"No, no..." Mayatis insisted repeatedly, "I definitely didn't mishear... I swear on my Lord's name. It was a woman speaking Tibetan."

I was completely confused and suspected Mayatis might have genuinely misheard; no matter whose name he swore by, the possibility of error remained. He hadn't told me the important part yet, and I didn't want to dwell on this point. So I asked, "Besides the woman's voice, did you hear anything else?"

Mayatis slowly shook his head, "Nothing... It was too quiet, so quiet you could hear your own breathing."

"Then... didn't you say you encountered a terrifying monster? What happened?" I asked.

"It was... it was..." Mayatis hesitated, as if reluctant to recall, closing his eyes in pain. "Oh God... poor Siegfried..."

Seeing his agitation, I slightly loosened my grip on his arms, which I had held behind his back.

"What happened to Siegfried?" Fearing his grief might overtake him and make him forget the serious matters at hand, I gently guided him, "What occurred to him?"

Mayatis spoke incoherently, his voice strained with agony, "He was leading the way in front of us... leading... the big-mouthed monster... the monster... bit down on him... with one snap, a crack sound... half the flesh and muscle on his back was gone... He was still lying there, struggling incessantly, trying to crawl towards me, shouting, 'Mayatis, help me... Mayatis... save me!' Siegfried and I grew up together as comrades... but... there was nothing I could do... nothing... Luo, nothing... We could only flee... otherwise the big-mouthed monster would be right behind us... We couldn't die... we still had a mission... Poor... poor Sieg..." At this point, Mayatis dissolved into wrenching sobs, unable to speak through his tears.

I couldn't bear it and released his hands. He immediately began frantically pulling at his hair, muttering, "Poor Siegfried... poor..."

Recalling the gruesome sight of Siegfried's corpse, I felt a pang of sorrow myself.

However, hearing Mayatis recount it, it sounded as if Siegfried hadn't died immediately and was perhaps somewhere in a passage. But when we found him, he was stone dead, and he certainly wasn't in a passage; he was right behind the door, and that door seemed ordinary, nothing like a hidden passage door.

...After a while, Mayatis finally calmed down a little. He looked at us with a slight apology, "I'm sorry for losing control... Siegfried was my best friend." His voice still choked when he mentioned his friend's name.

I understood his grief over losing a dear friend. Despite having many questions, I refrained from pressing him further.

Mayatis tried to speak several times, but each attempt trailed off as sorrow overtook him. After another pause, he spoke in broken sentences, "We started running for our lives... running... there were five of us; besides poor Siegfried, there were four others... In our blind panic, I don't know how I fell into this pit..." As he spoke, he gestured toward the abyss beneath our feet, "And then... until you all arrived..."

It was then that Old Li slowly spoke up, "Did you—know your friend's body was right across from us?"

Mayatis looked pained and hesitated, "No..." Then, snapping back, he shouted, "How is that possible! He was clearly with the big-mouthed monster! How could he be across here! The passage isn't over there!"

Old Li remained unhurried, "I can assure you, we saw your friend's body right across the way. I recognized him. In Lhasa, he made an excuse to talk to another one of our friends."

Hearing Old Li's firm assertion, Mayatis once again grabbed his hair, hunched over, and couldn't utter a word.

It turned out we had somehow scrambled across to this side without realizing it, a sheer accident of fate. Nijoen and Xu Zhiwu had climbed over using the chains; I didn't know if they had run back, gone somewhere else from here, or met with disaster.

Old Li turned to me, "Technician Luo, we're really quite foolish. Judging by how much they know about us, they must have been tracking us since we were rescued from Mount Qomang, probably before we even reached the Lhasa Military Region General Hospital. Frankly, Xu Zhiwu might have been a step behind them."

Old Li wasn't wrong; I considered it. It was a pity that despite everything, both Old Li and I had been completely in the dark, blundering our way to Zabrang village thinking we were so capable... In reality, we were merely moving according to Mayatis and his group's meticulous planning. I disliked being schemed against, yet I couldn't help but admire the precision and thoroughness with which this group operated.

