Fatty was right, it was a cell-phone.
We climbed in. This was a tunnel surrounded by stone slabs built of rock that formed a square pa.s.sage.
I could just barely sit up straight inside, but Fatty was a little cramped, and when we came to the place where the light source was lit just now, we found there was a crack in the stone.
The slabs before and after were tightly connected, and only the slabs here had gaps. I didn't why, but it may be related to the operation of the mechanisms here. It turned out that the light was indeed emitted by the phone, which had fallen into a crack in the stone slab.
I recognized it at a glance. This was indeed Xiao Hua's phone.
“That's great, they've been here.” Fatty said.
“Not necessarily. Look at the width of this gap." I gestured with my hand. The gap was much narrower than the phone. “It couldn't have fallen from here.”
“Then why is it down there?”
I said: “This gap should be mobile. The phone was brought from some other place because the mechanism moved.” I had seen such a thing in Xisha and knew that it wasn't impossible as long as it worked properly.
“Then how do we get it out?” Fatty said, “I have fat hands, why don't you try?”
I rolled up my sleeve, spat on my hand, and stretched it into the gap. I knew I was stupid halfway through since my palm could go down, but not my arm. I couldn't reach the phone at all.
“Are we not men? Let's use force." Fatty said. I remembered the iron pick given to us by Ghost just now, and pulled it out. Fatty inserted it into the gap, stabbed it hard, and broke off a chunk of the rock. As a result, the iron pick was bent, and we still couldn't get the phone out.
“Forget it.” Fatty said, “It's not a valuable thing either. I'll buy him another one at most since this style looks old. We'll send him a frying pan as a present, too.”
I thought to myself, "this brand was still on the market," but at this time, the phone in the gap lit up again, flashed a few times, and went out.
“What's going on? Is there any signal in this hole?”
“No, this is a warning from the phone battery. It's running out of power.” I said, “The cover isn't closed which consumes a little power.”
Did you not flip the cover closed? My heart thumped, and I thought that Xiao Hua didn't accidentally drop it since the cover was opened so wide. It wouldn't have been opened by the friction during the fall.
So Xiao Hua must have opened his phone at that time, but there's no signal in this place. Why did he turn it on? There was no need to call or text here.
“No, I still have to get it.” I said, “I think there's a problem.”
Fatty sighed and said, “You're just being paranoid.” I ignored him, dug out all the equipment Ghost gave us and began to smash the gap. After smas.h.i.+ng hard for half an hour, I finally opened a gap, which seemed to allow the phone to pa.s.s. Fatty used iron wire as chopsticks and picked it out carefully.
It was badly worn out, and I blew the dust off of it, turned it on, and saw a text message waiting to be sent.
“Open the phone's memory, everything we've experienced is there.”
“What does this mean?” Fatty wondered, “What is he playing at?”
“Watch the video.” I said. The phone still had 10% power and should last until I finished watching it. I immediately entered the phone's video interface.
There was a video in the library and I immediately saw Xiao Hua's face when I pressed it. Behind him was Pan Zi smoking, and Xiao Hua said something to the people on the opposite side but the microphone was too far away to hear clearly. After saying a few words, he turned his head to the camera and said, “Master Three, I don't know if something has happened to you, but we're in big trouble.”
Xiao Hua looked particularly funny because he was too close to the camera and Pan Zi behind him lit him up with a flashlight, which made his face very dark. He gasped for breath and looked around before saying, “Judging from the current situation, we are likely to die here and are ready to take a risky approach. The accident happened only half an hour after we entered the cave. Many places on Fatty's map have collapsed and there was no way to get through, so now there's nothing we can do.”
As Xiao Hua's camera was pointing at the surrounding walls, Pan Zi illuminated them. I saw the wall and the camera flashed by, but I could still see that there weren't any shadows in the wall.
When the camera was turned back, Xiao Hua continued, “There's nothing in the wall here. We smashed it and found that the inside was sealed firmly. Obviously, someone found that Fatty could get out of here and closed all the pa.s.sages.”
Behind Pan Zi, the camera turned to a bottomless rock crevice: “both sides of the crevice are sealed off and we don't know what happened. It's 7:12 now." After that, the camera suddenly shook and then turned to Pan Zi, who gasped at Xiao Hua and said, “Stop recording, there's no time.”
“There must be a record, or we'll die for nothing.” Xiao Hua's voice could be heard.
Fatty frowned, and the camera turned back to Xiao Hua's side: “ok, now let me show you something. Light!”
The lens began to adjust and the distance shrank. The aperture of the light next to the wall was enlarged. Then the lens moved forward and we saw at once that it wasn't that there weren't any shadows on the wall, just not so many.
We saw a huge shadow illuminated by the flashlight, which wasn't clear on the phone's camera, but we could still judge its size.
At the very least, it was more than four people tall, and one wall simply couldn't accommodate it. Almost the entire top of the cave and the walls on both sides were all surrounded by this dark shadow. We could clearly tell that it had very long hands and feet, extending far like a ribbon.
“This thing travels very fast and started to appear about half an hour after we were trapped here. At this speed, it will come out of the rock in little more than ten minutes. At first glance, this thing is of another breed and we're now ready to fight first. Before it comes out, we'll see if we can kill it. But I don't know what it is, so it's hard to predict what will happen." Xiao Hua continued, “Whoever sees this, if you come to a place where you can see this shadow, be careful.”
With that, Pan Zi gave a loud roar: “The rock is cracked, everyone get ready!” The camera shook and then it was dark.
I thought there was something wrong with the phone and shook it, only to find that the video was finished. Soon the screen lit up again and went back to the video selection screen.
I looked at Fatty and he looked back at me. We didn't speak for a long time.
“Do you think something happened to them?”
“Xiao Hua recorded this video four hours ago, and there's nothing we can do, whether they're ok or not.” Fatty said, “It seems that there are two kinds of miluotuo in this rock wall. In addition to the most common human form, there's another kind that is especially huge, like what we saw just now.”
“Will we be all right?” I suddenly felt uneasy, thinking that Ghost had told us not to stay in one place for too long. We had been here for a long time, but all around was real stone slate so it should be relatively safe here.
“I don't know, but it's better to move forward quickly.” Fatty said, then subconsciously s.h.i.+ned the flashlight behind him.
In an instant, we both froze. Fatty's flashlight lit up the place where we came in, and we saw a strange thing sticking out at the edge of the entrance.
<> <><>