Iron Bull taucht wieder auf

Kapitel 128

Guan Baoling groaned again: "I just feel like the nightmare has just begun. Do you want to hear what I saw in that palace?"

I couldn't help but exclaim "Oh!" in surprise, then immediately understood and felt relieved.

When Guan Baoling mysteriously reappeared, we were all strangers who had only met a few times. Of course, she wouldn't tell us everything and would definitely hold back some things. At the time, I overlooked this issue, thinking that her hallucinations weren't important, as long as no one was hurt and it didn't implicate Xunfuyuan, everything would be fine.

"What did I discover?" I began to feel uneasy. Although Guan Baoling wasn't a member of the underworld, she was by no means a country bumpkin who had never seen the world. She had acted in more than a dozen types of films and had worked with top directors, screenwriters, and movie stars from around the world, so she should be considered quite knowledgeable. Therefore, what she had seen and heard that could frighten her must be something extraordinary.

Guan Baoling bit her chapped lips and stared into my eyes: "Do you really want to hear it?"

Her big eyes were still as clear as water, which made my heart flutter, and I wanted to drown in those two clear, bright lakes.

I nodded firmly: "Yes, I really want to hear it. I'd listen to anything, no matter how terrible, if it helps with our current predicament." At the same time, I was inwardly smiling bitterly. The situation was already as bad as it could get; what could be more terrifying than this experience?

Only when you return to the air do you truly feel the terrifying and unsettling power of the deep sea.

That enormous underwater structure, the omnipresent red glow and mist, the endless rolling sand—all of these are eerie scenes that could only be fabricated in a horror movie, but we have experienced them all, and we are currently in a glass box suspended in mid-air with no power.

In contrast, the experience inside the deep and dark Tulku Khan Pyramid felt like a small Boy Scout camping trip—thrilling but without the overwhelming sense of impending doom.

If I could return to the surface, I would tell Su Lun everything I had experienced, and let her analyze what this enormous underwater structure was.

"Sigh, only Suren is my most trusted work partner. Once I leave her, even the simplest things become complicated. Is there something wrong with my approach? Or are there just too many strange changes in Hokkaido that caught me off guard?"

"Feng, you're distracted again, aren't you?" Guan Baoling tightened her arms around my waist.

I don't know if I'm caught in a dilemma. My heart has started to hold both Su Lun and Guan Baoling at the same time. Especially when I was about to escape, I suddenly realized how much I missed Su Lun.

“No, I’m listening to you—” I kept looking up. The spot of light grew bigger and bigger. If we were in a very deep, dry well, then the spot of light must be the wellhead, the exit for us to return to the surface. Hope was rekindled in my heart.

"Actually, before entering the palace and the long corridor, there was a high wall to my side. The white wall was covered with pictures drawn in colored pencils, countless pictures, stretching all the way forward. The content of those pictures was very terrifying, somewhat like the tragic scenes in the legendary eighteen levels of hell. Some people were cut in half at the waist, some were hanged, some had their limbs cut off, and some were thrown into boiling oil. They were very terrifying pictures. I was wondering at the time why I could look at them calmly."

Guan Baoling's voice was very calm. Perhaps extreme fatigue prevented her from getting excited, and she could only speak in a plain and descriptive tone.

"So what? Many tourist attractions have buildings like these 'mythical palaces,' which vividly depict the facial features of Yama, the judge, and little devils. They then create all sorts of nauseating models based on stories from unofficial histories and ghost tales. What you see is just a flat painting, so of course you won't feel anything, right?"

What you think about during the day, you dream about at night. In the quiet and desolate wilderness of Muwanzhoushan, it's not surprising that fear might lead to such fantasies.

Guan Baoling argued, "You haven't finished listening yet. Let's sit down, and I'll tell you slowly!"

We sat on the ground, leaning against the tower, a way to conserve our strength. I was already planning our escape from the cave. This strange cave must be in a sparsely populated area. We were both extremely weak. We should find some fresh water to replenish our fluids and try to get closer to populated areas before calling Xiao Keleng… I was so glad that Guan Baoling had remained healthy. She didn't know martial arts and was a delicate girl; if she fell ill, she probably wouldn't have made it out of this mysterious space alive.

