The little fox also asked with some confusion, "That's right, logically speaking, it shouldn't be so easy. Even if it were alive, it shouldn't be so easy to take out, nor should there be a hole?"
"Could it be that only this one brick can be removed?"
After hearing what Liang Ping and the little fox said, Ye Tiancheng briefly explained to them, answering their doubts.
When Ye Tiancheng took out the brick, he had already thought of this, so he observed it carefully and discovered the truth.
Ye Tiancheng told them, "There is a reason. Not only were these bricks not cast, but they were also cleverly designed with embedded structures, grooves, and clasps. This allowed them to be fitted together without being cast, maintaining structural stability."
"Moreover, even when a brick is removed, the structure remains stable, and the bricks above will not fall."
As Ye Tiancheng spoke, he also showed the removed brick in his hand to Liang Ping and Nie Chongyang.
Liang Ping and the little fox looked closely and found that it was indeed true. They saw a structure resembling puzzle blocks, but the principle was more complex and practical.
Now that they knew these bricks could be removed, Liang Ping and the little fox helped Ye Tiancheng, taking down the bricks with patterns that had been disturbed.
After removing the bricks, they also discovered that not only did the bricks themselves have interlocking structures, but there were also frames between the bricks.
This was probably one of the reasons why the bricks were easy to remove.
However, after removing all the patterned bricks, Ye Tiancheng and the other two were a little puzzled.
They didn't see any other structures that could indicate a mechanism.
But if there was no mechanism here, what was the purpose of the person who built this tomb in making it this way?
This was truly strange.
Since they couldn't figure it out, they might as well try. After trying, wouldn't they know what was going on?
Working together, they didn't rush to put the bricks back on the wall, as there was still the puzzle-solving process. If they kept picking up bricks, putting them back, finding mistakes, and then putting them back again, it would waste a lot of their energy.
After all, there were quite a few bricks to be assembled.
Ye Tiancheng and the other two squatted on the ground, observing the patterns on the bricks, trying to piece them together into a complete picture.
The little fox said with a troubled expression, "I really didn't expect to endure any danger, but now I have to use my brain, and it's so troublesome and complicated."
"This puzzle is much harder than ordinary puzzles."
Ye Tiancheng also said helplessly, "Isn't it? The difficulty of this thing is indeed greater than ordinary puzzles."
"With the puzzles we play ourselves, at least we can find the edges and corners first, and then, after determining an outer frame, it becomes much simpler to piece together the inside."
"However, with these bricks, we can't determine the edges and corners, and it will probably take us a lot of effort to put them together."
Originally, Ye Tiancheng had only found one very dirty brick with a pattern. It was when he was washing it that he discovered that the nearby bricks also had patterns, and then he washed out so many bricks.
Liang Ping said, "Let's focus on assembling. We can't be trapped here because of a puzzle."
Ye Tiancheng and the little fox immediately stopped complaining and focused their attention on the brick puzzle in front of them.
However, the difficulty of this puzzle was indeed very high. They couldn't determine the edges and corners, and they also didn't know what the original complete pattern looked like, which further increased the difficulty of piecing together the pattern.
The difficulty of a puzzle never lies in the number of pieces, although that is also a factor. The puzzles that can truly stump people do not necessarily have a very large number of pieces.
As they were piecing it together, Liang Ping suddenly said with some fatigue, "It's a pity we haven't seen the original appearance of this pattern. Some parts seemed to fit, but when we assembled them, we found that other parts also fit, and then we realized we had made a mistake."
"If it continues like this, all our time will be wasted here."
Hearing Liang Ping say this, the little fox couldn't help but become conspiratorial.
The little fox said, "Could this be a conspiracy by the mastermind? Deliberately using something like a mechanism to attract the attention of those who break in, and then wasting their time, trapping them here, or making them do it all for nothing?"
"...Ugh, how malicious!"
However, as Ye Tiancheng listened to the conversation between the little fox and Liang Ping, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him.
The little fox looked at Ye Tiancheng and asked him with confusion, "Brother, why aren't you assembling anymore? Are you tired?"
Hearing the little fox's voice, Ye Tiancheng immediately shook his head.
He said, "I have an idea."
"Huh?!" The little fox and Liang Ping were both invigorated. They quickly and eagerly asked Ye Tiancheng, "What did you find?"
