Winter Returns

Chapter 152 "03"

They said they'd be quick to go and quick to come back, but no one actually shouted that they should go down immediately.

Ruoping first had Dukang take off his coat, and the two of them worked together to wring out the water from the clothes. Qingyi then took out his phone to check something:
"Hmm, I was just checking on the air-raid shelter. We'd better wait up there for a bit and let it air out before we talk."

Zhang Shutong simply set an alarm and picked up a flashlight:

"You guys take a break, I'll go check on things and be right back."

Whether the air-raid shelter was abandoned was another matter. These underground passages that had not been opened for a long time often accumulated harmful gases. He thought of some ways to identify it, such as throwing a torch down, or at the very least using a lighter, but he didn't have any of those resources on hand, so he could only check it out himself.

But before he could take a step, Du Kang grabbed him:
"Let me go in a bit. Your hands aren't good, and it's so dark on the ground, what if you slip and fall? Look..."

As they spoke, they shone their flashlights toward the cave entrance. The rainwater on the stairs had almost completely drained away, leaving only a thin layer of yellow mud. In fact, not only the stairs, but even the ground beneath their feet was very slippery.

Zhang Shutong thought about it and didn't try to be brave:

"Then hold your breath and check if there's any wind down there. If you feel something's wrong, come up quickly."

“No problem,” Du Kang readily agreed.

After he finished speaking, he took a deep breath. Children who grow up by the lake are all excellent swimmers. Du Kang exaggeratedly puffed out his cheeks and slowly walked down the stairs.

It was best not to speak at this point, so Zhang Shutong didn't rush to ask how deep it was below, but instead counted the other person's steps in her mind.

He looked down using the beam of his flashlight, and after counting to about ten steps, the beam suddenly changed direction:

"There's a breeze down there, I can feel it, so I shouldn't be poisoned! It's just that the smell is awful, a musty smell..."

"I already told you to hold your breath," Zhang Shutong said helplessly. "Let's talk about it when we get up here."

"It's so cold..."

Du Kang came up again with his arms crossed, and before he could finish speaking, he sneezed loudly.

"You..." Zhang Shutong hesitated for a moment, "What if I get a fever if I really wait until tomorrow to come?"

"It's alright, it's alright. You know I still sleep with the fan on in the fall," Du Kang sniffed and couldn't help but laugh. "Shu Tong, you've finally met your match. You just finished persuading Ruo Ping and now you're persuading me. Do you remember what you said when we were persuading you last week? I said the same thing: I'm already here, if I don't go down and take a look, I probably won't be able to sleep."

Qingyi said:

“I agree. Shutong, where did your enthusiasm from last week go? But there’s something I need to correct.”

He put away his phone and habitually rested his chin on his hand.
"The actual situation is different from what you think. What I mean is, we're going to an air-raid shelter, not a cellar. It might be very, very long inside, and it's probably not something you can just look at and come up from there."

“Let’s go down and take a look first. Anyway, we’re just going with the flow today,” Du Kang said, showing a more open-minded side than the others. “You two are just too cunning. You want to plan everything in advance. Why do you have so many problems? If you’re bored, just come back up. If you’re interested, just walk a few more steps.”

Everyone agrees that this statement is correct.

They leaned the umbrella against the wall and closed the door of the old house.

This time there was no need to queue, as the passage could accommodate two people. Zhang Shutong walked to the front and carefully held onto the wall of the passage. The surface felt a little slippery, perhaps it was moss. The presence of this meant there was no lack of oxygen... Sure enough, after only a few steps, a faint breeze swept over him.

They were all soaked, and a gust of wind would inevitably make them shiver. The surroundings were cold and damp, and the sound of the rain finally subsided a little. They took a few more steps down the slope, and then it almost disappeared. It was hard to imagine that just a few minutes ago they were in a downpour.

The four walked very slowly, and all that could be heard was the sound of their shoes sticking to the mud.

"Shutong, help me get the flashlight."

"What are you going to do?" Zhang Shutong asked as Du Kang took out his phone.

"Let's record a video, so we can brag about it back at school tomorrow." He excitedly clicked the record button.

“I think this is like a typical plot in a horror movie,” Qingyi said slowly. “Usually, the person holding the phone suddenly disappears, the teammates see something they shouldn’t see in the video, and then it’s like the Calabash Brothers saving their grandfather… Ah, Ruoping, don’t touch my hair.”

"Can't you say something nice?"

"Is the atmosphere right?"

