Zhao Meiyou abruptly opened his eyes.
This time, what he saw was no longer the hospital room or the corridor, but an endless void. Not far away stood an open door, and beyond it stretched a long hallway lined with lanterns hanging from both sides, flanked by neatly arranged jars of specimen solutions.
This was Site 000.
He was back.
As his consciousness gradually returned, he became aware of his body. Only then did Zhao Meiyou notice a heaviness weighing on him. He lifted his head and saw Qian Duoduo kneeling over him in a posture that was difficult to describe.
There were red stains on the man’s lips—blood. Zhao Meiyou instinctively licked his own lips and winced in pain.
Only then did he realize his lips had been bitten raw. Whoever had done it had been ferocious, like the savage, brutal kiss of a wild beast.
Qian Duoduo heard his sound and looked up, meeting his gaze. He let out a breath of relief. “You’re awake.”
“Brother Qian, you…” Zhao Meiyou was startled by the raspiness of his own voice.
“Don’t talk yet.”
Qian Duoduo leaned in, pressing his lips heavily and slowly against Zhao Meiyou’s. Zhao Meiyou felt blood flooding into his mouth, burning its way down his throat into his stomach, through his intestines, and finally surging out via his groin—only to be taken back in by the man atop him, forming a complete cycle.
After what felt like an eternity, Qian Duoduo pulled away and began cleaning up the mess beneath him. “When you first arrived, the magnetic field here attacked your subconscious, plunging you into a coma. Without someone to wake you, you’d have looped in that dream forever.”
Zhao Meiyou lay sprawled on the ground in a spread-eagle position. Fireworks still exploded in his mind, as if he’d been utterly drained. After a long moment, he cleared his throat. “Brother Qian, your way of waking someone up… it’s pretty wild.”
Qian Duoduo remained calm. “I had to dive into your subconscious and pull you out. It was the most effective way to link up.”
Zhao Meiyou let out a “ha” of laughter. “Our Brother Qian sure gets the job done.” He was immediately pinned at the waist and yelped in pain as Qian Duoduo patted and pressed along his body, eliciting cracks from his bones. “Try sitting up.”
Zhao Meiyou did so, marveling. “My back doesn’t hurt anymore.”
He looked around. “Brother Qian, where exactly are we?”
Qian Duoduo snapped his fingers, conjuring a fresh pair of pants and slipping them on. “No idea.”
It was the first time Zhao Meiyou had heard “no idea” from Qian Duoduo.
The place resembled a cavern—or perhaps a pocket of void—utterly bare of any decoration. Qian Duoduo led him deeper in. “While you were out, I ran some tests. Archaeologists’ abilities seem completely useless here.”
“Useless?” Zhao Meiyou blinked in surprise. “Didn’t you just conjure those pants, Brother Qian?”
“It’s not that we can’t use our abilities,” Qian Duoduo explained. “It’s that using them has no effect.”
He stopped at a certain spot and raised his hand, pointing upward. “Look up there.”
Zhao Meiyou followed his gaze. High above, at what seemed like the ceiling, a crack had split open, letting in gray yet bright light—like moonlight.
“Let’s hypothesize we’re inside a museum, or some kind of building,” Qian Duoduo said. “That light is our only way out.”
Zhao Meiyou realized they had wandered this museum for quite some time. It had walls and ceilings, but no windows or exit doors.
“I even tried conjuring explosives earlier. Useless. Couldn’t even shatter the glass jars out there.”
“Did the explosives lose power?”
“No, the blast nearly knocked me over.” Qian Duoduo shook his head. “Everything here is immune to archaeologists’ abilities.”
To demonstrate, he snapped his fingers and produced a lighter. He held his palm over the flame, and the flesh quickly blackened and charred. Then he led Zhao Meiyou back to the initial corridor, where an angel slumbered in its jar. He took a lantern from the ceiling and tried to light the candle inside with the lighter—but nothing happened.
Qian Duoduo shook his hand, and the flesh restored itself. “Get it?”
Zhao Meiyou tsked and grabbed his hand. “So, to escape this museum, we can’t blast through walls or force an exit. Our only shot is that crack in the ceiling.”
“Exactly.”
“Can you fly up there, Brother Qian?”
“Nope. Tried it.” Qian Duoduo shook his head. “No matter how high I fly, the distance to the crack stays the same.”
“Then we need stairs.”
“Yeah. Stairs it is.”
With that agreement, they began wandering through the darkness. The space seemed circular; after some time, they returned to the starting point. Zhao Meiyou eyed the pants discarded on the ground. “Brother Qian, are those yours?”
Qian Duoduo hummed in affirmation. “We might need light.”
They both thought of the endless lanterns lining the corridor outside.
