vicious person

Chapter 8

Strange Changes in the Dark (5)

Soon this section of the passageway came to an end, and there was another bend. After turning around, there was still another section of the passageway.

By the time I reached the eighth section of the passageway, I had a bad feeling. How long was this passageway, and how many bends did it have? I'd been here for about half an hour. He Yunkai and Liu Wenying had been gone for so long; if they'd reached a new place, they should have immediately turned back. If the passageway was too long, they should have stopped and returned to report. But I hadn't run into either of them yet.

Moreover, although I didn’t pay much attention to distinguish them, each section of the tunnel still felt frighteningly similar to the others. How could nature possibly create such similar tunnels?

After a few more turns, the road signs became one at each bend, getting fainter and more haphazard, until they finally disappeared completely. I realized this wasn't due to any unforeseen circumstances, but rather because the two of them had simply lost interest in marking the road.

I started running forward, traversing seven sections of the tunnel before finally stopping, leaning against the stone wall and panting. I knew in my heart that things hadn't gone smoothly; from the moment I stepped into the tunnel, He Yunkai, Liu Wenying, and I had already been caught in a predicament.

This situation is likely a dark tunnel from which there is no way out.

How could this small mountain hollow possibly contain such a series of winding passageways? These endless passageways must be the work of some mysterious force. I thought of the Eight Trigrams Formation set up by Zhuge Liang. Could those trapped inside look like this?

I've lost count of how many turns I've made and how many passageways I've walked through. Two or three hours have passed, and Liang Yingwu and the others are probably already in despair.

Walking endlessly forward in a dead-end passageway, all I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps, and all I could see was the increasingly dim beam of my flashlight. I didn't know how much longer I could endure it. It wasn't just the physical strain; the constant mental pressure, the overwhelming despair that welled up from the depths of my heart, was tearing at my nerves.

I have never felt such despair, never, not even when death was just a meter away. My consciousness grew increasingly clouded with each clearly audible gasp. I bit my lip until it bled, using the pain to keep myself conscious. I checked my watch: 3:50 PM. When did I get in? 10 AM, or 11 AM?

My legs felt like they were filled with lead. I pulled out the two remaining compressed biscuits from my pocket. My stomach was already numb with pain, and these two biscuits would allow me to walk a little further.

I didn't stop and sit on the ground to eat the cookies; instead, I ate them as I walked. I was afraid that if I sat down, I would never have the strength or courage to stand up again.

My mind was gradually losing its capacity to think; only one thought remained: keep moving forward, don't give up. Many might scoff, considering that military field training often involves continuous marches for a full day and night, carrying loads weighing dozens of kilograms—far exceeding what I'm experiencing now. But there's a fundamental difference between that and my current situation: knowledge. Knowing where the destination is allows many to persevere, even if it's just walking for a day or two. But in this dark tunnel, with no idea how long it will take, how many turns there will be, or even whether the tunnel itself truly exists, the test of mental fortitude is brutally cruel, far surpassing physical exhaustion.

Moreover, I have been hungry for so long and am physically exhausted.

The flashlight in my hand had run out of power some time ago. I felt my way forward along the stone wall, needing to touch something to give me some peace of mind, to help me persevere and not give up.

I've lost count of how much sweat I've shed, but my hands and feet are as cold as my heart.

"That's a lot!"

"Look, there really are so many!"

I vaguely heard shouts ahead. Then a bright light shone on my face. My blurred vision prevented me from seeing anything. After a few seconds, my brain realized it was a flashlight beam.

The flashlight beam went out quickly; it was the last spare. I heard someone running towards me, and I felt a sense of relief. I fell straight forward to the ground, and the dead flashlight rolled far away from my hand.

The Secrets of Bones (1)

It took me about ten seconds to confirm that I had woken up from my coma, because when my eyes were closed, my pupils couldn't feel the light, and the darkness gave me a sense of unreality, which was especially strong when I first woke up.

I wasn't injured, but my highly tense nerves suddenly relaxed, and my body, which had already reached its limit, could no longer support me. I struggled to sit up, still feeling completely exhausted.

"You're awake." Liang Yingwu was sitting next to me. When he saw me move, he quickly helped me up.

"What time is it now?" I asked.

Liang Yingwu glanced at his watch, and a green fluorescent light flashed: "11:20. You slept for an hour and a half."

So, I've been walking in that passageway for over ten hours. I think if my subconscious hadn't sensed that I was still in a huge crisis, given my current physical condition, I probably wouldn't have woken up even after sleeping for twelve hours.

Liang Yingwu handed me some things, and by the faint green light, I could see that they were three compressed biscuits.

“This is…” I didn’t want Liang Yingwu to give me his food like this.

“Eat up, everyone agreed, including He Yunkai and Liu Wenying.”

