Lucky Girl

Professors Bai and Kang were standing in front of the large hole, quietly chattering. Come to think of it, now everyone was busy whispering away about what this perfectly circular hole was doing here.

"Now, regardless of why its here, there's a good chance this hole leads to one of the main entry chambers of the ruins," he said, then grabbed a couple of students who happened to be standing nearby, "You, and you...go in there, and holler at us when you've found out whether it goes anywhere."

They did so, and, not being especially tall, did not have to crawl or anything to get through the tunnel. Shortly afterwards, a couple of muffled shouts were heard.

"This has to be it!"

"There's a very large room in here."

Promptly, Professor Bai, looking rather adventure-hungry, ducked his head and climbed into the hole, followed by a less-than-orderly file of students.

As he watched them scamper like mice into the ruins, Professor Kang couldn't help but feel uneasy. This is strange, he thought, Normally surface-level ruins are covered in dirt, so the entrance has to be excavated by hand. But here we show up and this perfect hole is waiting for us. And, it doesn't look very old...

After all the students had gone in, he and Professor Lin joined them. About half of the soldiers went in, too, while the others stayed at the surface to keep watch. As soon as they climbed into the interior room, now well-lit by flashlights, they sensed an immense change in atmosphere. The air felt very heavy. On top of that, it was warmer and definitely more humid than the outside.

Above hung a tall, arched ceiling. The stone walls, though lifeless, were chiseled and decorated with exotic patterns, still bearing the mark of their ancient creators. The floor was nothing but dirt and pebbles. And to be sure, it was a very large room, large enough to fit a few small- to medium-sized buildings. It was also lined with some six or seven doorways leading to other hallways that tapered off into darkness.

Professor Kang was thoroughly disturbed that his boss didn't seem the least bit suspicious about the clearly suspicious hole.

"Um...sir?" He tapped him on the shoulder. "When was the last time you showed up to a buried site, and a perfect hole that looks like it was dug an hour ago is waiting for you?"

"Hah, never," he responded, sounding jolly, "but it sure makes my life easier. My doctor says I'm too old to be handling shovels and other heavy tools like I used to."

"You don't think this is even a little bit dangerous? It would seem that we aren't the first ones here."

"Perhaps some animals dug their way in to find shelter. This is a forest after all." He then took out his notebook and began jotting things down.

"What kind of animal do you think digs a hole that big?" Kang protested, stroking his hair anxiously.

"Enough," he said sternly, "Neither you nor I would have ever made it as archeologists if we were afraid to take risks."

The old man has completely lost it..., Kang thought.

After everyone's eyes had adjusted to the utter lack of sunlight, seeing as there were multiple paths to be explored, it was decided that they would split into five groups, each with five or six people. Two or three soldiers went with each group as well. One in each party was put in charge of creating a map, since with ruins like these, it was impossible to know how extensive they were. Without a map, it would be very easy to get lost, if the dungeon turned out to be especially large.

Lin Yuchen quickly gathered a few of his students he wasn't overly ashamed of and set out through one of the hallways opening to the west.

Qiu Shujie asked Professor Bai if it would be alright if she led her own group, and he acquiesced without a second thought. If she had any potential as a future scholar, now would be a great time to prove it, was his logic. In no time, she had rallied her female friends and was about to get going, when she heard this:

"Excuse me professor." The voice belonged to you-know-who. "It seems I don't have a group yet...Why don't I join Shujie's, it seems that group is short a person."

"Well, you are Mr. Xie's son, after all. How can I tell you no?" Professor Bai replied, "Now go."

"What? No. You can't join our group." She was about to lose it.

"Hey, you heard him. Looks like you are stuck with me."

"Haocang," she called out, "Doesn't your group still need one more?"

"No, we have five already. Thanks for the offer though."

She and her friends rolled their eyes, then set off without another word. They tried their best to stay at least five feet away from him while walking as though he had a contagious disease. In fact, they didn't even look at him, not until Shujie suddenly turned around and with both hands presented him with a notebook and pencil.

"If you wanted to join my group so badly, why don't you be in charge of drawing the map," she said with a forced smile, "You'd really be doing us a solid." The other girls were nodding and looking at him sweetly.

He had no choice but to take the notebook and start drawing the map. Turns out she had made a clever decision, because Xie Cai was actually very good at drawing maps. His lines were mechanically straight and he could draw them even while walking. What's more, he was able to draw nearly every room, corridor and cavity with exact proportions. After they had been exploring for a while, Shujie asked to see the map, and when she looked at it she found it was so perfect that it looked like it had been printed.

"This map's not bad," she told him, "Maybe you aren't entirely useless."

Secretly, though, she and the other young ladies were deeply impressed. Certainly none of them could draw that well. However rotten he was, at least there was a sliver of talent buried within.

"Aren't you glad I tagged along?"

Meanwhile, Lin Yuchen and his party had already entered into a very deep section of the ruins. That pathway they had taken led them through several winding, uneven rooms and down two flights of stairs, and while closer to the entrance there were several deviant paths to exhaust, here they discovered that many parts of the dungeon were flooded, greatly limiting the number of available paths. It almost seemed as though the ruins were trying to lead them somewhere specific.