"There's not much to say about the tortured people; they're just a little more realistic than the tacky paintings in places like the 'Mythical Palace.' What I'm talking about are the people being executed—I'm not sure if they're human, although they're all upright-walking humanoids, they have four arm-like things protruding from their backs. Their clothes are all the same style and color, like the orange vests paparazzi often wear, with many pockets of various sizes. If you have to call them human, you can only describe them as six-armed monsters..."

She reached up and rubbed her cheeks, wiping away the white streaks of seawater, her eyes filled with utter confusion.

I didn't offer any opinion, letting her continue as she pondered—"All the images are of this monster manipulating everything. Humans are merely its experimental subjects, to be arbitrarily chopped, torn, fried, and decomposed… It has a human face, but the features are arranged very awkwardly, as if they were just randomly assembled on a mechanized assembly line. The positions are correct, but the curvature of the eyes, the direction of the eyebrows, the thickness of the lips, etc., are all not harmonious or natural—"

"Ah? I remember now! Stop, stop, stop, I remember now—" I shouted suddenly, raised my hand and grabbed Guan Baoling's hand, shaking it vigorously.

I recalled a picture in the electronic notebook that Fujika had shown me: a strange giant with six arms, which she called the "Illusion Demon," the one always ready to kill the god Tu Liehan and destroy the earth. In Tu Liehan's secret chamber, what was seen was merely the image of a scalpel possessed by the Illusion Demon's shadow. In short, all the legends about the Illusion Demon are just legends, unverifiable and therefore unbelievable.

Guan Baoling looked at me with utter confusion: "What are you thinking about? Are those six-armed monsters aliens? Or are they demons and monsters that are wreaking havoc on the world?"

What I find strange is how the illusion demon could be related to Guan Baoling's fantasies? If her hallucinations were caused by suddenly entering another mysterious space, could that space actually exist? Like this infinitely long vertical tunnel we're currently in?

In that instant, many thoughts came to mind, but I couldn't express them coherently, so I urged Guan Baoling to continue.

"That wall stretched out so long that I couldn't see the end from where I was standing, which is why I wandered aimlessly, looking at about forty or fifty paintings. If you count them all, there were at least several hundred. It made me feel nauseous the whole time, because the strange man's gleeful expression combined with the frenzied killing made it seem like murder was a thrilling and pleasurable thing for him. In the end, I couldn't hold back anymore and had to vomit—"

She covered her mouth; it was indeed a memory that was not pleasant to recount, and it was perfectly normal not to tell outsiders.

“If my intuition is correct, everything we’ve been through is related to the hallucination we had last time, which is why I’m so scared. Thankfully, we didn’t encounter that monster…”

Looking down or up from inside the glass box, there was nothing there; there was no sign of the six-armed monster. But Guan Baoling kept looking around anxiously, as if the monsters might appear at any moment.

The box seemed to be rising at a slower pace. The long wait was making Guan Baoling drowsy. She turned and rested her head on my knees, whispering with a thick nasal voice, "I'm tired, let me sleep for a while... Feng, after all these years in the entertainment industry, meeting so many people, it seems like only when I'm with you can I feel relaxed. I love the feeling of being next to you, like when I was a child nestled in my mother's arms..."

I know that people are more likely to open up and accept others when they are extremely hungry and tired, but I don't understand why she kept talking about her childhood. Perhaps, subconsciously, I wanted to hear her story about her relationship with the tycoon? Men are the strangest creatures; they want to know about the other person's past, yet they are also so afraid of knowing it.

"I want to sleep... I want to sleep. I haven't longed to sleep this much in a long time. I want to dream of my mother; she's in heaven in my dreams..."

I gently patted Guan Baoling's back: "Sleep, sleep. When you wake up, we'll have already reached the top of the cave and will be able to return to the ground soon."

I also fell asleep. In my brief and shallow dream, I saw Su Lun's smiling face one moment and Guan Baoling's graceful dance the next.

Will she belong to me? Or is it that fate only arranged for her to appear in my life for this brief moment, and that once the crisis is over, we will naturally part ways, like a small boat and the tide, all our destinies just a fleeting encounter with the ebb and flow of the tide?

