From the end of the world

Chapter 23: Psychic vs. Fallen Demon Hunter 1
I am Zhuang Cheng.

I am not someone who cannot tolerate being alone, but when I am forced to be isolated for a long time and don’t know whether I can return to civilized society, even I cannot think in a normal way.

There were too few clues in this basement, and not many objects that could help me make positive associations. Before long, my mind was wandering aimlessly, like a cosmic documentary. In a sense, I was now like those bored people who went to the bathroom without their phones and had to think about the meaning of life and the end of the universe. It's not that I don't want to figure out how to leave this place, who told me I was in the bathroom now.

But after a while, as I lay on my back like a fish washed up on the beach, trying to find some revelation from the texture of the concrete ceiling, a spark of thought suddenly flashed in my consciousness.

I sat up suddenly, searching my memory for clues over and over again, pondering the inspiration I had just gotten.

I seem to know the pattern of the disappearance and appearance of caves.

The disappearance of the cave and the appearance of the cave may follow the same set of rules. At first, I thought that "it is not enough to just know why the cave disappeared", but I was wrong. Agent Kong and the demon hunter woman may think that the cause of the cave is outside the ritual array, but no, the answer is "ritual array".

Agent Kong once mentioned that the purpose of the ritual array was to "open up certain alien spaces that overlap with real time and space", and the reason why he judged it to be a failure was because "the last part of the spell symbols was missing."

I'm not quite sure about the exact principle of the spell symbols, but since the cave appeared, it should mean that the missing spell symbols of the ritual array were supplemented by some accident.

So, what exactly is it that makes up for the missing spell symbols in the ritual array?

The object of my suspicion at this moment is the black plush carpet.

Strictly speaking, it was a monogram pattern on a black plush carpet.

It's not that those letters are equivalent to magic symbols, but perhaps some of the lines that make up the letters just meet the requirements of magic symbols. At the same time, I also have sufficient circumstantial evidence to support this inference.

Let me recall carefully every time the cave appeared and disappeared. Every time Chang'an and I covered and opened the black plush carpet, the state of the cave would switch between appearance and disappearance.

This morning, Chang'an and I opened the carpet and the cave appeared; then we covered the carpet and opened it in front of Agent Kong, and the cave disappeared; later in the afternoon, Agent Kong covered the carpet when he was checking the room alone, and I opened it when I came alone at night, and the cave appeared.

The same thing happened the night before, when Changan first saw the cave. He discovered the cave after opening the carpet for the first time and called the police, and then "opened it again" in front of the police - yes, he explicitly mentioned "opened it again" when he told me - which means he covered the carpet before the police arrived.

Why did he put the carpet in the middle? Because he was afraid. When he was with me today, he said that he was worried that there might be something dirty hidden under the cave, so he chose to seal the wooden lid and the carpet together the night before.

In this series of situations, the black plush carpet acts as a "switch", and all changes are directly related to it.

Is my reasoning correct? Can I be sure of this?

No, wait, wait…I missed a very important part!

That's why the entrance and exit of the cave disappeared after I entered it.

If the state of the cave will only change after it is covered with the black plush carpet, then the cave should not disappear on its own after I enter it.

Unless... unless after I entered the cave, an "unidentified person" sneaked into the room on the 15th floor and sealed the cave.

I have indeed been monitoring the surroundings, but now I am unable to monitor the real world outside the cave. Moreover, the cave disappeared when I was pulled into the illusion by the black jade, so I can no longer observe whether there is anyone outside the cave.

And there's another desperate problem with this reasoning.

Just as I had expected at the beginning, the cave can only be opened and closed from outside the cave and cannot be opened from this side.

I'm really at the end of my rope.

No, I haven't fought to the end yet. It would be too ugly to just throw my hands up and surrender. If you are yearning for an adventure beyond reality, you shouldn't just sit there and wait for death. Fighting to the end until you take your last breath is in line with my aesthetics.

So how should I struggle? My location and the ritual array outside are not even in the same time and space... Wait, Agent Kong mentioned before that the different space here should overlap with the real time and space. Since it is overlapping, it cannot be simply regarded as "not together".

In other words, if I painted the alphabetical pattern of the black plush carpet on the ceiling, would it overlap with the ritual circle outside?

There are still some problems. First of all, the surface of the ceiling and the surface of the floor are not completely in the same plane... But the pattern on the black plush carpet is also not completely in the same plane as the ritual array on the floor. If it works there, I might be able to try it here. Although the degree of deviation on both sides is very different, how many centimeters is the thickness of this floor slab...

Never mind, no matter how much you think about it, it’s better to put it into practice once, so give it a try first!

