Liang Qian pushed the iron door, which let out an ear-splitting screech as it swung inward. She shone her headlamp inside, and Da Xiong and I both sucked in a sharp breath of cold air.

Inside, the room was rectangular, not particularly large. Both sides were crisscrossed with various pipes and electrical conduits, and amidst them lay over a dozen desiccated corpses in grotesque states of death.

These mummies were bizarrely contorted, yet all wore yellowed lab coats, perforated with holes and stained with patches of blood that had long since turned black with age. It seemed the tape recorder hadn't lied; a bloody massacre had indeed taken place here.

I could almost still smell the metallic scent of the old gore. If we hadn't been trapped down here, I would have desperately wanted to escape sooner, lest we end up as crazed as these remains.

Gazing at the oddly shaped corpses, we proceeded through the narrow room toward the deeper recesses. As we passed, Da Xiong casually picked up a rusted hatchet from the ground and used it to flip over one of the mummies slumped near the pipes.

We saw faces twisted in agony, some missing limbs, with severed arms and legs scattered about—a truly chilling sight. However, Da Xiong was foolhardy and seemed unfazed by the dead.

But it bothered me, so I snapped, "What the hell are you doing? Are these your relatives?

Do you need to turn every single one over?" Da Xiong shot me a look and cursed back, "Your relatives are the zombies! I'm just a bit curious; something about these bodies seems… off." I stopped walking and looked closely at the mummies, asking, "What seems off?" Da Xiong scratched the back of his head, pointing at one corpse's arm.

"Look here. It’s this dry climate; the bodies are all mummified by the air, so where is the moss coming from on his arm?" Intrigued by his strange observation, I borrowed Liang Qian’s headlamp to illuminate it, and I gasped.

A layer of fuzzy green growth covered the mummy’s arm. It wasn't the ghastly green associated with reanimation, but actual, palpable moss, and at the tip of every strand, there was a minuscule yellow sphere.

Examining the other bodies, they all exhibited this growth to varying degrees, some even on their faces. It was terrifying, and something about it struck a chord with me.

Liang Qian, being knowledgeable, urged us on. "What's there to stare at?

Hurry up and move! This stuff is extremely inauspicious." Just as she finished speaking, a loud clattering sound echoed from directly above us, making us all flinch violently.

I aimed my lamp upward and saw an old-fashioned ventilation duct overhead. It was aluminum, not heavily rusted, but riddled with holes.

The noise had clearly come from inside that duct. After a silence of about three or four seconds, the sound returned: the scraping of many claws against metal, moving incredibly fast, crossing right above our heads and instantly heading toward the deeper part of the room.

Da Xiong wiped his face and swore, "Damn it, what is that now? Is it one of those giant lizards from before?" I nodded, about to agree it was highly probable, when suddenly, at the very limit of my headlamp’s beam ahead, a face dangled down from an opening in the aluminum duct.

Seeing that face instantly banished any thought of a lizard. It was undeniably a human face covered in green hair.

The upper lip had rotted away, exposing a set of horrifyingly stark teeth. Da Xiong cursed beside me and raised his gun, but Liang Qian stopped him, sharply crying out, "Don't waste bullets!

You can't kill it—run!" I hadn't understood why Liang Qian insisted the thing was unkillable until I looked closer, and my scalp tingled with dread. The green-haired monstrosity was riddled with bullet holes of various sizes; there were five or six just on its face, and a section of its skull cap was blown away, exposing blackened muscle tissue beneath.

The people who were here at the research station must have fought it, but the result was obvious. Da Xiong saw it too and cursed, "Holy hell, what kind of monster is that?

With that many holes, even a zongzi would be down." As he spoke, the creature writhed, desperately trying to squeeze out. Its features were utterly savage, but the duct opening was too narrow, temporarily trapping it so only one shoulder could emerge.

"What do we do now? Charge past or retreat?" I asked Liang Qian, sweat beading on my forehead.

