At first glance, the entire stone chamber seemed unchanged, as if it were the same as before. Yet, the little fox had a feeling that the stone chamber had indeed changed.
However, he couldn't articulate this change.
The little fox wanted to call out to Ye Tiancheng and tell him about it, but Ye Tiancheng had already placed his hand on the chamber door and was opening it.
As the door was pushed open a crack, the little fox's attention was once again drawn to the chamber door.
The moment Ye Tiancheng pushed the door open, he felt something was slightly off, but he couldn't pinpoint what it was. He couldn't think of it at the moment, so he didn't react. After opening a crack, he pushed it open with more force.
He pushed the door open, and the next moment, he was slightly startled.
Because the room before him, behind the same door, was no longer the previous scene. Instead, it had become another room, and this room was very familiar to Ye Tiancheng. It was the very room they had entered before descending the secret staircase from under the bed.
It was very much like Mei Mei's bridal chamber.
How did they end up back here?
What kind of structure was this space? They had clearly been going down all along. The secret staircase under the bed had indeed wound downwards. Ye Tiancheng knew whether he was going upstairs or downstairs, and after descending such a long staircase, there had been no upward section.
So how could they have returned to this place?
Was this the room they had entered before, or a new, very similar room?
Ye Tiancheng stopped at the doorway. Seeing the scene before him, he didn't rush to enter. After all, if they couldn't figure out what was going on and entered, and then couldn't go back from there, wouldn't they have to repeat their previous experience?
He stepped back to confirm. If he hadn't been sure he wasn't mistaken, Ye Tiancheng would have thought he had opened the wrong door.
If this wasn't a real space but a phantom realm, Ye Tiancheng would have been incredibly bewildered by such a bizarre scene.
Now, although Ye Tiancheng couldn't say he was calm, facing such a scene and such an event, he wasn't overly confused. Because if something like this happened in reality, it might make people feel strange, but appearing in a phantom realm, then any strange structure would not be strange at all.
Moreover, Ye Tiancheng was certain that the familiar room he now saw was not an illusion, nor was it a deceptive phantom. After all, the smell in the room that had hidden the discarded corpses could not be easily masked.
However, Ye Tiancheng couldn't smell it at all now.
And wasn't something like this similar to how they couldn't leave the staircase before and couldn't reach the first floor?
The manifestation was different, but the situation should be similar.
When the little fox realized he could no longer smell the foul odor from the previous room, he had already begun to react, knowing that something might have changed in the room. Seeing what the room behind the door looked like, the little fox was somewhat surprised.
Seeing that Ye Tiancheng didn't intend to enter, the little fox realized he needed to remind Ye Tiancheng of something else.
He quickly said to Ye Tiancheng, "Brother, I've discovered something."
Ye Tiancheng was contemplating how this room had changed and what the structure of this space was. Suddenly hearing the little fox speak to him, he temporarily stopped thinking about it and turned to speak with the little fox.
He asked the little fox, "What did you discover?"
The little fox told Ye Tiancheng, "I just realized it. I feel that this stone chamber we are in, I feel it has changed. It has undergone some changes, and it's a bit different from before. But at first glance, I can't find where this change has occurred. Yet, I feel that such a change has truly happened."
"I find it very strange. I wanted to tell you just now, but you were opening the door, so I didn't get a chance to speak."
Hearing the little fox's words, Ye Tiancheng immediately took two steps back and began to re-examine the stone chamber carefully. After a while, he noticed the subtle change.
The change should be real, but unfortunately, they hadn't observed the room closely enough before, so they couldn't immediately pinpoint the source of this feeling of change.
"It seems there really is a change, but unfortunately, we didn't remember it carefully enough. Even if we found it, we can't seem to find where it changed."
Ye Tiancheng frowned deeply.
The little fox tilted his head and thought for a moment, then suddenly said to Ye Tiancheng, "Let's play 'spot the difference' together?"
Ye Tiancheng didn't react immediately. "What?"
The little fox explained to Ye Tiancheng, "I think the changes here won't happen just once. This change is very subtle and requires careful observation to find out where it changed."
"It feels like playing a spot-the-difference game, where you're given two very similar pictures, the same scene, and then we find the subtle differences."
