I didn't understand what he meant, but although I was very interested in that person, especially his aura that could scare away monsters, it wasn't enough to chase after him to see what was going on.

At that moment, I remembered what the man had said just before leaving, and I turned to Boss Wu and said, "Oh, right, that person said to tell you to go back when he left."

"Go back?" Boss Wu slowly rose from the ground, a wry, helpless smile playing on his lips.

"Once you're here, there's absolutely no reason to go back," Boss Wu stated flatly, yet with an unyielding firmness.

Soon, he dropped the subject and returned to our immediate task. "Let's get back to what we were doing and see what this is."

Boss Wu picked up the glow stick I had dropped and slowly approached the wall where we had just been hiding.

From the start, I felt something was off about the recess in the cave; its shape was too regular, unlike a natural formation. It looked as though it had been gouged out with a blade, or deliberately excavated.

Now, illuminated by the light from Boss Wu's glow stick, I saw that the wall we had leaned against wasn't rock at all, but seemed to be cast in bronze.

Stranger still, this bronze wall was covered in countless imprints of hands and fists.

I leaned in for a closer look and realized these palm and fist marks were deeply pressed into the bronze, and the surfaces were remarkably smooth. Only in the deeper indentations had dust settled, suggesting a considerable passage of time.

Furthermore, these marks weren't made when the bronze was cast, because that would have left fingerprints, and we found no trace of any.

Someone had pressed these into the metal after the slab was cast, using sheer brute force.

How much strength would it take for flesh and blood to leave an impression on a metal plate like this? I honestly couldn't imagine. Even someone like me, possessing a strangely strong and entirely numb right hand, might not accomplish it.

"What do you think this is?" Boss Wu asked, turning to me after studying it for a long time.

"A bronze wall covered in handprints," I answered him succinctly.

But Boss Wu shook his head. "No, this isn't a wall. It's the inside of a bronze censer."

I froze, then re-examined the structure. Indeed, it was a semi-arched bronze plate fitted into the curve of the cave wall. By the size of it, if this was also a bronze censer, it should be comparable to the one we saw earlier.

Seeing I didn't argue, Boss Wu continued, "Inside this bronze censer, there was once something humanoid confined. It was immensely strong and wanted to escape, and clearly, it succeeded."

Tell me about it, I thought, otherwise why would only half a censer be left here?

Yet, the idea of a humanoid creature, using nothing but its body, beating handprints into its companion and ultimately smashing the bronze vessel was utterly baffling.

Boss Wu placed his hand over one of the more intact prints. His hand was clearly much larger than the markings on the wall.

He then said, "This human-like thing—it was either a woman or a child, but I suspect it was more like an animal."

I asked skeptically, "What kind of animal?"

Boss Wu pointed to the extremely sharp tips of the fingernails in the print. "A monkey."

"A monkey?" I repeated, somewhat incredulously.

Boss Wu nodded. "Correct. A monkey."

Hearing his certainty, I leaned in for another careful inspection. Indeed, the five fingers of the print were all quite short, the palm broad, the finger pads puffy, and the nails long and sharp. It truly resembled the claw mark of a monkey.

Instantly, I recalled the story from Journey to the West—how Sun Wukong got trapped in Laozi's furnace, suffered the agony of the Samadhi True Fire, and finally gained the Fiery Eyes.

Could this really have happened? Or was that story based on a historical archetype?

Of course, we wouldn't find the answer just by standing here. So, after one last look, we moved on.

Boss Wu and I continued deeper into the cave. This time, there were significantly more flickering lights on the ceiling than before—all the returning Stygian Fire bats resting there.

However fierce the Stygian Fire might be, they were still essentially bats. Once they hunt and secure food, they enter a state of dormancy and won't actively attack unless we make significant noise to startle them.

Those scientists before us must have known this too, which is why they dared to traverse this cave. Unfortunately, they failed, leading to the tragedy we found.

We proceeded cautiously, noting that the tunnel ahead bent sharply and began to slope downward.

Frankly, I despise the feeling of descending further away from the surface, but there was no alternative now. Zhuoya mentioned the Underground Golden Palace had many levels, so we were obviously entering the next tier. We had no idea how many levels were above us.

I was still eager for the Golden Palace on the next level, but the passage wasn't as short as I’d hoped. We navigated several turns, continuing ever downward. Half an hour slipped by quickly, yet there was no sign of an exit at the tunnel's end.

Boss Wu had been quiet since the beginning, managing his composure well, but the further we went, the more uneven his breathing became, betraying a growing impatience.

To be honest, I was anxious too. The air in this perilous cave felt suffocating, hard to draw a full breath. But the more we rushed to get out, the further we seemed to travel.

Logically, since we had been moving consistently downwards, we shouldn't be backtracking, as we hadn't ascended at any point. Yet, every few steps, I had a nagging feeling that I recognized certain stones on the ground.

At first, I dismissed it as mere similarity in rock formations. But when Boss Wu stopped ahead and pointed to a dark, viscous patch clinging to a stone, we realized we were indeed walking in circles.

That black sludge was nothing less than the thoroughly chewed core of an apple, squashed flat and stuck to the rock by whatever had trodden upon it.

Boss Wu and I examined the apple core, then exchanged a look. Almost simultaneously, we asked the same question: "Where's the furnace?"

I had encountered illusionary traps before—things like Gui Da Qiang (Ghost Hitting Wall). Boss Wu, constantly exploring ancient tombs, certainly had too. It wasn't strange even to find formations like the Qimen Dunjia or Zhuge Liang's Eight Trigrams array hidden in a tomb.

What troubled us was this: looping back through a maze is one thing; looping back only to find the scenery has changed is entirely another matter. Because, at some unknown point, perhaps even we could suddenly vanish.