When Mayatis finally calmed down again, I suddenly recalled his earlier mention of digging tunnels and asked him about it. He looked back at me with genuine surprise, asking in turn, "You don't know?"

I was bewildered by his question, "Know what?"

"The Golden Eye and Silver Pearl can open an entrance to another world," Mayatis looked at Old Li and me as if we were Martians. "You came out of Mount Qomang, how could you not know?"

I scoffed, "Is there a Golden Eye and Silver Pearl inside Mount Qomang?"

Mayatis gave me a complex look, tinged with pity, "You... you really... know nothing, yet you dared to take this risk."

I felt a surge of anger. He was still mourning his dead friend, yet he was here, sneering at us. "It seems you know a lot?" I challenged him.

Mayatis shook his head silently, "No, I know very little. Siegfried knew the most... too bad..." His voice grew thick with emotion again at this point. Fearing another emotional breakdown that would halt the important discussion, I quickly interjected, "Then what things do you know?"

Mayatis thought for a moment, then glanced at Old Li and me, ensuring we were genuinely uninformed, before slowly stating, "There were originally two Golden Eye and Silver Pearl objects; when brought together, they form a key to open the way to another world. Both must be used simultaneously."

Could he be referring to the key to the world of eternal life that Nijoen mentioned? I started, could there really be a world where one never dies? I was about to ask Mayatis if that was the case, but I saw Old Li shaking his head slightly at me, signaling me to hold back. So, I kept quiet, waiting for Mayatis to continue.

"Actually, the Golden Eye and Silver Pearl have another very peculiar property. Their magnetic field is anomalous and affects everything close to them, regardless of whether it's flora or fauna. It has a similar effect on humans, though not to the point of causing mental confusion. We unanimously believe it has some beneficial effects on the human body..." Mayatis clearly didn't want to elaborate on what 'beneficial effects' meant, so he abruptly changed the subject, "In short, its greatest function is opening a passage entrance."

Old Li disliked his vagueness and pressed, "What beneficial effects?"

Mayatis feigned difficulty and smiled, "Well... we haven't figured that out yet, which is why we risked coming to Guge to find the door that uses it as a key... But this passage is extremely difficult to find. If you hadn't come in through the desiccated corpse cave, we might have explored many other tunnels..." Fearing further questioning, he quickly returned to discussing the passage.

"Wait, wait, you dug tunnels to find an entrance... Where did you start digging, and how did you manage to break in so coincidentally?" My curiosity was piqued again.

"That..." Mayatis said with a touch of arrogance, "The people General Himmler sent back then weren't fools or simpletons. Their descendants included geologists, biologists, anthropologists, surveying experts, computer wizards... you name it. Do you think that was a difficult task?"

Exactly! Descendants of those sent by Himmler to Tibet searching for the Eye of the Earth. No wonder his accounts shared certain commonalities with Nijoen's and Xu Zhiwu's. That explained it. Now I was reasonably certain that the Golden Eye and Silver Pearl possessed an abnormal magnetic field, but whether another world truly existed—that was debatable. At least the education I'd received told me there were no ghosts, gods, or concepts of heaven and hell in this world.

I remembered Nijoen mentioning two groups of Germans arriving in Lhasa—one conversed with him in Tibetan, and the other must have been these people. I wondered if Mayatis knew about that other group.

"Mayatis, how many groups were there in total?" I asked.

Mayatis seemed unsure of the meaning of "groups" and repeated the word, staring at me expectantly for an explanation.

"How many parties came? Besides your team, were there others?" Old Li sounded annoyed, "Are you even a sinologist? How can you not understand this!"

"Oh, oh~~~~" Mayatis gave an awkward laugh, his expression slightly unnatural, but it quickly normalized. "Just me and Siegfried, five of us in total..."

Mayatis wasn't omniscient, so I broadly accepted his statement, believing that only his group and ours, Old Li's and mine, had come to Guge.