Chapter 350 - 153: Gate of Old Days (Part 2)

Chapter 350: Chapter 153: Gate of Old Days (Part 2)

’Besides, if this was a prison, the security should be much stricter.’ Thinking this, he returned to the door. They had forgotten to check it earlier. Zhang Shutong examined it for a few moments before dismissing the theory that this place was a prison.

He knocked on it. It seemed to be an ordinary residential door with a simple lock installed on the inside. It even had a handle on both sides. Du Kang had probably opened it by accidentally pressing down on this handle.

He inspected the lock again. Aside from some rust, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

If this were a prison, it made no sense to go to the trouble of holding someone underground only to skimp on the door.

He frowned. ’No flashlight is just too inconvenient.’ The room wasn’t large, but investigating anything required them to run back and forth. Logically, the presence of a candle suggested there was no electric lighting; the era in which the room was built likely precluded it. Still, just in case, he asked Qingyi to check along the walls for a switch while he returned to the wooden table.

The only clue might be this wooden table. There was a chair underneath it. A table implied that there was some business to be done, even if it was just sitting down to read a book... He shone his light on the tabletop and was suddenly startled.

The tabletop was covered in scratches. They crisscrossed in every direction and were definitely not the result of time; they were clearly man-made. A great deal of force had been used, with the deepest gouge being nearly a centimeter deep.

’Keeping track of time?’

’No.’

He examined the scratches carefully. There was no pattern to them; they definitely weren’t used to record anything.

’Just venting frustration, then?’

That seemed to be the most likely explanation.

Zhang Shutong felt a conflict of thoughts. ’If this was a prison, then everything would make sense—’

’A person locked in a basement, never seeing the sun for years, with no way to even know the time outside. It would be inevitable for them to go mad. Maybe they never left this room, not even in death.’

The problem was, the door had just proven that the possibility of this being a prison was very small.

Forget a dangerous prisoner; Zhang Shutong himself could probably crack it open with a good shove.

’A bed, a table, a flimsy door...’

’What was this place for?’

’And what kind of person would be kept here?’

’Wait, "kept"!’

Zhang Shutong suddenly realized he had been trapped in a fixed mindset. He turned to look at the door. If it only had a simple lock, and that lock was on the *inside*, didn’t that mean—

The person wasn’t "kept" here at all, but could come and go as they pleased?

Almost all of his previous deductions were overturned. This meant...

The person stayed here voluntarily!

’But why?’

His gaze left the wooden table as all sorts of speculations churned in his mind.

Zhang Shutong raised his head, staring blankly at the wall in front of him.

He saw the familiar face of a woman with short hair.

"..."

"..."

"..."

Zhang Shutong’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

It was a photo of the woman named "Yun."

He was all too familiar with this woman. Song’s dorm room was practically wallpapered with her photos. She had large eyes and dimples when she smiled. There was no way Zhang Shutong could forget her face. The problem was...

’Why is her photo in this basement...?’

’The mud people...’

Zhang Shutong mechanically illuminated the entire wall with his phone. The real clues had been hidden on the wall all along, but he was no longer in the mood to be surprised.

Countless photos of the short-haired woman were strung together with thread, hanging on the wall and forming a huge spiderweb.

A sticky note was attached beneath each photo, bearing simple numbers and words. Zhang Shutong recognized them as the time and location of each picture. The records on these labels were even more detailed than those in Song’s notebook.

And they followed a strict pattern.

From left to right, the dates were chronological.

December 18, 2008, West Lake Shore...

January 27, 2008, Southern Suburbs...

February 15, 2009, Foothills East...

February 16, 2009, Central Urban Area...

His eyes widened as he followed the photos. Zhang Shutong walked along the spiderweb, unable to count how many pictures there were, but there had to be dozens. The photos here were far more detailed than the ones in Song’s notebook. Song had only managed to take a dozen or so photos by circling the island day after day, and some of those were even of the wrong person. How had this person managed it?

Soon, Zhang Shutong found his answer.

He saw photos of the long-haired woman.

Zhang Shutong had grown numb looking at the wall, but he froze when he saw a face that bore a striking resemblance to Gu Qiuyan. It turned out this entire wall of photos wasn’t just of Song’s girlfriend, but also Gu Qiuyan’s mother!

And unlike Song, who had only managed a blurry profile shot, these were full, frontal pictures!

December 6, 2008...

February 7, 2009...

March 14, 2009...

A powerful sense of the absurd washed over him. A woman he thought was incredibly difficult to find was, to the person who lived in this room, someone whose information was already well-documented?

’What was this person’s role in all this?’

He thought of the mural Lu Qinglian had mentioned. That afternoon, they had discussed how the mud people were created—that they required a human body. This led them to a bold speculation—

’If a corpse needed to be brought into the forbidden zone, it likely means the deceased’s body has vanished from its grave.’

’Someone dug up the bodies.’

’There’s a main culprit hidden behind all this.’

But before they could even prove their theory, that very evening, Zhang Shutong might have already found the answer.

He subconsciously began to wonder what Lu Qinglian would think. If she were here and saw these photos, what would her reaction be? What would she deduce?

But soon, he didn’t have to wonder anymore.

Zhang Shutong saw Lu Qinglian.

To be precise.

It was a photo of Lu Qinglian.

The entire photo wall was actually composed of three parts.

