. After all, this was not a physics laboratory, and we were not lab rats. If the experiment failed, there would be no divine hand to pull us out; we would be left with only a dead end.
In the midst of my dilemma, my peripheral vision caught sight of something behind the Copper Door. The stone that Old Qiao had thrown in for the experiment had floated back up, but it had moved forward by about thirty centimeters.
An idea suddenly struck me, and I shared my discovery with everyone. "Actually, quicksand behaves like water; it has buoyancy. If we can find the critical point that allows a person to float, we can determine whether it's possible to swim across!" This was based on my own experience from learning to swim; I couldn't explain it scientifically but could only express it in simple terms based on intuition.
As I spoke, my thoughts were chaotic and disorganized. There was so much I wanted to convey, yet I struggled to arrange it coherently for others to understand. The more anxious I became, the more tangled my words became. I used various terms haphazardly, speaking as ideas came to me: "For example, a piece of wood can float on water without any effort, with its submerged depth only reaching halfway. But a half-full gasoline barrel must first sink completely before it can rise again, and its submerged depth reaches all the way to the neck of the barrel! What does this mean? It shows that buoyancy in water is closely related to the density of the submerged object! That stone we saw earlier is like that gasoline barrel; it sinks first and then floats back up. We just need to conduct several experiments to find out the density of an object that doesn't sink in water—like our 'piece of wood'—and compare it with human density to see if this method is feasible!"
Old Qiao understood the principle of quicksand well. Although my explanation was messy, he grasped it immediately and his face lit up with excitement as he summarized: "Exactly! When an object sinks into quicksand, the surface sand becomes loose and runs downwards, pulling the object deeper. Once the object sinks to a certain depth, sand and clay from above fall down and gradually accumulate, creating thick sediment that prevents further sinking. This 'certain depth' is the balance between the object's density and that of quicksand. The denser the object is compared to quicksand, the shallower it will sink without facing drowning."
I nodded vigorously. "Yes! That's exactly what I mean!"
Yet my explanation was too chaotic while Old Qiao's was overly technical, leaving everyone else confused and lost in thought. Especially since they lacked any awareness of being able to "swim" through sand—some even held an opposing belief—it became even harder for them to comprehend.
It was akin to trying to explain how someone could walk through walls to someone who didn't believe in such a thing; they would dismiss your words as nonsense and likely argue against you internally.
However, Old Qiao's final remark about not facing drowning struck a chord with Liuzi. After all, he had experienced being caught by quicksand and had been rescued; he knew exactly what that felt like: "I understand now! You mean that when someone sinks into this quicksand, they won't be completely submerged—they'll only sink up to their waist or chest or neck—and then we can move forward slowly inside it? That's what you mean by 'swimming'?"
Old Qiao stroked his beard and visibly relaxed; finally, someone had grasped the concept: "Exactly."
A Chen nodded half-understandingly and then asked, "So who will go down for the experiment?"
As soon as the words left my mouth, everyone immediately exchanged glances, each looking at the other with suspicion. There was already tension among us, and now we were all wary of being the one pushed forward. The looks we exchanged were cautious yet laced with a malicious intent to outmaneuver one another.
I was truly fed up with this feeling—there wasn't a single trustworthy person around me. Everyone's heart was filled with suspicion and insincerity! Cold Bench had openly betrayed us, and it seemed even my junior brothers had grown distant from me. Just a few days apart, and people's hearts had changed so drastically!
But on the flip side, could I really trust Third Granduncle Master and the others? Would I be willing to put myself at risk for them, to become a test subject? No, I didn’t know… perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldn’t—damn it, I really hated this version of myself!
Damn it, I was being driven crazy! I blurted out, "I’m going!"
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