King of Tomb Raiders

Chapter 281

About ten meters ahead, a row of portholes, two meters high, appeared, lit by a pale brown light, like that of a nearly depleted incandescent light bulb. The windows were strangely shaped, standard isosceles trapezoids, rarely seen on the exteriors of human buildings.

I tried to stay alert: "The corridor outside was pitch black before I reached the mirror. Where did the porthole come from?"

"Tiger—Tiger, where are you?" I looked down and saw more than a dozen rows of portholes stacked up, each one narrower than the last. Looking up, the portholes stretched upwards, I couldn't tell if there were dozens or hundreds of rows, but it seemed to stretch on forever.

I feel that this is a giant building that is wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, and the side facing me is a sloping structure, with the higher you go, the further away you are from this mirror.

"Wind—" came the sound of a tiger from below, but the trailing sound was very long. This kind of sound wave prolongation only occurs when the distance between the two places is more than 30 meters.

"Thank God, he's still alive!" I breathed a sigh of relief and lowered my head with difficulty, but I couldn't find his position among the star-like portholes.

After calming down, I immediately understood: the Saturnians' spacecraft was falling from the Earth's veins, and the mirror, being embedded in the outer wall of the veins, wouldn't fall with the spacecraft. However, there was an incomprehensible contradiction: did the bearded man, Situ Qiushi, and Lei Aobai from the Tang Dynasty enter the mirror first? Or did the Earth God's spacecraft stop below the wellhead of the Empty Courtyard first?

At least, before the great god Turkham arrived here, he had lurked in the Egyptian desert, his flying vehicle hidden inside the "Turkham Pyramid." Then, after his energy was depleted, he went underground to lie dormant, waiting for an opportunity to rise again, until he prepared to attack Alpha's world.

The only explanation is that the Great God Tu Liehan had long coveted the energy of the "Asian Gear" and had been hiding beneath the exit for an unknown period of time, simply waiting for the right opportunity to launch an attack. It was during the time his spacecraft was stationary that the Tang Dynasty people's time travel event occurred, which led to the creation of the renowned martial arts figure, "Wandering Tiger."

Tigers are incredibly skilled at surviving in the wild; climbing a 30-meter-high rock face with their bare hands isn't too difficult for them. The biggest problem, however, is that we can't find a foothold on such a narrow rock face, nor can we find a way back to the small building. Because those ladders were inside the aircraft, and now that the aircraft is gone, we're trapped deep within the ley lines.

Part 4: Resurrection Battle

— Chapter 3 — Entering the World of Asian Gears —

I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead and yelled a second time, "Tiger, try climbing up here first—"

If we could pass through the mirror and enter a safe world, whether it be the Tang or Song Dynasty or the Qin or Han Dynasty, it would be much better than being trapped on this cliff.

A minute later, the tiger's response came through: "No, the space below is getting bigger and bigger. I'm at least forty meters away from the opposite stone wall. There's no way I can get across. Feng, it seems we're in a cone-shaped space that's wider at the bottom and narrower at the top. Quickly think of a way to get me up."

I had no ropes around to rescue him, and I had to rely on my hands to hold onto the mirror to maintain my balance, so I was barely able to save myself.

Inside the porthole opposite, there are more than a dozen rows of control panels, and as far as the eye can see, there is a staircase connecting any two floors from bottom to top.

Suddenly, I had an idea: "That aircraft is like a skyscraper. Even if there are no elevators between floors, there will be stairs. If the tiger can climb to a floor that is parallel to me, it will be easier to cross the distance of more than ten meters. If he can climb to the top of the aircraft, he might be able to find a new exit."

This is a "clumsy method," but it is simple and effective.

Tiger is indeed a master of survival. While I was thinking, his voice came again: "Feng, I'm going to find the stairs. You wait, we'll see each other soon."

I breathed a sigh of relief, finally calming down, and continued to pull in my stomach and hunch my back, pressing myself tightly against the mirror.

