Chapter 348 - 151: "03" (2)

Chapter 348: Chapter 151: "03" (2)

All three of them jumped, startled by him.

Du Kang was holding his phone in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He was walking the fastest because he was recording, stopping every few steps to film their surroundings.

"We’re at the end?"

"Yeah," Du Kang said, turning around puzzled. "It looks like there’s a wall up ahead. A dead end."

"This is it? We’re already at the end?"

"I think it’s weird too. Didn’t Qingyi just say this place was huge? The old air-raid shelter at school wasn’t like this, either. There should be level ground after the stairs, so why is it a dead end?"

"Are you sure it’s a wall?" Zhang Shutong asked suddenly.

He frowned subconsciously.

Even the smallest air-raid shelter wouldn’t be just a single staircase.

’Or is this not an air-raid shelter at all?’

He walked over to Du Kang and took the flashlight.

In his line of sight, about five meters away, a stone wall stood before them.

But if it was a dead end, where had that draft from earlier come from?

The door to the house above was now closed, so the wind they had felt couldn’t have been a cold draft from outside.

At this thought, Zhang Shutong lowered the flashlight beam slightly. The water pooled at the base of the stone wall was very shallow, but the muddy water that had poured in was much more than that. He turned and raised a finger, signaling the other three to be quiet.

Zhang Shutong listened quietly to the sound of flowing water beneath their feet. Since the water was draining somewhere, it meant there had to be a lower point in the air-raid shelter.

After listening for a moment, he quickly formed a theory.

’So this tunnel doesn’t just go straight down. It’s more like... it takes a turn up ahead?’

Zhang Shutong walked up to the stone wall and soon made an even more surprising discovery. The end of the tunnel didn’t just take one turn—it took two!

To be precise, they were at a T-junction, with a passage extending out from both sides.

It seemed the tunnel under the iron door wasn’t so much an "entrance" as it was a "node."

This place was like a junction, forcibly severing what should have been a single, continuous air-raid shelter.

Zhang Shutong then shone the light down both sides. Unfortunately, it was just an ordinary plastic flashlight, probably one used by security guards on night duty. He had no idea what the effective range of a typical flashlight was, but he figured it was probably around twenty meters.

But twenty meters wasn’t nearly enough to see what lay ahead.

Their original plan had been to come down, take a quick look, and decide whether to turn back or keep going based on the situation.

Back on the stairs, the four of them had discussed what they might find, but the one thing they hadn’t anticipated was—

—the path splitting in two right in front of them.

"So, what do we do? Left or right?"

Du Kang sidled up.

"Hey, does anyone remember which direction the hospital is? We could just head that way. Maybe if we keep walking, we’ll pop up right inside the hospital."

"The basement of a hospital is usually the morgue."

"Meng Qingyi, stop changing the subject!"

"There’s really no way to know," Qingyi said with a shrug. "The hospital should be south of us, but this is an east-west tunnel. I can’t say for sure which way would lead there."

Zhang Shutong thought for a moment.

"I suggest we go right."

"What, left for boys, right for girls?"

Zhang Shutong ignored Du Kang’s wisecrack, shining the light at their feet as he explained:

"The standing water on the left is obviously much deeper. It’s probably blocked off up ahead for some reason."

"Let’s go right, then." The other three agreed.

They turned the flashlight, and the path ahead narrowed. The four of them fell back into their original formation, with Zhang Shutong following behind Du Kang, using his phone to light up the walls on either side.

Only now did they feel like they had truly entered the air-raid shelter.

Zhang Shutong had never been in a real air-raid shelter, so he didn’t know if there were supposed to be signs or markers inside. In any case, they hadn’t seen any so far.

Du Kang reasoned that this was to guard against enemy spies. What if the enemy could read Chinese? If they understood the signs, wouldn’t they be able to ambush all our soldiers and civilians?

Zhang Shutong actually thought that made a lot of sense.

He now wanted to figure out which air-raid shelter this was. According to the information Qingyi had looked up earlier, it was no wonder there were two different stories about the shelter’s origin—it was because two separate ones had been built during those two different periods.

The one from the War of Resistance was less of an air-raid shelter and more of a tunnel, while the one built in the mid-1960s was a proper air-raid shelter.

