"Why do I feel like there's another step on the ground? Isn't this flat land?"
Du Kang was also dazed after speaking.
Qingyi asked:
"A step? I don't get what you mean."
"How should I put it... There's a very obvious height difference. Meaning... where you guys are standing right now is flat land, but a few steps over there's a raised platform. That's the thing that tripped me."
"How high is it?"
"It's not too high, feels about the same as a brick. Actually, at first I thought it was a brick too, but I didn't expect the area to get bigger the more I groped around. I'm not exaggerating, guys," Du Kang shuddered, "but it feels like I'm squatting right on top of this platform now."
As he spoke, he shone the flashlight into the water, but the light couldn't penetrate the murky mud water at all.
Du Kang had no choice but to keep groping, asking as he did:
"And I clearly walked through the room once just now, so how did I not notice it? That shouldn't be right."
"You were walking along the wall just now, you didn't go toward the middle at all," Qingyi reminded him.
"Oh, right, I see," Du Kang realized. "But the question is, why build a platform inside the room? Also, why does this feel like iron when I touch it? Hiss, it even has edges and corners?"
"Iron?"
Zhang Shutong caught this keyword. Thoughtful, he instinctively wanted to plunge his hand into the water.
Ruoping, however, advised:
"You stay still for a bit. You're already carrying an injury, let Du Kang and Qingyi look first."
In fact, without her needing to say it, Qingyi had already nimbly rolled up his sleeves. He raised an eyebrow:
"We've finally found something interesting."
Zhang Shutong watched him bend down, plunging one hand into the water. As he groped around, he simply started walking, unexpectedly circling all the way around Du Kang.
"No, bro, what are you doing?" Du Kang was startled. "Why are you making me look like some kind of sacrificial offering?"
"No, that's not right."
Qingyi said in a low voice.
"What?"
"I'm saying you didn't get it right from the very beginning."
Qingyi straightened up, shaking the mud water off his hands. He said softly:
"This is a door."
"A door?"
"Yes, an iron door. A very regular rectangle, and it has a handle."
"Who would just throw an iron door here for no reason?"
"To be precise, it wasn't discarded and left unused, but rather this door was meant to be here." Qingyi tapped a certain spot with the toe of his shoe. "This place feels very much like a hinge or a similar structure when I touch it. You guys know about cellars, right? There are still some on the island, used for storing food over the winter."
"But that kind of thing should be in the surrounding villages, this is the urban area." Zhang Shutong immediately recalled the basement in the dormitory. "Did you feel anything like a keyhole?"
"No, it feels like a very smooth door."
"In other words, there's a possibility of opening it?"
"We should be able to."
Zhang Shutong walked to Qingyi's side. He finally turned serious, squatting down and plunging his hand into the water. After observing for a moment, he pulled his hand back:
"Look, even though we can't see what the iron door looks like, the water is flowing toward the vicinity of the door. This means the space below isn't completely sealed; the water is slowly seeping down."
He then felt the handle Qingyi had mentioned and tried pulling it:
"The handle is pretty wide, one person might not be able to pull it alone."
"I was thinking the same thing. Let's call Du Kang to try together."
Qingyi called out, and Du Kang didn't care about the dog anymore, hurriedly stepping forward to help. Zhang Shutong took a step back; with his arm currently in a sling, squeezing in would only get in the way.
"How is this getting weirder and weirder..." Ruoping stood beside him, speaking in a low voice.
"It was weird to begin with," Zhang Shutong thought about it. "Think about it, this house doesn't even have windows. It's better to say its existence wasn't for people to live in, but rather it was born for this iron door on the ground."
"Then what exactly is hidden inside? It can't really be that people from the past hid food in there, right?"
"Hard to say." Zhang Shutong made a simple judgment. The place where the clay figures were born was a restricted area, so pulling open this cellar at least wouldn't cause too much trouble. Since it was within control, they might as well try it first.
While talking, Qingyi and Du Kang had already gauged the weight. Then, they grasped the handle at the same time and looked at each other:
"Three, two, one!"
The two suddenly exerted force, the veins on their foreheads bulging out:
"Heave—"
With a creak, like a long, drawn-out sigh from ancient times, the iron door was lifted open a crack.
"Hey, it moved, it moved!" Du Kang shouted loudly.
The two pulled back with all their might. Seeing the angle of the iron door opening wider and wider, almost forming a right angle, Zhang Shutong and Ruoping hurriedly stepped forward to support it, while reminding them at the same time:
"Everyone watch your step, don't step into empty space!"
The four stood on opposite sides, laboriously lifting the iron door. In an instant, the mud water on the ground seemed to have finally found an exit to vent. The water filling the room rushed down, flowing with a crashing sound like a waterfall. Zhang Shutong then had Du Kang and Qingyi carefully switch positions, and then the four stood on the same side. They gave a powerful push—
With a loud crash, the iron door hit the ground, splashing the mud water high up. Their faces looked as if they had been washed over, and they were soaked from head to toe. But right now, no one had the time to care about the dirty water on themselves, instead staring fixedly at the opening beneath the iron door.
The opening was likewise rectangular. The surrounding mud water surged inward, making it temporarily impossible to see the interior clearly. The small dog scrambled up in panic and was lifted by the back of its neck by Du Kang. No one knew what to say; at this time, there was nothing to do but wait. After about several dozen seconds, once the accumulated water had drained completely, Zhang Shutong shone the flashlight down and suddenly froze.