Clearly, if it weren't for this mysterious disappearance, she would already be back in Hong Kong, back in the arms of the tycoon. And I, too, would leave the fruitless Hokkaido to meet up with Su Lun. We would each have our own paths to walk, instead of being trapped together in this strange glass box.

"She's the tycoon's woman! The tycoon's woman..." Suren's voice echoed in my ears, instantly bringing me back to my senses, my face covered in a cold sweat of shock.

Guan Baoling remained fast asleep, emitting soft snores, her shoulders rising and falling with her breath. My hand, still on her back, unconsciously lifted, a pang of sorrow washing over me: "The tycoon's woman? To snatch her away from him, wouldn't it be a long war between two men? Is it worth it? Is she really more lovable than Su Lun?"

Looking up again, the light spot had magnified to about a meter in diameter. I pressed my wrist, using my heart rate to calculate that the box was rising at a speed of about five meters per minute. I estimated that we would be about three hundred meters away from the light spot. In another hour, we would reach it. I hoped that it would be an exit from our predicament.

How long has it taken since we arrived here from the seabed? How did the water in the box drain out? How exactly was the oxygen collected in the tower thousands of meters underwater, enough for the two of us to breathe freely? I can't explain it, and perhaps no physicist's theory can explain it, but these things really happened. At least Guan Baoling and I didn't die from suffocation due to lack of oxygen.

After closing my eyes and adjusting my breathing, I felt a surge of energy returning to my body, and my mind became clear and agile once again.

"Assuming that huge, mysterious underwater structure belongs to a secret Russian military base, then must this glass box we're in also belong to the Russians? Could this device, which completely defies geophysics, be one of the Russians' most secret inventions?"

International strategic observers have repeatedly pointed out that "the arms race between superpowers is developing in completely different directions. The United States is developing towards space, always ready to control extraterrestrial weapons, with its core idea being 'control of space warfare,' aiming to launch overwhelming attacks on enemies from the air; Russia, also a superpower, pursues 'underwater warfare' and maritime control, aiming to achieve 'control of naval warfare' in the Pacific Ocean to address potential threats to enemies."

Russia and the United States, located in North America, are separated only by the Bering Strait. Since the glorious era when Tsarist Russia swept across Asia, Europe and North America, the navy of this superpower has been a mysterious force that cannot be ignored. It has also blocked all news about the development and expansion of its military power, making it impossible for spies from other countries to obtain any information.

Between the two answers, "alien base" and "Russian military facility," I lean towards the latter, so it was especially important to contact Xiaoyan as soon as possible and confirm this quickly.

If Russia has already built its underwater base in Hokkaido, the Japanese will be practically in a wolf's mouth, and there will be no need for them to clamor to follow the Americans around and frequently engage in international diplomacy.

I couldn't help but smile bitterly. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many far-left and far-right forces in the international community have forgotten the threat from Russia. These politicians who have developed amnesia will soon taste the bitter fruit of their forgetfulness.

Guan Baoling twisted her neck twice, then suddenly looked up, staring blankly around: "Where are we? Where are we?"

When she saw the eerie blue stone wall clearly, she suddenly sighed, "I dreamt I was home, I dreamt of a fireplace and roast chicken, and fragrant corncobs, but it was all just a dream!" Then she sighed repeatedly in disappointment.

As I watched her long eyelashes flutter shyly, a surge of jealousy welled up inside me. Was she dreaming not just of food and a fireplace, but also of the tycoon's warm embrace? The power of jealousy made my temples throb simultaneously, and an unnamed anger burned restlessly in my chest.

"Feng, what's wrong? You look terrible." She looked at me strangely.

I shook my head with a wry smile and remained silent. It wasn't just that my face looked bad; jealousy also overwhelmed my reason, making me do many inexplicable things.

Fortunately, if we can get out of trouble in an hour, we won't have to sacrifice ourselves to save Guan Baoling, and we will all be safe and sound.

Things were far more complicated than I had imagined. Half an hour later, when we were still a hundred meters away from the spot of light, Guan Baoling whispered in confusion, "Feng, I think it's not a cave entrance, but rather the shape of a painting. Don't you think so?"