The flying machine opposite us was quite enormous, but it was the "small flying machine" that the Tuli Khan god had mentioned, unlike the massive Tuli Khan pyramid in the desert. Thinking about it now, drilling a hole to enter the pyramid was truly a very risky move. However, even the ancients lamented, "The most beautiful scenery is found at the most dangerous peaks." Without taking risks and being daring, how can one pick the most beautiful flowers?

Perched atop the precipice, my thoughts soared ever higher. My elder brother, Yang Tian, had faced countless such perilous situations throughout his life, yet he always managed to escape with his head held high, kicking aside all misfortune to achieve the renowned title of "King of Tomb Raiders," commanding the respect of heroes across the land. If his many experiences could be written into a thick novel, it would surely be a captivating and irresistible read.

"Where is he? The great god Tu Liehan died suddenly, without even having time to reveal the coordinates of the desert. What should we do next? Should we escape from here and fly back to the Egyptian desert as soon as possible, or should we rely on Tina's military forces to conduct a search?"

Thinking of Tina, the Egyptian female general who was deeply in love with me, I felt a mix of guilt and sweetness. This complex feeling was something that neither Guan Baoling nor Su Lun could give me.

"No, I will go back with Suren. Even if we ask Tina for help, it will only be on the level of friends in the martial arts world. We will never cause any other complications and hurt Suren. You can't step into the same river twice in your life, and I will not let Suren down a second time. From now on, whether in life or in sickness or in health, in poverty or wealth, I will stay by her side and take good care of her."

The faces of the tycoon, Guan Baoling, Xiao Yan, Xiao Keleng, Xiao Lai, Sun Long, and others slowly flashed before my eyes, and every scene that happened in Hokkaido surfaced in my mind. My heart seemed to have suddenly aged; those fragmented stories could no longer bring me joy. My memories had come to an end, leaving only the two words "Su Lun," which were increasingly imprinted in my mind.

"The Earth God and Youlian are both dead. What will happen to the flying machine after it loses its pilot? Will it stay in the ley lines forever?"

Looking out the porthole, I felt a deeper fear of the uncertain and unknown future.

The appearance of the "broken knife mark" signifies certain death—a saying understood by any seasoned fortune teller, and considered one of the golden rules for "knowing human destiny and predicting life and death." I didn't want to watch my friend die, so I kept my eyes glued to the staircase behind the porthole.

Actually, the walls of that space were covered with screens, each displaying countless characters flashing and jumping. I could only understand one of them, which showed countless flashing Arabic numerals "zero" and "one". These are the basic symbols that make up the human electronic world, so what's the point of them being here? Is it some kind of encoding, or a code?

The tiger finally appeared, and his running movements were truly like those of a lithe and fierce tiger. In the blink of an eye, he was behind the porthole that was parallel to the mirror.

I guessed the porthole could be opened somehow, but the situation was urgent, and the tiger couldn't calmly search for a way to open it. He was shouting at me, and from his lip movements, I could tell he was repeating the word "come here." I looked down at my feet. If I leaped forward, even if I couldn't reach the porthole where the tiger was, I would land on the outer wall of the aircraft and climb in through the lower entrance. That was better than being trapped here.

A low alarm rang out, and the window in front of Tiger opened silently. His laughter, accompanied by the whirring alarm, came through: "Wind, come quick! This spacecraft is amazing! It's like another world! Good brother, let's forget everything and go to outer space together! Jump over here, quick—"

He waved excitedly, his face beaming with a joyful smile, like a general on the National Day parade platform.

Things took an unexpected turn for the better. In his right hand, he held a brown rectangular remote control, which emitted colorful lights every time he waved it.

"What are you saying? That aircraft is out of energy. You should jump over here!" I always remembered what the Great God Tu Liehan said first. If it hadn't run out of energy, he wouldn't have ordered Youlian and the others to risk charging into the formation and painstakingly arranged for people to fight Alpha.

The alarm blared for over ten seconds, and suddenly countless red lights illuminated the outer wall of the aircraft, reflected in the mirror behind me. The world before me seemed to transform into a red haze, and the lights in the portholes appeared even dimmer against the contrast of the red glow.

