But that wasn't right either.
If this place were a prison, the guards should have been much stricter. Thinking of this, he walked back to the door. They had forgotten to check it just now. After a few glances, Zhang Shutong dismissed the theory that this was a prison.
He knocked on it; it seemed to be just an ordinary domestic door. A common lock was installed inside, and there was even a handle on both the interior and exterior. Du Kang might have just accidentally pressed down on this handle earlier, causing the door to swing open suddenly.
He examined the lock again, but aside from being rusty, he couldn't see anything unusual about it.
If it were a prison, since they had gone to the trouble of locking the person deep underground, there was no reason to cut corners on the door like this.
He knitted his brows tightly. Not having a flashlight was still too much trouble; even though the room wasn't large, he had to run back and forth just to investigate anything. Logically speaking, since they had found a candle, there wouldn't be electric lights—the time when this room was built didn't allow for it either. But just in case, he sent the three of them to look for a switch while he returned to the wooden desk.
The only clue was probably this wooden desk. A chair sat beneath it. Having a desk meant there was business to handle, even if it was just sitting down to read a book... He shone his light on the surface and was suddenly startled.
The desktop was covered in scratches. These scratches crisscrossed one another and were definitely not the marks left by time; they were clearly signs of human activity, made with a great deal of force, the deepest one being nearly a centimeter deep.
Recording the time?
No.
He carefully examined these scratches on his own; they were completely without pattern, definitely not used to record anything.
Or was it pure venting of anger?
Only this was the most likely.
Zhang Shutong thought conflictedly that if it were a prison, then all of this would make sense—
A person locked in a basement, unseen by the sun for years, finding it hard to even know the time in the outside world. Over a long period, losing one's mind was an absolute certainty. Perhaps they had never left this room until the day they died.
But the problem was, that door just now had already proven that the possibility of this place being a prison was very slim.
Never mind a dangerous prisoner—Zhang Shutong figured that if he used a bit of force himself, he could probably crack it open.
A bed, a desk, a fragile door...
What exactly was it used for?
And what kind of person would be kept here?
Wait, kept!
Zhang Shutong suddenly realized he had fallen into a severe cognitive bias. He immediately turned to look at the door. Since there was only a structurally simple lock on it, and the lock was installed on the inside of the door, didn't that mean—
The other party wasn't "locked" here, but rather came and went as they pleased?
All his deductions from just now were practically overturned, because this meant...
The other party was staying here voluntarily!
But why?
His gaze left the wooden desk, all kinds of conjectures churning in his heart.
Zhang Shutong raised his head, staring blankly at the wall in front of him.
He saw the familiar face of a short-haired woman.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Zhang Shutong opened his mouth soundlessly.
A photograph of the woman named "Yun."
He couldn't be more familiar with this woman, because Old Song's dormitory was practically plastered with her photos. The woman had large eyes and would show dimples when she smiled. It was impossible for Zhang Shutong to forget what she looked like. But the question was...
Why would her photograph appear in a basement...
The clay figures...
Zhang Shutong mechanically illuminated the entire wall with his phone. It turned out that the real clues were all hidden on the wall, but he no longer had the energy left to express his surprise.
Because countless photographs of the short-haired woman were strung together by threads, hanging on this wall and forming a giant spiderweb.
Beneath each photograph was a sticky note with simple numbers and Chinese characters written on it. Zhang Shutong recognized them as the dates and locations of the photos. The records on these labels were even more detailed than those in Old Song's notebook.
And they were highly orderly.
From left to right, the dates moved progressively forward.
December 18, 2008, Western Lakeshore...
January 27, 2009, Southern Suburbs...
February 15, 2009, Eastern Mountain Base...
February 16, 2009, Central Urban Area...
His eyes widened with each photograph. Zhang Shutong walked along this spiderweb. He couldn't count exactly how many photos there were, but a few dozen was a safe guess. The photographs here were far more detailed than those in Old Song's notebook. Yet Old Song drove around the island every day and had only managed to capture a dozen or so, some of which were misidentifications. How had this person managed to do it?
