Chu Xinghe turned around. At the far end of the misty room, there were rows of glowing, giant carvings. However, these were not human carvings or Jiaguwen script like those on the underground pillars. These were star patterns. Billions of points of light were interconnected to form constellations completely unrecognized by modern astronomy.
"A map," Chu Xinghe murmured softly. He stepped forward slowly, his eyes unblinking as he stared at the wall of light. "This is a constellation map. But the position of our solar system... our sun and our earth are not in this pattern."
"What do you mean? Are we being taken to another planet?" Li Wei asked with a shrill voice. He struck the crystal floor in frustration. "Were we kidnapped by aliens using technology shaped like antiques?"
"I don't know what kind of aliens use corpses as towing engines," Chu Xinghe replied with a skeptical tone. He felt the star patterns floating in the air. "But what is certain is that this furnace is taking us away from Earth. Far from everything we know."
"No. It is impossible. My father will surely send a rescue team. He has the money to fund a spacecraft launch!" Zhao Lin screamed hysterically, refusing to accept reality. He looked around and suddenly burst into tears. "Where are my guards?! Where are the two of them?! Why is it only the eight of us?!"
Chu Xinghe scanned the vast crystal room. Sure enough, amidst the thinning purple mist, there were only the eight of them: Chu Xinghe, Xin Yan, Li Wei, Han Dong, Fang Hua, Lin Mei, Yun Hai, and Zhao Lin. The two burly guards who had been holding onto Zhao Lin's legs earlier had vanished without a trace.
"Maybe they were thrown off when the gravity reversed at the entrance earlier," Han Dong muttered, his voice hoarse. He stood up and tried to brush the dust off his torn pants. "The pressure was insane, Zhao Lin. If they didn't make it onto this platform, they must have... fallen back into that underground hole."
"Fallen?!" Zhao Lin shrieked, his voice so high-pitched that it echoed off the misty ceiling. "From what height did they fall? We had already almost pierced the clouds! They are dead, Dong! They must have been crushed to death!"
"Shut up, Zhao Lin! We are all trying not to go crazy here!" Li Wei snapped while clutching his throbbing head. "Do you think you are the only one who lost people? We all lost our homes, our city drowned, and now we are inside a giant cauldron pulled by dead dragons and birds! Can you stop screaming about your money and your wagyu chef for one second?"
"You don't understand, Li Wei!" Zhao Lin pointed toward the darkness outside the crystal platform. "They were paid to protect me! If they aren't here, who will guard me in this cursed place? Look at Xinghe! He's perfectly calm because he has no one to worry about! He's an orphan obsessed with death, of course he likes it here!"
Chu Xinghe did not turn. He was still transfixed by the star map pulsing on the wall of air. "I don't like it here, Zhao Lin. I was just calculating how much oxygen we have left if you keep screaming like a pig about to be slaughtered."
"Oxygen?" Yun Hai spoke faintly, her face as white as paper. "Xinghe, is it true the air here will run out?"
"I thought so at first," Xinghe replied, finally turning to face his friends. "But look at the purple mist above us. That mist isn't dissipating; it's rotating in a stable cycle. And pay attention to your breathing. Your chests aren't tight anymore, are they? The pressure here is constant. This furnace has its own circulation system. Somehow, this thing has created a mini-ecosystem."
"You mean we can breathe in outer space?" Lin Mei asked while checking her phone, which still had no signal even though the screen was on. "But those dragons... they are out there in the vacuum. How can they move?"
"They don't breathe, Mei. They are corpses," Xinghe answered flatly. "Corpses don't need oxygen. They only need motive energy, and I suspect that energy comes from those stone pillars beneath Guangzhou. We are hitching a ride on a giant coffin that is returning to its origin."
"Returning?" Xin Yan approached Xinghe, her fingers still trembling. "To where, Xinghe? To that star map you don't recognize?"