The woman named "Yun," and Gu Qiuyan’s mother.

They made up almost the entirety of the web.

So it wasn’t until Zhang Shutong reached the very end of the web...

...that he saw a figure in a green robe with long, flowing hair.

The woman’s figure was blurry, and she was raising a hand as if preparing to strike.

And the woman in the photo had a checkmark drawn over her in red marker.

"April 4, 2009."

The exact date the mud person disappeared.

Zhang Shutong stared at the wall, lost in thought, speechless for a long time. His hands clenched and unclenched unconsciously.

’It was all wrong.’

This air-raid shelter was built in the 1970s, forty years ago. But that didn’t mean the person who lived here did so forty years ago.

It was four years ago.

Or, at least four years ago.

Just then, Qingyi’s voice came from behind him.

He said:

"Shutong, look at this."

It wasn’t just Zhang Shutong; Ruoping and Du Kang also walked over when they heard. The four of them gathered together, aiming their four phones at the same spot. Du Kang said in disbelief:

"Is that... another door?"

Ruoping sighed first.

"I swear, I’m developing an allergy to doors today..."

"So, should we go in and have a look?" Du Kang asked again.

"Are you trying to get us killed!" Ruoping hissed. "Someone lives here! Who knows what’s inside? What if there’s actually a person in there?"

"Probably not," Qingyi said, shaking his head. "Look, the lock is on our side, and it’s covered in dust. Considering the state of the bed, no one’s been here for a long time."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let’s just take a peek and be done with it," Du Kang said to Ruoping. "Think about it, it’s like we’re on the final level of a game, about to beat the boss. Turning back now would be like a sudden power outage."

’I still think this is a bad idea.’

"It’s fine," Du Kang grinned, rubbing the bump on his head. "For this alone, I have to see what’s inside. Come on, Qingyi, give me a hand. This lock is pretty heavy..."

After a countdown, the door was finally pushed open, revealing another patch of darkness.

"We’ll go in first and take a look. You and Shutong, wait here for a second."

"What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?" Ruoping waved a hand in front of Zhang Shutong’s face. "Are you going in or not?"

"Not in."

"What do you mean?"

Zhang Shutong said in a low voice:

"But..."

"Out."

He suddenly pushed past Du Kang’s shoulder and, amidst the shouts of his friends, rushed up a flight of stairs. Zhang Shutong ran around a corner, sprinted to the end of the staircase, and stopped, panting slightly.

His friends followed him from behind, stunned by the sight.

"Hey, why’d you suddenly come up here?"

"And it’s another dead end. Looks like a real dead end this time, can’t see a thing. Zhang Shutong, what are you doing?"

Feng Ruoping instinctively reached out, but it was too late. The figure before her suddenly lifted his leg—

Zhang Shutong kicked with all his might.

The panel in front of them crashed to the ground.

Accompanied by the sound of a poster tearing.

In the faint light of their phones, a simple dorm room appeared before them.

The clear sound of rain could be heard again.

"What the hell? How did we end up in someone’s house?"

"I just told you! I told you not to go in, and now look at this mess!"

"Uh, we can still go back," Qingyi said, then he too froze. "Shutong, how did you..."

Zhang Shutong tore away the poster on the wall and walked out.

The voices behind him seemed to fade into the distance. He just stared blankly at the dorm room.

This...

...was Song Nanshan’s faculty dorm room.

A hidden space within the dormitory building.

A secret room connected all the way from behind the hospital.

That photo of Lu Qinglian with the checkmark.

Perhaps she wasn’t the mastermind behind the creation of the mud people.

Instead, she was the answer to the question Zhang Shutong had agonized over for so long: why the mud person had disappeared.

The "mud person" from four years ago.

Was also.

Retrieved by someone.

He suddenly felt a wave of suffocation. Zhang Shutong bent over, gasping for breath. Ruoping ran over and patted his back. After a few coughs, Zhang Shutong finally caught his breath.

There were so many questions, his brain almost shut down.

And yet, there were so few questions, it boiled down to just one.

Did Song Nanshan know about the existence of this basement?

If he knew, it meant this man held even deeper mysteries.

But Zhang Shutong immediately dismissed this speculation.

’No, he couldn’t have known.’

’Setting aside his reaction on the phone, if he really knew about a secret room like this, he would never have left the only notebook containing clues on his bedside table.’

’He would have sealed all his secrets underground.’

But if he didn’t know about this basement...

An unparalleled chill suddenly rose in Zhang Shutong’s heart—

It meant...

That for the past four years, while Song was driving his little car around the island searching for his girlfriend...

Someone else.

Had been silently observing him from right beneath his feet?

...

At nine o’clock, they returned to the old house.

The rain was still falling.

No one had any appetite for dinner.

The four of them called their parents, and soon, four cars pulled up to the hospital’s front entrance.

An inevitable scolding followed.

Back home, he ate a hasty meal, took a shower, and lay down on his bed.

Zhang Shutong closed his eyes, only to be jolted awake by an intense feeling of suffocation.

He rolled over, gasping desperately for air. The feeling was all too familiar. It wasn’t just like what he’d felt in the dorm room a few hours ago; he’d had trouble breathing even earlier, when he first discovered that Gu Qiuyan’s social connections had been altered.

He lay exhausted on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Zhang Shutong knew what this meant.

This time, the anxiety attack...

...seemed to have come early.