Chapter 1208: A Strange Construction
Entering Earth Snake's room, the group confirmed which wall they needed to break through.
These walls were all made of old, aged wood, appearing quite fragile indeed.
According to White Snake, these walls and rooms were very strange—the soundproofing was inconsistent, sometimes working and sometimes not, and it came and went unpredictably.
Earth Tiger wanted to step forward and shatter the wall with a single punch, but White Snake spoke up to stop him.
"This is my room. I'll do it myself."
After saying that, he turned around, intending to ask everyone to step back, but instead saw Yan Zhichun with a face full of sorrow, red-eyed and in tears.
"Hey...? What's wrong with you again, you dead girl?"
"Ah...?" Yan Zhichun seemed unaware that she had been crying. She reached up and touched her cheek. "Damn... I'm..."
"Did you touch me just now?" Earth Snake asked again.
"Uh..."
"Don't blame me for this. Go cry over there for a while."
Earth Snake shook his head, rolled up his sleeves, and faced the wall.
Then, he swung his arm hard, and the fragile wall immediately bore a large hole.
Sure enough, it was another room on the other side.
In a few quick moves, enduring the heartache of tearing through the wallpaper, he gradually enlarged the hole until it was big enough for one person to pass through.
Earth Tiger stepped forward, looked at the adjacent room, and asked, "Who lives next door?"
"I don't know," White Snake said. "I rarely hear any sounds from there. It might even be unoccupied."
One by one, they passed through the hole in the wall and entered the next room to take a look. There was some furniture inside, but it was covered in dust. It was indeed possible, as White Snake had said, that no one lived there.
After all, even the "Earth Grade" had a death rate. Perhaps one day, one of these "Zodiacs" died outside while on duty, and their room was simply abandoned.
"This is a good method," Earth Tiger said with a grin. "We'll just keep breaking through like this; we can definitely avoid the crowds."
"I have a bad feeling about this," Yan Zhichun said. "We might run into other 'Zodiacs'..."
"No worries." Earth Tiger shook his head, looking reassured. "There aren't many in the 'Earth Grade' who can take me down."
With that, he came to the wall opposite the hole, signaled the others to step back, and then swung his arm—thick as an iron pillar—and smashed it viciously into the wooden wall.
This strike was completely different from Earth Snake's attack—it was dull and heavy, instantly causing cracks to spread across the entire wall.
Feeling that he had made too much noise, Earth Tiger could only extend his fist again, aimed at the center of the wall, and punched it quickly.
A basin-sized hole appeared, but instead of showing another room on the other side, it was pitch black.
Earth Tiger pressed his big head close to the hole and peered inside. After a long pause, he squeezed out three words—
"Is the light off?"
"What the hell do you mean, 'the light off'?" White Snake frowned. "Are you sure there's a room on the other side?"
"Well..."
Earth Tiger stared into the hole for a long time. In the far distance, he could faintly see tiny specks of light, but he really couldn't confirm it was a room.
Then, he stuck his head further in and looked down. It was so dark inside that he couldn't even see the floor.
"Forget it... No use worrying about it. I'll go in and have a look!"
Earth Tiger tore apart the wooden wall roughly, creating an opening just big enough for him to squeeze through, and was about to step inside.
"Wait!"
Yan Zhichun stepped forward and grabbed Earth Tiger. For some reason, looking at that hole made her uneasy, as if something was wrong, but she couldn't say why.
She turned back and looked at the hole behind them. That one clearly led to Earth Snake's room. So where did the hole in front of them lead?
"What's wrong, little sis?" Earth Tiger and Old Sun asked in unison.
"I feel like something's off..." Yan Zhichun thought for a moment. "Earth Tiger, try throwing a piece of wood inside."
"Throw wood? Yeah... that makes sense." Earth Tiger understood her meaning. He picked up a fragment of the broken wall from the floor and tossed it into the hole.
Unexpectedly, after the piece of wood entered the hole, it kept falling and never hit the ground.
"What the hell..." Earth Tiger's fur stood on end from the fright. "What is this... a cliff?"
Yan Zhichun narrowed her eyes and cupped her chin with her hand.
"Shouldn't the rooms on the 'Train' be symmetrically built...?" she said.
"What do you mean?" Earth Tiger turned back to ask.
"I mean..." Yan Zhichun didn't know how to describe the situation. She looked around the room and, sure enough, found some paper and a pen.
So she quickly sketched her hypothesis on the paper.
"I suspect that Earth Snake's room and this room in front of us are actually a single unit, just separated by a wall in the middle." Yan Zhichun pointed to the drawing. "The other side of this wall isn't another room—it's empty, or rather..."
She couldn't even describe what exactly lay outside that wall.
If it really was a "cliff," then what was the "Train" built on top of?
In other words... what was underneath the floor of this room?
White Snake thought for a moment, then said to Earth Tiger, "Try throwing wood farther away."
"Farther away?" Earth Tiger looked at him.
"Yes," White Snake said. "Throw it straight out, far away."
Though unsure of the intent, Earth Tiger picked up another piece of wood and hurled it into the distance.
In everyone's sight, the wood flew forward until it vanished, swallowed by the darkness.
Seeing this, Earth Snake shook his head, turned around, walked over to Yan Zhichun, and pointed at the notebook in her hand. "Dead girl... you see that? Something seems off..."
He took the pen and added the position of the door on Yan Zhichun's drawing.
"From the corridor, the 'doors' are very close together—at most, three or five meters apart." Earth Snake said. "So how can breaking through the wall from inside the room reveal a structure like this?"
Earth Snake put a question mark in the void space.
Yan Zhichun understood what Earth Snake meant, but the more she understood, the more abstract the situation became.
What kind of strange architectural style was this?
"Could the 'doors' in the corridor be fake...?" Yan Zhichun voiced the doubt in her mind.
"Probably not..." Earth Snake shook his head. "The 'Earth Grade' rooms are already limited in resources. What would be the point of building a room far away and putting fake doors in between?"
Yan Zhichun and Earth Snake immediately fell into thought, while Earth Tiger and Old Sun looked completely puzzled.
"Is this really that complicated?" Earth Tiger said. "If this road doesn't work, we'll just take another one, right?"
"Yeah," Old Sun chimed in. "Brother Tiger hit the nail on the head."
"Take another road..." Yan Zhichun looked up at Earth Tiger. "What other road is there to take?"