I was Zhuang Cheng.
I wasn't someone who couldn't endure being alone. But when forced to remain confined for a long time without knowing whether I could ever return to civilized society, even I couldn't think with an ordinary mindset.
There were too few clues in this basement, and hardly any objects that could inspire positive associations. Before long, my mind began wandering aimlessly, as if it were playing a documentary about the universe and astronomy. In a sense, I was just like those bored people who had gone to the bathroom without bringing their phones and could only ponder the meaning of life and the end of the universe. It wasn't that I didn't want to carefully reason out how to leave this place. It was just that I was on the toilet right now.
However, some time later, when I was lying on my back on the floor like a fish washed ashore, trying to find some revelation in the patterns of the concrete ceiling, a spark of thought suddenly flashed through my mind.
I abruptly sat up and repeatedly searched my memories for clues, analyzing the inspiration I had just received.
I seemed to know the pattern behind the cave's disappearance and appearance.
The cave's disappearance and appearance likely followed the same set of rules. At first, I thought, "Knowing why the cave disappears isn't enough." That had been my mistake. Agent Kong and the female Demon Hunter might have thought the cave's cause lay outside the ritual formation, but that was wrong. The answer was the ritual formation itself.
Agent Kong had mentioned that the ritual formation's purpose was to "open certain alternate spaces that overlap with real space-time." The reason he had judged it to be a failed product was that it was "missing the final portion of the spell symbols."
I didn't really understand the exact principles behind spell symbols, but since the cave had appeared, that should have meant the spell symbols missing from the ritual formation had somehow been completed by accident.
So what had completed the ritual formation's missing spell symbols?
The object I currently suspected was that black shaggy carpet.
More precisely, the letter patterns on the black shaggy carpet.
It wasn't that those letters were equivalent to spell symbols, but perhaps some of the lines forming the letters happened to meet the requirements of the spell symbols. At the same time, I had circumstantial evidence sufficient to support this deduction.
Think carefully about every time the cave had appeared and disappeared. Whenever Chang'an and I had completed one cycle of covering and uncovering the black shaggy carpet, the cave's state had switched between appearing and disappearing.
This morning, Chang'an and I uncovered the carpet, and the cave appeared. Then we covered the carpet and uncovered it again in front of Agent Kong, and the cave disappeared. Later, Agent Kong casually covered the carpet while inspecting the room alone in the afternoon, and when I came alone at night and uncovered it, the cave appeared.
The same thing had happened the night before last, when Chang'an first witnessed the cave. After uncovering the carpet for the first time, he discovered the cave and raised the alarm. Then, in front of the police, he "lifted it up again"—yes, when recounting the incident to me, he had specifically mentioned "lifting it up again"—which meant he had covered the carpet before the police arrived.
Why had he covered it in between? Because he was afraid. He had said today that he was worried something filthy might still be hiding beneath the cave, so the night before last, he had chosen to seal the wooden cover together with the carpet first.
Throughout this series of events, the black shaggy carpet had acted like a "switch." Every change had been directly connected to it.
Was my deduction correct? Could I confirm it just like this?
No, wait, wait... I had overlooked one extremely important detail!
Why had the cave's entrance disappeared after I entered the cave?
If the cave's state could change only after the black shaggy carpet had been covered, then the cave after I entered shouldn't have disappeared on its own.
Unless... unless an "unidentified person" had infiltrated the Fifteenth Floor room after I entered the cave and sealed it.
I had indeed been monitoring my surroundings the entire time, but right now, the one thing I couldn't monitor was the real world outside the cave. Moreover, the cave had disappeared while I was being pulled into an illusion by the black jade, making it even more impossible to observe whether anyone had entered the area outside the cave.
There was another despairing problem with this deduction.
Just as I had feared at the beginning, the cave could indeed only be opened and closed from outside the cave. It couldn't be opened from this side.
I was truly at the end of my rope.
No. I hadn't fought to the very end yet. Raising my hands in surrender now would be too ugly. Since I longed for adventures that transcended reality, I shouldn't simply sit around waiting to die. Struggling until I swallowed my final breath—that was what fit my aesthetics.
So how should I struggle? My position and the ritual formation outside weren't even in the same space-time... Wait. Agent Kong had previously mentioned that this alternate space should overlap with real space-time. Since they overlapped, I couldn't simply regard them as "not being together."
In other words, if I drew the letter patterns from the black shaggy carpet on the ceiling, could they also overlap with the ritual formation outside?
There was still a problem. First, the surface of the ceiling and the surface of the floor weren't exactly on the same plane... But the patterns on the black shaggy carpet and the ritual formation on the floor weren't exactly on the same plane either. If it worked over there, perhaps I could try it here as well. Although the discrepancy between the two sides was vastly different, how many centimeters thick was this floor slab again...
Forget it. Thinking about it more wouldn't be as useful as trying it once. I'd give it a shot first!