Then I remembered why I had entered the passageway: "When did they come out?"

“About nine hours before you,” Liang Yingwu said gravely, “no one has entered the passageway since then.”

I was stunned.

"It's that force that's preventing us from continuing the experiment."

If we had tried every scientific method imaginable, we might have found clues to the secrets of the tunnel. But that force ended it all in the most brutal way. The original tunnel only required two turns to return to the starting point, a few minutes' walk at a brisk pace. But it took He Yunkai and his group over three hours, and I took more than three times as long to get out. If anyone dared to enter the tunnel again, they would probably be dead before they even emerged.

I'm afraid I'm really going to die here. This is the first time such a thought has crossed my mind.

I forced down the third cookie, my mind a jumbled mess, even forgetting to save a piece or two for later. As I finished, I shook my hand, gathered the crumbs together, sucked them into my mouth, and then clapped my hands. Suddenly, I noticed a faint green glow on the back of my hand. My mind was still a bit foggy; I'd seen the light when I took the cookie, initially thinking it was the glow of Liang Yingwu's watch, but now I realized it wasn't. I looked up at the source and was startled.

It was phosphorescence. Not far away, in the center of the living area where the bones had been cleared away, there was now a pile of bones emitting a bright green phosphorescence. They were all large bones, skulls, leg bones, and so on, clearly selected from the glowing bones in the cave after considerable effort.

“You noticed that,” Liang Yingwu said.

"How...how could this be..."

“I wouldn’t let them use the last flashlight, but they couldn’t stand the darkness anymore,” Liang Yingwu sighed.

I stood there for a while longer, then I understood what Liang Yingwu meant. The passageway could no longer be entered, and even the exploratory experiments, which were already hopeless, could no longer continue. Of course, these students would despair. Their mentality had changed, to the point that on the one hand, they could not bear the darkness, and on the other hand, because they were getting closer and closer to death, they were no longer so afraid of the white bones that represented death. Perhaps they even had a perverse, rebellious sense of closeness to them.

I looked at the students; they sat there lifelessly, not uttering a sound. Liu Wenying was huddled next to Liang Yingwu; although she had come out nine hours earlier than me, she hadn't recovered from her fear. This once cheerful and beautiful girl was completely unrecognizable from who she was just a few days ago.

“She needs to be next to me to calm down,” Liang Yingwu explained to me in a low voice.

In any other situation, I would definitely make a loud joke, but now that I've heard this, I have no interest in replying at all.

"Crunch."

"Who?" "What is that?" Several voices shouted at the same time.

It sounded like something being chewed. I shuddered; it reminded me of a dead person, of chewing on a dead person.

"Damn it! Zhu Zili, what are you doing?" He Yunkai grabbed Zhu Zili by the collar and lifted him off the ground.

"I, I didn't..." Zhu Zili tried hard to break free, but couldn't utter a complete sentence.

"What's wrong?" Liang Yingwu stood up and walked over there. I also tried to stand up, but when I tried to push myself up, my legs felt sore and numb, and I sat back down on the ground.

Sitting on the other side of Zhu Zili, Zhao Gang picked something up from the ground: "He stole food," Zhao Gang said angrily.

The others, realizing what had happened, immediately erupted in commotion.

"Put him down first, He Yunkai," Liang Yingwu said sternly.

He Yunkai snorted heavily and released his hands. Zhu Zili staggered back a few steps, until he was outside the living area before collapsing to the ground with his hands supporting himself on several white bones, coughing incessantly, apparently choked by the chocolate waffle he had just eaten.

Zhao Gang gripped the large half of the chocolate waffle he had picked up from the ground tightly, staring at it intently as he held it higher and higher.

He Yunkai grabbed Zhao Gang's hand: "What do you want to do?" He then snatched the biscuit away with his other hand.

"You!" Zhao Gang was furious and was about to lose his temper.

Liang Yingwu strode up to the two men and said loudly, "Give it to me."

He Yunkai did not respond.

"Give it to me!" Liang Yingwu said sternly.

He Yunkai hesitated for a moment, then finally gave the biscuit to Liang Yingwu.

Liang Yingwu walked up to Zhu Zili, whose cough had gradually subsided, and asked, "What about the rest?"

No, that's all.

Liang Yingwu stared intently at Zhu Zili, whose eyes were only visible as a pair of green reflections, and said, "Perhaps we should have He Yunkai search him."

The Secrets of Bones (2)

"No, no." Zhu Zili reached into his crotch and pulled out a sealed chocolate waffle. Heaven knows where he had put it.

"This is all I have. Really, I'm just too hungry to stand it anymore."

“If I see you hiding it again, I’ll chop you up,” He Yunkai shouted.

