The fat man nodded and whispered, "I heard it. Sounds like mice."

I immediately rejected the fat man's judgment. I said, a little agitated, "Damn it, don't talk nonsense. Have you ever heard mice make such a big noise?"

The fat man shook his head. "Young Master, you haven't seen mice bigger than rabbits, have you? They live in the deep mountains and old forests. These mice come in droves, and the noise they make is no less than people."

Fine, I didn't continue arguing with the fat man. After all, there was no point in arguing about it.

But I was just wondering, people can't even get into this place, so where did the mice come from?

As we fled, the noisy sound behind us continued, and it grew louder and louder.

I felt that the "mice" the fat man was talking about were following us and were about to catch up.

As we were running, the fat man suddenly slammed on the brakes. I crashed into the fat man with a "thud." Rou Yi, Jennifer, and Dodge didn't have time to react either, and they crashed into the fat man one after another. But the fat man was like a mountain, standing still.

Jennifer almost fell to the ground because of this. The fat man was quick-witted and quick-handed, and he put an arm around Jennifer's waist, saving the beauty and holding her in his arms.

"Are you okay?" the fat man asked gently.

Jennifer nodded shyly, then looked at the fat man and asked, "Why did you stop suddenly? What happened?"

The fat man stammered, pointing to a dark mass in front of him, and said to us, "It seems we've run back to the starting point."

"What?"

Rou Yi, Dodge, and I exclaimed almost in unison.

I clearly felt that we were moving in a straight line just now, so how could we have circled back? Could this be a corridor?

The fat man explained seriously, "The group of people we saw sitting cross-legged just now are in the darkness not far in front of us." Damn, how is that possible?

My eyes and Dodge's eyes slowly adapted to the dim state here, and we could see a little further.

Dodge and I looked forward and found that there were indeed some vague things in the place the fat man pointed to, but we couldn't be sure that they were what the fat man said.

The rustling sound behind us gradually turned into a "patta, patta" sound, and the thing making the sound was getting closer and closer to us.

There was an ambush in front and pursuers behind.

I decided to take a chance and move forward.

"Anyway, let's go over and take a look." I suggested.

The fat man and the others had no objections, so we cautiously approached the vague things in front of us.

After walking about five or six meters, the fat man took a deep breath and confirmed again, "Yes, it's the group of people sitting cross-legged. Their number and sitting postures are exactly the same."

But our steps forward did not stop because of the fat man's words, until I walked in front of the person sitting cross-legged. The posture and formation of these people sitting cross-legged were exactly the same as those we had seen just now.

At first glance, it was indeed as the fat man said, they were the same group of people, and we had returned to the origin after going around in a circle.

However, I was sure that these two groups of people were not the same group.

First of all, their eyes were closed, not open, which was different from the state I last saw them in.

Of course, it could not be ruled out that they closed their eyes after we left.

This point alone cannot be used as a reason to judge that they are not the same group of people.

There is also a very important reason to judge that they are not the same group of people.

There was a very important detail, a detail that none of the fat man and the others noticed, only I noticed.

This detail was the bamboo strip inserted in the hair of the old man in plain robe sitting in the front.

I pointed to the bamboo strip in the hair of the old man in plain robe and said to the fat man, "The bamboo strip in the hair of this old man in plain robe is different from the bamboo strip in the hair of the old man in plain robe we saw earlier. The bamboo strip in front of us is thick at the top and thin at the bottom, while the bamboo strip in the hair of the old man in plain robe before was thick at the bottom and thin at the top, exactly the opposite."

The fat man hesitated a little and asked, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure!" I said decisively.

The fat man scratched his head and was troubled. "Damn, what's going on here? Why is there a lump here and a lump there?"

The fat man's question was also the question in our hearts, and we had not yet found the answer.

"Strange." I looked around and asked the fat man, "Was the road we walked along just now a straight line?"

The fat man said without thinking, "Of course it was! Young Master, let me tell you, even if Fatty is drunk, he still walks in a straight line."

"In that case, I have a guess." I pointed to the darkness in front of the old man in plain robe and said to them, "We came in a straight line from there, and now at the position we are at, these people sitting cross-legged are exactly symmetrical to the people sitting cross-legged over there. If I guess correctly, taking the center of this space as the point of symmetry and walking around the edge, you will find many, many people sitting cross-legged like this, and these people are arranged in a centrally symmetrical pattern in the space."

I felt that what I said might be a little convoluted, so I changed my way of saying it: "You can understand that the space we are in is a dojo, and these people sitting cross-legged are all old Daoists who are here to comprehend the Dao and cultivate immortality. They surround a pill furnace or a statue of the Dao, forming a circle."