Chapter 349 - 152: Gate of the Old Days (Part 1)

Chapter 349: Chapter 152: Gate of the Old Days (Part 1)

"What happened?" Ruoping’s voice trembled.

"I don’t know!" You could hear the panic in Du Kang’s voice. "It can’t be out of batteries, can it? It just suddenly died. It was working fine a second ago..."

"Maybe it got wet." A faint light illuminated their surroundings as Qingyi turned on his phone’s flashlight. "When the four of us were pushing that iron door, the flashlight was on the ground. That’s probably when it happened."

"Today is definitely not my day." Du Kang wouldn’t give up, smacking the flashlight against his palm, but it still didn’t respond.

Besides him, the other three all took out their phones. Though the beams were far weaker than the flashlight’s, they could at least see their immediate surroundings.

"Let’s go back," Ruoping said first. "What’s the point of exploring if we don’t have a light?"

"But we have our phones..."

"Is that the same thing?" she shot back, her eyebrows raised. "How much battery does your phone have left? Mine’s in the teens. What if they die? You want to feel your way back in the dark?"

"It’s not impossible to feel our way back," Du Kang retorted under his breath. "We just have to turn around and keep walking. It’s just this one path, anyway. Once we get to the part with the water..."

"No! We’re going back now!"

Ruoping was finally showing her "big sister" authority.

Since she’d put her foot down, the three guys glanced at each other and unconditionally cast their votes in favor.

What else could they do but agree?

Zhang Shutong had no intention of standing around.

He turned around without another word, but as he took a step, a faint squelching sound came from under his shoe.

’Is that...’

’The sound of water?’

He frowned and immediately looked at the ground. In the faint light, a stream of water was meandering toward his feet. But how could there be water here?

Hadn’t they been walking for seven or eight minutes since leaving the stairs?

Zhang Shutong bent down and lightly touched it with his hand. The pad of his finger was immediately coated in a layer of yellow, muddy water. He rubbed his fingers together and was certain it wasn’t dust from the ground, but mud.

Logically, the muddy water backing up from the old house shouldn’t have flowed this far. Two possibilities immediately came to mind. First, the old house was on low-lying ground, and they hadn’t closed the tunnel door when they came down. As long as it kept raining outside, water could pour through the dilapidated wooden door into the house and then flow continuously into the tunnel.

Second, this tunnel wasn’t perfectly level. Perhaps drainage had been considered during its construction, and the entire path was sloped. The incline was just so slight that it felt like walking on flat ground.

While he was examining the muddy water, Ruoping urged them on again:

"Hurry up!"

Seeing Du Kang still standing there fiddling with the flashlight, she tugged on his arm.

"Just give up on it already. You go first, I’ll bring up the rear. Do you know what time it is...?"

"Hey, wait a sec, don’t pull me..."

Then came a sharp CRACK.

Zhang Shutong quickly aimed his phone’s light at the two of them. In the beam, Ruoping was frozen in place. Du Kang’s hand was still suspended in mid-air as if trying to grab something, a small piece of plastic in his grasp.

Zhang Shutong glanced down at the ground. The flashlight had fallen.

"What’s with you two?"

"I was trying to take the batteries out to shake the water off, but Ruoping wasn’t looking and suddenly pulled on me," Du Kang said, not annoyed at all. In fact, he was defending her. "My bad, my bad. I didn’t have a good grip on it."

As he spoke, he bent over to pick up the flashlight. But just as he got it in his hand, there was another soft sound, like something hitting the ground—

A battery.

A battery had fallen out of the wide-open battery compartment and was rolling away down the tunnel’s slight incline.

Du Kang instinctively tried to block it with his foot but missed. The battery shot between his legs, rolling faster and faster.

Seeing this, he slapped his forehead and sighed.

"I told you my luck was garbage today. It’s not good to lose something you borrowed. You guys wait here, I’ll be right back..."

With that, he turned and took off after the battery.

Ruoping opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find the right words. "Be careful," she managed.

Qingyi comforted her, "It’s fine, you didn’t do it on purpose. He hasn’t had enough walking yet anyway. Let him run a bit more..."

Before he could finish, a loud BANG echoed through the tunnel!

This sound was much louder than the previous two. It was followed by Du Kang’s wail of pain. The three of them froze, then quickly raised their phones to see what had happened up ahead.

They were only a few steps apart.

"What happened?"

Zhang Shutong asked as he walked. He had been at the very back of the group, and it was already dark; in the confusion, he could barely see anything. He hurried forward, his gaze passing over Ruoping’s and Qingyi’s backs, and saw Du Kang squatting on the ground, clutching his head and sucking in sharp breaths of pain.

"He hit his head," Qingyi said.

"Hit his head?"

As if to answer his question, Qingyi stepped aside.

Only then could Zhang Shutong see the scene ahead. They had unknowingly reached the end of the tunnel—and right behind Du Kang, a door stood silently in the darkness!

...

