Underground (I) [First Update]
Underground? What could be underground that spreads out in all directions and captures the sound?
Reason tells me that it’s not those banyan tree-shaped people.
Because "people" have two ears and two eyes, they can directly observe and capture our movements. "People" should still be on the surface of the town except for temporarily avoiding the storm. This iron rule of identity setting is difficult to violate and overturn.
Otherwise, just like me who violated my duties as a tour guide on the bus, those bright red eversion deformations will be a visual punishment.
I subconsciously touched my arm, and the memory of being folded still seemed to hurt.
It was at this time that I felt my vision blurry and dim, perhaps an illusion.
"It's getting dark." Zhang Tianyi looked at the sky and realized something. "After the storm, although it's already night, it seems like we've just sunk into it."
I looked towards the ground after hearing that. Although the town buildings were still as bright as day, they were gradually covered with a layer of dimness.
However, this feeling was very strange. It seemed that the darkness of the town was something that took shape, not through the passage of time, nor through the changes in light and darkness, but like a piece of dirty gray cloth, it suddenly emerged and covered everything, getting closer and closer.
Along with this uncomfortable dimness, this time, even I heard some subtle sounds, right below us, very close indeed, so close that I could clearly hear the subtle changes.
It was a...very hollow sound.
The word "hollow" here is literal, I can't think of a better description. It's like there is residual wind passing through some underground cavity, and the cavity is interconnected. Therefore, the empty echo is superimposed, gradually amplified and concentrated to the surface.
What is that? I'm a little confused.
I thought it was some evil monster approaching, but at this moment, intuitively yet counterintuitively, an answer seemed to say:
“The underground is becoming empty.”
Because of the emptiness, long and tortuous cavities appeared one after another, just like there was a huge and quiet sun below, casting countless rays of light. Wherever those rays of light intersected, all the soil and rocks melted silently and disappeared, turning into passages of varying lengths.
Then another sound joined in and became identifiable: an irregular scraping sound, like some large, heavy, clawed creature crawling unfamiliarly toward the surface along these new passages in the vanishing dirt and gravel.
It has a purpose.
I don't know why, but I suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.
It wasn't fear, nor was it anxiety. It was a strong desire to talk, along with a lot of underground details that I shouldn't know that all came pouring in.
As if by some strange coincidence, I said:
"It's okay, brother, let's go down. I know what's going on down there. It's here to pick us up and it won't hide anything from me."
Zhang Tianyi was silent for a moment, "…something is coming to pick you up? A 'tour guide'?"
I was startled and then I realized what I had said. I couldn't help but get goose bumps all over my body. I opened my mouth, but I couldn't explain myself.
But after leaving the platform building, my instinct to warn of danger quickly grew out of control. At this moment, I felt inexplicably anxious and could not delay any longer: "Let's go, get down first, it's too late."
After a brief second, Zhang Tian turned over and brought me to the ground.
The shaking of the ground intensified, and the gravel on the ground began to jump visibly.
The grayness and gloom around me was rapidly increasing. I gritted my teeth, forcibly pulled Zhang Tianyi over, and asked him:
"Where is the cement thinner? We have to get underground quickly."
Before I finished asking, the ground shook again. Zhang Tian shouted "Oh no!" and pressed my ears tightly. At the same time, a buzzing sound and some kind of sharp whistle erupted from the ground. I was caught off guard and felt dizzy. I felt a heat in my nose and ears.
Then, there was a pain in front of my eyes, the sky and the earth were spinning in my vision, the air was visibly twisting, floating, and flickering, and wherever we could see, the light was twisting, and all the buildings in the town were distorted and deformed.
Huge cracks spread across the platform, tearing apart the concrete surface, and most of the platform collapsed.
The fall was so sudden that my feet felt empty and I fell, losing my balance. I hit the falling gravel and felt a pain in my back. I shouted hastily, "Zhang Tianyi!"
In the chaos, a hand suddenly grabbed my arm from above, and inertia pulled both of us down. I couldn't see anything in the flying smoke and dust, but I could feel the vibrations and scraping sounds approaching from all directions.
“Which one?!”
Zhang Tianyi was lying on the deformed platform and asked in a low voice. I pointed in a random direction and shouted, "Never mind." Then I felt my whole body being swung hard and thrown out.
He also leaped down, and this time Superman was too late to catch me. I just heard a sound of "look down" and I reflexively curled up with my head in my hands. I felt a chill around me and rolled into a cavity in the ground.
There was another slight sound, and Zhang Tianyi also jumped in and pulled me up from the ground.
I finally had time to rub my eyes vigorously, and I felt that they were full of dust. Still in shock, I stood up and looked around.
The mobile phone's light was on, the vibrations around us were still continuing, and dust kept falling from the top of our heads, covering us all. But at this moment, looking around, I was completely stunned. I seemed to hear no sound and feel no change.
At some point, the place above my head, where the platform should have been, was completely covered by a material black color.
In the past, people often described the arrival of night by using the phrase “night falls” and used the word “curtain” to describe the change.