As soon as he finished speaking, a chorus of agreement erupted, interspersed with curses from a few girls.

"Go to hell! If you die, you won't need to eat anymore." Lu Yun's curse sent a chill down my spine. I worried that if something like this happened again, He Yunkai might actually resort to violence.

Liang Yingwu weighed the waffle in his hand, then tossed it back to Zhu Zili. He then walked over to the small pile of food and said, “Now, I’m going to distribute all the food equally among you. You can eat it all at once, or you can save some to eat slowly. But please remember, this is your last food. Zhu Zili, the small portion you ate will be deducted from your portion.”

I was glad I wasn't given a big bag of potato chips; not only would they not be filling, but their sheer size made me feel insecure. I received a full ten compressed biscuits, while Liang Yingwu gave himself a whole bag of soda crackers. I think he deliberately favored himself and me; for him, preserving himself and me as much as possible was crucial to increasing our chances of escape. This was an optimal allocation of resources; he was never a rigid, absolute fairness advocate. Many people received large or even two large bags of puffed snacks, including Liu Wenying, who tried to get as close to Liang Yingwu as possible. Few people could truly discern what makes a person live longer.

Ever since I woke up, I've had a vague feeling that something was going on, but I couldn't quite grasp the key point. Until just now, when I thought about how Liang Yingwu had consciously left the best food for himself and me, hoping to give us a better chance of getting out of the tunnel, a sudden flash of inspiration seemed to hit me.

“It’s conscious, Liang Yingwu, it’s conscious,” I exclaimed.

“Conscious, why…” Liang Yingwu asked halfway before realizing the answer.

Originally, we always thought that we were trapped in something like a formation. Whether it was natural or man-made, it had existed in this cave for who knows how long. We were innocent and were completely trapped by our own curiosity.

However, the mysterious force within the passageway clearly altered its pattern due to our exploration, preventing us from continuing our experiments. This cannot be explained by the natural reaction of any formation; it is almost certainly a conscious reaction based on intelligent thought.

A conscious force, meaning that life we've never encountered before exists here...

But why, why would it do that?

I lay on the ground, the extreme fatigue slowly receding, but my body was still much weaker than usual. The energy I had expended couldn't be replenished with just a few biscuits. A good night's sleep might make me feel a little better by tomorrow morning, but that wouldn't help. Besides, my mind was full of thoughts about how to escape this predicament, so how could I possibly fall asleep?

The tunnel is impassable, but it's the only way to the outside world. If we give up, can we really carve out a path ourselves? If this were a video game, it would be like being targeted and waiting for a headshot to end the game. But in reality, and it's happened to us, we have to find a way to fight back.

I had actually considered this: to deal with the problem of getting stuck once inside the cave, one could tie a rope around a person's waist. If the passage ahead couldn't be completed, they could simply use the rope to return. However, that force clearly didn't want anyone to conduct such an experiment again; there was no guarantee it wouldn't secretly break the rope, and who knows what might happen then. So, I was still undecided about whether to discuss this method with Liang Yingwu. But if we were to completely abandon this passage and find another way, I really had no clue what to do.

With a loud "whoosh," I quickly sat up and looked. I saw that the pile of bones that had been used for lighting and was glowing with phosphorescent light not far away had collapsed. He Yunkai was standing next to it, and Zhu Zili, who had fallen into the pile of bones, was struggling to get up.

"He Yunkai is robbing people! He Yunkai is robbing people!" Zhu Zili shouted.

"Who knows how much you've eaten? I think you've already eaten more than enough for two people. What do you need so much food for?" He Yunkai grabbed the strap of Zhu Zili's travel bag and pulled hard, his facial muscles twitching, looking terrifyingly ferocious in the green light.

Although Zhu Zili knew he couldn't beat He Yunkai, food was life at stake, so he refused to let go. He didn't even bother to stand up again and held onto the bag tightly.

"Let go, He Yunkai!" Liang Yingwu shouted.

He Yunkai did not listen to Liang Yingwu as usual, but retorted, "I usually eat four bowls in one meal, but this kid only eats one bowl. The food I get is about the same as his. This is not fair. He must share some with me."

While He Yunkai was distracted talking to Liang Yingwu, Zhu Zili suddenly stood up, still holding his bag in his right hand, but grabbing a thigh bone with his left, looking like he was about to fight He Yunkai to the death.

The thing that Liang Yingwu and I had been worried about has finally happened.

The students around finally realized what was happening, and unlike last time, this time everyone advised He Yunkai not to act rashly.

He Yunkai's face was ashen, but he did not give up his previous idea. He pulled hard with his right hand, and Zhu Zili staggered forward, raising the white bone high in his left hand, about to fight He Yunkai.

Lu Yun shouted loudly, "He Yunkai, if you steal from others now, others will steal from you later."