Chapter 1 Slip In! The Eerie Underground Secret Room
When I was moving those square bricks just now, I vaguely felt that there seemed to be a mechanism like a bracket or gear underneath. It was already so obvious, so why should I hesitate?
Of the three square bricks between the two snake-shaped sculptures, only the middle one can be moved out. The other two can only be moved out one after another after the middle square brick is moved out. When everything is completed,
Under the gap exposed after the square brick in the middle was removed, you can already see the location of the mechanism.
I took a deep breath and pushed the two snake sculptures toward the middle.
After a burst of extremely harsh "blah blah blah" sounds, only a few crisp metal hooking sounds were heard, and the two snake-shaped sculptures began to slowly rotate.
These two spiral sculptures intersected perfectly, forming a shape of twin snakes!
Then what?
Still no movement.
I tried hard to breathe evenly and thought: Now that I have completed the first four sentences of the twenty-four-character mantra in my uncle's notes, the fifth sentence is...
"Give me the staff."
Staff?
The twin snakes entwining the staff, haven't they already taken shape at this moment?
No. Since it is a staff, there should be a stick in the middle! Not only should there be a stick, but there should also be a round head on the stick, so that it is cool enough. (See the picture below)
But where is the stick with a round head in this damn place?
I walked around the site and didn't find any suspicious "rod-shaped objects".
If this place has a history of more than fifty years, and the uncle has been here, then the staff and stick he is talking about must have been here for a long time. It should be a very dated thing.
That's right...
My eyes stopped on the clock that scared me out of my mind just now. Suddenly I understood. I quickly walked over, opened the glass door and looked down. The long "click", "click" kept shaking.
The pendulum...if you turn it upside down, wouldn't it be a staff? The weight underneath is the round head on the top of the staff.
I held the pendulum and pulled it down hard, but there was no response. I lifted it up instead, but it made a "click" sound, which seemed to be correct.
After the "click" sound sounded several times in a row, there was no movement again. There was no doubt that the mechanism had been activated, but there must be some key points that were not in place. I pondered carefully and suddenly remembered the last part of the note.
In one sentence, "I will rest in peace"...
I have always thought that "laying to rest" means that there is a secret room underground and you can go down there. However, judging from the current situation, there are probably other mechanisms inside this clock, and the pendulum can only be removed after it is activated. If the corresponding
If the hint is also hidden in the twenty-four-character mantra, it is probably the last sentence.
The word " Enter " is one short and one long. If it is understood as the hour and minute hands of a clock... it means 8:20.
With this thought in mind, I stretched my fingers to the minute hand and started to move it. After going around many times, it turned to the 8:20 position. Sure enough, there was another sound of the machine. I was overjoyed and held it with my hand.
The pendulum felt like it was constantly moving up and down. Soon, with a heavy hand, the pendulum finally fell down.
When I took out the pendulum, I found that the top of it was shaped like a key and was connected to the inside of the clock through a very thin steel wire.
I couldn't care less, so I took the pendulum and couldn't wait to carefully insert it upside down into the gap formed by the twin snakes, all the way to the bottom. The base of the snake-shaped statue is lace. After the two are combined, the lace
They bite together to form a circular keyhole, into which the tip of the pendulum can just fit.
A double snake staff finally took shape.
The heavy hammer made a crisp sound, and the edge cracked along the center line, forming two semicircles, which turned downward. In my surprised gaze, many iron sheets attached to the inside of the semicircles spread out to both sides, becoming
into the shape of wings.
Holy shit, cool! So cool!
These two wings are just two wrenches. The lever principle is used to make the pendulum rotate easier. I held the two wings with both hands and turned the pendulum clockwise. After turning 90 degrees, there was a clear sound.
I quickly let go, and the pendulum returned to its original position on its own.
What followed was a slight tremor on the entire ground.
The underground mechanism was activated.
It was hot and stuffy on this midsummer night. I was locked in this airtight small building with only a small hole connected to the outside world. I was still kneeling on the ground pushing bricks. I was sweating profusely and almost collapsed from exhaustion.
, sitting on the ground. Looking at all this, I thought: God! How clever and resourceful is my uncle who I have never met before, so that he can crack this mechanism alone without any prompting?
All the secrets? Thinking of this, I can’t help but admire them.
Just as I was thinking this, the sound of the machine suddenly stopped, and the whole building fell into terrible silence. Suddenly, the square bricks on the ground seemed to be alive, rising up, layer upon layer, row after row, some high and some low.
, arranged in sequence, forming a cave-like entrance. Inside, there is a slide diagonally downwards.
Judging from the slope of the slide, as long as I got in and landed on the lower level, unless I had super strong arms and non-slip gloves on my hands, it would be impossible to climb back down the slide. Looking at this place is even darker and more inhospitable than the inside of the house.
I have a hard time thinking about the hole of light. Where will this hole lead me? After going down, is there a way to the outside? Decades have passed, if there are still mechanisms under the hole, can they still be used? Even, below
I don't even know if there is enough oxygen.
