Mayatis hesitated slightly, appearing somewhat surprised, and murmured, "Buddha and all sentient beings establish appearance in all things; this is not a realm lacking anything. Therefore, the self of body, speech, and mind—all are merely phenomena." He drew out each syllable, as if even he doubted his own utterance.

Naturally dull-witted, I couldn't grasp the meaning; it just sounded like something from a sutra. I asked Old Li, but he didn't understand either. When I asked Mayatis again, he stared at me wide-eyed: "If you Chinese don't understand, how could I? I'm not an immortal!"

Right, why should I expect a foreigner to comprehend scriptures. So, I let it go and asked if that whole passage of Tibetan text boiled down to just that one sentence.

"Certainly not," Mayatis replied. "There's more. I haven't finished reading." He leaned closer to the script, then continued, "What is thus observed is truly the wandering mind. If the mind harbors demons, demons are seen; if the mind harbors ghosts, ghosts appear. Only when the mind is clear and luminous is there no obstruction." I understood this part: everything you see is a product of your own thoughts. If the heart holds a demon, that is what you see; if the heart holds a ghost, that is what appears before your eyes. Only those with a pure and clear inner self can pass through unharmed.

Hadn't Old Li told me something very similar before? It seemed he was right. Thinking of this, I couldn't help but feel a surge of respect for Old Li. I had always thought him nothing more than a coarse fellow pretending to be profound, lacking much culture. But the skill he displayed this time, coupled with his traditional Daoist cultivation, truly amazed me.

After reciting those few lines, Mayatis bent his head again, studying the script intently, then declared, "That's all there is."

Tibetan script differs quite a bit from Han characters; often, a large block of Tibetan translates into just a few Chinese characters. Thus, I believed Mayatis wasn't deceiving us.

"Ugh, it’s all just nonsense. Do we really need it to drone on for ages about how what I see is what I think? Old Li, you told me this already. Honestly…" I felt a pang of disappointment, having hoped the text held clues to leading us out of the cave, only to find it was just platitudes.

Old Li stroked his chin thoughtfully, "Technician Luo, don't be hasty. Let me think... let me think..." With that, he pulled out his compass and began carefully taking bearings. I was an amateur and couldn't help in the slightest, so I could only watch intently.

Old Li paced out the steps according to the Bagua formation (or so I guessed), pausing with each step to glance at the compass before moving on.

Mayatis and I watched him anxiously, waiting for him to point out a path to safety.

After a few steps, Old Li's face suddenly lit up with joy, and he muttered to himself, "It is here. This is it." Then he turned and called me over, his voice slightly excited, "Technician Luo, I've found the gate of life!"

I rushed forward a few paces, but the surroundings remained half-dead, half-lit, with no visible door or opening of any kind. "Old Li... this... where is the gate?" I asked idiotically, immediately regretting the question; a 'gate of life' didn't necessarily imply a physical door.

Old Li managed to suppress a smile as he heard me, "The so-called gate of life isn't an actual door... it’s the direction of escape, Technician Luo. Where has your usual cleverness gone?"

I couldn't help but feel ashamed. Indeed, my mind felt unusually muddled, yet I dared not delve into the cause, fearing that a single thought might conjure illusions or inner demons again.

"Come on, follow me," Old Li commanded with surprising authority, carefully cradling the compass against his chest, and strode off—I had completely lost my sense of direction, knowing only to follow him, unable to articulate which way we were heading.

Mayatis followed without needing to be prompted, quite willingly. A thought suddenly struck me: didn't he mention before they had precise maps? Why, then, didn't he use the map to avoid the trap and end up falling in with us? Naturally, I voiced the question.

Mayatis looked equally perplexed. "I don't know how that happened—the map didn't indicate any traps in that tunnel."

I couldn't help laughing at that. Did he think the map was some omnipotent cheat sheet? I retorted, "So your map marks everything? Does it point out every flower and every blade of grass too?"

Unexpectedly, Mayatis grew serious. "Yes, our maps are that precise. Otherwise, how could we honor our ancestors? That information was derived from their lifelong search for the Eye of the Earth... Back then, they..."

Just as Mayatis was about to continue, my scalp suddenly prickled, and I hastily waved my hand to cut him off. Immediately, my mind became inexplicably crystal clear, as if my hearing and sight had been emptied yet sharpened to an extreme degree. My intuition in such matters had always been keener than others', and I instantly realized something was terribly wrong. I quickly grabbed Old Li, urging him not to step forward.

