Volume 7 Chapter 10: Plan

The light from the lighter was very weak, and it was already very good to be able to see two or three meters away. Under this light, I was really shocked to see a coffin.

After I reacted, I felt very strange. This was really unheard of. How the hell could there be a coffin here, and it was an ancient coffin?

A sanatorium built in the 1960s and 1970s for the leaders to rest, with underground secret facilities, is already a bit unbelievable. Now in this place, there is also a coffin, which is too incredible. What kind of person is inside? Could it be an officer who died here back then?

I looked behind me, and the stairway from when I came was right behind me, so I wouldn’t lose it. I just walked over to look at the coffin.

From a distance, I knew that this was not a modern coffin. The coffin was completely black and lay in the center of the basement like a huge stone pillar. This coffin should have quite a history, at least more than 500 or 600 years old. And judging from its size, I was afraid that it was not for ordinary people, but at least for scholars.

I went up and touched it. There were fine patterns on it, and it was cold and prickly, like a stone coffin. I didn’t know what kind of stone it was. After touching it, the thick dust on the stone coffin was scratched by me, revealing some small patterns.

I took my lighter and looked closely. On the lid of the coffin, there were signs of damage from hammering and chiseling. There were also signs of a crowbar being inserted into the gap between the lid and the coffin. Obviously, I could not have been the first person to discover this huge coffin. Someone had tried to pry it open. I had experience with this, so I was particularly sensitive to it.

The ancient coffin could not have appeared in the basement of a modern building for no reason. Someone must have moved it here, for some reason.

The temperature in the basement was very low. I gradually calmed down as I panted, trying to slow my heart rate. I had spent the whole way down in extreme tension. Although I had suppressed my fear, I still felt quite uncomfortable. As I took deep breaths, I began to think.

Someone sent me a video tape, an address and a key to lead me to this dilapidated sanatorium, and guided me to find this secret door. Through the stairs behind the secret door, I found this basement, where there was also a sarcophagus.

This is beyond the scope of any prank. Is the other party trying to tell me that something incredible happened in this sanatorium?

It seems that there must be a very complicated story behind this closed floor and basement, as well as behind this sarcophagus.

I pushed the lid of the sarcophagus, not too hard, just to see if I could open it. Fortunately, it was just as I had predicted, the sarcophagus did not budge, and I could see that I would not be able to open it without tools.

I was relieved. I had never opened a sarcophagus before, and I had never done it alone. I could not open it, and I did not have to force myself to do it.

I looked at the details of the sarcophagus again and found nothing noteworthy. I bypassed the sarcophagus and continued walking forward. I saw a small iron door at the end of the basement. I pushed the door in and found a corridor behind it.

I only walked a few steps and found that the structure here was the same as upstairs. There was a corridor with rooms on both sides, but this corridor extended all the way without an end, as if it led to other places. The rooms on both sides of the corridor had no doors and were very simple.

I took out my lighter and walked into the first room. I looked around and saw two desks against the wall on one side, with a few filing cabinets around them. The walls were covered with things, and the floor and desk were covered with scattered papers.

It seemed to be an office. I was even more puzzled. How could an office be set up underground? This was too strange. In the basement, there was a coffin on one side and an office on the other. Could it be that the Golmud funeral office was set up here?

I walked over to the desk and looked for clues.

As I got closer, I suddenly froze. I didn’t know why, but when I saw the way the desk was arranged, I had a strange feeling that I had seen this room somewhere before.

I raised my lighter and recalled. I gasped and immediately recognized it. This room was the one that was in the video of Huo Ling.

The desk, the floor and the walls were exactly the same. I walked to the desk and even saw the mirror where she combed her hair, which was in the same position as in the video.

My heart started to race, and I took a deep breath to calm myself down. The strangeness in my heart had reached its peak.

When I watched the video, I thought she was in some kind of residential building, but I never imagined that she was in the basement of this nursing home, and that I would find this place. It was clear that this was all real, that what was recorded on the video was real.

Huo Ling had been here, filming herself with a video camera. She had been constantly combing her hair here, and it was very likely that “I” had really crawled through the lobby overhead.

For a moment, I even saw a ghostly image of her in my eyes, and it seemed that her world and mine overlapped. The scenes on the video flickered before me.

But what was going on? A woman in a nursing home’s secret basement is constantly combing her hair, while a person similar to me crawls like a disabled person in the nursing home’s lobby. These things really happened and were recorded. What is the purpose of this? What exactly happened in this nursing home outside the camera?

I was a little dazed and dizzy. Obviously, the person who sent the tape to me wanted me to see this room. But after I saw it, I was even more confused. I felt like I was putting together a blank puzzle, with no place to start.

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down, then picked up the lighter and started to observe the surroundings. I had to check it out and see if there were any clues.