Chapter 7
The fine sand hits the crater wall, creating a continuous sound.
The base is located underground and has a curved dome, which is a natural sound-collecting structure that will amplify the movement inside the base.
It also makes it easier for people to ignore external changes.
Jiang Yunu was still diligently filling the pit with sand. The pit was big enough to accommodate twenty-one children sleeping. The sand she had diligently brought in was almost half filled in. The spacious bottom of the pit was raised a bit, and the children who were originally at the bottom were no longer visible. Their pale faces were completely buried by the golden sand.
But there are still many children's pale bodies exposed.
At the beginning, Jiang Yunu had a sense of ritual. She would stand quietly by the pit and watch a whole basket of sand flow out. Then she would drag another box over and pour a new basket of fine sand into it.
But halfway through the project, Jiang Yunu realized that this was too inefficient.
"After everyone is settled, I want to find a piece of board, use a blade to scratch the paint on it, write something, and build a unique monument for everyone." Jiang Yunu shared her idea with the children who were half buried.
She also had other plans. After filling the grave, she wanted to make this simple grave as solemn as possible. So, she decided not to waste her remaining limited energy and changed to a more efficient way to pour the sand.
Jiang Yunu pushed all the baskets to the periphery of the circular pit at once, and then dumped them all out one by one in order.
The sound of quicksand instantly became a chorus.
Then it changes from one layer to two, two to three, and three to a chorus.
The noise inside the base was now even louder, and the fine sand flowing down like a gurgling stream created a sense of grandeur - mixed in with a few muffled sounds that seemed to not belong to the base.
But Jiang Yunu still didn't notice.
Jiang Yunu picked up a piece of board that she had removed from an instrument, held it in the air and measured it. Feeling that its size was just right, she carried it back to the side of the pit to use as material for the tombstone.
As for the tool for engraving characters, Jiang Yunu weighed the pros and cons between her own rusty knife, which had been used diligently for many days and whose blade had been burdened with too much, and the remaining hard plastic sheets in her small supply store. She finally chose the plastic sheets.
Because the edges of plastic sheets are also hard and sharp, they just lack cutting strength. However, if they are only used to scratch something or leave some marks on the metal surface coating, plastic sheets are still quite useful.
Jiang Yunu grabbed a piece of plastic, listened to the chorus of quicksand, and looked at the metal plate in front of her with the paint on the edge already mottled.
Jiang Yunu wrote on the board:
[A group of nameless children are sleeping here].
Using a plastic sheet as a pen was not very convenient, and Jiang Yunu hadn't written by hand for many days. She carved each word stroke by stroke, and her writing speed was quite slow.
By the time I finished writing this line, I could hear that the chorus of quicksand had dwindled to a smaller number, with only the last few baskets placed around the circular pit still pouring sand.
Jiang Yunu rose from the ground. She had just finished carving the words and sat down on it, wearing a pair of newly made plastic slippers. She leaned over to the edge of the pit to inspect the burial. She saw that the child, originally at the top of the pit, was now almost completely covered by the sand, with only a few pale limbs still uncovered.
Jiang Yunu put down the plastic sheet, picked up the boxes that had become lighter because the sand had been poured out, and turned them over one by one towards the former pits, which were now sand pits, and poured the remaining sand at the bottom of the boxes into them.
So some of the exposed pale limbs were also covered with sand.
Jiang Yunu threw the basket on the ground.
The basket fell to the ground with a bang, and there seemed to be a "boom" from somewhere outside the dome of the underground base.
Jiang Yunu's first reaction was to think that he had thrown the basket too hard.
When people stay in an environment where they are the only ones there for a long time, and have repeatedly confirmed that the environment has been abandoned, and know that they cannot leave and that it is unlikely that other people will come here, they will subconsciously take it for granted and regard themselves as the only living creatures here who can make noise.
Jiang Yunu continued to walk towards Twenty-Two who was sitting on a bench against the wall.
The other children had almost finished burying the bodies, but Twenty-Two was still sitting outside, as if he wanted to carry out the "supervisory spirit" until the very last moment.
However, Jiang Yunu now knows very well that Twenty-Two is the companion she found for herself in her lonely survival on the deserted island.
Just like the moon on the top of the mountain is her other companion.
Jiang Yunu carefully picked up Twenty-Two's pale body. She was still hesitant when she carried him to the edge of the pit.
"Do you want to go in too?" Jiang Yunu asked.
Twenty-two's body remained silent and did not answer.
"Why don't we just stay outside?" Jiang Yunu continued, as if negotiating with someone. "Anyway, when I first woke up, I saw you lying on the edge of this pit."
Jiang Yunu and Twenty-Two stopped in front of the sand pit. She put Twenty-Two down from her arms and held him beside her. "You've never been in the pit since I first saw you. Why don't we stay together for the last time? You sit on the box, I'll lie on the bed, and we'll stay outside to protect everyone."
In Jiang Yunu's plan, she has already found a "deathbed seat" for herself.
She herself had no intention of lying in the sand pit: if she left Twenty-Two outside, she would stay inside the base with Twenty-Two, and eventually become two corpses facing each other; if she finally put Twenty-Two into the pit as well, and let Twenty-Two lie together with the other twenty-one white-haired children, then Jiang Yunu would be ready to go to the barren mountain alone.
