I saw a section of iron ladder. It was very dark inside, but I could see water at the bottom.
It was really a manhole.
I thought for a moment, but I figured I wasn"t wrong since the lid was full of holes. If it rained, it would definitely fill in, so the wire must go down a little further.
The manhole was very small, and there was almost no s.p.a.ce for me to turn around after I entered. After going down, the ensuing area was a cubic s.p.a.ce of about one meter, full of water and fallen leaves. There was also a hole on the left that could only be crawled through. I saw the wire went all the way down, stretching directly to the hole.
I held the flashlight in my mouth, climbed into the hole, and crawled straight ahead.
This kind of feeling reminded me of crawling through the grave robbers" tunnel again and I felt very uncomfortable. But I clenched my teeth and persisted, climbing six or seven meters until I finally reached the end of the tunnel.
With a flashlight, I found that at the end of this pa.s.sage was a room. It was built on a covert elevated frame of iron and wood, with water flowing underneath. But the frame was badly decayed and when I stepped on it, it felt like I was stepping on cotton.
There were several bookshelves, a bed, and a table, on which a computer, a video recorder, and a TV were placed. They were badly mildewed due to the moisture, and I could see many mildew spots on them from where I stood.
The wire went to the computer in this room, but I didn"t see anyone.
The man hadn"t come back yet?
I paused for a moment and then touched the computer. It was cold.
There were so many potted plants covering the manhole where I came in just now that if he wanted to go out, he would have to remove them first. He couldn"t have come in and out from there.
I looked around the room with my flashlight and found that there was another hole in the wall to the right, through which water flowed out from the direction I came from. I took a peek and saw that it was very deep, but no one was inside.
Who the f.u.c.k was this? Even though someone lived in the sewer under Uncle Three"s house, he still kept in touch with Uncle Three in such a secretive way.
This was f.u.c.king weird.
I shined my flashlight on those bookshelves, which were all full of videotapes.
My hands began to shake and I pulled out a box… I found all the videos on the shelf were numbered, exactly like the ones I received at that time. But it felt wrong when I pulled it out. It was too light, and when I opened it, it turned out to be empty.
I opened several more boxes and found them all empty. I was surprised, why did he put the empty boxes here?
I calmed down after a moment, but my heart was very confused and I wanted to sort everything out a little.
There was a man under Uncle Three"s house, who kept in touch with him in a particularly strange way. Did Uncle Three know this person was here?
I didn"t think anyone could make such a dark room under Uncle Three"s watchful eyes, let alone his house. He must"ve known about it, and it was even possible that everything in the dark room was arranged by him.
So how many years had this man been here?
Judging from the degree of rust on this iron and wood frame, this thing had obviously been in existence for a long time. I couldn"t tell exactly how long it was, but I thought it would take at least six or seven years, or even a few decades, to reach this level of decay. Although there was more rain in Hangzhou, on the whole it was usually sunny and cloudy. According to this structure, the sewer pipe wouldn"t have water all year round, so it would take a long time for it to corrode to this extent.
Judging from the appearance of this bed, this man definitely lived here. I went over and flipped the quilt, seeing that it was all clean and neat. Obviously, this person still maintained extreme self-discipline although he lived in this environment.
This person must be an extremely important player in Uncle Three"s plan, and may even be the most central figure; otherwise he wouldn"t exist in such a state.
However, where was this person now? If he had to stay in such a place, he shouldn"t go out often.
This must be someone who couldn"t exist in the outside world, which was why he was hidden this way. It was a bit like the secret annex in Anne Frank"s Diary.
I sat down, rubbed my face, listened to what was going on around me, and turned on the computer when I didn"t hear anything.
This computer was the exact same model as Uncle Three"s and started up smoothly, quickly displaying the same interface as Uncle Three"s computer.
After several operations, I found that it was similar to Uncle Three"s in that there was almost nothing on it.
I immediately opened the mail software.
I saw a blank list with only one email.
I opened it and found it was the last one I wrote.
The rest, both the inbox and outbox, were completely blank.
