Mining
Sanyi was unmoved by my teasing, and turned to the boss and asked coldly, "I have finished my instructions, why don't you come over?"
The boss seemed to be accustomed to his world-weary character. He swam over by grabbing a chain and smiling as if nothing had happened.
"Not crazy and not having second amnesia? Then we have one more candidate, that's good."
I felt a little awkward when I saw this strange expression on the face I was used to seeing in the mirror. But the advantage of talking to "myself" is that I don't need to say a lot of unnecessary words or be polite. I can just ask him directly:
"What do we do now?"
The boss looked at me carefully and became serious. "Quarrying. The only thing you can and are allowed to do here is quarrying." He snapped his fingers and asked me to look down.
I was somewhat curious about the "quarry" they mentioned repeatedly, so I lowered my head and looked around.
At this moment, we are already at the bottom of this space covered with blue-black knife edges. We can clearly see that the base of the stone pillar is very strange and is not integrated with the entire ground.
Compared with the uniformity of the main body of the stone pillars, the bottoms of those stone pillars are much larger and their shapes are irregular.
They are not pointed cones like stalagmites, nor do they have many wrinkles that grow naturally. Instead, they are very deliberate cubes, about two meters long and wide, with slender stone pillars extending abruptly from them, giving people a sense of incompatible and stiff patchwork.
I exclaimed, feeling somewhat confused.
To be honest, this doesn't look like a mineral deposit.
The entire ground depression was so flat, or neat, without any undulations or burrs, just a nearly perfect smooth arc. In my limited knowledge, I don't think I've ever seen a mine like this.
Add to that the rows of stone pillars that look like beehives, and it looks weird no matter how you look at it.
The boss was holding a handheld searchlight, with no intention of turning on the light. He just knocked on the bottom of the stone pillar with the metal hoop of the searchlight.
At this time, I realized something was wrong. The cube made almost no sound when I knocked it, and it was very dull and solid. After a small layer of leaf-shaped blade was knocked open like shale, there was dense rust underneath.
The boss took me to the side and saw that there was a broken corner, which should have been broken open by their previous hard work. Among the potholes, I saw something like a rusty metal pipe exposed.
I touched the metal pipe and felt an uncomfortable prick on the outside of my protective gloves: "What is this?"
"The handrail of the mine cart."
I was slightly startled, and took a step back to look again. The wrapped cube did look a bit like a wheelbarrow. How could the stone pillar grow out of a mine cart?
The creepy feeling became stronger: "Are these all mine carts? Where are the ore veins and other mining tools?"
“At the bottom.”
The boss stomped on the ground hard and took me to the side again, bypassing the cover of several stone pillars. A large area of dug up ground was full of debris, which looked like cement and white plaster, with some weathered and dried moss mixed in.
When we dug the deepest part, we saw a half-down escalator, completely embedded in the ground. The flooded steps looked vague and uncertain, which made me subconsciously think about what was buried at the end of the steps.
But the excavation stopped here, and some engineer shovels were scattered on the spot, reflecting a strange dark blue color in the water. It can be seen that the section where the excavation was stopped was sealed with a layer of cement and white plaster.
The more I looked at it, the more I felt something was wrong. If what I saw and understood was correct, this place had been completely filled up by humans?
Sanyi raised his hand to block me and told me not to get too close.
"Before the Nian family discovered this place, this mine was originally a hidden industry." Sanyi said, "But it was abandoned a long time ago, everyone evacuated, and almost no relevant information was left."
"In fact, in our generation, Taizi should be the first to look through the records and get to the bottom of it. But we don't know how many times he came here, and what he gained and failed along the way."
He half squatted down, his voice a little distorted in the water, and pointed to the excavated section.
"This was done by the first group of us who entered the water. After we discovered repeated cement seals, we suspended our work. At the time, our instructions from above were to take some samples of the seal and return to the ground to wait."
"Where are the people?"
"They are all dead."
It wasn't unexpected, but my heart sank all the same.