My eyesight is fine, and I noticed this beforehand, but I just kept quiet about it.

The feeling of a light spot or a cave entrance is definitely different. Right now, it looks like someone turned on a powerful flashlight and shone it on the stone wall, creating that patch of white light. After climbing another fifty meters, Guan Baoling and I realized this at the same time without a doubt—the light spot was just a light spot, not the bright cave entrance we had imagined.

The Sixth Sea God Plaque

— Chapter 5 — The Strange Gear —

"It's not the cave entrance! Oh my god, we have no way out, there's absolutely no way out, we're going to be trapped here to die! Feng, do you see that? It's just a stone wall, just a stone wall! Just..." Guan Baoling suddenly sprang to her feet, screamed at the top of her lungs, then swayed twice and fell down, crashing to the ground with a thud.

I couldn't catch her in time, because the overwhelming shock and disappointment had left my limbs numb and my heart felt like it was about to stop beating.

The long, hopeful wait was rewarded with nothing but a ridiculously steep cliff. A faint whistling sound came from somewhere, and my neck stiffened. I just stared blankly up at the huge spot of light, more than ten meters in diameter, like the moon reflected in the lake during the Mid-Autumn Festival, bright and beautiful yet utterly illusory.

"It's just a patch of light, not an exit!" The stone wall above was very smooth. Perhaps I should climb to the top of the tower; looking up from there would feel more real. It was a genuine blue stone wall, blending seamlessly with all the other stone walls in front of me, like a perfectly fitting stone cap for this deep well, with no visible gaps for escape.

It doesn't matter where the white light came from—we will be trapped here to die. Even if I sacrifice myself to extend Guan Baoling's life by three, five, or ten days, she will still die; it's unavoidable.

I stood up, staggered to the edge of the glass box, and threw myself onto the cold, curved glass. All around and above were indestructible stone walls, and below was a bottomless abyss. If the force that had lifted the box suddenly disappeared, it would once again become an infinitely accelerating free fall, crashing back into the deep sea.

Suddenly, my vision blurred, and it seemed that tears were welling up, but I wouldn't let them spill out of my eyes. The "whoosh whoosh whoosh" sound suddenly became much louder, and the source must have been somewhere nearby.

I roused myself and ran quickly toward the side of the box. In the opposite direction of the tower door, I saw an extremely bright opening—no, not an opening, but a large hall carved out of the cave wall, more than ten meters high and about five meters wide, extending horizontally outwards.

The floor of the hall is slightly lower than the bottom of the box, so I can see everything inside from the edge of the box.

On the ground is a vertically extending white stone platform, upon which countless spinning gears are placed.

My body trembled violently with extreme excitement, and I couldn't help but kick and punch the glass wall. Those gears were similar to those we saw through the skylights of deep-sea buildings, except this time the straight-line distance was no more than ten meters, and I could see them clearly.

The dark gears were connected by a white band of light, twenty centimeters in diameter. This seemingly flexible band of light acted as the gear's axle, pressed tightly against the stone platform, around which all the gears rotated. Of course, each gear had a groove beneath it, and only half of their volume was visible above the stone platform.

The gear closest to me was spinning very fast. After dozens of gears outwards, the speed dropped noticeably, and further inwards, it spun even slower. I strained to see into the deepest part of the gears, but all I could see were stone platforms, gears, and bands of light; nothing else, just emptiness.

The mysterious hall was brightly lit, but I couldn't see any lights, just like seeing spots of light on the ceiling of a cave but not being able to find their source.

"That's strange—where does the power for the gears to rotate come from? What is their function?"

I desperately wanted a sledgehammer to smash through these glass walls blocking my way and jump inside. Whoever set up these gears, finding a way out at the deepest part of the hole would be better than being trapped in a glass box. I wanted to scream or laugh out loud; my frustration had nowhere to go. Watching so many gears spinning rapidly was like watching a well-organized automated factory workshop.

Behind every mysterious thing lies some kind of mysterious force, and I believe that there exists a "person" controlling everything in this vertical tunnel.

In my extreme shock, I almost forgot about Guan Baoling's presence and just stared intently at the gears.