"Huh? What?" The excited tiger wasn't listening to me; he was just staring excitedly at the remote control.

“I said ‘The spacecraft’s energy is depleted,’ did you hear me? Get out now—” I said, but the rest of my words caught in my throat, choked by shock and horror, because this time I had witnessed the spacecraft plummeting before my very eyes. The lights in the layers of portholes were like a slowly opening blind, flashing eerie colors as it continued to fall.

It was plummeting rapidly, out of control, and uncontrolled.

"Tiger—" I raised my voice to its limit, my throat immediately becoming hoarse, a sweet, metallic taste seeping from my throat. It felt like I had stepped into a nightmare once again, and in a single second, at least hundreds of portholes flashed before my eyes.

"Wind—Catch—Hold on—" The tiger's voice came from a very distant place, and the echo of each word became a heavy hammer, pounding hard on my eardrums.

A brown remote control and a greyish-white ivory pistol flew up, passing right in front of me, rising more than ten meters before their ascent ended and they began to fall. Tiger probably threw the objects up as soon as he sensed he was falling; his reaction time was always quick.

The light on the remote control was still flashing. Although I didn't know its function, the tiger must have had a deeper meaning in risking his life to throw it up.

The voice, "Press the third button," faded rapidly into the distance, as if it came from the deepest depths of hell. He meant for me to "press the third button," but unfortunately, the remote control and the pistol's wires were three meters in front of me, making it impossible to catch them.

I watched helplessly as the two objects flipped over, slid past me again, and plummeted into the darkness.

The porthole in front of me seemed to stop falling for a few seconds, but then it plummeted to the bottom and disappeared completely from my sight. As my gaze followed it downwards, I saw a gleaming spire. Its shape resembled a small pyramid, or a four-sided cone. Perhaps in the Saturnians' scientific technology, such a spacecraft structure was the most effective at overcoming air resistance and achieving maximum speed.

I could only see one side of the aircraft; the other three sides also had many gleaming portholes. As it receded further and further from my sight, I couldn't help but let out a long, regretful sigh: "Press the third button? Tiger trusted me so much; in that emergency, he had no time to save himself and placed all his hopes on me, but I let him down—"

After the killing and death, the tiger fell into such an end that, when I think about it, I can't help but feel a chill run down my spine.

"Am I going to be trapped here and die? No one can get in here, and no more alien spacecraft will rise from the ley lines. My future won't be any luckier than a tiger's." Cold sweat trickled down my back, quickly soaking my shirt and clinging to my body.

Opposite me was endless darkness. I could imagine that the earth's veins were actually surrounded by stone walls, roughly in an irregular circle.

At a 60-degree angle to the upper right, there is a glowing white dot, suspended in mid-air, very far away. That must be the exit of the earth's veins, leading to the empty courtyard in the Epang Palace, at least a kilometer away, seemingly unreachable. It is the only path to survival here, but one can only watch from afar, never able to reach it.

Sure enough, deep underground, there was a flickering flame. When the shadow of the aircraft appeared against the backdrop of the flames, it felt extremely bizarre. The aircraft, which had previously appeared enormous, now looked like a miniature prop, shrunk tens of thousands of times, gently plunging into the sea of fire. Indeed, only a vast expanse of soaring flames could be called a "sea of fire," capable of engulfing at least tens of thousands of aircraft, and constantly pulsating, rising and falling, bright and dim.

The aircraft vanished without a dramatic explosion as expected. Like a small piece of paper falling into a fire pit, it turned to ash in an instant and ceased to exist.

"The tiger is dead." My chest was filled with inexplicable sorrow.

Just minutes ago, he was full of ambition and vowed to travel through time and create his own glorious era; a minute ago, he even thought he had obtained the secret to traveling through space and flying through the universe. Now, he is gone, just like hundreds of great figures in history who suddenly disappeared. He has vanished, allowing the special word "tiger" to be released again, so that more heroes of the martial arts world can identify themselves with this name.

