Chapter 12 The Sound

Luckily, one end of this music classroom was tiered, and the overflowing water only reached the bottom step.

Stepping onto the stairs finally freed them from the strange sensation of walking in water.

The pattering sound was about to drive them crazy.

Zhou Taifu shook the water from his shoes, gazed around, and involuntarily lowered his voice, "This place is too big. If we want to search it thoroughly, I'm afraid we won't have enough time."

"Let's try searching first. We'll talk about it if we don't find anything," Yu Wen said, also hoping they wouldn't split up.

Standing where they were, they looked around; darkness had almost completely swallowed the room, and everything was shrouded in a hazy gloom.

The two started from the far left.

There were piles of equipment there, probably used for rehearsals. It was too much trouble to move them back and forth, so they had simply been left there.

The thought that in less than 30 hours, they would have to come here at midnight to participate in the third rehearsal made the two of them speed up their search.

After a quick search, they didn't find anything special.

The two continued to move inward. Fortunately, in addition to the light from Yu Wen's phone, Zhou Taifu had also borrowed a miniature flashlight from Feng Lan.

Feng Lan had detached it from her keychain.

The light wasn't strong, only illuminating a small area nearby, but it was better than nothing.

Zhou Taifu carefully moved his feet. The floor was covered with wires, all different colors. At first glance, they looked like the web spun by the Spider Demon in the Pan Si Cave.

He tried to lift his feet high to avoid tripping on the wires.

Ten minutes passed, and the two had only searched a small area. At this rate, they definitely wouldn't be able to leave before dark.

"No," Zhou Taifu straightened his back. "We need to spread out a bit so we can cover more ground."

Yu Wen didn't seem to have a better idea, so she nodded and replied, "Then be extra careful. Call me if you encounter anything. And," she said seriously, "there are too many obstacles here, some of which can block your view. Pay attention to those areas."

Zhou Taifu nodded. "Okay, we'll stay within 10 meters of each other."

Just as Zhou Taifu was about to turn around and search the other side, Yu Wen suddenly called out towards the door, "Miss Feng!"

After a moment...

"Miss Yu," Feng Lan's response came from the doorway, but from her voice, it was clear that Feng Lan was terrified. "Please... please hurry. It's so dark here."

Hearing Feng Lan's reply, Yu Wen felt a little relieved. She gestured to Zhou Taifu, who left to search the other side.

But the ideal and reality always have a gap. The two were racing against time, and slowly, they strangely neglected the distance between them, causing them to drift further and further apart.

A strange and inexplicable atmosphere gradually eroded them. They became increasingly impatient, and their movements became more hurried.

Zhou Taifu rolled up his sleeves and moved a cabinet that looked potentially suspicious, but the final result showed that he was overthinking things.

The inside of the cabinet was exceptionally clean. There was nothing there.

Nor was there anything in the gap under the cabinet.

"Creak—"

A sudden grating sound caught the attention of the panting Zhou Taifu. He turned his head and looked around. Aside from the light from Yu Wen's phone flickering on the other side, there was nothing unusual.

"What was that sound?" He frowned.

"Creak—"

As if playing hide-and-seek with him, he heard another sound just as he bent down.

This time, it almost made his hair stand on end.

It wasn't the harsh grinding sound of an old door hinge being pushed; it was the sound of a rope, as if it would snap from the strain at any moment.

As a former mercenary, assassination was one of the skills he had to master.

He had once strangled a traitor to death with his own hands, and the rope had made this sound as the person struggled in his death throes.

He didn't act immediately, but instead, he asked in a loud voice in the direction of Yu Wen, "Did you hear anything?"

The light over there flickered, and then Yu Wen's voice came, "No."

Her voice was calm, and Zhou Taifu couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

"Be careful," he said, looking around while reminding his companion.

It was even darker here than before. Where he could previously make out shapes, now there were only black shadows.

Zhou Taifu took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He had bought them when he bought soy milk that morning.

He wasn't addicted to tobacco, but he had an inexplicable attachment to it.

It stemmed from the rampant mosquitoes in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The old soldiers there smoked their own rolled tobacco, which contained the crushed leaves of a certain plant.

Taking a puff was very refreshing, and they could stay awake for a day and a night without getting tired.

He had once asked an old soldier the name of the plant, but the old man just grinned, revealing his yellowed, rotten teeth, and told him with a smile that it was called Sang Ji Ji in their local language.

It also had another name: Dead Man's Grass.

This grass was very strange. It grew in the rotting mud where many corpses were buried, and it only grew where fresh corpses were buried.

The old soldier grabbed his arm with his calloused hand and said that he had personally seen this grass sprout from a dead man's arm.

Zhou Taifu shuddered at the time.

First, a small sprout, then slowly drawing nutrients from the flesh and blood until it was 20 centimeters tall.

Blood red.

You could see it from far away.

"That's the blood and flesh of people inside," the old soldier said, his smile gone, as he sat cross-legged with his muddy legs in straw sandals, staring into the distance.

His eyes held something that Zhou Taifu couldn't understand.

"Kid," the old soldier said without looking at him, his voice as rough as gravel from years of smoking a dry pipe, "take my advice, leave. While you still can, leave this place. Go anywhere, it doesn't matter where, just never come back."

"But... I've only received half of my commission," Zhou Taifu said, as if not wanting to interrupt the old soldier's thoughts. He half-coaxed and half-comforted him, saying, "I'll finish this job and then retire, go home and get married, and live a stable life."

The old soldier seemed to see through his evasiveness, and after sighing, he didn't say anything else.

The roughly made cigarette crackled and popped in his fingers, burning with a flame as red as blood. Taking a puff filled his entire nasal cavity with the sweet, fishy smell of blood.

The old soldier finished his cigarette, patted his butt, and left without a word, carrying his AK-47 rifle, the handguard of which had broken countless times.

His pants were so dirty that you couldn't see their original color, one pant leg rolled up, the other dragging on the ground, stepping in the mud and water, making a "pitter-patter" sound.

Just as Zhou Taifu was about to get up and leave, he inadvertently noticed out of the corner of his eye that there was a stone under where the old soldier had been sitting.

No, he looked closely; it wasn't an ordinary stone.

It was a tombstone.

The tombstone was also engraved with inscriptions in the local language.

After countless years of erosion, the inscriptions were severely weathered.

He was unfamiliar with the local script, so he could only squint and identify the words one by one—

"Those whose hands... are stained with blood... shall not return."