"I feel this change should be a spatial change, just like when we opened this door, and the scene behind the door changed, and we even returned to the previous room, and how we were stuck in a loop on the stairs before."
The more the little fox spoke, the clearer his thoughts became, and the more fluent his speech became when talking to Ye Tiancheng. "If this is truly a spatial change, then if we can decipher the rules or reasons for this spatial change, perhaps we can get out of here!"
Ye Tiancheng was also intelligent and had strong comprehension. After listening to the little fox's words, he was immediately enlightened.
He immediately reacted and said to the little fox, "So, we should try to remember the changes in this space, then close this door, and wait for a while to find the node of spatial change and the place of change. Perhaps we can find the problem and leave here!"
The little fox immediately nodded and said, "Yes, yes, yes! That's exactly what I mean!"
To remember the changes in space, relying solely on human eyes and brains, unless one has an exceptionally strong memory, it would be impossible to be completely foolproof. However, fortunately, they still had their phones. The phones had no signal, but any built-in functions that didn't require a signal were all working perfectly.
Therefore, remembering the current state of the space was not that troublesome.
Ye Tiancheng closed the door he had opened, and the little fox directly took out his phone and took panoramic photos of the entire stone chamber, as well as detailed close-up photos. He didn't miss anything, from the walls and floor to the ceiling and the details of various objects.
With a clue, Ye Tiancheng and the little fox were no longer in a hurry. They both sat down patiently and began to wait.
When they were blindly rushing around, it was naturally difficult not to be anxious. But now that they had made a significant discovery and had a direction for research and exploration, there was no need to continue being anxious.
They spent about half an hour waiting.
This time was an estimation, because after entering this space, all their timekeeping tools and functions had stopped working. Even the stopwatch on their phones couldn't be used for timing.
Let alone the clock function that displays the time.
Their watches also stopped, and the time displayed on their phones had not changed. Therefore, after entering, they had been relying on their own estimations for timing. If they were trapped in such a space for a longer period, Ye Tiancheng and the little fox would have lost their sense of time.
Fortunately, the little fox's discovery was indeed useful. His feeling was not wrong; the space they were in was indeed changing with the passage of time.
Approximately every three minutes, the space they were in would shift, and the space would undergo subtle changes, causing slight differences. After multiple comparative experiments, the little fox gradually became certain.
Although the stone chamber appeared to have only four doors when viewed with the naked eye, it actually had eight doors.
It was precisely because of this that Ye Tiancheng had opened the same door before, only to find different rooms behind it. This was closely related to their mistaken perception of the number of doors and the constant changes in the space they were in.
If even such a place was undergoing such frequent spatial changes, then it was perfectly normal that they couldn't find an exit when they were climbing the stairs before.
They thought they were going down, but the space was constantly changing. They might have gone down, but ended up on a higher floor.
Ye Tiancheng and the little fox even vaguely realized that with such frequent spatial changes, and even a degree of deception to their perception, it meant that their own perception was not entirely accurate.
In such a situation, their situation while climbing the stairs became even more subtle.
When they thought they were going downstairs, they might not have actually been going downstairs but upstairs, which is why the stairs kept looping endlessly. In this case, how could they get out?
After realizing these things, Ye Tiancheng patiently and carefully studied the pictures they had taken, observing the changes, trying to find clues to leave. The little fox was also looking.
Unlike Ye Tiancheng, perhaps this aspect was indeed highly related to his expertise in metaphysics, so his thoughts were clearer than Ye Tiancheng's.
The little fox felt he had grasped the thread and was trying to unravel the tangled ball.
As both of them were deep in thought, the little fox suddenly had a flash of inspiration and exclaimed, "I've got it!"
Seeing this, Ye Tiancheng immediately asked him, "Do you have a clue?"
The little fox said to Ye Tiancheng, "I think so. It's very complex. If I didn't know these things, I wouldn't be able to connect them. It's related to the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, and the Nine Palaces and Eight Gates formation!"
Ye Tiancheng was helpless upon hearing this.
This was indeed an area he was not good at. Whenever he encountered such difficult problems, Ye Tiancheng had to rely on the little fox's assistance because he himself was really not good at it, but the little fox had great talent in this area and knew a lot.
Even after losing his memory, the little fox was very quick to pick up things in this area again, and no one else could compare to the little fox's talent.