"I will die too, and Suren and my brother may also die—" My thoughts began to become chaotic, and it seemed as if hundreds of people were walking hurriedly around me. One of them, a short man with a small mustache, walked over, stopped beside me, and looked me up and down.

"Who are you?" He stroked his mustache, his gaze piercingly fixed on my face.

My arms were sore and numb, but I still tried my best to stay awake and used my internal energy to hold onto the mirror, otherwise I would fall if I lost my focus.

"Who are you? Where's the tiger?" he asked impatiently.

“He’s dead.” My voice sounded weak and feeble, like a dream.

“Dead? Accident? Hmm, accidents always happen. These passages are becoming increasingly unsafe. Sigh, there are so many people on Earth—no, I should say there are so many useless people on Earth. They bury all the elites in these passages, stealing their food, their air, and their living space. Don’t you think we should get rid of all this useless stuff?” He talked on and on like a great philosopher, completely ignoring my predicament.

"Come with me, let's work together to change the world—" He stroked his beard with a smug smile.

I suddenly remembered his name, bent my knees and jumped away from him, and was delighted to find that I could move freely again. I was no longer on a cliff, but in a silver-gray corridor.

"I can create the world. Pangu separated heaven and earth in a day, God created man in six days, but I only need a tiny fraction of a time, negligible. I could sweep from Western Europe to Eastern Europe with almost no effort, you know? A world without rivals is utterly boring. I even deliberately give my enemies a chance to breathe, just to make them stand up and fight me on equal footing, but they are still utterly vulnerable. See, this world is incredibly naive; I could wipe them out with just one hand. So, I want to join forces with Tiger to create a more powerful world and rewrite the rules of the game—"

He waved his hands, as if he were giving a passionate speech at the Berlin International Theatre back in the day.

I smiled faintly: "But you are dead, and you will be remembered in history for your many misdeeds and infamy."

He burst into laughter: "History? I've always said that heroes create history, that's absolutely true. A hero can create the history of an entire dynasty, making it white or black as they please. Like you Chinese, Qin Shi Huang created Qin history, Liu Bang created Han history, Li Shimin created Tang history, Zhao Kuangyin created Song history... Are those all true? Just like when you read the history of World War II, studying and analyzing those classic battles, are those all true? Wrong, wrong, wrong! Those who read history will never understand history; only those who create history truly understand..."

Behind him stood many people, bowing respectfully, even more so than the generals and marshals who had followed him and started the war years before.

I didn't want to stay here. I rushed straight towards the bright path ahead. Whether in illusion or reality, there's nothing to say to such a warmonger.

“They’re all willing to follow me, yet you have no interest at all? The Chinese like to say, ‘Those who obey me prosper, those who defy me perish.’ It seems you’re destined to die here—” he shouted angrily, followed by the noisy sound of gun bolts being pulled back.

I sprinted forward with all my might, and as I sensed the danger closing in behind me, I suddenly swung my knife in a backhand motion. The sound of the blade slicing through flesh and breaking bone was incessant, but I didn't look back, continuing straight ahead. War maniacs and their followers are sinners in history; countless war criminals and innocent civilians have died at their direct behest. Therefore, killing these people is a blessing for the people of the world, and I can wield my knife without any hesitation.

"Ah—" His scream suddenly rang out, followed by cries of alarm from many others: "The Führer has been stabbed! The Führer is wounded!"

Unfortunately, I am not a tiger and have no time to care about the Führer's life or death. I can only push my running speed to the limit in the hope of getting rid of their entanglement as soon as possible.

At the end of the light was a veil-like curtain. Without thinking, I turned and bumped into it. My feet went light, and I fell two or three meters down before collapsing to the ground with a "thud".

A strange, fresh air entered my nose. I took a deep breath, sprang up, and suddenly realized that I was in a completely unfamiliar world.

It was a colossal mechanical structure, its surface covered with countless gears of all sizes, spinning rapidly, all a deep, dark blue-black. There were at least tens of thousands of these gears rotating simultaneously, yet they made not a sound, not even a whisper of wind or friction. The mechanical structure was enormous; I was standing fifty paces away, yet I could only see a single curved surface, one hundred meters wide and thirty meters high.

