"What's going on?" Ruoping's voice trembled.
"I don't know!" Du Kang sounded incredibly frantic. "It couldn't have run out of battery, could it? It just went out all of a sudden. It was working perfectly fine a second ago..."
"It probably got water inside." A faint light illuminated their surroundings as Qingyi turned on his phone's flashlight. "When the four of us were pushing that iron door earlier, the flashlight was resting on the ground. That's most likely when it happened."
"Today is seriously unlucky." Still refusing to give up, Du Kang smacked the flashlight against his palm repeatedly, but it remained completely unresponsive.
Aside from him, the other three pulled out their phones. Although the light was a far cry from the flashlight's beam, it was at least enough to see their immediate surroundings.
"Let's go back," Ruoping was the first to speak. "The flashlight is dead, so what's the point of exploring?"
"Don't we have our phones..."
"Is that the same thing?" Her eyebrows shot up. "How much battery does your phone have left right now? Mine is down to the teens. What if it shuts down? Do you want to grope our way back in the pitch black?"
"Groping our way back isn't impossible," Du Kang muttered in protest. "We just turn around and keep walking. It's just this one path back and forth anyway. Once we reach the flooded area, wouldn't we just..."
"No, we're going back right now!" Ruoping finally asserted her authority as the boss of the group.
Since she put her foot down like this, the three boys glanced at each other and unconditionally voted in favor. What else could they do but agree?
Zhang Shutong didn't feel like practicing his energy-conserving doctrine in the tunnel right now either. He turned around without another word, but the moment he took a step, a faint squelching sound came from beneath his sole.
Was that... the sound of water?
Knitting his brows, he immediately looked down at the ground. In the dim light, a winding trickle of water had unexpectedly reached his feet. But how could there be water here? Hadn't they left the stairs seven or eight minutes ago?
Zhang Shutong bent down and lightly touched it with his finger. His fingertip was instantly coated in a layer of yellow mud water. He rubbed his fingers together, absolutely certain that this wasn't dust from the ground, but actual mud.
Logically speaking, the mud water rushing in from the old house shouldn't have flowed this far. He instantly thought of two possibilities:
First, the old house sat on very low ground, and they hadn't closed the tunnel door when they came down. As long as the rain outside didn't stop, it was highly probable that water would pour into the building through that dilapidated wooden door and continuously flood into the tunnel.
Second, this tunnel wasn't a flat path in the truest sense. Perhaps drainage had been taken into consideration when it was first built, meaning the entire path was sloped, but the incline was simply so subtle that it felt like walking on level ground.
While he was studying the mud water, Ruoping urged them again, "Hurry up and move!" Seeing Du Kang still standing there fiddling with the flashlight, she yanked his arm. "Give up already. You go first, and I'll bring up the rear. Do you know what time it is..."
"Wait a second, don't pull me..."
This was followed by a sharp, plastic snap.
Zhang Shutong hurriedly aimed his phone light at the two of them. In the illumination, Ruoping froze in place, and Du Kang's hand was still suspended in midair as if trying to catch something, holding a piece of broken plastic.
Zhang Shutong looked at the ground and saw that the flashlight had crashed onto the floor.
"What's wrong with you two?"
"I wanted to pop the battery out to shake the water out, but Ruoping wasn't paying attention and suddenly yanked me," Du Kang wasn't annoyed, and he even spoke up on Ruoping's behalf. "My fault, my fault. I didn't have a good grip on it."
As he spoke, he bent over to retrieve the flashlight, but the moment his fingers brushed it, there was another faint click—the sound of something hitting the ground.
The battery.
The battery had fallen out of the open compartment and was rolling forward down the slight incline of the tunnel. Du Kang instinctively tried to block it with his foot, but he missed. The battery slipped right between his legs, rolling faster and faster.
Seeing this, he smacked his forehead and sighed, "I told you my luck was down to the absolute bottom today. It's bad to lose something we borrowed. Wait up, you guys, I'll be right back..."
With that, he turned around and dashed after the battery.
Ruoping opened her mouth but found it hard to say anything, her voice softening as she called out, "Hey, slow down."
Qingyi comforted her, "It's fine, you didn't mean to. He hasn't walked enough anyway, so let him run around a bit..."
Before his voice could even fade, a massive THUD echoed out!
This sound was far louder than the previous two combined, immediately followed by Du Kang's agonizing wail. The three of them froze in shock, then hurriedly held up their phones to check ahead.
The group was only separated by a few paces.
"What happened?" Zhang Shutong asked as he walked. He had been walking at the very back of the line, and the surroundings were already pitch black, making it even harder to see through the chaos. He quickened his pace, his gaze cutting past Ruoping and Qingyi's silhouettes. He found Du Kang crouching on the ground, cradling his head in his hands, sucking in cold air from the sheer pain.
"He hit his head," Qingyi said.
"Hit his head?"
As if to answer his question, Qingyi stepped aside.
Only then could Zhang Shutong clearly see the scene ahead. Without realizing it, they had actually walked to the very end of the tunnel—and right behind Du Kang stood a closed door, looming quietly in the dark!
Zhang Shutong only spared the door a single glance before hurriedly turning his attention back to Du Kang. "Is it bleeding?"