To enter or not to enter?
While I was hesitating, the clock suddenly rang.
The pointer is already pointing to half past eight.
I watched helplessly as the pendulum rose up from the entanglement of the two snakes little by little.
It's that extremely thin wire that's pulling it!
It seems that the subtlety of this mechanism is not only the previous part, but what is even more impressive is that it can return to its original position on its own.
Wait, it will return to its original position on its own? Doesn’t that mean the hole will disappear soon?
The question that I was still hesitating about just now now requires an immediate decision.
To enter or not to enter?
I remembered the last sentence of the twenty-four-character mantra in my uncle's notes: "I will rest in peace."
Once I go in, will I be able to "settle"?
Uncle, I believe you once, but please don’t cheat your eldest nephew!
The pendulum fell to the ground with a clang, and was dragged by the extremely thin wire, dragging slowly on the ground like a snake. Time was running out, so I gritted my teeth, picked up the backpack on the ground, shrank my legs, and opened my eyes.
He closed it and slipped in.
This slide is not too long, but it is very steep. When my feet touched the ground, the ground was soft, probably a rubber-type buffer.
There was an old and decaying smell. This underground smell had been suffocating for decades. It really didn't smell good.
Before he could recover, the entrance above had been completely closed with a loud roar.
A heartbreaking "squeaking" sound came, and I quickly took out my flashlight and shined it towards the place where the sound came from. A thin mouse stared at me and ran away in a hurry.
I felt so guilty that I took out the pistol that Huang Dingpeng had given me before from my backpack. I imitated the secret agent's posture on TV and held it in front of my chest. The other hand holding the flashlight was placed on the gunman's wrist.
Shine forward and move forward slowly.
According to the length and direction of the slide, my current position is about five meters directly below the arc hall, facing east. The ceiling of this basement is densely covered with water pipe-like things, like spiders, connected to each other.
The dust in the air made me cough. It seems that these water pipe-like mechanisms are the secrets of those mechanisms in the hall. And the dust in the air is when those water pipe-like things move.
Shake it off.
I took out the mask and alcohol I bought from the FamilyMart convenience store. After applying it, I took off the stockings on my face and covered my mouth and nose with the mask. Maybe you will find it strange when you see me buying stockings and a mask. But with me
Based on the rich adventure experience in the past, these items are indispensable equipment. If you get poisoned and faint here, it will be a hundred years before someone comes down again.
The layout of this basement is similar to that of the central granary of the Caojing Grain Depot. It is also a laboratory. Two large tables put together in the middle are equipped with various chemical instruments. I looked around and saw that they were all layered on top of each other.
There were bottles and jars on the shelves containing all kinds of internal organs. I even saw the heads of two children, a boy and a girl, with a pile of esophagus and cracked flesh underneath.
In a big jar, one of the boy’s eyes is still open!
This ghostly eye stared straight at me. In an instant, the dark environment seemed to be even more gloomy. It made me shudder and my back felt cold. There was an organ of unknown origin in the jar next to it. Judging from the size, it seemed that
It's as big as a heart, but it's definitely not a heart. It's like a rotten pear. It's disgusting and makes me shiver. In addition, there are all kinds of rotten, pus-oozing livers, and livers that have been cut open by knives.
, the turned-out stomach pouch was soaked in formalin solution.
Seeing this, my stomach was churning, and the dumplings I ate at night were all about to pop out.
The formalin solution used in medicine is an aqueous solution of 35 to 40% formaldehyde. In addition, 10 to 15% methanol is usually added to prevent formaldehyde from polymerizing. Both formaldehyde and methanol are easy to dissolve.
Evaporation, if the jar is not properly sealed, the organs soaked in it will still rot and deteriorate. But in this basement, I did not smell any pungent smell of formaldehyde, and the organs soaked in formalin were also well preserved. See
Come on, these jars are high-end professional equipment of excellent quality.
I looked at the thick dust falling on the jar, and then looked at the floor. I found a series of shallow footprints. The thickness of the dust in the footprints was about two-thirds of the thickness of the dust on the ground and on most jars. It seemed that,
These footprints were left by my uncle.
I remembered that the information on the Internet said that the Shanghai Medical Association had moved once in 1959, and it must have been moved to this small building. In other words, since 1959, except for the uncle, this basement must have been used again.
No one has ever come in. From 1959 to 2007, it was about 48 years. Based on the thickness of the dust on the footprints, the time when the uncle came here should be 16 years ago, that is, around 1991.
Among the footprints left by the uncle on the ground, only the tip of one pair of footprints was facing the shelf, and it was also some distance away from the shelf. This shows that the uncle just glanced at the shelves and bottles before moving forward.
.
I also followed the footsteps and walked forward. I didn't dare to walk too fast. Who knew what weird things would be ahead of me in this extremely eerie basement?