Fatty gave me a pat, and trembled like me.

We had finally arrived. f.u.c.k, it wasn't easy, and I could feel the tears coming down.

The whole building was dark without any light source, showing an ominous atmosphere. I never thought that Zhang Jialou would be such a huge building.

Where were they? The eagerness in my heart burst out: “Zhang Qilin!” I gave a loud shout.

There were echoes from the empty cave and I even shouted several times, the echoes almost filling the whole s.p.a.ce.

I thought to myself: it's absolutely impossible not to hear that. If they were still alive, they couldn't have missed it.

As the echo slowly disappeared, the whole s.p.a.ce returned to the kind of silence that made people feel cold.

I gasped and waited for a response from anywhere.

I waited for a long time, however, the silence wasn't broken and my unease began to increase.  The nightmare that had always existed in the back of my mind reared its head.

What if all of them were really dead?

The problem that I had been unwilling to consider had now rushed to the forefront and I could no longer escape.

There was no reply and everything was as quiet as h.e.l.l, as if we were the first group of visitors in nearly a thousand years. Even the sleeping dead couldn't be awakened.

“Let's go.” Fatty patted me on the shoulder and said, “Whether dead or alive, you have to see it with your own eyes. Didn't your uncle say so?”

I lit a cigarette, took three puffs in a row, and then threw it to the ground: “Go!”

Zhang Jia ancient building's door was completely gray, and when I touched it, I found it was all dust. The door was badly decayed, and the window paper on it was so completely rotten that you could see the darkness inside.

I looked at those checkered windows—typical Qing Dynasty architecture, and it was indeed the style of Yangs.h.i.+ Lei.

“Here,” Fatty said to me. I saw that dust had been knocked off in several places on the windowpane. Fatty gave it a push and the door opened.

The door shaft gave a shrill creak, and then dust surged everywhere.

Fatty and I immediately took a step back, covered our mouths and waited for the dust to slowly fall.

We looked each other in the eye and Fatty made an “after you” gesture. I tilted my head and said, “Didn't you lead the way before?”

Fatty said, “This is giving you a chance to perform. If you can't, then I'll do it.”

I took a deep breath: “Well then, don't mind if I do.” I stepped towards the door.

It was dark inside and I could see a huge s.p.a.ce when I swept the area with my flashlight. It was a huge floor with four pillars standing in the middle of the hall.

There was nothing on this floor, only a lot of equipment spread out in the middle of the room.

As we walked over, we found that it was indeed Poker-Face's equipment bag covered in white dust. Fatty looked at the roof beam, which was undoubtedly the architectural style of the Qing Dynasty, and saw countless patterns on the roof. Right now, the whole building was miserably white from any angle you looked at.

“Why is this place so big?” Fatty squatted down and shook a package that I saw contained food. The white dust on it was shaken up so much that I suddenly felt uncomfortable and immediately pulled him back.

He covered his mouth and looked at his hands, which were already a burning red.

“Strong alkali dust.” He said, “That deformed brother didn't lie to us. It seems that Little Brother and the others came into contact with it; otherwise the equipment wouldn't be covered with such a thick powder.”

“But here's the thing, where are the people?” I asked. It's not like they'd all melt away, there would have to be some traces.

I thought the atmosphere was a bit strange, but I couldn't say what the problem was. Fatty told me to treat my wound first since there was strong alkali dust here. If it touched my wound, I'd be in trouble.

I didn't notice in the chaos just now that the place bitten by the bug was no longer bleeding, but if not treated, it would probably fester.

After I wrapped it up, I looked at Fatty's watch. He asked me if we should split up and look for them separately but after thinking it over, I didn't think we should. Who knew what would happen in this building? If the two of us are going to die, we'll die together, and once it's over, there won't be so much trouble.

Fatty turned on his flashlight and slowly shook the powder off the equipment bit by bit, seeing that many of the bags were open. He went up and counted them, then said: “gas masks and flashlights aren't here. They probably put down their equipment here and went for some light exploration.”

There was a huge hole in the hall's ceiling, which was probably formed by corrosion. The edge of the hole was very irregular, and there were many pieces of wood rotting on the ground covered in the thick white powder, looking like cotton. We could see the ceiling on the upper floor by s.h.i.+ning a flashlight upwards, and it looked the same.

The first floor was clear at a glance, so we walked to the side. According to feng shui theory and the usual design habits of Yangs.h.i.+ Lei, the best location of the stairs should be at the edge of the building, generally in the east. Of course, for such a large structure, there should be stairs in all four directions; otherwise the running distance would be too long and troublesome.

But we looked around the hall several times and found no stairs going up. Fatty muttered, “Could the stairs be outside? In the ancient building's design, there was a staircase specially designed for viewing, winding all the way up.”

d.a.m.n it, there's nothing good to view in this place. After going around for a turn, I found that Yangs.h.i.+ Lei agreed with my idea and also thought there was nothing to look at here since there were still no stairs outside.

s.h.i.+t, don't tell me the Zhang family is all like Ximen Chuixue (TN note: fictional protagonist of the wuxia novel series Lu Xiaofeng by Gu Long), flying up with their swords and not needing stairs?

Back inside the building, Fatty went to look for rope in the equipment bags only to find that it wasn't there either. “Maybe there aren't any stairs in this place and they took the rope to get upstairs.”

“There must be a place where ropes can be used.” There was strong alkali powder everywhere, no gas masks, and dust flying everywhere we walked. Not to mention inhaling, just blinking may make your eyes go blind in an instant.

Just when I was at a loss, I suddenly remembered the feng shui problem that Xiao Hua told me about by the lake. Zhang Jialou was located in a place where the bones were laid to absorb the marrow. The so-called Dragon House Treasure Hall was built just for the purpose of long-term peace, while the Zhang Jialou on the other hand, devoured the dragon spirit and destroyed the dragon vein.

I seemed to have heard before that some places needed to sc.r.a.p the stairs to achieve some feng shui effect.

But sc.r.a.pping them entirely wasn't really necessary, they just couldn't build visible stairs. That means there must be a place to go up to the second floor and the invisible stairs were marked somewhere.

We continued our search and soon focused our attention on several pillars. They were carved with several Qilin, whose bodies looked like dragons, and the heads of several were especially prominent.

Fatty stomped his feet, grabbed some of the floating dust that had been kicked up, and dodged to the side. When the dust had calmed down, he wrapped his clothes around his mouth and nose and climbed up.

This was indeed the place. We stepped on the Qilin's head and quickly climbed to the top of the pillar, but when we pushed, we found that the floor above didn't move.

“It's stuck.” Fatty said. Having said that a large amount of white powder was shaken off. Fatty immediately turned around, jumped down, and ran away, coughing incessantly. The sputum that came out was already b.l.o.o.d.y.

“We can't stay in this place too long. Even if the mechanism isn't activated, our internal organs will rot after staying so long.” When he said this, I suddenly heard a crack. The Qilin he stepped on just now actually moved and a staircase came down from above.

Fatty and I looked at each other and immediately climbed up carefully. When the flashlight shone, our hearts shook. We could see that there were numerous shelves on the second floor of this ancient building. At first glance, there were hundreds of them, one by one like the upper, middle, and lower floors of a train, but with more layers.

What made us uncomfortable was seeing that the shelves were full of those iron figures.

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