I suddenly had a bad feeling. I stood up, looked under the bed, opened all the video ca.s.settes on the bookshelf, and looked at the video recorder.
This last e-mail proved that the person I was dealing with was here to send and receive e-mails.
But there was nothing here.
If a person was hiding here, this couldn"t be the case since there would definitely be more traces of life. Maybe he was a robot that did nothing but send and receive emails and process information.
This would definitely drive people crazy. If someone lived here alone, he would definitely go mad.
I kept pacing around the room, wondering what was going on. Was there more than one room?
It was possible. I squatted down and looked at the other side of the hole, thinking that maybe if I climbed through, I would find another room full of daily necessities, even a basketball court, and so on. Maybe there would even be inflatable dolls.
The man may very well live in another room.
I took a deep breath, squatted down, and went in. This pipe was narrower than the other one and I had to suck in my stomach to squeeze in bit by bit. By the time I was halfway there, I realized that this person would definitely not be a big man. If I were a big man and lived like this every day, I would rather die.
I kept going all the way forward and had climbed about ten meters when there suddenly appeared a light in front of me. I climbed out and found that the end of the pipe wasn"t the other room I wanted, but a piece of wood. The plank was full of holes that let the light shine through.
I pushed the plank away and found myself in a dark alley.
This so-called dark alley was created when farmers" houses were built close together. A very narrow pa.s.sage was formed in the middle, flanked by the walls of the two houses on either side. This kind of structure was very unsafe, because thieves could step on both sides of the wall and push themselves up step by step. In response, many residents simply put their walls and their neighbor"s walls together, blocking the two entrances of the narrow pa.s.sage.
In this way, people would soon forget that there was still a very narrow s.p.a.ce between their own house and the neighbor"s.
Most of the time, this kind of structure was used by many antique dealers to place some contraband.
This dark alley only had enough s.p.a.ce for me to move sideways, and it was almost impossible to return to the hole after coming out. I sidled to the wall where there were some bricks that I could use, and I stepped on them and climbed down the wall.
I realized I was by the outer wall of Uncle Three"s home and when I looked around, I found myself puzzled. I could only despondently head back in through the front gate, asking myself, "What"s going on?"
I walked around the yard and touched my head. Based on the underground structure, this guy should"ve come out of the dark alley like me.
How would he come back later? Did he climb over the wall from there? That was fine, I could go to the dark alley to block him. The place was so narrow, he wouldn"t be able to escape.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it would be more appropriate to block him in his room.
I went down the manhole again and went to the room.
I was out of breath after this round of crawling, and sat down on the chair to focus my attention on the entrance. As long as anything stuck out from the inside, I would jump on it and press it to death.
I didn"t dare turn on the flashlight and stayed quietly in the dark.
I didn"t know how long it took, and was in a slight trance, when suddenly I heard someone speak.
I immediately came to my senses with a jolt, quickly holding my breath and looking in the direction of the pa.s.sage.
It was dark over there.
I paused, was I hearing voices?
I had just finished thinking this when there was a voice.
“Friend.”
I didn"t know which corner of the room the sound came from. I was so scared that I almost peed my pants, immediately turning on the flashlight and swinging it around everywhere like a machine gun.
But after taking a look, I found that there was still no one in the room.
Was it in the sewer? I was about to take a look when the voice rang out again: “Turn on the computer.”
I quivered, this time able to clearly distinguish that the voice came from the ceiling.
At that moment, I suddenly felt like something was hanging on the roof, and I immediately looked up.
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Random TN note that you can totally ignore: I was only going to do 2 chapters today but 2 lovely people thanked me for working hard on translating and I was SUPER happy and got motivated lol. I usually crank out about 3 chapters a weekday (20ish pages) but this week I was shooting for 2 chapters a day (15ish pages) because I wanted to finish To be a Heartthrob in a Horror Movie (did that yesterday now that KKTranslate finished it) and Heaven Official"s Blessing (I"m on the extra stories so maybe I can do that tomorrow). Oh well, I don"t might putting aside my own reading when I know others are happy with my work on this project despite it not being the greatest ?