"Wind, wind...where are you? Where are you? Don't leave me, please don't leave me, don't leave me here alone! Wind—wind—wind..." Guan Baoling's tearful cries echoed weakly within the huge glass box.

I rubbed my dry eyes hard and turned to walk back, only to find that my legs were starting to give way. At least three days had passed since I entered this space. Although my watch had stopped, my senses were right; my physical strength and energy were nearing their breaking point.

"Feng—" Guan Baoling rushed over, tears streaming down her face. Her hair was disheveled and draped over her back. Her elegant black dress was wrinkled beyond recognition and covered with white stains left by seawater. From her appearance, I could tell that my own image was also completely ruined, utterly devoid of any grace.

We both collapsed to the ground almost simultaneously, too exhausted to continue.

“I saw gears, just like we saw underwater—” I turned and pointed, the cave, half-hidden by the tower, was still clearly visible.

When a person is extremely weak, their fear of anything strange is greatly reduced. So, Guan Baoling didn't scream like I did; she just nodded slightly, pressed her face against my chest, slowly closed her eyes, and let out a long sigh.

“I couldn’t find you. I thought you would disappear from my life like Resica, never to return. Don’t leave me… don’t leave me. Before I die, I want you to stay with me forever, always by my side…” Her lips cracked open with countless tiny fissures, and with each movement, trickles of blood seeped out.

I held her wrist and forced a smile: "How could that be? The box is sealed so tightly, even if you forced me to leave, I couldn't get out. Besides, with you here, I will never leave alone, never."

She pressed herself close to me, murmuring indistinctly, "I'm so cold, hold me tight, hold me tight, hold me tight..."

At this moment, she was the most helpless little girl in the world, completely stripped of the dazzling aura of a superstar and a freak of the film industry. She was just a sweet girl in my arms who needed to be loved and cared for, but I could give her nothing and could not change the terrible situation.

"If the tycoon were here, what would he have done? Would he have done better than me?" I even kept blaming myself, thinking that if I had been the one to accompany her back to Fengge Temple, perhaps this series of events wouldn't have happened, and she wouldn't have suffered such torment.

As the gears whirred and whirred in my ears, I counted her increasingly faint heartbeats, feeling extremely anxious but helpless.

The knife was trembling in my hand. I couldn't predict how long I would bleed. If I really had to use my own blood to prolong Guan Baoling's life, I would do it without hesitation.

In my heart, Guan Baoling replaced everything, even overshadowing the search for my elder brother Yang Tian. I turned my head to look at the spinning gears, racking my brains for clues that might be related to them. Perhaps the next time Guan Baoling opened her eyes, I would cut my wrist and let the blood drip into her mouth.

What will the consequences be? Will I really die here? Is this my final fate?

A giant gear, three meters in diameter and one meter thick, rotated around the light strip, like countless huge millstones. Apart from the whooshing sound of it cutting through the air, it did not make any friction sound.

From those slowly rotating gears, I could vaguely see many densely packed tooth rings, each about twenty centimeters apart and deep. But what was the point of such individual gears rotating any faster or slower? If they couldn't mesh with each other, it seemed they were just rotating alone meaninglessly, producing no effect whatsoever.

The white light inside the cave seemed to be emitted by some kind of high-powered shadowless lamp, pure white and uniform, without casting any shadows of the gears onto the stone surface. The cave was very deep, stretching endlessly into the depths. Recalling that the enormous structure underwater contained one hundred and twenty-eight gears, perhaps there were just as many here, or even more—Guan Baoling groaned, licking her chapped lips as she opened her eyes, her pupils filled with fine, tangled blood vessels.

“I’m going to die, Wind, I’m so hungry and thirsty… I just dreamt of iced lemon tea, roast turkey for Christmas, creamy coconut bread, French soup…” She rattled off more than a dozen drinks and foods, making my stomach rumble uncontrollably.

When I was in Cairo, I often went to a French restaurant called "Meyerlin" with Suren. Their candlelight dinners were the best in all of Cairo, and they also had fine French red wine and creamy pearl ice cream. But now, even a bowl of water and a slice of bread would be fine; I'm so hungry I'll eat anything.