"Maybe further than that," Chu Xinghe whispered. He looked back at the bronze watch in his hand. The golden-green light from the watch was slowly fading, but the hands were now moving at an incredibly slow rhythm, one tick every ten seconds. "My grandfather once said that Earth is just a small pier long abandoned by its original owners. He said that one day, the old ships would return to retrieve their anchors."
Chu Xinghe let out a slow sigh, his breathing visibly shaky. "There are eight of us, and the pillars underground were also eight. Do you think this is a coincidence? Zhao's two guards brought our number to ten earlier. And... they suddenly disappeared."
"You mean... we are some kind of sacrifice?" Li Wei's voice squeaked; he clutched his stomach as if that could protect him from reality. "Eight people for eight pillars? Don't joke, Xinghe! I just wanted to be an accountant, not a battery charger for an ancient cauldron!"
"I didn't say we were sacrifices, Wei. I said we are the residue left behind," Chu Xinghe narrowed his eyes, staring at the crystal floor which began to emit geometric lines of light. "Those two guards didn't disappear because of an accident. They were rejected by this system. They didn't have the same frequency as anything inside this furnace."
"What frequency?! You're talking like a cult shaman!" Zhao Lin shouted, tears wetting his dirty cheeks. "They were human, we are human! What's the difference?!"
"The difference is they didn't touch those pillars with the same intent," Chu Xinghe replied coldly. He pointed at Xin Yan, then at Li Wei and his other friends. "We all ran to the center not because of military orders, but because we have an attachment to one another. Whether it's fear, friendship, or obsession. Those two men... they were only performing a professional duty."
Chu Xinghe continued with a soft exhale. "Do you know the constellation Orion? The four corner stars, Orion's Belt, and the Orion Nebula. There are eight points, and perhaps because this bronze fell into the eight pillars representing Orion, the eight of us were pulled in. This thing... perhaps it uses stellar preferences, doesn't it?"
"Orion?" Zhao Lin snorted, though his voice still shook violently. "Are you talking about astronomy or fortune-telling, Xinghe? We've just been kidnapped by a dead object and you still have time to think about constellations!"
"I'm just trying to find a pattern, Zhao Lin. If you'd rather sit there and cry until you're dehydrated, be my guest," Chu Xinghe said without emotion. He knelt on the crystal floor, observing the lines of light beginning to crawl beneath his feet. "But listen, those eight pillars underground were arranged in a Bagua formation. The eight cardinal directions. And there are eight of us here. Do you think it's a coincidence that your two guards were thrown out?"
From outside the furnace, a screeching and roaring sound suddenly emerged, shaking everything. The five dragons and four phoenixes appeared to thrash and flap their wings in the vacuum of space, the resulting vibrations causing the room inside the furnace to shake violently.
"Grab onto whatever you can! Don't let your bodies hit the walls!" Chu Xinghe shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the deafening roar of metallic resonance. He immediately pulled Xin Yan to the center of the platform, forcing the girl to crouch low while holding onto a protruding crystal edge.
The crystal floor beneath their feet tilted at an extreme angle. This shaking was not like airplane turbulence, but like being struck by a giant hammer from multiple sides. The screeching of the phoenixes from outside sounded agonizing, the frequency so high that it caused a thin trickle of blood to leak from Li Wei's ears.
"Xinghe! My head is going to explode!" Li Wei screamed, rolling on the crystal floor, both hands pressing against his ears with immense force. "What is that sound?! Why are those birds screaming like they're being slaughtered?!"
"They aren't screaming, Wei! That's the sound of friction between their auras and the Earth's exosphere!" Chu Xinghe shouted back with a hoarse voice, trying to stay upright though his knees shook violently. "We are piercing the final atmospheric boundary! The speed is increasing tenfold!"
"Tenfold?!" Han Dong crawled toward Li Wei, trying to hold his friend's shoulders so he wouldn't be thrown toward the dark purple mist. "Physically, that's impossible! Our bodies should have been crushed into pulp by G-forces that high! Why can we still feel whole here?"