I raised my right hand and pointed my finger at the ceiling, where the cave entrance was originally located. Then flames suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like thin snakes moving at high speed in the air, climbing to the surface of the ceiling.

The letter pattern on the black plush carpet spelled out "carpet", which I remembered very clearly. Then there was the style and size of the font... As I recalled it, I changed the posture of the fire snake and finally adjusted it to the shape that matched my memory.

After finishing my homework, I let out a long breath and then looked at the ceiling nervously.

Nothing changes.

I couldn't help but feel disappointed. Is this still not possible? Is it because we are not in the same time and space, or is it because the floor is too thick, and the deviation between the two planes is too great?

Or is it because we shouldn't use fire to draw patterns? The ritual array was drawn with blood, so maybe I should use blood too... But the letters on the black plush carpet weren't drawn with blood either, right? Could it be that the dirty carpet was a murder scene object, and it was soaked with blood stains...

I tilted my head back to observe, moving around to observe the flaming letters I had put together from different angles. After all, maybe I had spelled the word wrong.

It's easy to make yourself dizzy if you walk around in this position. After a while, I felt a little uncomfortable, so I lowered my head, closed my eyes and rested for two seconds.

And when I reopened my eyes, something incredible happened.

I don't know when a concrete staircase appeared in front of me.

After staring blankly for a moment, my eyes moved up the stairs and I saw a light brown wooden cover on the ceiling at the end of the stairs.

The entrance to the cave reappeared! -
Why the entrance and exit did not appear immediately after I drew the letter pattern with flames? This was an inference I made afterwards, and I don't know whether it is true or not.

This inference is a bit ridiculous. At the beginning, I was standing right below the cave, and the concrete stairs later appeared at that location. Just like in a business strategy game, the location of a new building cannot overlap with other targets. Maybe it was because I occupied the location of the stairs, so the stairs and the entrance were not convenient to appear in time.

In order to avoid any further accidents, I took action immediately after I saw the entrance and exit. I walked up the stairs to the wooden cover, pushed it open, and returned to the floor of the room on the fifteenth floor.

Finally back to the real world.

I looked around and breathed a sigh of relief.

At the same time, I vaguely felt that the state of mind that was almost enlightened when I was facing loneliness and death in the cave was now slowly receding.

That kind of enlightened state of mind must be a special state of mind that can only appear under special circumstances, and I can no longer have it after escaping death. However, I think that state of mind must have left a special mark in my heart.

I am now a completely different person from the person who hadn’t entered the cave.

I pondered my thoughts and looked behind me.

Let’s put aside the theoretical issues for now and look at the practical problems first.

When I was pushing open the wooden lid, I did not feel the black plush carpet that was supposed to cover it. After I came out, I saw that the carpet was still piled up next to it. This means that while I was in the cave, no "unidentified person" entered the room on the 15th floor and covered the carpet.

Since my method allowed me to escape successfully, it means that my reasoning about the pattern of cave appearance and disappearance is correct. But if there is no "unidentified person", how can we explain the disappearance of the previous cave entrance and exit?
I was puzzled and looked back at the cave entrance.

This cave, this basement... I thought I had figured it out, but there are still many unknowns.

Apart from anything else, I actually still don’t know what the black jade I got from the basement is, nor what the foggy illusion and the three shadows I saw before were about.

There are secrets hidden underneath that I don’t know about.

How about...I go down again?
Although it is not a good idea to think about turning back after escaping death, this cave will be destroyed by tomorrow. If we don’t complete the exploration now, we may never have another chance in the future.

I really had this idea at first, but soon, another abnormality made me give up this plan temporarily.

All the "fireflies" I set up in the real world have disappeared. Needless to say, this is because I disconnected them in the basement before. The biggest problem is that now I have lost the monitoring of Ma Zao.

Now I can't stay here any longer.

Ma Zao had been asking to leave me from time to time. If I had only lost control of her for a short period of time, it would have been acceptable. At most, I could have gone and come back quickly. This was also what I thought at the beginning. But now that I have lost control of her for a long time, the nature of the matter is different. If she really left during this period, I would never be able to find her again.

It is possible that it is Ma Zao's unlucky physique that makes me encounter strange events, and I am not so confused as to not be able to distinguish between "a full meal" and "every meal".

I also couldn't send out Firefly to my house while exploring the basement, so I had to put this aside for now.

But before leaving, I still took photos and videos of the ritual circle and the black plush carpet from different angles. Maybe I can replicate this circle in other places in the future.

After doing all this, I turned around and left the room on the 15th floor and walked out of the residential building.

Looking at the moon in the night sky, I finally felt like I was seeing the light of day again.

However, before I had walked far, a strange shadow appeared in an eerie way in front of my sight and blocked my way.

(End of this chapter)