Dream Walker: Feng Shui Master Bai Ya

After kicking open the iron gate, Liu Qingyang and Xu Lele put on masks and gloves, turned on their headlamps, and walked straight into the enclosed space.

Shang Muchen, without a mask or headlamp, muttered, "You guys are pretty well-equipped..."

"Nonsense!" Xu Lele said, "Rat extermination involves burrowing underground, that's common sense, okay?"

Shang Muchen hadn't really thought about that.

Liu Qingyang handed over a face mask, smiling as she said, "I knew you didn't have one, so I prepared one for you."

Shang Muchen felt a warmth in his heart and nodded to put it on.

As he crawled into the area sealed off by the iron gate, Shang Muchen felt a chill run through his body, and the dampness intensified.

Liu Qingyang took the lead, walking at the very front, while simultaneously flicking a switch with his index finger, causing the machine behind him to light up with a green standby light.

Xu Lele followed behind her, using a tablet to record the surrounding environment.

Shang Muchen followed behind empty-handed, looking rather foolish.

Most of the lights in the hallway were broken, and the few remaining dim bulbs cast mottled shadows on the walls.

Walking in this corridor feels like stepping back into my middle school days, to the school building corridor at 2 PM on the day of the school-wide exam. It's deathly quiet, awkward, and every step feels like a guilty remorse for doing something wrong.

The corridors were still filled with empty, unremarkable rooms, devoid of furniture, bottles or jars containing corpses, or zombies lurking in corners—just empty rooms.

Turning a lifeless corner, you're greeted by the same identical corridor, with the same empty rooms on both sides.

After turning two more corners, it was still the same stairwell.

Xu Lele complained, "What kind of building is this? The underground space is so big?"

"Are we trapped in a maze of ghosts?" Shang Muchen asked timidly.

As soon as he said that, Xu Lele and Liu Qingyang both stopped and refused to leave.

"Oh no, what Shang Xiaobai said might actually be true!" Xu Lele tapped the tablet with her fingernail, showing it to Shang Muchen and Liu Qingyang.

"As I walked, I scanned the area with a laser imager. Look at the map I recorded..."

"A dead end? No, a loop?" Shang Muchen was surprised to see that the location of the three people displayed on the tablet seemed to have returned to their initial position.

"Is the same height? Could it be that we've gone down one floor?" Liu Qingyang asked.

"The altitude shown by the barometric pressure sensor hasn't changed, and I don't know if the instrument is accurate..." Xu Lele said, frowning.

"Altimeters aren't that accurate, especially since we're indoors," Liu Qingyang said. "Don't scare yourself. In such a confined space, it's easy to develop claustrophobia."

This basement must be like one of those spiraling underground parking garages, going down in circles; it can't be a dead end, that doesn't make sense.

"I'll make a mark so that if it's a maze, at least we'll be able to spot it."

As Shang Muchen spoke, he raised his leg and kicked two black shoe prints hard on the high white wall.

Liu Qingyang shook his head slightly, did not object, picked up "Rat Exterminator No. 1", and continued to walk in front.

Xu Lele and Shang Muchen followed and continued forward.

By this time, all three of them had begun to observe the details of their surroundings.

Shang Muchen counted the light bulbs on the ceiling, trying to remember the location of the broken light bulbs in each corridor.

However, he soon discovered that he no longer needed to record the light bulb, because the shoe prints appeared on the wall in front of him.

Liu Qingyang asked in shock, "Shang Muchen! Are those your shoe prints?"

Shang Muchen took off the shoes, held them up, and found they were the perfect size.

"I'm lost in a maze..." Shang Muchen shook his head repeatedly and said, "You only realize how little you know when you need it."

I even flipped through the explanation of "dead ground" in "The Five Secrets of Geography" these past couple of days, but unfortunately I didn't look at it carefully, sigh..."

"Deadly place? What deadly place? Don't say such unlucky and depressing things." Liu Qingyang cheered loudly like a cheerleader.

"No, a dead place doesn't necessarily mean a place where people die. A dead place is a term used in military strategy and feng shui, meaning a dead end with no way out, or a vicious cycle of being trapped in a maze."

Shang Muchen explained, "In the 'dead zone,' energy is mutually exclusive, with no entrance or exit, and is trapped in an internal cycle."

If you accidentally fall into a deadly situation, it's like jumping into a running washing machine, constantly being pushed and spun around by external energy, with absolutely no way out.

A dead end is not necessarily a dead end. To escape a dead end, one must pass through a specific location and break free from the circulation of Qi, like a hamster jumping off a wheel.

"I get it!" Xu Lele slapped her thigh. "We've gotten stuck in a 'nonholonomic constrained motion mode'!"

Liu Qingyang's eyes lit up, and he asked, "Is it possible to derive the Lagrange equation using d'Alembert's principle?"

Given an instantaneous configuration, let's define a virtual displacement... well, the corresponding generalized momentum is linear momentum... the partial derivative of velocity with respect to the generalized coordinates...

"Lele! Bring me the computer!"

"Do you need to tell me? I've already set up the coordinate system!" Xu Lele typed rapidly on her tablet, displaying a bunch of complex equations on the screen.

Is this the level of ability of these two female PhDs?

Shang Muchen couldn't understand any of the gibberish on the tablet except for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Unable to get a word in edgewise, Shang Muchen, to cover up his embarrassment, was too embarrassed to ask what the two of them were doing, so he could only look around blankly.

Apart from Liu Qingyang and Xu Lele's discussion about mathematics, the hallway was completely silent, which made their voices sound even louder, like a few drops of water being dropped into a hot iron pot, making a crackling sound.

However, if you listen carefully, you can hear a very, very faint rustling sound in addition to their voices.

The rustling sound is like the sweetness in tea; if you listen carefully, you can always taste a tiny bit of it.

Shang Muchen savored the taste, straining his ears to find the source of the sound.

As my mind calmed down, a strange feeling arose; my head felt itchy, and my brother's words from the dream echoed in my ears again: "Our family has a talent for 'observing aura' in our bloodline..."

Is it for observing qi (vital energy)?

What is Qi...?

Although I calmed down, the rustling sounds grew louder and louder. On the contrary, the voices of Liu Qingyang and Xu Lele became the background noise of the world, and I couldn't hear what they were saying.

The rustling sound gradually turned into an almost shrill laugh, deafeningly loud, coming from one direction.

Shang Muchen instinctively looked in that direction and clearly saw that there was a way out as long as he went through the second room on the left.

Attracted by the sound, Shang Muchen walked aimlessly toward the second room on the left.

In the field of vision, passing through the corner of the room, there is a spacious hall that resembles an auditorium.

I'd only taken two steps when Xu Lele's loud voice suddenly rang out behind me: "The result's in! Input the navigation coordinates! Follow me!"

As she spoke, she strode forward, heading towards the same room as Shang Muchen's.

The two entered the second room on the left almost simultaneously, but Xu Lele was stunned: "There's no way out?"

Liu Qingyang scratched his head and asked, "Did we make a mistake somewhere?"

Shang Muchen ignored the two of them and walked towards the corner of the wall.

"Shang Muchen! What's wrong with you? Are you going to bang your head against the wall?" Liu Qingyang thought Shang Muchen had a mental breakdown, so she quickly stepped forward and grabbed him.

Unexpectedly, the moment Shang Muchen touched the corner of the wall, the entire scene changed instantly, and the three of them found themselves in a spacious room.

"Wow! I didn't miscalculate!" Xu Lele was about to clap her hands triumphantly when she suddenly exclaimed in surprise, "My God! What kind of monster is that?"