The Lost Tomb Vol. 8

Chapter 41: Mystery in the Ancient Mirror

Fatty was right. At this time, the basic knowledge I learned before was very critical. If you didn't understand basic physics, many people would only pay attention to how the building appeared in the mirror. But I knew that the strangest part of this mirror wasn't here at all.

Mirrors need light sources to reflect things, and where there's no light source, mirrors won't have any reflection points.

However, the ancient building in the mirror was shrouded in a miserable blue light, and this light wasn't our light source, but the light from the ancient building itself.

It was coming from inside the mirror.

That is to say, as long as I turned off the flashlight, the only light source in the whole cave was the blue light which passed through the mirror and made the place look dark.

But when we first came in, the cave was dark and there was no light from the mirror.

"Turn off the lights." I said to Fatty and immediately turned off my flashlight.

The whole cave darkened. According to normal physical conditions, the blue light in the mirror should become the main light source.

But now the whole mirror was dark and the cave also became absolutely dark, with only the fluorescent logo on Fatty's flashlight shining.

"Pa!" The flashlight was turned on again.

Looking in the mirror again, the inside was exactly what we saw before. The bleak ancient building was as quiet as a fossil.

Fatty asked me what I was doing and I gave him a rough idea of my theory.

He didn't understand, but he got the purpose of my experiment and said to me: "Get to the point, Mr. Naive, don't be so polite to illiterate people like me."

"This shows that this phenomenon has nothing to do with the propagation of light. As long as there's a light source shining on the mirror surface, the mirror will start to display images. But as far as I know, there was no photosensitive technology in ancient China. There are records of the use of light to turn on mechanisms, usually using the phototaxis [1] of animals. They're short-acting mechanisms, usually just handicrafts for amusement." I said, "It's good that ancient China didn't have this technology, otherwise we would have to fight in the dark in the ancient tomb, and a little light would trigger the mechanism and kill us."

"That's not helpful." Fatty touched his chin. "You're basically telling me this mirror is amazing, but you don't understand why?"

"It's different, I made some deductions about the principle of the matter so I can rule out a lot of wrong theories. Let me think about it. I believe that the great proletarian warriors won't be defeated by strange forces and will overcome this confusing mystery. All phenomena have their natural principles behind them." I was a little irritated by what he said, so I told him not to talk anymore.

"Stealing my lines." Fatty grunted, "Well, while you think about it, this fat man will go have a smoke." As he spoke, he retreated to the stone beam and lit a cigarette.

Finally, I got Fatty to shut up for a little bit! I smiled, thinking about looking at the mirror again.

Truthfully, I really thought this mirror was too amazing, but with my understanding of some ancient Chinese technology, I had to learn how it worked.

In ancient China, the craftsmanship of some skillful craftsmen had reached an uncanny level, but they were still craftsmen and wouldn't become real ghosts. Therefore, what our eyes would conceive as a miracle, would really be called "deceptive ingenuity" when the truth was revealed.