At this moment, not metaphorically, but literally, something black, stagnant, and heavy, like the sea water, was inverted all over the top. It was indeed like an incomprehensible velvety curtain, dissolving and swallowing up other contours on the surface.
Underground, there were spherical holes, one after another, densely distributed like nests. The winding and narrow cracks in the ground connected them, stringing the holes together like ropes. Zhang Tianyi and I were in a small hole in it at the moment, and our bodies were as small as dust.
What supports all the spherical holes and foundations, preventing the town from completely collapsing, is a metallic luster that I am very familiar with.
I followed the light reflecting off my phone and saw countless aerial roots of banyan trees, moving back and forth like giant pythons. They were countless times larger than the tree bodies that were only a dozen meters tall in the small building, and they woven a tough giant net in the ground. These spherical holes were like shock-absorbing foam particles attached to them.
"…Today's storm is too strong."
A voice said, it could be me, or it could be Zhang Tianyi. At this moment, I was so shocked that I couldn't tell the difference.
I just listened to the voice saying, "Normally, the banyan tree couldn't digest the impact, so it dispersed it and directed the impact force into the ground. But this time, the shock wave was beyond the scope of the mechanism's ability to digest and handle. So, the platform collapsed."
It was almost there. I looked at the center where the aerial roots gathered, and my back was soaked with cold sweat of fear. I thought to myself, it was almost there. If the platform had collapsed completely and the small building had been destroyed, then it would have been the end of us.
The lighting from the phone was limited, but it was still swaying everywhere, and I soon discovered:
I don't know whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, but a part of the metal-cast hollow roots and spherical cavities were also destroyed. The piece we were in was almost cracked in half, but the center was still relatively intact.
It was at that position that the scraping sound that had been calling me before was stuck there, replacing a mostly broken aerial root, wrestling with the vibrations all around.
It was through the hollow pipes of the metal aerial roots that the scraping sound was unexpectedly dispersed in all directions, making it impossible for me to determine the exact location, which caused me to point the way at random and fall to the side with Zhang Tianyi.
The claw-like sound was caused by countless half-brown and half-bright red fleshy tree roots extending from the tattered iron sheet, grabbing and climbing up while shaking.
But a heavy concrete platform was falling down and pressing down on top of it, making the entire car unable to move.
"No. 118, bus."
Zhang Tianyi suddenly realized, "So it went underground. No wonder I looked everywhere on the roof of the small building and didn't see where it went."
I felt a chill run down my spine. “Is this the thing that was haunting me just now, calling me to get in the car?”
Damn, is this a blessing in disguise or bad luck? I recalled my state of mind when I blurted out the words just now, and I was completely possessed and believed that something was coming to take me away.
But, feeling frightened, I waved the flashlight of my cell phone vigorously and felt something was wrong.
The bus was also empty.
It may sound strange to say this, but there was nothing in the car except those fleshy tree roots that expanded out of control.
The driver, Lao Zhao, and Nian Ziqing, both disappeared.
What made me even more terrified was that those fleshy tree roots were simply going crazy, constantly trying to pull the broken iron sheet of the car body away from the metal aerial roots.
Although both things are called banyan trees, in my heart, they are very different.
The metal banyan tree on the platform is just a hollow piece of armor, a transformation device that carries and handles storms, full of human will and style; while the banyan tree in the valley, formed by sponges crawling out of the lake, is a sinister parasite that claims to make your wishes come true.
It is also because of this that I am very dissatisfied with the young man who took things out and made a fake banyan tree.
Until this moment, a certain similarity hit me.
I probably shuddered several times before I pointed at the bus that was still struggling and asked Zhang Tianyi:
"Why do I feel like...these two banyan trees seem to be a complete set?"
One is hollow with only a shell, while the other only needs water and temperature to continue to spread, take root, and regenerate.
They seemed to be one body, more suitable than the giant humanoid with multiple heads and limbs. They were also more adapted to face storms and high-temperature and high-pressure volcanoes, and to adapt to the densely packed shock-absorbing mechanisms underneath.
At this moment, those fleshy tree roots looked to me like something was peeling off its own skin, trying hard to pull out the contents. As the struggle and the vibrations around me gradually subsided, I heard an almost resentful snicker that seemed to come from some hollow metal tree root.
“…” A terrible thought suddenly flashed through my mind, making me shudder.
I think, maybe it is because the original banyan tree was broken, split into two, and its core was stripped away and stolen... that the deformed long man changed his duties and had to choose to use "people" to fill the banyan tree. So after avoiding the storm, it rejected the banyan tree shell so much and would rather stay in the dark underground.
People are supposed to be protected by banyan trees.
Perhaps, those long men were just guards of a small building on the platform, responsible only for patrolling and taking away townspeople who might be dying.
However, perhaps it was an accidental loss, or perhaps it was a deliberate betrayal, the core sponge that was originally used to fill in and drive the banyan tree to operate left the platform building.
Finally, after going through certain things, it ended up in Nian Ziqing's hands, and he took it out of the town and threw it into the lake.
Now, as vehicles drove into the town, drivers, tour guides and tourists disappeared one after another, and the out-of-control sponge banyan tree was discovered by the "people" who had been waiting for a long time with resentment.
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