Looking up, a tall, silvery-white dome enveloped everything, obscuring the sun.

"Could this be the 'Asian Gear'?" I remember when I saw Suren in front of the crystal window, there was a rotating gear behind her, but at that time I never imagined that the real "Asian Gear" would be so magnificent and huge.

The hole I fell into was quiet; no one chased after me. There were nine similar holes horizontally and nine vertically, a total of eighty-one, each with a cross-sectional dimension of three meters wide and two meters high. They weren't carved into the stone wall, but rather embedded in a large metal wall, like the dome above my head.

"Surren—" I remembered my main goal, and especially after realizing that I had entered this world, I immediately shouted, because Surren was right here.

No one answered. I quickly assessed my surroundings and started running along the metal wall to my right, calling out Suren's name repeatedly. Everything here was made of metal; even the ground beneath my feet shimmered with a faint silver light. The legendary "Asian Gear" turned out to be such a strange place, filling me with unease.

"Fortunately, Suren is still here. Let's find her first, then sit down and slowly discuss how to get out of this predicament." This is the only hope I have left.

Every so often, neat rows of holes would appear in the metal wall, their numbers varying from a minimum of four to a maximum of eighty-one. My voice was hoarse from shouting, but I still couldn't hear a response from Suren. If this continued, the only way was to search through each hole until I saw her.

This situation was somewhat similar to when Guan Baoling disappeared at Fengge Temple. My friends and I from the Sharpshooter Society searched every corner of the temple, but to no avail. Thinking of this, I immediately stopped my blind running and stared at the enormous gear-like mechanical structure.

“She must be here. Is she trapped in some space where she can’t hear or see? Like Guan Baoling who entered the strange glass box?” I’ve already run around the mechanical body once. Every quarter of the way around the circumference, there’s a towering metal staircase leading to the top.

At this moment, I stood at the foot of one of the steps, with spinning gears on both sides, looking eerie and dangerous.

After thinking for a few minutes, I resolutely began to climb. The stairs, which were only two meters wide, were flanked by highly reflective metal walls. As I climbed, I could see my reflection all the time, and of course, some embarrassing moments were inevitable.

I quickly climbed all 150 steps, but unexpectedly, at the end of the stairs was a deep well, more than ten meters in diameter. To me, it wasn't a well at all, but rather the exit or entrance of another ley line, offering no help whatsoever.

Everywhere I looked, there were spinning gears, the same shape as those in modern industry, but each one was spinning wildly without any apparent purpose. I even wanted to try to touch the nearest one, but it was going too fast, and I eventually restrained my curiosity and didn't make a move.

I turned my head and looked down at my feet. The holes looked extremely small, like sand holes made by small crabs when the tide is out.

"Where is Suren? I can clearly see this place through the crystal wall, why can't I find her?"

I sat down on the steps, resting briefly and clearing my mind: "The tiger crashed into the abyss of fire along with the aircraft, while I entered the mirror. Strictly speaking, the mirror is a complex passage; leaving with that warmonger might have led to another fork in the road. I refused and wounded him, stumbling here by accident—this should be the best outcome. Now, all I need to do is find Suren—"

Ultimately, the root of all the strange events lies with Suren. This time, we will fight side by side again, but unlike in the Egyptian desert, the level of trust between us has deepened, and our hearts are even closer.

Suddenly, a flash of silver light appeared to my right front, near a set of two holes arranged horizontally and vertically.

I watched intently as someone slowly peeked out of the hole, looked around very carefully, and then immediately withdrew. It must have been a girl, because she had thick, short, jet-black hair that swayed back and forth with her head movements.

"Suren!" That was my first reaction. I jumped up, covered my eyebrows with my hands, and looked carefully again.

The metal wall reflected light intensely, and staring at it for a long time made my eyes increasingly sore, but the cave entrance remained quiet, with no further movement.

"That must be Suren, it must be her!" I suppressed my elation and rushed down the steps toward the cave entrance.