She could also die alone on the top of the mountain basking in the moonlight.
Whether Twenty-Two could finally enter the sand pit became a problem that temporarily trapped Jiang Yunu.
But just when Jiang Yunu was hesitating - mainly struggling between two ways of dying, outside the base, it was as if the prelude to a heavy and slow thunder finally ended, and the unusual movement that had been hinted at a long time ago but had never been noticed by Jiang Yunu was no longer subtle.
"boom--"
It was a noise that was loud enough to shake the dome of the base, and even the originally solid rock tunnel was shaken.
The solid ground beneath your feet suddenly turned into a trampoline, causing your body to bounce involuntarily along with the shaking ground.
Jiang Yunu was shocked by the sudden attack and lost her balance. Twenty-two slipped out of her arm, and she subconsciously reached out to pull it.
“Boom boom—”
The earth shook again. Jiang Yunu failed to hold on to Twenty-Two, but instead slid into the nearby sand pit with Twenty-Two.
Fine sand is soft, while quicksand is easy to sink into.
Jiang Yunu happened to step on a place where there was no white-haired child's body to support her. One of her legs sank quickly, and in a moment the sand submerged her calves.
But just as Jiang Yunu was about to continue sinking, Twenty-Two's body quietly lay beside her.
Twenty-two's scattered arms swayed and rested on the body of a child buried in the fine sand, and a section of his calf was still hanging on the edge of the pit. His body lay horizontally next to Jiang Yunu, just supporting a small, cold and pale bridge that allowed Jiang Yunu to quickly use his hand to escape from the fine sand.
With the help of Twenty-Two, Jiang Yunu pulled her legs out, then grabbed the edge of the pit not far away, turned over and pushed herself back out of the pit. She turned around quickly and wanted to pull Twenty-Two again, but the white-haired child's body had already slid further towards the center of the sand pit. Jiang Yunu's outstretched hand brushed past Twenty-Two's ankle that had fallen into the sand pit.
Twenty-two's long white hair spread out, revealing a complete pale and tender face.
His body only sank a little in the middle of the sand pit, and soon reached the other children buried underneath. He stopped sinking, with the remaining half of his body exposed on the sand. He looked towards Jiang Yunu with a calm face with his eyes closed.
Jiang Yunu had been looking at this face for many days. For some reason, even though the base was shaking, she actually saw an extraordinary sense of peace on that face.
Twenty-two had died a long time ago. He might have died long before Jiang Yunu became conscious in this world, but he seemed to be able to speak to Jiang Yunu through his corpse.
Twenty-two said silently with his body: Let's go, you can still go outside.
So let's go.
The white-haired children who have lost their lives should really stay in one place. They will never be able to leave the base on their own.
Jiang Yunu, who still had a life left, should not be buried with them.
Rocks have begun to fall from the dome of the base, and the corridor leading to the upper entrance is at risk of collapse.
Jiang Yunu found her balance amidst the shaking, stuffed the last of the nutrient solution into her pocket, and held on to her knife. Just as she was running towards the upward corridor, she couldn't help but look back to see the sand pit that she had painstakingly filled to make a grave, and to see Twenty-Two, half of whose body was still exposed outside the sand.
But soon, Jiang Yunu no longer looked back, she strode forward.
The bearings of the base's gate groaned hoarsely under the heavy load, and the hinges wobbled like the osteoporotic joints of an elderly person.
As Jiang Yunu rushed out of the door in a hurry, he heard a teeth-grinding sound of metal friction and cracking. Then, the door shook and tilted in a certain direction, and with the next loud bang, it staggered and crashed to the ground completely and irreversibly.
“——!”
Jiang Yunu lowered her head sharply and shrank her shoulders to the side with amazing reflex speed. She could almost feel the wind created by the heavy door as it hit the ground, barely brushing past her.
But the door didn't hit her in the end, and Jiang Yunu rushed out of the base safely.
When she looked back, the entrance and exit of the base had been blocked by the collapsed gate and the falling rocks.
If Jiang Yunu had hesitated for one more second, he would have been trapped in the base and would have found it difficult to get out.
The loud noise was still echoing in my ears, like one thunder after another. Although it was already night on the isolated island, the sky was as bright as day.
Jiang Yunu turned around with her back to the base. She looked up at the sky, but did not find the moon she was familiar with.
She saw that the sky seemed like an upside-down glass cover. Outside the glass cover, energy substances like meteors poured down, bringing extremely bright light that ignited the night, and then exploded outside the "glass cover", turning into thunder.
A meteor is like a thunder. They hit the sky, shaking the isolated islands and oceans below.
Jiang Yunu still had no idea what these energy substances were. There was actually a "dome" above the sky. She seemed to be trapped in an artificial space. Many of her guesses began to be vaguely confirmed - but that was not the most important thing at the moment.
The most important thing at the moment was that Jiang Yunu's ears caught a "click" sound with her surprisingly sensitive ears amid the sound of thunder and explosion.
It was an ominous sound of breaking.
First, a sudden spot appeared on the "cover" on the sky, as if someone fired a gun into the sky and hit the heart of the sky. Then, with that spot as the center, cracks radiated outward like spider webs.
The sky cracked before Jiang Yunu's eyes.
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