Negating Earth's gravity, a levitation spell?
How unscientific is this?
Yet, when I shifted my perspective and looked closely, I spotted something peculiar.
The coffin wasn't floating in the air, nor was it suspended by chains from above. Instead, it was "embedded" in the cave ceiling in some manner, much like a sink in a home. My viewing angle from within the cave was akin to looking up at a sink from the drainpipe.
I couldn't fathom the logic behind it. Wouldn't it be simpler to place it directly on the ground?
I gauged the distance; the bottom of the coffin was about three meters above the ground. I had a grappling hook in my bag, similar to Zheng Bingbing's, but there was no obvious place on the coffin's exterior to hook it. Climbing up with a rope seemed impractical. The only option was the most primitive method: a ladder.
An aluminum alloy retractable ladder. At the mountaintop, with Zheng Bingbing. I returned to the cave entrance, emerged, and crouched on the ground, sending her a WeChat message: "Send the ladder down to me."
Zheng Bingbing: "I'll bring it down myself."
I quickly refused: "No, it's not confirmed safe yet. You can't come down. Listen to me."
Zheng Bingbing sent a pouty emoji. A short while later, a rope slithered like kelp from the bushes to my left, with a folded ladder attached to its end.
I stood up, unhooked the ladder, and glanced back at the Hanyin Temple below. Everything was normal. The incense was quite strong today. The makeshift parking lot outside the temple was filled with over ten civilian vehicles. The dense smoke from the temple's incense wafted out, making it look like a crematorium furnace at first glance.
I tugged the rope three times. Zheng Bingbing concealed the rope again. I took the ladder, returned to the cave, extended it, set it up, and cautiously began to climb.
The ladder was two meters high. Standing on its top rung, I could just reach the cave ceiling.
However, I still couldn't open the coffin because the lid wasn't here. Based on how the coffin joined the cave ceiling, the lid should be on the level above, specifically on the bottom of the cave above this one, the "Immortal Demon Cave."
It seemed I had entered the wrong cave.
This made things difficult. I suspected Song Lei hadn't successfully entered this particular cave. Otherwise, he would have mentioned it in his diary, and there would be no need for him to go to such lengths to get Shen Xingyue's hairpin to unlock it. He could have simply opened the lock of the cave above. When I descended earlier, I observed that the lock on the upper cave was a common modern door lock, likely a recent replacement for a broken one.
Whether the upper cave had a lock was irrelevant. There were demons inside. Even without a lock, anyone would hesitate to enter.
I certainly wouldn't dare!
I had to focus on the coffin itself.
I examined the coffin closely. I couldn't tell what kind of wood it was made of; it looked brand new. Due to the cave's humidity, a fine layer of dew clung to the red lacquer outside. I wiped it; it was cool and damp. The underlying red paint was lustrous and dazzling. I even suspected the paint was recently applied. Didn't Shen Xingyue and the others have the key? Perhaps they brought "Three Trees" paint every so often to maintain the coffin.
The coffin was crafted from a single piece of wood, with no seams or cracks. After hesitating for a while, I mustered the courage to tap it with my knuckles, bending my knees and ready to jump off the ladder to escape at any moment.
A crisp tapping sound echoed in the cave, but there was no response from within the coffin.
"Yaoyao, Yaoyao? Mujige?" I called out softly.
Still no response.
Were they taking a nap?
I descended the ladder, shifted half a meter horizontally, and climbed up again. This was at the joint where the side and bottom planks met, fastened with mortise and tenon joints. I took out my ruler and measured the thickness of the side plank: they had spared no expense, it was a full twelve centimeters thick. The only tool I had with me was a power drill, and its length was insufficient to penetrate the coffin plank, let alone cut the entire side plank. I would need tools like a power saw. The bottom plank was thinner, but I feared Yao Yao might be injured if she fell when I sawed it open.
It seemed this was the only way.
Once the plan was formulated, I descended the ladder, retracted it, and placed it outside the cave. I returned to the area beneath the coffin, stepped backward, and used a small brush to meticulously clear away my footprints.
Emerging from the cave, I inserted another crowbar into the copper handles on either side of the stone door. I connected a rope to the cords tied to the stone beasts on both sides, then inserted the crowbar I was holding into the rope and twisted. Using the torque, I pulled the stone door back, restoring it to its original position.