Zhang Shutong listened to the three of them arguing, but noise was better than silence with only the sound of flowing water and footsteps. He focused his attention on the wall, whose surface was rough and uneven, making it hard to tell whether it was concrete, stone bricks, or a natural cave.

The tunnel echoed with the sounds of people talking. Without a flashlight, it was pitch black, making it impossible to judge distances. All that remained was to remember your own footsteps.

After counting to about twenty steps, Ruoping said, on the verge of tears:
"Shutong, switch places with him, I can't stand it!"

Qingyi had been wanting to tell ghost stories, but Ruoping wouldn't let him. So he started talking about all sorts of common underground creatures, like bats, salamanders, snakes, moles... and then he was met with disdain.

Zhang Shutong and Qingyi switched places. He did a simple subtraction in his mind: he had just taken twenty-two steps, and when he switched places, he took two steps back, so let's count it as twenty steps.

Since it's an air-raid shelter, we can't keep going down the stairs forever. Once we get to flat ground, we can estimate the distance of this underground passage by measuring the length of the steps.

"I have a feeling we're about to reach the end!" Du Kang suddenly shouted.

All three of them were startled by him.

Du Kang is now holding a phone in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He is walking the fastest because he is recording a video. He stops every few steps to take pictures of his surroundings.

"To the end?"

“Yeah,” Du Kang turned around, puzzled. “I think there’s a wall in front of us, it’s a dead end.”

"Is this the end of the road?"

“I also find it strange. Didn’t Qingyi just say that there was a lot down there? The air-raid shelter at school wasn’t like this. It should have been flat ground after you went down the stairs. How come it’s a dead end?”

Are you sure it's a wall?

Zhang Shutong suddenly asked.

He frowned subconsciously.

Even the smallest air-raid shelter wouldn't have just one staircase.

Or is this not an air-raid shelter?
He walked over to Du Kang and took the flashlight.

About five meters away in sight, a stone wall stood before us.

But if it's a dead end, where did the wind come from?
Now that the door to the house upstairs is closed, the wind you just felt couldn't possibly be the cold wind from outside.

Thinking of this, Zhang Shutong moved the flashlight down a little. The water under the stone wall was shallow, but the muddy water that had flowed back was far more than that. He turned around and raised his finger, signaling the three people behind him not to speak.

Zhang Shutong listened quietly to the sound of the flowing water at his feet for a while. Since the water had gone elsewhere, it meant that there were lower places inside the air-raid shelter.

He listened for a moment and quickly came to a guess.

It turns out that this tunnel doesn't extend straight down at all; it's more like it... took a turn ahead?

When Zhang Shutong walked up to the stone wall, he soon made an even more surprising discovery, because there was not just one turn at the end of the tunnel, but two!

To be precise, they were like being at a T-junction, with a passageway extending from both sides.

It seems that the tunnel under the iron gate is more of a "node" than an "entrance." This place is like a node, abruptly cutting off a complete air-raid shelter.

Zhang Shutong then shone the flashlight to both sides, but unfortunately it was just an ordinary flashlight with a plastic casing, probably used by security guards on night shift. He didn't really know how far a regular flashlight could see, but he estimated it was at least twenty meters.

Even at a distance of twenty meters, it is still not enough to see clearly what is ahead.

Their original plan was to stop and take a look, and then decide whether to return or continue on their way based on the situation.

The four of them had discussed what was going to happen on the stairs, but the one thing they hadn't anticipated was—

Two paths suddenly appeared before us.

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

Du Kang leaned closer:
"By the way, does anyone remember which direction the hospital is in? Let's head that way? Maybe we'll just walk up and end up in the hospital."

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

"Meng Qingyi, don't interrupt!"

“It’s really hard to say,” Qingyi shrugged. “The hospital should be to our south, but this road is east-west, so I can’t say for sure which way to go.”

Zhang Shutong thought for a moment:

"I suggest going to the right."

"Men on the left and women on the right?"

Zhang Shutong ignored Du Kang's witty remarks, looked down at his feet, and analyzed:

"The water on the left is significantly deeper, and it's very likely that the front is blocked for some reason."

"Then let's go to the right," the three agreed.

Then they turned their flashlights, and the road ahead became narrower. The four of them returned to their original formation, with Zhang Shutong following behind Du Kang, shining his phone on the walls on both sides.

Only here did they officially enter the air-raid shelter.

Zhang Shutong had never been to a real air-raid shelter, so he didn't know if there were any signs or markers inside; in any case, they hadn't seen any along the way.

Du Kang analyzed that this was to guard against enemy agents. What if the other side could speak Chinese? If they understood it, wouldn't they be able to encircle all our soldiers and civilians?