In accordance with protocol, every possible path had to be mapped. The only exceptions were cases where a path is obstructed, by water or rocks or something, or if the number of paths is simply too large to reasonably explore. Lin Yuchen had put a student of his--I believe his name was Xu Shen--in charge of drawing the map. But, his drawing skills were frustrating to say the least.

"You call this a map?" His angry voice echoed off the dungeon walls. "Where even are we? I can't read this thing."

"We're right here...I think," Xu Shen replied.

"And, what is this? Are these supposed to represent the stairs? Whenever you go down stairs you are supposed to start a new page. Treat it like you're going to a different floor."

Lin Yuchen regretted that he hadn't corrected him earlier, but it was too late now. The clumsy map would have to do.

The good news was that there was no lack of Artifacts to be found along the way: copper coins, stone implements, a tiger tooth, a dull iron sword, a half-disintegrated scroll. By Lin Yuchen's estimate, most of it was Common in quality, although a few pieces--among them an unusual bronze wine vessel, a jade goblet and a jewel-encrusted dagger--had to be at the very least Uncommon.

As before, Lin Yuchen was by no means an expert at appraising Artifacts, been even a meager scholar like him was trained in estimating Artifact Quality. There were five main tiers, by the way: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary and Mythical. Each tier was also subdivided into grades. Common comprised a good 85-90% of all Artifacts. They typically had no latent attributes (that is, no magical properties), though sometimes you might find one with one or two. These are your typical dime-a-dozen Artifacts.

Uncommon Artifacts are not something you encounter day-to-day, though in ruins or other high-density Artifact deposits you are bound to run into a fair share. Rare Artifacts, put simply, are career-makers. That gold coin Shujie found turned out to be Rare, 4th grade. Legendary Artifacts were once-in-a-generation discoveries. You're more likely to die by slipping on a banana peel than you are to find one. As for Mythical...let it suffice to say that only two were known to be in human possession, and both of them had been intentionally given by gods in ancient times.

Anyway back to the story.

Basically, Lin Yuchen and his team had ended up traversing a very long, wide hallway. It seemed to go on forever, which was a bit strange, but what was even stranger was that at the end was nothing but a giant wall of stone bricks.

"Dead end, huh," Xu Shen said, making a note on the map.

"And not a single Artifact or anything..." someone else said, "Jeez, we walked all that way for nothing."

"Sucks doesn't it...my legs hurt."

They all decided unanimously to sit down and rest for a couple minutes. Since the path they had taken to get here also had an ever so slight downward incline, the return trip was going to be hell--especially with all the Artifacts they were lugging around.

About a minute later, the faint glow of lamps appeared in the distance. Someone else must have gone down the same path.

"Professor Lin, is that you?" A girl's voice came bouncing off the walls.

"Huh? Who's there?" He replied.

"It's us."

"Who's 'us'? Get down here."

When they got a little closer, he shined his own lamp on them. Qiu Shujie's shiny black hair and white face came into view. Her relaxed demeanor and modest smile made her seem to be brimming with youthful energy. The others, in contrast, looked exhausted. Chenxi looked half-dead. Cai threw himself onto the floor as soon as he reached the end, panting heavily.

"So this is where that long hallway leads," Shujie said.

"I'm impressed you managed to make it all the way down here," Lin Yuchen replied.

"You wasted your time though," Xu Shen added, "and your energy!"

"Don't tell me we have to walk all the way back..." his face burred in his knees, Xie Cai sounded on the verge of tears.

"What goes down must come up, genius," Xu Shen jeered.

"Certainly you don't have to follow us out," Lin Yuchen snickered, "You can stay here and become an Artifact yourself."

"No, this wasn't a waste of time," Shujie said, "Because there's something behind this wall."

Yuchen and Shen looked at her like she had just told them the sky is green.

"You're kidding, how can you tell?"

"We felt the air moving while we were walking here. There's a slight breeze. There must be some more space behind this wall."

"You felt a breeze?" Yuchen asked, "That's impossible. How come I didn't feel it?"

"Yeah, I didn't feel anything!" Xu Shen said.

She giggled, then grabbed the ends of her plaid skirt and did an elegant curtsy. "Maybe you would have," she said, "if you weren't wearing pants."

It dawned on them. All four of the girls were wearing skirts that went down to their knees, leaving the rest of their legs exposed. The men all had on long pants. Naturally, if the air was moving, it would be the girls who knew first.

"Well, how do we get past this wall, then?" Shen sighed.

"All of you, start feeling around for a switch or other mechanism," Yuchen ordered.

They did so, groping anxiously up and down the entire length of weathered cobblestones. They weren't having much luck, though.

All of a sudden, Shujie's eyes locked onto a strangely discolored stone near the left edge of the wall, drawn there almost as though by fate. She went there and pulled on it, and it came right off the wall. Then a pulsating rumble shook the cavern. A couple seconds later, a massive doorway appeared before their eyes.