Very soon, Zhang Shutong found the answer.
He saw the photographs of the long-haired woman again.
Zhang Shutong had already grown numb from watching, until he saw that face which bore a striking resemblance to Gu Qiumian, and he froze instantly once more. It turned out that this entire wall of photographs didn't just feature Old Song's girlfriend, but also Gu Qiumian's mother!
And unlike Old Song, who had only captured a blurry silhouette of her profile, these were full-face shots!
December 6, 2008...
February 7, 2009...
March 14, 2009...
A massive sense of absurdity suddenly rose within him. A woman who, in his eyes, required a painstaking search to find, was actually information already thoroughly mastered by the person living in this room?
What exactly was this person's stance?
He thought of the mural Lu Qinglian had mentioned. The two of them had even discussed the way the clay figures were born during lunch—it required a human corpse. Therefore, they had made a bold guess—
If a corpse needed to be sent into the restricted area, it very likely meant that the deceased's body had already vanished from their grave.
Someone had dug up the corpse.
A culprit was still hidden behind all of this.
But before they could prove this hypothesis at the time, on the evening of the exact same day, Zhang Shutong might have already found the answer.
Right now, he would subconsciously surmise what Lu Qinglian's view would be. If she saw these photographs here too, what would she think, and what would she deduce?
But soon, there was no need to think about it.
Zhang Shutong saw Lu Qinglian.
To be precise...
It was a photograph of Lu Qinglian.
The entire photo wall was actually composed of three parts.
The woman named "Yun," and Gu Qiumian's mother.
They made up almost the entirety of this web.
So it wasn't until Zhang Shutong walked to the very end of this web...
That he saw a figure dressed in a green robe with long, loose hair.
The woman's silhouette was blurry; she was raising a hand, looking as if she were poised to act.
And the woman in the photograph had been marked with a red checkmark.
"April 4, 2009."
The exact date the clay figure vanished.
Zhang Shutong stared blankly at this wall, silent for a long time. His hands subconsciously clenched tightly and then loosened.
It was all wrong.
This air-defense shelter was constructed in the 1970s, and forty years had passed in the interim. But that didn't mean the time that person lived here was forty years ago.
Instead, it was four years ago.
Or rather, at least four years ago.
At this moment, Qingyi's voice came from behind him.
He said:
"Shutong, look over here."
Not just Zhang Shutong, but Ruoping and Du Kang also walked over upon hearing this. The four of them gathered together, four phones simultaneously illuminating a single spot. Du Kang said in disbelief:
"It looks like another door?"
Ruoping sighed first:
"I am seriously about to become allergic to doors today..."
"So, should we go in and take a look?" Du Kang asked again.
"Do you want to die?!" Ruoping lowered her voice. "Someone lived here. Who knows what's inside? What if there's actually a person in there?"
"Probably not." Qingyi shook his head. "Look, the lock is on our side, and it's completely covered in dust. Combining that with the bed, no one has frequented this place in a very long time."
"Then what else is there? Just go in and take a look and be done with it," Du Kang said to Ruoping. "Think about it, this is equivalent to us playing a game until the final level, right on the verge of beating it. Going back now would be like a sudden power outage, wouldn't it?"
"I still feel like it's not quite proper..."
"It's fine, just one look. If something's off, we'll back out immediately." Du Kang grinned, touching the bump on his head again. "Just for the sake of this bump today, we have to look. Come on, Qingyi, give me a hand. This lock is plenty heavy..."
Following a chant of "three, two, one," the door was finally pushed open, and another expanse of darkness appeared before their eyes.
"The two of us will go in first to scout the path. You and Shutong wait a moment."
"Let's go together, it's better not to separate..." Ruoping shook her head.
But as she took a step forward, she turned her body around strangely.