Liang Qian bit her lip and said, "It can't get out right now. We use this chance to rush past." With that, she took the lead and bolted.

Da Xiong and I followed closely behind. The rectangular room was barely ten meters long.

We crouched low, scrambling underneath the monster as it flailed its limbs, one of which narrowly missed tearing open my back. The door at the far end of the room was a thick, insulated concrete barrier, featuring a wheel-like metal plate, resembling the watertight doors on a large warship.

Da Xiong and I rushed forward and strained to turn the iron wheel. With surprisingly little effort, we heard a solid clack, and the door gave way.

We didn't care what was inside. We pulled the door open a crack, filed through quickly, and Da Xiong slammed it shut behind us.

We had no time to catch our breath before we were stunned into silence by the scene before us. We stood at the edge of a brightly illuminated excavation site.

Dozens of massive spotlights shone in from all directions, clearly revealing the vast area. I saw numerous old excavators parked nearby in disarray, along with various tunneling machines and compactors.

These antiquated machines were covered in rust, silent in the deathly quiet, but I could still imagine the bustling activity that once filled this place. The Soviet Union's heavy industry and machinery technology were already highly advanced, but I couldn't fathom how they managed to transport so many massive pieces of equipment out into this desert, especially those colossal, old-style bucket-wheel excavators, each one five or six meters tall and weighing hundreds of tons.

However, the most arresting feature was at the very center of the machine cluster: a gigantic pit, fifty to sixty meters in diameter, pitch black and seemingly bottomless, with only the sound of wind whistling mournfully echoing from within. Furthermore, we realized this excavation site wasn't underground; it was open to the air.

We could see the starry sky above. The sky was already paling; it looked like dawn was breaking.

Da Xiong’s surprise was evident as he cursed, "Damn it, there really is a huge hole! What the hell were the goddamn Russians doing here?" I frowned and surveyed the surroundings.

Many cables and pipes extended from the floor of the rectangular room we had just exited, all leading toward the pit, and numerous similar cables and conduits connected to the area surrounding the hole. On the outer, circular perimeter of the excavation field, there were many doors distributed in all directions.

I imagined this must have been a radial architectural complex, shaped like the sun, and the number of people working here must have been in the hundreds. Liang Qian pointed to the wires on the ground and told us, "The power source for all this clearly originates from inside that pit.

This isn't geothermal or wind power—there must be some extraordinary secret inside that hole." I nodded. "This situation is getting complicated.

Now that we've found the way back to the surface, I think we should go back and call for more people, especially for that green-haired monster. The three of us probably can't handle it, and we don't know how many more there are." Hearing this, Da Xiong immediately protested, whining, "Hey, Comrade Xiao Chuan, how can you say that?

We haven't even found any mingqi yet—just a worthless bronze tag and a rotten tape recorder. By the time everyone gets here, Wu Boss’s men will have snatched all the good stuff!" At this, Liang Qian frowned and asked, "What worthless bronze tag?

Are there bronze artifacts here?" I shot Da Xiong a glare. Knowing he had let something slip, Da Xiong laughed it off.

"Uh... yeah, what bronze artifacts would be here?

I meant an Olympic medal; maybe there was an Olympic athlete here once." I touched my forehead, sweating profusely, and forced an awkward smile. I told Liang Qian, "I’ll show you that bronze plaque when we get back; it might help your investigation." Liang Qian seemed displeased, frowning at me.

"I’ve been telling you the truth about everything, and you still don't trust me?" Seeing her expression—so genuine, with a hint of vulnerability in her eyes, entirely lacking her usual sharp demeanor—I suddenly realized she was just a fragile woman too. My face flushed, and I coughed twice, avoiding her gaze.

Liang Qian murmured to herself, "Fine then. It doesn't matter.

Ever since Black Bamboo Gully, you haven't trusted me. Let's just go our separate ways."

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