Zhang Shutong actually thought it made a lot of sense.

He now wanted to figure out which air-raid shelter this was—according to the information Qingyi had just found, it was no wonder there were two versions of the origin of the air-raid shelter, because two were indeed built in those two different periods.

The tunnel built during the War of Resistance against Japan was more like a tunnel than an air-raid shelter; it was only when construction began in the mid-1960s that it became a proper air-raid shelter.

They didn't even know which cave they were in.

The water underfoot had almost disappeared.

The humidity in the air was strangely indescribable. It felt damp and cold, but when you wiped the wall with your finger, there was a layer of dry dust.

They then walked onto the dry road.

A few wet footprints looked like they had stepped onto a new continent. No one had been here for a long time. Every step stirred up the accumulated dust, which floated in the beam of the flashlight.

Zhang Shutong told the three of them to cover their mouths and noses with their wet clothes, and continued to check the wall with unwavering determination. Finally, he found a mark on it, but it was not the "National Defense Project" he had imagined, but "03".

Zhang Shutong was stunned for a moment.

What does “03” mean?
Is there a third point?
Zhang Shutong examined the surface of the characters more closely. They were dark red and had already peeled off somewhat, which was quite in line with his imagination. Air defense works should have large red characters.

But it's impossible to tell what kind of paint was used to write these numbers; maybe it's oil paint? Zhang Shutong wouldn't go so far as to put his nose in and smell it.

He called everyone over to take a look:

"What do you mean? Are you saying there's a third one?"

“No,” Qingyi explained, “I guess it refers to the code of a certain entrance. That old house should be the third entrance to the air-raid shelter.”

Zhang Shutong nodded, thinking to himself that city kids were indeed less worldly than island kids.

They continued walking, and the initial tension and excitement gradually subsided. The further they walked, the more they realized that it really was just an air-raid shelter, and a fairly ordinary one at that, unlike the notorious "restricted area."

Not only Zhang Shutong, but the other three had never heard any rumors about him since they were young. Otherwise, they would have searched the whole island long ago instead of waiting until today.

The group walked scattered around the air-raid shelter. The air underground was murky, and it was hard not to feel a tightness in their chests. Someone brought it up first, and the discussion started about whether or not to start the return journey.

Zhang Shutong glanced at the time; they had been walking for about five minutes, and the air-raid shelter seemed to have no end.

Ruoping wanted to go back, but Dukang said that since there was "03", they should continue walking and maybe they could find another staircase, which was "04". He also said that they had walked for so long, wouldn't it be a waste to go back now?
Ruoping was persuaded. Sometimes people are like that; they get trapped by sunk costs.

As for Qingyi, Zhang Shutong was wondering why he hadn't made a sound all this time. Qingyi had somehow gotten around to his side.

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

"Oh, I get it, it's Ghost Blows Out the Light, right? The problem is there are no candles."

Qingyi then said, "Don't we look like we're walking through a tomb passage?"
Zhang Shutong bit his cheek and said, "Brother, well, to be honest, this is really a bit unlucky."

"Who remembers we wanted to get a discounted fried chicken combo meal?" Zhang Shutong sighed. His phone kept flashing a signal bar every now and then before disappearing again.

During the brief intervals when the signal came back on, Zhang Shutong would check for any new messages. Not long ago, his mother asked him where he was, and he said he was hanging out with his best friends and would go back when the rain subsided, so she probably wouldn't need to pick him up.

Zhang Shutong wasn't a timid person, but because of Qingyi's words, he re-examined the tunnel and his heart skipped a beat.

Is this really an air-raid shelter?

It seems that the air-raid shelter is just their speculation. There are indeed air-raid shelters on the island, but no one said that this tunnel is one.

Since that "03", he had never seen any new handwriting. Zhang Shutong thought that it was easy to scare himself in a gloomy environment. This amount of work was not something that a few thieves in a tomb raiding novel could dig up.

They walked for another two minutes, and their formation completely broke down. Du Kang continued recording his video, muttering to himself, wondering if he might have the potential to be a broadcaster in the future. Qingyi continued to educate Ruoping on trivia. Ruoping was both timid and playful, and every time she got scared, she would chase after him and hit him a few times, but she would still listen next time.

Zhang Shutong walked at the back, sometimes looking back, but they had completely lost sight of what was behind them. Endless darkness followed closely behind his steps, and he couldn't see the way he had come from at all.

then.

Even the road ahead was no longer visible.

The flashlight went out.

The darkness swallowed everything.

(End of this chapter)