"Shutong, what's wrong with you all of a sudden? You've been staring at that wall since just now without saying a word?" Ruoping waved her hand in front of Zhang Shutong's eyes. "Are you coming in or not?"
"It's not about going in."
"What do you mean?"
Zhang Shutong said in a low voice:
"Instead...
"It's about going out."
He suddenly pushed past Du Kang's shoulder and charged up a flight of stairs amidst everyone's shouts. Next, Zhang Shutong ran past a corner, speeding to the very end of the stairs. It wasn't until there was nowhere left to go ahead that he stopped his feet, panting slightly.
His best friends caught up from behind, freezing in shock upon seeing this:
"No, why did you run up all of a sudden?"
"And it's a dead end this time too. It really looks like a dead end, not a single bit of light can be seen. Zhang Shutong, what are you trying to do?"
Feng Ruoping instinctively reached out her hand, but it was already too late. She watched as the figure in front of her suddenly raised a leg—
Zhang Shutong kicked out with all his might.
The door panel up ahead crashed down.
Accompanhed by the sound of a poster tearing apart.
In the faint light of the phones, a plain dormitory appeared before everyone's eyes.
The clear sound of rain rang out once more.
"What's going on? Holy crap, how did we end up running into someone else's home?"
"I told you just now, I told you guys not to go, not to go! Now look at the mess we're in!"
"Uh, it's still not too late to go back right now," Qingyi was also dazed after speaking. "Shutong, why did you..."
Zhang Shutong ripped away the poster on the wall and walked out.
The voices behind him seemed to grow distant in an instant. He just stared blankly, sizing up this dormitory.
This dormitory...
The staff dormitory belonging to Song Nanshan.
A hidden space concealed within the dormitory building.
A secret chamber connected all the way from behind the hospital.
That photograph of Lu Qinglian marked with a checkmark.
The other party might not actually be the mastermind behind manufacturing the clay figures.
Instead, it was the answer to why the clay figures vanished—a question Zhang Shutong had racked his brains over for a long time.
The "clay figure" from four years ago...
Likewise...
Had been manually reclaimed by someone.
He suddenly felt a wave of suffocation. Zhang Shutong bent over, breathing desperately. Ruoping ran over and patted his back, and after coughing a few times, Zhang Shutong finally caught his breath.
The questions were many, so many that his brain almost stopped working.
The questions were also few, so few that there was only one left.
Did Song Nanshan actually know about the existence of this basement?
If he knew, it meant that this man still hid an even deeper mystery within himself.
But Zhang Shutong immediately dismissed this conjecture.
No, he wouldn't know.
Setting aside his reaction on the phone, if he really knew about such a secret chamber, he absolutely wouldn't leave the notebook containing the only recorded clues on his nightstand.
He ought to have sealed all the secrets away underground instead.
But if he didn't know about this basement...
A peerless chill suddenly rose within Zhang Shutong's heart—
This meant...
During these past four years, while Old Song was driving that small car around the island searching for his girlfriend's whereabouts...
There was another person...
Who had been silently observing him from right beneath his feet?!
At nine o'clock, they returned to that old house.
The rain was still falling.
No one had the mind to go eat anymore.
The four of them called their respective parents, and before long, four cars drove up to the front gate of the hospital.
Inevitably, they received a thorough scolding.
After returning home, he ate a hasty meal, took a quick shower, and lay on his bed.
Zhang Shutong closed his eyes, only to be snapped awake very soon by a intense wave of suffocation.
He rolled over, panting desperately. This feeling was incomparably familiar, because it wasn't just in the dormitory a few hours ago; as early as when he discovered that Gu Qiumian's interpersonal relationships had been altered, Zhang Shutong had already experienced this difficulty in breathing.
He lay on the bed, drained of strength, staring listlessly at the ceiling.
Zhang Shutong understood what this signified.
This bout of anxiety...
Seemed to have arrived ahead of schedule.