They didn’t even know which of the two tunnels they were in.

The standing water underfoot had almost disappeared.

There was a strange quality to the humidity in the air. It felt damp and cold, yet when he wiped a finger against the wall, it came away with a layer of dry dust.

And with that, they stepped onto dry ground.

Their few wet footprints looked like they were stepping onto a new continent. Who knew how long it had been since anyone had been here. Every step stirred up accumulated dust, which floated in the flashlight’s beam.

Zhang Shutong told the other three to cover their mouths and noses with their damp clothes. He continued to stubbornly inspect the walls until, finally, he found some writing. It wasn’t the "National Defense Project" he had expected, but "03."

Zhang Shutong froze for a second.

’What does "03" mean?’

’Is there a third one?’

Zhang Shutong examined the surface of the numbers more closely. They were dark red and had started to peel, which matched his expectations. It was a defense structure, after all; it should be marked with large, red characters.

But he couldn’t tell what kind of paint had been used for this string of numbers. Maybe it was oil-based? Zhang Shutong wasn’t about to stick his nose up to it for a sniff.

He called the others over to have a look.

"What does this mean? Is it saying there’s a third tunnel?"

"No," Qingyi explained, slipping into his trivia mode. "I’m guessing it’s a code for one of the entrances. That old house is probably the third entrance to the air-raid shelter."

Zhang Shutong nodded, thinking to himself that kids from the city really weren’t as worldly as kids from the island.

They kept walking. The initial tension and excitement slowly faded as they realized it really was just an air-raid shelter, and a pretty ordinary one at that. It wasn’t sinister and infamous like the "Forbidden Zone."

It wasn’t just Zhang Shutong; the other three had never heard any rumors about it growing up, either. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have waited until today—they would have been searching all over the island for it long ago.

The group walked sporadically through the shelter. The underground air was stale, making their chests feel tight. It’s unclear who brought it up first, but soon they were discussing whether or not to turn back.

Zhang Shutong checked the time. They had been walking for about five minutes, and the shelter seemed to stretch on endlessly.

Ruoping wanted to go back, but Du Kang argued that since there was an "03," if they kept going they might find another staircase, an "04." Besides, he added, they’d come all this way; wouldn’t it be a waste to turn back now?

Ruoping was convinced. People are like that sometimes, trapped by sunk costs.

As for Qingyi, Zhang Shutong was wondering why he’d been so quiet. Just then, Qingyi appeared at his side.

"We should have lit a candle when we came in."

"Oh, I get it. *Ghost Blows Out the Light*, right? The problem is, we don’t have a candle."

Qingyi then asked, "Doesn’t it feel like we’re walking down a tomb passage?"

Zhang Shutong bit the inside of his cheek. "Dude, you know... to be honest, that’s some seriously bad juju."

"Does anyone even remember we were just trying to get a discounted fried chicken combo?" Zhang Shutong sighed. His phone would occasionally show a single bar of signal before it vanished again.

In the brief moments he had signal, Zhang Shutong would check for new messages. A little while ago, his mom had asked where he was. He’d told her he was out with his best friends and would head home when the rain let up, so she didn’t need to come pick him up.

Zhang Shutong wasn’t a coward, but Qingyi’s words made him re-evaluate the tunnel, and his heart began to pound.

’Is... this... really... an air-raid shelter?’

It seemed "air-raid shelter" was just their assumption. There were definitely air-raid shelters on the island, but no one had ever said this specific tunnel was one of them.

He hadn’t seen any other markings since the "03." Then again, Zhang Shutong thought, it was easy to scare yourself in a creepy environment. The amount of work required for something like this was far beyond what a few thieves in a tomb-raiding novel could dig out.

They walked for another two minutes, their formation completely breaking down. Du Kang continued to film, muttering to himself—he probably had the potential to be a streamer someday. Qingyi kept spouting random trivia at Ruoping, who, being both timid and fun-loving, would chase him and hit him a few times whenever she got scared, but would still listen again the next time.

Zhang Shutong walked at the very back. He would occasionally look over his shoulder, but they had completely lost sight of what was behind them. Endless darkness followed at his heels, making it impossible to see the path they had come from.

Then, the path ahead became invisible, too.

The flashlight went out.

Darkness swallowed everything.