Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 259 The First Clue
"How about trying again?" said the hound.
"Try again... Wait, I know what's going on!" Ke Lan suddenly raised his head, a gleam of light flashed in his eyes, "This mechanism is like a Rubik's Cube. Because we didn't reset it after the first 'turn', the trajectory formed by the second turn became 'garbled'!"
"Reset? Do you mean to move the three of them back to No. 4, 5, and 6 first?"
"Yes, first let the stone chamber return to the state before we woke up, and then perform another transformation. The resulting motion trajectory will be completely different from the trajectory obtained in the second case without resetting... I tried to simulate it in my mind, and I could vaguely piece together a few complete characters, which shows that this idea is correct!"
"Hurry up! I see the doctor can't hold on any longer!" The hound said as he carried the man up.
First reset the stone chambers 4, 5 and 6 to the connecting axis in the middle, and then move the three of them to the corresponding stone chambers 7, 8 and 9 - finally, the content of the second half of the sentence came out.
"What does this sentence mean?" After Ke Lan injected the three people with drugs, the Hound asked impatiently.
"When the silver ring and the golden ring overlap..." Ke Lan said silently.
"What else?"
“No more.”
"That's all? Isn't this just the first half of the sentence? What about the second half ?" the hound said in astonishment.
"That's all the content of the two halves of the sentence combined. That's roughly what it means." Ke Lan shrugged. "But my translation may not be accurate because I can't understand the two words in this sentence."
"Which two words?"
"'Silver Ring' and 'Golden Ring'... Literally, they are a golden ring and a silver ring, but I don't know what special meaning they have in the language of Alpha Civilization."
"Does it mean the ring made of gold and silver?" The Hound gave an example.
"No, no, no," Ke Lan shook her head. "In Alpha language, gold and silver and gold and silver are completely different phrases. This sentence only mentions the colors, not the materials."
"But the problem is that there are no gold or silver rings in these nine stone chambers... It's just stones." The hound squatted on the ground, took a sip from the water bag, and said angrily, "This clue is useless."
Looking at this "nonsense" clue, Ke Lan couldn't help but fall into confusion.
When the silver ring and the golden ring... overlap...
What do these two rings symbolize? What does their overlapping mean?
Although there was a clue, Ke Lan felt even more troubled.
"Let's eat something first. We've been trapped in this place for more than ten hours and haven't eaten ." The Hound said as he took out a piece of compressed biscuit from his backpack, tore open the outer packaging, broke off half of it, and handed it to Ke Lan.
"More than ten hours..." Ke Lan took the biscuit and subconsciously glanced at the watch on the hound's wrist - it was an old-fashioned mechanical watch that used a spring as a power source. Although its functions could not be compared with the various high-tech timers on the market, its only advantage was reliability: all parts were forged with anti-magnetic alloys, the outer shell was mixed with a large amount of nino alloy, and the dial was polished from a hollow shell of energy crystals. Even in the harshest environment, it could achieve accurate timing.
Ke Lan also has such a watch. Like the Hound, it is made by a factory called "Jung Precision Machinery". This factory specializes in producing various precision mechanical equipment for elite hunters. Their products have almost no disadvantages except for their high prices.
"I know what this sentence means..." Ke Lan stared at the watch on his wrist and said excitedly.
"Uh... Shenmo... what do the gods and demons mean?" The hound quickly swallowed the biscuit crumbs in his mouth and asked.
"The golden ring and the silver ring refer to the 'twin moons'... which are the two natural satellites of Alpha Centauri. Because the stars contain different elements, one of the 'twin moons' is golden and the other is silver, which corresponds exactly to the gold and silver in this clue!"
"Then when the rings overlap, it means that their orbits coincide... Oops, that was a slip of the tongue." The Hound also reacted, "It means when the twin moons and Alpha Centauri are in the same straight line?"
This phenomenon is called a "double lunar eclipse" by humans. Since the orbits of the two moons are on the same horizontal plane, the frequency of "double lunar eclipse" is very high. According to the orbital periods of the two moons, a "double lunar eclipse" occurs approximately every thirty-five hours.
"How long has it been since the last double lunar eclipse?" asked the Hound.
"Exactly thirty hours! In other words, there are still five hours until the next 'double moon eclipse', which is the 'time when the golden ring and the silver ring overlap' mentioned in this clue!"
"Wait!" The Hound crumpled the biscuit bag in his hand into a small ball and held it in his palm. "I hope there will be a surprise in five hours."
…
Just half an hour before the "double moon eclipse", two people who were trapped in the dream world woke up first.
The two people who woke up were both trainee hunters from the Polaris Hunting Group. Their first reaction after seeing the stone chamber in front of them was very similar to Ke Lan's. They also drew their guns, but they pulled out nothing - in order to prevent accidental injuries, the weapons of all the people in the dream world had been taken away in advance by Ke Lan and the hunting dogs.
"Not bad. He is very alert and his emergency response is impeccable. He is a good candidate." The hound sat on a corner of the stone platform and said to the two of them.
"Where is this? Why... why am I here? Who are you?" The trainee hunter named Martin looked around in surprise. When he noticed Cao Feng lying on the ground, his surprise turned into fear.
"You...you killed Cao Feng?!"
"Martin, don't get excited. Cao Feng is not dead, he's just unconscious." The person who spoke was not Ke Lan or the hound, but another trainee hunter, who was also the only female among the group - Qin Zhao.
"Hey, take back what you said just now. You are a grown man, but you are not as calm as a woman in this situation. Your observation ability is not very good either. It's shameful." The hound teased with a smile.
They didn't have any ill will towards the rookies of the Polaris Hunting Group - if possible, they wouldn't mind poaching and recruiting these young people... Of course, the prerequisite was that these rookies could gain their recognition.
"Are you hunters too?" Qin Zhao took a look at Ke Lan and the hound's outfits and made a judgment. "Can you tell us what happened before this?"