Because no human bodies were found around. Sanyi said that the mandrills would not leave the waterway and the iron net area, and the broken limbs vomited out in the stagnant water were all severely tanned corpses, so where did the guys who died recently go?
Based on my experience, if the guys all died in the waterway on the way back, the remains should have been collected by the mandrills in time. Could it be that they were all piled up and collected in the nest that I haven't found yet, so there is no trace of them?
While he was speculating, a waiter next to him said sadly that to be precise, that group of guys died one after another.
I felt a chill run down my spine when I heard this and asked what he meant.
The guy shook his head, as if he couldn't bear to recall the story, but he still described it to me.
It should be noted that the ground was still solid and dry at that time, as the tide had not yet risen. They also did not see the waterways, which were also made by drilling machines.
But as the drill was drilling, the drill bit seemed to get stuck and hummed a few times. The echo from below was very empty, and there was a faint flash of water surface deep underground.
Zhang Tianyi mentioned before that there are not only fake people among the members of Hidden Man, but also people like Xu You and Nian Ziqing, who once mistakenly thought that they were also fake people and thus came into contact with Hidden Man.
But most of these people are troublemakers who disobey discipline and are unwilling to accept constraints. Compared with the pseudo-humans' instinctive desire for strange stories, they are more motivated by the thrill of adventure. They cannot stand some "monsters" in the team like Taizai who like to wear human skins, but do not reject blood and violence, and claim to be extraordinary progressives.
Seeing something strange underground, they were the most excited as they rarely got together and immediately asked to be the first to go.
The core pseudo-people had just experienced the Zhang family meeting incident and had no intention of disciplining the team, so they just nodded and pointed to a small team of about seven people, letting those troublemakers who were determined to run wild to lead the way.
They hung a large lamp to illuminate the way for the guys going down, and the process of going down was very smooth. However, occasionally some guys reported that there were many vertical tunnels like hanging shafts below, which were suspected to be abandoned mines.
It is said that after going down, there are only a few puddles here and there, and everything looks more like a karst cave with some kind of karst landform.
When we found the underground part of the stone forest, several excited guys joked that it was also a kind of stalactite. But why are there stalagmites drilling backwards into the ground, and the color is also unusual. We can take some of them and pretend to be the so-called "evergreen sky stalactites", which will definitely make some fools out of some middle school students.
While chatting and laughing, one of the guys discovered that there were many small holes like honeycomb coal on the surrounding stone walls, and there were also tiny pieces of what looked to be dried feces and bird bones next to the holes.
They thought about it and decided that the traces did not look like those of a bat, so they asked one of them to put on a lighting and go in to take a look.
At this point, the guy suddenly became a little emotional. He was the operator on the ground at the time, answering the call for the team. He was already somewhat dissatisfied with the laughing attitude of the few people, and he felt a little depressed when he heard them being so reckless.
But before he could stop them, a scream was heard from the other side, followed by a series of panicked gunshots.
It seemed like someone shouted, "The call is stuck." After a long while of chaotic noise, a guy, still in shock, resumed the call.
The operator suppressed his impatience and asked, "What's the matter?"
The creature hesitated for a moment, and spat out a mouthful of blood. "It looks like a monkey, or a lizard or a fish, anyway it's in the water. A layer of shallow water just came out, and it ran away when we shot it." As he spoke, he hissed, and cursed in a low and gloomy voice a few very dirty words, as if he had been bitten by a mandrill in a hurry.
The operator frowned and asked quickly how many creatures were attacking and what form they took. He then raised his hand high to indicate to the other guys who were taking over orders that something was wrong.
The one who led the group underground was none other than Da Jiang who later came to the drilling engine room. He immediately said angrily, "Why are you so surprised at such a small matter? Haven't you seen wild monkeys before? Besides, those creatures can't stay away from water for too long. What are you afraid of?"
I was stunned and couldn't help interrupting here:
"Why is it Da Jiang? Also, they encountered a mandrill?"
Sanyi patted the operator who looked uncertain, asked him to calm down, took over the call and asked me if I remembered that the "palms" of mandrills are actually mostly made up of webbed feet, covered with a layer of mucus.
