Bright Sword: Conquer the monk at the beginning and take down Zhou Weiguo

Liu San said nothing, but slowly turned around, his gaze fixed on the world at the foot of the mountain, which had already fallen into darkness. His fingers drew invisible dots in the wind, as if sketching dark lines in the air.

"The passage is different now," he whispered. "They've changed the route and moved the control point. Your map—it's out of date."

Qin Cang shook his head: "They wanted me to think it was expired."

There was a moment of silence in the air, and then Liu San laughed softly.

"You've become a bad person," he said.

"I learn it from you."

"I only taught you to read the lines, not to deceive yourself."

Qin Cang did not refute. He just took out a small black box from his arms and handed it to Liu San.

It was an FM decoder, the latest model, which only inside agents were authorized to use. Liu San's eyes fixed for a moment, and he asked in a deep voice, "Where did you get this?"

"I have my own line." Qin Cang replied coldly.

Liu San stared at him for a long time and finally put the box away.

"Okay," he said, "follow me."

He led Qin Cang down a path that had never appeared on the blueprints. It was a hidden path in the grass, trodden countless times by beasts and humans. The path wound through the mountainside, obscured by vines. From a distance, it looked like just a pile of weeds, but every step concealed a trap and opportunity.

Liu San's steps never faltered, as if he wasn't walking on land, but on memories. Occasionally, he'd squat and pry open a small wooden plank beneath a rock, revealing a buried signal repeater. More often, with a gentle wave of his hand, a sensor materialized from thin air, as if awakened by an invisible trigger.

"Did they install this thing?" Qin Cang asked in a low voice.

"It's not them." Liu San exhaled a puff of smoke, "It's our own people."

"us?"

"Those early people knew they wouldn't survive long, so they left a series of backup routes here. Once the main road was cut off, they could only rely on these gray branch roads to survive."

"What about you?" Qin Cang's voice was full of inquiry. "Are you the one who left the lines, or... the one who controls these lines?"

Liu San didn't look back, but continued walking, his voice blurred in the wind: "I am the last one who remembers how to get here."

They advanced in darkness, the landscape growing increasingly desolate. The trees along the road seemed tainted with toxins, their branches twisted like dying tentacles. Scorch marks began to appear regularly on the ground, remnants of a bygone era, warning circles that, if accidentally triggered, would trigger a chain reaction of explosions.

Every time Liu San led the way, he would stop at some point, half-squatting and pondering for a long time in front of an unremarkable stone or a crack, then reaching out to activate some hidden mechanism, or whispering a string of identification codes.

Qin Cang couldn't remember how many nodes they had passed through. He only knew that the further they advanced, the colder the air became, as if even their bones were frozen by the chill. But Liu San's back became clearer and clearer, like a lone beacon in the darkness.

Finally, they stopped in front of a rusty wall. Liu San stared at it, silent for a long time, and then slowly said, "The line ends here."

Qin Cang stared at the wall and suddenly felt a strange vibration in his chest, like some power about to explode - that was not a wall, but a door, a door hiding life and death.

"You have to walk the rest of the way alone." Liu San said softly, "In there, I don't dare to touch the place."

"You came before?"

"I waited outside the door for three days and three nights." Liu San's voice was so low that it sounded like he was talking in a dream. "The person I was waiting for...didn't come out."

Qin Cang slowly walked towards the wall, each step as if stepping on his own memories. He suddenly turned back to look at Liu San: "If I don't come out, will you wait for me for three days and three nights?"

Liu San took a puff of his cigarette, his expression as calm as ever: "I'll hang up the phone for you."

He wasn't looking for how to open a door, but rather making a final match and confirmation of a circuit diagram buried and invisible behind the wall.

"Low-voltage area... the bay module is 327... the lead-in port is five centimeters clockwise, and the pins must be inserted from the opposite corner... This door is operated by a staggered bridge." He recited each word silently, his mind rapidly reviewing all the memories related to staggered bridges. It was a rare distribution board he had dismantled at a scrap site. The craftsmanship from more than a decade ago is now extinct, but this wall, this door, is a continuation of that old craftsmanship.

He bent the five fingers of his right hand slightly, and with the precision of a piano, he placed them on five nodes. Subtle vibrations echoed through his fingertips, each electrical pulse trembling as if trying to communicate with him. He slowly turned the decoder on his left wrist, and the bright red needle edged closer to the set frequency—the point where he calculated the door lock pulse fluctuations would stabilize. If he got it wrong, this wall would trigger a high-frequency feedback wave, instantly plunging him into a state of electric paralysis.

He was not wrong.

With a gentle "click," as if a nerve had been gently pricked, a previously imperceptible crack quietly appeared in the metal wall, then slowly retreated to the sides, revealing a narrow and deep passage. The moment the breath emerged from behind the door, it carried the scent of stale dust and oxidized metal, with a hint of decay and mildew, making one almost suspect that it was a tomb where someone had been buried alive.

Qin Cang didn't hesitate. He turned around and glanced at Liu San, who was leaning against the wall, motionless. His cigarette had burned out, with ash scattered on the tip of his boots, as if he had never intended to follow him in from the beginning.

"Don't you want to know what's behind the door?" Qin Cang asked in a low voice.

Liu San shook his head lightly, his tone indifferent: "When I know too much, I die quickly. Go in - don't look back."

He nodded, turned and stepped into the darkness.

The passage was incredibly narrow, its sides lined not with ordinary walls but rows of dusty control modules and power connectors, many aged, some even dilapidated. Wiring crisscrossed like vines, hanging in mid-air, almost reaching his shoulders. He had to duck to avoid touching any exposed wires that might already be exposed to current.

The ground beneath his feet was uneven, composed of jagged, jagged blocks. Every step he took could lead to a trap. He crouched down, using the low-light scanner on his wrist to search for a safe section of the route—a completely undocumented gray area, beyond the predefined limits of any planned map.

He kept simulating and reconstructing in his mind, trying to find some pattern in this chaos.

"Three meters ahead, the intersection nodes are too dense. It should be the signal frequency modulation point... We can't go through it head-on." He muttered to himself, groping at his waist, pulling out an electromagnetic test pen, and untangling a strand of green cable wrapped around the wall.