Ruoping had already gone over and pried Du Kang's hands away. "Where exactly did you hit it? Stop covering it up..."
"Ouch, ouch, ouch!" Du Kang winced as he sucked in air. "Holy crap, why is there a door here? I thought this air-defense shelter only had stairs. How can there be a door..."
He made a huge fuss for quite a while. In truth, judging by the sound alone, the impact couldn't have been light. It took him a good while to recover.
"No blood," Ruoping said after inspecting his head, though her tone was still exasperated. "Who told you to ignore where you're going and just charge forward blindly!"
"I just wanted to grab the battery quickly so we could head back..." Propping his hands on his knees, Du Kang simply leaned against the door with a miserable look on his face. "I told you my luck was completely bottomed out today. We should have just gone to eat properly."
Qingyi let out a snort. "And here I thought you'd want to study this door a bit more."
"Whatever it is, I don't care," Du Kang muttered. "Did they even have concepts like fire doors or emergency exits back in the last century? What is this thing even doing here... Whoa, whoa, whoa!"
With a long, drawn-out creak, his body unexpectedly tumbled backward. Zhang Shutong's reflexes were quick; he lunged forward and grabbed him, allowing Du Kang to barely stabilize himself before his face could make intimate contact with the floor again.
But everyone knew the real issue wasn't the near-fall, but rather—this door had actually swung open on its own!
It was impossible not to feel curious. Just moments ago, they hadn't even had the chance to process the door, let alone vote on a consensus—like whether they should open it now or come back tomorrow. Of course, all of that was predicated on the assumption that the door could even be opened. Yet they never expected that this door at the end of the tunnel would swing open so effortlessly from nothing more than Du Kang leaning against it!
For a moment, the group fell silent. They merely held up their phones, using the light to inspect the half-open door. Inside was a void of absolute darkness, revealing nothing out of the ordinary.
"I am absolutely finding out what's hidden behind this thing today!" Du Kang hissed through gritted teeth. He pushed the door wide open. Before Zhang Shutong could stop him, the rusty hinges let out a long, grating squeal, and Du Kang had already stepped inside.
Zhang Shutong immediately followed him, sweeping his phone light back and forth. One step, two steps, three steps... By the time Zhang Shutong reached the middle of the threshold, an indescribable shock surged in his chest—this seemed to be a room!
Zhang Shutong wasn't even sure if he should call it a room or a secret chamber, but what else would you call a room hidden at the dead end of an underground tunnel?
He wasn't the only one stunned; his three friends were even more bewildered.
"Why is there a desk here?" Du Kang asked in amazement.
Zhang Shutong followed his gaze. Set against the wall was a wooden desk. It was about waist-high and didn't even have drawers—just a wooden slab resting on four legs, a piece of furniture too meager to even be called an office desk. Yet in a place like this, the cruder it was, the more it sent a chill down one's spine.
Zhang Shutong walked briskly over to the desk. On its surface sat a dried-up candlestick. His pupils contracted as his suspicion was instantly confirmed—there were traces of human activity here!
"Why is there a bed too?" Ruoping murmured.
Zhang Shutong spun around. Sure enough, there was a wooden bed facing the desk on the opposite side of the room. The flashlights from the two phones were like fireflies in the dark night, illuminating the two sides respectively. Zhang Shutong hurried over to the bed, and an even more shocking realization formed in his mind.
This really was a bed.
If the presence of a desk and a candle meant someone had active business here, then the presence of a bed elevated the implications to another level entirely. It didn't just mean activity; it meant prolonged residence!
But who would live long-term in an underground chamber?
Or, to ask a different question—where was that person now?
A cold shiver ran through Zhang Shutong's entire body. He stared calmly at the wooden bed. There was no bedding on it, only a bare, thin mattress board. Zhang Shutong wiped his finger across it, and his fingertip was coated in a thin layer of dust.
No matter who had once lived here, it seemed they had vacated the place a long time ago... But was that really the case? Vacated? Or was it something else entirely?
"Shutong... do you, do you think someone might have died here...?" Ruoping's voice trembled.
Zhang Shutong wrinkled his nose. He didn't smell any rot, only a faint mustiness. As they walked along the tunnel, he had noticed that many sections of the walls were covered in thick moss, indicating that the air humidity remained exceptionally high even on non-rainy days. Under such damp conditions, it was virtually impossible for a corpse to mummify.
Just as he was about to check the remaining two walls, Qingyi was already standing in the center of the room with his phone raised. "I've checked all four corners. There are no other living people here besides us. And no dead ones either."
Zhang Shutong nodded, letting half of his anxiety slip away.
Let's make a hypothesis. Assuming this air-defense shelter was the one constructed in the 1970s, it was now the year 2012. Forty years had passed in the interim. For some unknown reason, someone had lived here for a period of time during those forty years.
The good news was that, at the very least, they hadn't found anyone present. The bad news was that the very existence of this room was incredibly sinister.
He scanned the area with his phone light once more. The only furniture in the room consisted of the bed and the desk.
So, what exactly was this place used for?
The first thought that flashed through his mind was a prison cell. But what kind of thing would be locked away several meters beneath the surface of the earth?