I still remember this, and after thinking about it, it suddenly dawned on me: "So, these creatures are actually closer to giant salamanders, and are amphibious?"
Sanyi nodded and said, "We later captured a mandrill. Not long after leaving the water, it began to scream and become restless, and the yellow rash-like spots on its body began to change color and darken.
And after about 20 minutes, its entire body seemed to be severely dehydrated, the mucus dried up very quickly, and then the yellow hairs began to fall off severely, and it also showed symptoms of suffocation. "
I was a little surprised. "That is to say, the mandrills didn't attack us too much during the day, partly because they couldn't stay out of the water for too long."
I see.
Perhaps it was because of this that the first advance team only had a minor conflict with the mandrills in the mine tunnel that had not yet been filled with water.
Perhaps it was because in the first encounter, the mandrills appeared weak and harmless in a waterless environment, so the troublemakers did not take it seriously and continued to drill deeper. Although the operator had some complaints, he was also somewhat misled in his judgment and just thought they had encountered some wild animals living in the cave.
Not long after exploring, Da Jiang was a little surprised and asked for some equipment for digging and exploring caves to be sent down from above.
"It's right here," Sanyi said solemnly, "Da Jiang and his team said they saw the bottom of the stone forest and the water level barely covered their feet. They took some photos of this blue-gray spherical space for us. Then, as I just said, a secondary cement seal was found during the excavation, and the team returned."
I was startled, and after thinking about it, I realized that something was strange. Things didn't seem to be consistent with what I thought:
"So when did they die?"
If we take Da Jiang as a benchmark, he lived long enough to operate a drilling rig for me for a while. Even though I didn't formally meet him, the time span of "died one after another" is a bit too long.
The operator smiled bitterly and pointed to the faded guide ropes that had been floating above our heads for a long time:
"Seven of us have come up to get our equipment. We found that the water level has risen so fast that it has already reached the entrance to the second section of the waterway where you dived."
However, it was discovered that after the water level rose, the mandrills still did not appear in the dark, as if it was indeed an accidental encounter.
Those people followed the instructions and forced themselves to observe for half an hour. Apart from the rising water, nothing seemed to happen. Finally, they could not sit still anymore.
“That’s when the guide line was dropped.”
The operator said, "Da Jiang was bitten by a mandrill when he went down for the first time, and he looked abnormally hot when he went down again.
We were afraid that he might have rabies or tetanus, so we left him in the cabin of the drilling rig to rest alone. He took some medicine and fell asleep for a while, then he kept shouting that water was dripping on his body and asked who was torturing him.
This unexpected turn of events made my scalp numb, and I suddenly realized something:
"That part where Da Jiang's body was dismembered by mandrills..."
"This is what we were arguing about when you fell asleep, Advisor." San Yi said calmly, "We didn't arrange his death. I was really surprised at the time. We originally wanted to mislead you. What we arranged was just the mandrill tied in the canal and the human head in its hand."
I was startled, as if I was hit on the top of my head by a small hammer, and suddenly I lost my voice:
"So you tied yourself up in the middle of the night to check how Da Jiang died?"
Sanyi seemed to smile and looked at me with a strange look.
"Advisor, the cabin of the drilling rig was covered with water stains when I opened it at night. There were scratches all over the cabin door glass, and the scratches got worse as they got closer to the door. There were bloody fingerprints all over the door frame seal. Da Jiang's fingernails were torn from scratching."
"The only explanation I can think of is that while we were dealing with you and guiding you to come to the stone forest for observation... at the drilling machine, without anyone noticing, the dripping of water on Da Jiang's body worsened, and in an instant a large amount of water flooded him out of nowhere, causing him to drown in the cabin alive."
"I said I found the drilling rig seemed to have faded abnormally, and I wasn't making it up. When I checked it at night, I found that it was water dripping down the cantilever. Where the water dripped, rust marks seemed to be everywhere at double the speed. It was severely aged."
"So..." My breathing became heavy. "If the situation hadn't changed after we found the drip and discussed countermeasures in the hospital, Da Jiang's fate would be mine."
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