"Because this room is isolated from external inertia!" Chu Xinghe stared toward the wall of mist which was beginning to thin, revealing a terrifying view of the outside through the furnace walls that were slowly becoming transparent. "Look over there! Look at what's outside!"
All eyes turned to where Xinghe was pointing. Behind the metal walls that now looked like transparent black glass, they could see the five black dragons convulsing violently. Their giant bodies were enveloped in purple and black fire, the result of friction with deep space particles. The four black phoenixes flapped their wings at an irrational frequency, creating shockwaves that incinerated the darkness around them.
"Earth... look at the Earth..." Yun Hai whispered, her voice very faint amidst the noise.
From that height, they could see the blue curvature of planet Earth beginning to recede. The city of Guangzhou that had just drowned now looked like a tiny speck of light surrounded by a giant storm cloud. The realization that they had truly left home began to strike their minds one by one.
"We're going to die here, aren't we?" Fang Hua cried, hugging her own legs, trembling incessantly. "There's no oxygen out there. If this glass breaks, we'll freeze in seconds. Lin Mei, say something! You always have a theory for everything!"
Lin Mei could only shake her head, clutching her phone which was now completely dead. "I don't know, Fang Hua. Nothing on the internet explains dragons pulling a carriage into space. I... I just want to go home. I want to see my mother."
"Stop your crying!" Zhao Lin suddenly stood up, though his body was shaky. He pointed at Chu Xinghe with a trembling finger. "This is all your fault, Xinghe! If you hadn't invited us down into that hole, we wouldn't be trapped here! You made us curious with your history babble!"
Chu Xinghe turned, his gaze sharp and cold. "I never invited you, Zhao Lin. You went down because of your own arrogance, because you wanted to show off in front of your phone camera. Don't dump your stupidity on me."
"You bastard!" Zhao Lin lunged forward, but a violent jolt occurred again, throwing him back onto the crystal floor. "You know something, don't you? That watch in your hand... why did your grandfather have an object that resonates with this cauldron? Is your family some kind of deviant sect that summoned these monsters to Earth?!"
"Watch your mouth!" Chu Xinghe approached, the aura around him suddenly feeling heavy. "My grandfather was just a historian who knew more than narrow-minded people like you. If this watch didn't exist, maybe we'd all have been crushed to dust when the gravity reversed earlier. This watch is the only reason this crystal platform remains stable!"
"Xinghe, calm down!" Xin Yan held Chu Xinghe's arm. "Zhao Lin is just scared. We are all scared. Let's not kill each other in here while out there those dragons are taking us who knows where."
Chu Xinghe took a deep breath, trying to dampen his anger. He looked back at the bronze watch. The golden-green light inside it was now beginning to form coordinate lines that seemed to point forward, piercing through the furnace walls toward the endless darkness.
"We've already passed the moon," Han Dong murmured, pointing toward a giant white object passing the left side of the furnace with lightning speed. "If that really is the moon, it means our speed has surpassed any kind of rocket ever made by NASA. We are moving at a fraction of the speed of light."
"Or maybe we are jumping through a space rift," Chu Xinghe added. "Look at the stars outside. They are no longer points, but elongated streaks of light. We aren't flying conventionally. Those nine corpses... they are pulling us through a dimensional tunnel."
"A dimensional tunnel? Like in the movie Interstellar?" Li Wei asked, his eyes wide. "But where is the wormhole? I don't see anything but darkness!"
"We are inside the wormhole, Wei," Xinghe answered. "This furnace is the shield. The dragons and phoenixes are the engines. And we... we are the cargo that was accidentally carried along."
"Cargo?" Yun Hai swallowed hard. "Cargo for whom? If this is a funerary journey like you said earlier, who is going to receive a shipment of corpses and eight mortals at the other end?"
"I don't know," Chu Xinghe replied softly. "We just have to stay here; there's nothing else we can do."