So they went back, taking down lantern after lantern, using them to illuminate the bottomless void beyond the door. The lanterns came in bizarre shapes—miniature stars, flowers with goldfish, alien brains or eyeballs. The light within seemed like a living substance, with the lanterns serving as wombs nurturing it, cages imprisoning it, or coffins burying it. In the end, the lanterns they gathered formed a small mountain beyond the door, a radiant graveyard where suns and moons lay interred. Zhao Meiyou climbed atop it, trampling all the stars beneath his feet.
“Brother Qian!” Zhao Meiyou’s voice called from above. “I think I’ve found our way out!”
Qian Duoduo squinted up at the figure on the peak. “What way?”
“We build our own stairs!” Zhao Meiyou shouted. “Brother Qian, I’m jumping down!” With that, he leaped from the lantern mountain. Qian Duoduo stepped back a few paces and caught him steadily.
“What did you mean by building stairs?”
“From the top, the crack in the sky looked closer.”
Qian Duoduo understood immediately.
Everything in this museum was immune to archaeologists’ abilities—but what about creations already belonging to the museum?
A tall man might struggle to pluck the stars, but even the towering Taihang Mountains had their limits.
He couldn’t fly, but he could move a mountain to reach higher.
“Come on, Brother Qian,” Zhao Meiyou said beside him, his voice light and brash. “Let’s move a mountain.”
Without hesitation, they set to work, shuttling through the museum. Specimen jars, massive skeletons, even dead planets—countless exhibits were dragged into the void and piled into a mountain. Zhao Meiyou discovered a hall full of porcelain; they stacked the slender vases and wine cups into the heap. Some shattered in the void, ringing out with a mesmerizing clangor—like destruction or rebirth. He recalled reading in a library book about ancient porcelain-making: soil from the mountain, fired in a kiln, yielded brilliant glazes. Now these beautiful creations were smashed, reduced once more to mere dirt and stone in the pile. Yet their mountain was eerie: bones cluttered the midway slopes, angels buried at the base. And the movers were no gods—just two humans bent on reaching the heavens.
Finally, they reached the summit. The crack overhead was now very close. Zhao Meiyou suddenly asked, “Hey, Brother Qian, how tall do you think this mountain is?”
Qian Duoduo pondered. “Around three hundred kilometers.”
“That close?” Zhao Meiyou was surprised; that was less than an hour’s drive. “How’d you figure?”
“According to the books, that’s the distance from Earth’s surface to space,” Qian Duoduo said. “Sometimes the sky isn’t as far as you think.”
Zhao Meiyou gazed at the white light spilling from above. The crack, so narrow from the ground, now yawned wide enough for two. “In that case, we look more like people emerging from a cave.”
It was a metaphor, and Qian Duoduo caught it. “Those who emerge from the cave must return to it, to test if their path leads to the good.”
“Hey, Brother Qian, give me some credit. That was hard to memorize.”
Qian Duoduo considered, then said earnestly, “You nailed it.”
“You’re just humoring me like a kid.”
“Then you butchered it.”
“I’m gonna throw a fit now.”
Yu Gong moving mountains, Jingwei filling the sea, the Tower of Babel, Socrates emerging from the cave—they had become an overlay of a thousand legends. Zhao Meiyou stood on tiptoe but found the opening still too high for his jump. He squatted and patted his shoulder. “Brother Qian, hop on.”
Qian Duoduo raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“What’re you saying? You’re not heavy, Brother Qian.”
Qian Duoduo shook his head and stepped onto Zhao Meiyou’s shoulders. The man below steadied himself, then stood. “How’s it look?” Zhao Meiyou asked. “Can you reach?”
Qian Duoduo stretched—but even on tiptoe, his fingertips fell short.
He narrowed his eyes at the distance between the white light and his hand.
Like Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel, where Jehovah reaches toward Adam—divine wisdom separated from humanity by a mere breath.
Qian Duoduo eyed the gap, withdrew his hand, and jumped down. “Zhao Meiyou, you go up.”
Zhao Meiyou blinked. “Me?”
“Your vertical leap is better than mine,” Qian Duoduo said. “Stand on my shoulders and jump—you can reach the light.”
No time for modesty. Zhao Meiyou climbed onto Qian Duoduo’s shoulders and was lifted up.
He stretched out his hand.
The next instant, a tremendous “boom” echoed from the base—likely from uneven weight distribution. A massive fireball came tumbling down from the mountain. It was a planet they had hauled from an exhibit hall; Qian Duoduo had studied the star for a long moment and murmured that it resembled the sun.
The chain reaction began; the entire mountain shuddered and collapsed. Qian Duoduo’s voice rose from below. “Zhao Meiyou, hold on!”
Zhao Meiyou scrambled into the opening and hauled Qian Duoduo up after him.
At that moment, the sun set.
And together, they beheld the light beyond the mountaintop.