Zhang Shutong only glanced at the door for a second before quickly looking back at Du Kang.

"Are you bleeding?"

Ruoping had already gone over and was prying Du Kang’s hands away.

"Where did you hit it exactly? Stop covering it..."

"Ow, ow, ow!" Du Kang said, still sucking in his breath. "Holy crap, why is there a door here? I thought this air-raid shelter was just the stairs. How can there be a door..."

He yelped and groaned for a while. Just from the sound of the impact, it was clear he hadn’t hit it lightly. It took him a good moment to recover.

"No blood," Ruoping said after checking his head all over. Then, annoyed, she added, "Who told you not to watch where you were going? Just blindly rushing forward!"

"I was just trying to grab the battery and head back quickly..."

Du Kang supported himself on his knees and simply leaned back against the door, his face a mask of misery.

"Holy crap, I told you my luck is the absolute worst today. We should have just gone out to eat like normal people."

Qingyi let out a snort of laughter. "And here I thought you’d want to investigate this door."

"Whatever, it can be whatever it wants," Du Kang grumbled. "Did they even have concepts like fire escapes and fire doors last century? What’s this thing doing here... Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

With a CREAK, his body started falling backward uncontrollably. Zhang Shutong’s reflexes were quick; he grabbed Du Kang and pulled, barely keeping him from having another intimate encounter with the ground.

But everyone knew the issue wasn’t whether he fell, but rather—

The door had opened on its own!

It would be impossible not to be curious. But they hadn’t even had a chance to process the door’s existence, let alone vote on what to do—whether to open it now or come back tomorrow. Of course, all of that assumed the door *could* be opened. None of them could have ever imagined that this door at the end of the tunnel would swing open so easily from just being leaned on by Du Kang!

For a moment, everyone fell silent, just holding up their phones to peer through the half-open doorway. The space within was pitch-black, with no discernible abnormalities.

"Today, I swear I’m going to see what’s hiding back here!" Du Kang was the one to finally break the silence, speaking with fierce determination. He shoved the door fully open. Before Zhang Shutong could stop him, the rusty hinges let out a long, drawn-out CREAK, and Du Kang had already stepped inside.

He immediately followed, shining his phone back and forth. One step, two steps, three... By the time Zhang Shutong reached roughly the center of the room, an indescribable shock washed over him—

This was a room!

Zhang Shutong wasn’t even sure whether to call it a room or a secret chamber. But what else would you call a room at the end of a tunnel if not a secret chamber?

He wasn’t the only one who was surprised; his three best friends were even more stunned.

"Why is there a desk?"

Du Kang asked in surprise.

Zhang Shutong followed his gaze. Leaning against the wall was a wooden desk. It was about half a person’s height and didn’t even have drawers—just a wooden plank and four legs. It would be considered shabby even for an office, but at a time like this, its very simplicity sent a chill down the spine.

Zhang Shutong walked quickly to the desk. On its surface sat a dried-out candlestick. His pupils contracted. In an instant, his suspicion was confirmed—

’There are signs of human activity here!’

"Why is there a bed?" Ruoping also murmured.

Zhang Shutong turned to look. There was indeed a wooden bed, directly across from the desk and against the opposite wall. The two phone flashlights were like fireflies in the dark, illuminating either side of the room. Zhang Shutong hurried over to the bed, and an even more shocking conclusion formed in his mind.

It really was a bed.

If the desk and candlestick indicated that someone had been active here, then the bed took it a step further—

’It wasn’t just activity. It was long-term residence!’

But who would live long-term in a secret underground chamber?

Or to put it another way—

’Where is that person now?!’

A chill ran through Zhang Shutong.

He stared calmly at the wooden bed. There was no bedding, only a thin wooden board. Zhang Shutong wiped a finger across it, and the pad of his finger came away coated in a thin layer of dust.

’Whoever used to live here, this probably means they moved out a long time ago...’

’But is that really it?’

’Moved out?’

’And not... something else?’

He reflexively wrinkled his nose. He didn’t smell any stench of decay, only a faint musty odor. He had noticed on the way here that many parts of the tunnel walls were covered in moss, which meant that even when it wasn’t raining, the air was still very humid.

In such damp conditions, it would be impossible for a body to mummify. He was about to check the other two walls when Qingyi, who was standing in the center of the room with his phone raised, spoke up.

"I’ve checked all four corners. There are no other living people besides us. No dead ones, either."

Zhang Shutong nodded, his heart, which had been lodged in his throat, settling halfway.

’Time for a hypothesis.’

’Let’s assume this air-raid shelter was built in the 1970s. It’s 2012 now, which means forty years have passed. Sometime in those forty years, for some unknown reason, someone lived here for a period of time.’

’The good news is that, at least for now, we haven’t found anyone.’

’The bad news is that the very existence of this room is incredibly strange.’

He shone his phone’s light around again. The only furniture in the room was the bed and the desk.

’So what was this place used for?’

The first thing that came to his mind was a prison.

But what would be locked up several meters below the ground?