Gu Zhi swam for his life. The currents were intense and ruthless, he was barely making progress by using all his muscles and it didn't look like he would get far. Until he spotted a handle in the water, he couldn't make out what it was but he used it as leverage to go deeper and deeper. He found many such handles/ledges in the waterway and used them to fight his way deeper into the current. In truth he still thought this was a stupid idea, but his wife seemed oddly fixated on it, and he knew her to be a diviner of some skill. If she latched onto it, perhaps there was something about it that made it that way to her. Gu Zhi always lacked a general knowledge on things so the more he thought about it, the more it made sense if she knew something about the sewers but purposely didn't say anything for some reason. Gu Zhi wasn't really worried about this though, if they didn't trust each other they would have never passed the trial of trust.
He was making his way deeper and deeper, it got darker and darker until he spotted a faint light in the distance, the darkness didn't help at all for moving forward so the faint light was like a beacon of hope for Gu Zhi. He pushed his way forward until he passed the water way and noticed that there was no wall above him.
"Splash!"
He worked his way up and pushed himself up from the current onto solid land. He noticed fast that he had reached the sewers, it was a dark damp space with faint light covering the cobblestone walls. There was barely any light, and came from these faint blue torches that seemed like they lasted forever.
"Ugh".
He took off his mask and breathed in the air, finding it damp and moist. The sounds of rushing waters were like a lullaby to him. The constant sound seemed to sooth his mind as he got up and looked around.
The sewers weren't exactly hospitable with lower ceilings and narrow corridors all he could find was stone, water, and nothing else.
"What exactly did she think I would find down here. It's not like I'm going to find a secret lab full of beneficial things for us" he said to himself complaining about the sewer dive.
He went up to pull one of the torches off the wall, to help himself navigate the sewers.
"*Click*"
A noise sounded as he pulled the torch and the wall besides him started rumbling slowly moving releasing a hidden staircase downwards.
"You can't be serious" he said
'You can't make this up'
Not even one minute into the sewers and he discovered a hidden room. He tried the other torch on the next wall to see if it was all torches, turns out it isn't. The one torch he tried to pull turned out to be a lever for a secret tunnel.
"*Sigh* whatever I should be happy about this"
He took the torch that was detachable from the wall and headed down the secret tunnel. It was quite tight and narrow, obviously made for secrecy over comfort, as he made his way down, the stairs seemed to last forever. It took him a full five minutes of going down a spiral staircase until it opened up into a big room.
"What the fuck"
The room was huge with bright lights illuminating the whole room. His torch was useless now because of the bright light. Chandeliers hang from the ceilings as Gu Zhi did not expect a secret room to have such luxury. He found rows and rows of bookshelf's lining the walls with comfortable chairs and carpets on the floor. Luxurious soft pillows, and nice couches as well. In the dead center front of the room was huge map that covered the entire wall. He also noticed some baths and toiletries in a side room.
'Looks like an avid readers wet dream'.
He got closer to the map finding it to be a map of the palace.
It was quite detailed and also complicated and hard to understand due to the sheer size of the palace and how many floors there were.
It took him several minutes just to find the ground floor of the palace.
"let's see is there any hidden rooms on the ground floor".
He noticed a few including one that led to the sewers.
'Hmm, a bigger question is who made this?'
He also knew that some parts of the map were just missing with a question mark over them looking like the person who made this map had no idea what was over there. In particular he noticed that the map detailed the sewers very well but the farther the place was from the sewers the less detailed the map got. The higher floors of the palace were even missing. While the vault floor of deeper underground just had a "do not go" sign on it.
'That's rather quite ominous'.
The map was a good start but he doubted however made it knew everything about the palace. But at the very least they seemed to know everything about the sewers. Whoever or whatever made the map. It was easy to tell that the room had not been used in a very long time, due to the wear and tear of all the equipment, and no signs of frequent use. That being said the room did seem very well preserved. There was no dust, and despite the wear of time things were still standing. He went over to check the content of the books on the bookshelf.
'Journal entry 34 of exploring the palace of eternal love' a book said.
'That, does not seem like it would be fun'.
Perhaps a previous contestant found himself stranded in the palace.