I raised my right hand and pointed my fingers at the spot on the ceiling where the cave entrance had originally been. Flames suddenly appeared from thin air, darting through the air like little snakes before climbing onto the ceiling.
The letter patterns on the black shaggy carpet spelled the word "carpet." I remembered that very clearly. Then there was the font style and size... As I recalled them, I changed the flames' positions, finally adjusting them to match my memories.
After finishing my work, I let out a long breath and nervously examined the ceiling.
There was no change at all.
I couldn't help feeling deeply disappointed.
Could it still not work? Was it because they weren't in the same space-time after all, or because the floor slab was too thick and the discrepancy between the two planes was too great?
Or was it because I shouldn't have used flames to draw the pattern? The ritual formation had been drawn with blood. Perhaps I should use blood too... But the letters on the black shaggy carpet weren't made of blood either. Could it be because that filthy carpet had been an object at a murder scene, and bloodstains had soaked into it...
I looked up and observed while moving around, examining the flame letters I had pieced together from different angles. After all, I might have spelled the word incorrectly.
Walking around in that posture easily made me dizzy. Before long, I started feeling uncomfortable, so I lowered my head and closed my eyes to rest for two seconds.
When I opened my eyes again, something unbelievable had happened.
At some point, a flight of concrete stairs had appeared in front of me.
After standing dazed for a moment, I moved my gaze upward along the stairs. At the ceiling at the top, there was a light-brown wooden cover.
The cave entrance had appeared again!
Why the entrance hadn't appeared immediately after I drew the letter pattern with flames was something I only came up with an unverified theory about afterward.
The theory was somewhat laughable. At first, I had been standing directly beneath the cave, and the concrete stairs had later appeared in that exact spot. Just as the position of a new building in a strategy game couldn't overlap with another target, perhaps the stairs and entrance hadn't been able to appear immediately because I had occupied the stairs' position.
To avoid another accident, I acted immediately after spotting the entrance. I followed the stairs to the wooden cover, then pushed it open directly and returned to the floor of the Fifteenth Floor room.
I had finally returned to the real world.
I looked around and let out a long sigh of relief.
At the same time, I vaguely sensed that the state of mind resembling enlightenment, which had surfaced earlier when I faced loneliness and death beneath the cave, was now slowly ebbing away.
That enlightened state of mind must have been a special mental state that could only appear under extraordinary circumstances. Having escaped death, I couldn't continue to possess it. But I thought that state of mind must have left a special mark in my heart.
My current self and the self who had never entered the cave were already entirely different people.
I mulled over my feelings, then turned to look behind me.
I would put the abstract questions aside for now. First, I should deal with the practical problem.
When I had pushed open the wooden cover, I hadn't felt the black shaggy carpet that should have been covering it. After coming out, I also saw that the carpet was still piled to the side just as before. This meant that while I had been beneath the cave, no "unidentified person" had entered the Fifteenth Floor room and covered the carpet.
Since my method had allowed me to escape successfully, that meant my deduction regarding the cave's pattern of appearance and disappearance had been correct. But if there had been no "unidentified person," how was I supposed to explain the disappearance of the cave entrance earlier?
I racked my brains without reaching an answer, then turned to look at the cave entrance.
This cave, this basement... I had thought I understood it, but there were still many unknowns.
For one thing, I still didn't know what the black jade I had obtained from the basement actually was, nor what the misty illusion and the three shadows I had seen earlier were about.
There were still secrets hidden below that I didn't know about.
Should I... go down again?
Although it seemed inappropriate to turn back immediately after barely escaping death, this cave would be destroyed tomorrow. If I didn't finish exploring it now, I probably wouldn't get another chance in the future.
I had genuinely considered doing that, but another anomaly immediately made me put the idea aside for the time being.
All the Fireflies I had set up in the real world had disappeared. Needless to say, that was because I had lost contact with them while in the basement. The biggest problem was that I had now lost surveillance over Maza.
I couldn't stay put any longer.
Maza had brought up leaving me from time to time. If I had only lost surveillance over her for a short time, it would have been acceptable. At worst, I could hurry back after making a quick trip, and that had been my initial plan. But now that I had lost surveillance over her for an extended period, the nature of the situation was entirely different. If she really left during this time, I would never be able to find her again.
It was possible that Maza's jinxed constitution was what had allowed me to encounter strange events in the first place. I wasn't foolish enough to confuse "one full meal" with "meals forever."
There was no way for me to explore the basement while sending a Firefly home at the same time, so I could only put this matter aside for now.
Before leaving, however, I still took photographs and videos of the ritual formation and the black shaggy carpet from different angles. Perhaps I could replicate this formation somewhere else in the future.
After finishing all this, I turned and left the Fifteenth Floor room, then walked all the way out of the residential building.
Looking at the moon in the night sky, I finally felt as if I had "seen daylight again."
However, before I had gone very far, a bizarrely shaped shadow surfaced in front of me in an uncanny manner, blocking my path.
Before you continue