Old Li looked at me with confusion. "Technician Luo, what is it?"

My mind screamed with extreme clarity: Do not go forward. Danger. Danger! Yet, looking at Old Li, for some reason, the words wouldn't form, "Let's rest a moment," I mumbled weakly.

Fortunately, Old Li didn't press for an explanation and nodded understandingly, halting in his tracks.

I wanted to find a place to sit and lean against, but looking around, there seemed to be nowhere suitable; I settled for sitting cross-legged on the ground. Mayatis showed some impatience. "We're in a hurry to get out, aren't we? This place gives me the creeps."

It was precisely because the place gave me the creeps that I dared not wander. My intuition was usually razor-sharp; if I felt something was off, trouble was sure to follow. He, ignorant of the danger, dared to speak like that! Out of sheer irritation, I glared back at him. Just as I turned my head away after the glare, a bizarre sight materialized directly behind Mayatis!

An old man with thick, circular, high-prescription glasses, his hair streaked with white, dressed in a grey changshan, holding a thick notebook in one hand and a fountain pen in the other. His face was etched with extreme terror as he stared straight ahead—towards us. His face appeared abruptly and starkly behind Mayatis, completely unguarded, his eyes peering through the thick lenses with desperate alarm at us.

My mind instantly snapped, and every hair stood on end; a wave of icy chill swept up my spine. "O-Old Li..." I stammered, pointing forward, trying to get him to look.

Old Li, hearing the distress in my voice, followed my gaze. His expression shifted violently, and he cried out, "Impossible! How is this possible!"

Mayatis, seeing us both staring at his back, assumed it was a prank and casually turned around. The moment he faced the apparition, he let out a terrified shriek, "God!" and collapsed limply to the ground.

The old man in the changshan showed no reaction to our alarm, as if we didn't exist. He kept staring fixedly in our direction for a while, then his eyes suddenly lost focus, becoming half-blank and vacant. Next, the muscles in his face began to shrink, slowly turning into dry, lifeless skin. Yet, he did not die. He suddenly picked up his pen and scribbled furiously in his notebook, stopped mid-sentence, looked behind us again, and resumed writing.

Setting aside how frightening his appearance was, just a few glances from him had paralyzed me with fear. Yet, I was intensely curious about what he was looking at behind me.

Finally, curiosity won out. I slowly turned to look behind me. What I saw shattered my remaining composure; standing there, right behind us, were several men dressed in the uniforms of Nazi officers from the Second World War era. However, they carried no rifles or swords; instead, they held entrenching tools and similar implements, digging furiously at something (I couldn't see clearly, only the action). Their faces were flushed an abnormal crimson, clearly silhouetting the white stubble on their cheeks. Their eye sockets were sunken in every case, their eyeballs bulging and tinted a ghastly scarlet. Yet, they seemed completely oblivious to their own strangeness, murmuring amongst themselves in German about how to blow up the exit and permanently seal off the pagoda. Yes, they spoke German, but the meaning—the intent to discuss demolishing the exit to seal the pagoda—translated directly into my mind without effort.

The old man with glasses continued to record the increasingly bizarre actions of the Germans. After writing for a while, his hand seemed to tire. He shook his right hand, then took off his glasses to breathe on them and polish them before putting them back on. His demeanor was utterly normal. Suddenly, the old man seemed to recall something, murmuring to himself with a mixture of relief and regret, "My Xu lineage has an heir; at least this much honors my ancestors. But I don't know if they will find the secret of immortality this time. If not, I fear we will only be buried here, becoming lonely ghosts with no descendants to offer rites." His voice sounded utterly desolate at the end.

"The Xu lineage?" I started, "Could this have something to do with Xu Zhiwu?" A thought flashed through my mind, and I asserted with absolute certainty, "He is Xu Zhiwu's grandfather." I had no prior knowledge; I didn't know how I knew this.

What followed was like a scene change in a movie—no transition whatsoever. There was a faint boom, immediately followed by smoke filling the tunnel, the heavy smell of gunpowder nearly suffocating us. Then, the few Nazis collapsed instantly, their flesh and skeletons scattering violently. The bespectacled old man cried out, hurling his pen and notebook away, and fell to the ground, struggling convulsively.

My palms were slick with cold sweat. Staring at the scene unfolding, there was nothing but fear, pure and simple.

The old man with glasses struggled for a moment before his strength finally faded. He lay motionless, his body shuddering uncontrollably, his clothes gradually becoming loose and oversized.