Ye Tiancheng explained to them, "You reminded me. If this is indeed a mechanism they use, there might be some hints!"
"I think we don't necessarily have to blindly assemble. We could also look for similar patterns in the surrounding area that could provide us with reference value."
The little fox thought Ye Tiancheng's words made some sense, but then he couldn't help but worry a little.
After thinking about it, he said to Ye Tiancheng, "The logic is sound, but what if the pattern they used is one that their own people would know and be familiar with, so they didn't leave any useful hints? Wouldn't we be wasting our time again?"
The little fox's words also had some truth.
Liang Ping nodded in agreement and then looked at Ye Tiancheng, wanting to know if Ye Tiancheng had any other ideas.
Ye Tiancheng said, "What you said is indeed possible, but I think there might still be hints. After all, the mechanisms you solved before, and the mechanisms Liang Ping solved, were they so difficult that they required hints and were so complex to solve?"
"If mechanisms that are not particularly complex have hints, then for something like this, which is very troublesome to assemble and requires the original picture for reference, there's no reason for them not to leave a clue of the original pattern as a hint."
"After all, human memory is not that reliable. Sometimes, due to the passage of time, some details of human memory gradually become blurred under the erosion of time."
"If that's the case, wouldn't their own people be stumped when assembling the puzzle?"
Hearing Ye Tiancheng say this, the little fox was convinced again.
He scratched his head and said, "If you put it that way, it seems possible, but..."
The little fox hesitated and continued, "But what if we don't find a reference for the pattern? What should we do then?"
Hearing the little fox's question, Ye Tiancheng gave his answer.
He said, "If we can't find any reference hints for the pattern, then it means your previous guess was correct."
The little fox looked confused.
The little fox asked, "Which guess of mine?"
He had said quite a lot before. The little fox was not a person of few words, especially in front of people he was close to. He was quite talkative, especially when everyone needed to brainstorm and find a way out, like now.
Even people who were usually quiet would say more than usual at this time.
Ye Tiancheng told the little fox, "If such a complex pattern has no reference hints, then it means this thing is either unimportant, or as you said before, it's meant to deceive people. In that case, we don't need to waste our time on it."
The little fox immediately remembered his previous statement.
"Ah..."
However, Ye Tiancheng continued, "But I think the probability of this thing being useful is still quite high. Looking at the structure of these bricks, it's clear that a lot of thought and effort went into it. If it was just to deceive people, they would have spent so much effort, which would be quite costly."
Hearing this, the little fox and Liang Ping breathed a sigh of relief.
The worst thing was to find out at the end that everything was in vain.
But with Ye Tiancheng's deduction, the little fox and Liang Ping became a little more motivated.
Due to the previous incident where Nie Chongyang and Liang Ping came here, and Nie Chongyang was replaced by an unknown entity, even though Ye Tiancheng and the other two needed efficiency at this time.
However, for the sake of each other's safety, they did not adopt more efficient methods.
For example, leaving one person to continue studying the pattern puzzle while others searched for pattern hint clues.
The three of them chose to act together.
This would reduce efficiency, but it was safer.
Efficiency was important, but it was absolutely ranked after everyone's life safety.
Everything was prioritized for safety.
Especially after one member had already gone missing, the safety of the other members became even more important.
The three of them searched the tomb. They found quite a few new mechanisms, but it was best to take things one by one, making a note of each, and then unlocking useful items when they encountered them.
Fortunately, Ye Tiancheng's guess was not wrong.
Finally, on a table with an ancestral shrine, they saw a shallow, not very obvious pattern carved on it. The pattern's texture looked quite familiar.
The little fox was even bolder. Because the pattern's color was too light and the texture too shallow, the pattern was not clear enough. So, the little fox directly picked up the incense burner on the table with the ancestral shrine, poured out some incense ashes, and applied them to the pattern. After clearing away the excess, the pattern became much clearer.
The three of them took out their phones and took a photo of this pattern.
As expected, with reference, the efficiency was much higher. The three of them, with the pattern reference, returned to the pile of bricks and quickly assembled the bricks back to their original state according to the pattern on the table with the ancestral shrine.
At this, the three of them breathed a sigh of relief and began to put the bricks back on the wall in order.