Beneath the iron door was not at all a cellar like Qingyi had guessed. He had seen cellars in the countryside before; they didn't have much of a structure, being nothing more than an earthen hole dug underground, with cabbages, potatoes, radishes, and other storage-resistant vegetables kept inside, usually requiring a ladder to go down.
But when he shifted the flashlight toward the opening, what appeared in his line of sight...
Was clearly a flight of stairs!
The stairs were made of concrete, extending straight down into the depths of the earth, narrow and deep, with no telling where they led.
The thing hidden underground was much larger than he had imagined. Just as Zhang Shutong was about to take a few steps down the stairs, Qingyi suddenly said:
"I think I know what this is. It's the entrance to an air-defense shelter."
"An air-defense shelter?"
Seeing the realized expressions on the other two, Zhang Shutong figured this was yet another piece of old news known only to the locals. He could only listen as Qingyi explained:
"It should be an air-defense shelter, no mistake. Shutong, you know we used to have guerrillas on our island, right?"
Zhang Shutong nodded. He did know this, or rather, it was history that every kid on the island knew.
In a sense, the small island could be considered an old revolutionary base area from back then. Benefiting from its innate geographical advantages, it had served as an important base during the War of Resistance. Now, when going into the city, one could still see a specially built martyrs' memorial hall, and the school had organized activities there in the past.
Qingyi added:
"One theory is that it was built during the War of Resistance. Of course, another theory is that it was an air-defense project from the 1970s, during the period when relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated. Back then, there was a very famous slogan, 'Dig deep caves, store grain everywhere.' But I haven't looked into the specifics carefully. In short, what is certain is that there are air-defense shelters on the island."
"Do you two still remember the air-defense drills from the past?"
These words were directed at Du Kang and Ruoping. Qingyi recalled:
"When we were in elementary school, the school would organize air-defense drills. Back then, everyone would go hide inside the air-defense shelter."
"Wait a minute, there's actually an air-defense shelter under the school?" Zhang Shutong was truly hearing about this for the first time.
The elementary school and middle school on the island were right next to each other. Having gone to school on the island for three years, he had naturally participated in the annual air-defense drills, but everyone just ran out to the playground to go through the motions, laughing and talking along the way. Who had ever seen a real deal like an air-defense shelter?
"There used to be one, but it's gone now," Qingyi said. "It used to be right under our school's synthetic running track. Actually, back when we were in elementary school, there was no such thing as a synthetic track; it was all paved with cinder."
"And then?"
Qingyi spread his hands:
"But by the turn of the century, a lot of air-defense shelters became useless, and some weren't maintained well, so they were backfilled or renovated. Not just here, I've heard that in some places they even use air-defense shelters as tourist attractions and commercial streets."
Zhang Shutong didn't want to care about attractions or commercial streets for the moment. He immediately thought that since Qingyi said the school's air-defense shelter was right under the synthetic track, and before he transferred schools there was no synthetic track yet, didn't that mean...
"It's exactly what you're thinking." Qingyi nodded. "When Gu Qiumian's dad donated that playground, because they had to lay a new foundation, they backfilled that section of the air-defense shelter."
"So unfortunately, Shutong," Qingyi was still in the mood to crack a joke, "the childhood you experienced on the island is actually incomplete."
Zhang Shutong didn't speak. He merely looked toward the passage leading underground, and some conjectures instantly formed in his mind. Seeking verification, he said:
"Then let's make an inference. Since this is behind the hospital, and the old hospital was a building from the last century, there's a high probability that an air-defense shelter entrance was left underneath. So this house is actually an entrance meant for people to escape, which is why it has remained here for so many years?"
"Probably so." Qingyi folded his arms. "We just don't know if they switched to a new entrance after the new hospital was built."
"Hey, wait a minute, we didn't cause some kind of trouble, did we?" Du Kang was a bit panicked. "According to what you guys are saying, since this air-defense shelter might still be in use, won't we flood it by opening it like this?"
"No way." Qingyi rolled his eyes at him. "If it got flooded by this bit of rain, what kind of air-defense shelter would it be? Still, it's better to go down and take a look. Since it's a formal defense work, at least we don't have to worry about safety issues."
Then, the three boys' gazes turned toward Ruoping at the same time.
"What do you say?" Zhang Shutong asked. "If you're scared, we don't actually have to pick today."
"I'm fine," Ruoping hesitated for a moment. "I'm actually afraid of those supernatural, unexplainable things. If everything can be explained by science, then it doesn't matter. Think about it, although these things look very abnormal, the door opened because of the dog, and the old house exists because of the air-defense shelter. To put it bluntly, it's just a national defense project left over from the past, so what's there to be afraid of?"
Zhang Shutong didn't expect her to be quite good at comforting herself, but then Ruoping's tone shifted:
"But I want to go back and change my shoes now."
She added conflictedly:
"But if we go back just like this, I probably won't be able to sleep well tonight, and you guys will definitely nag about it the whole way."
"Then what do you think we should do?" Du Kang asked instinctively.
"How should I know what to do?" she snapped back.
"Sigh, I really... I really owe the three of you!"
Ruoping had a character that never admitted defeat. She closed her eyes and opened them again:
"Let's go. Just according to that whatever chaotic energy-saving doctrine, let's go quickly and come back quickly!"
"It's the energy-conserving doctrine."
"Beat it!"