Su Mengfan felt a little familiar when he heard Cage's words. He interrupted and hurriedly asked, "What about the survivors?" ”

Cage glanced at Su Mengfan, was interrupted and didn't get angry, took a sip of water, moistened his throat, and spoke again:

"I asked the survivors of the accident, and only seven people survived, five men, and two children, who I heard were brothers. And those who survived were only close to the tram on the tracks.

Even more fortunately, it was the Savyolovskaya station, or the entire Moscow Metro Line 9, that saved them.

Fortunately, they were close to the metro station, and the sweat-soaked escapees shouted for help, and the guards at the Savyolovskaya station pulled them back from the line of death.

At the same time, the guards who were standing guard quickly ripped off the lid of one of the flame launchers, an indigenous product assembled by the local craftsmen themselves with accessories, but with incomparably more firepower.

When the first wave of giant rats came into view, and when the claws of thousands of giant rats were heard scraping through the darkness, the guards lit the flame launchers.

They did not stop firing until the fuel burned out.

The orange-red flames roared and filled the distance of more than ten meters in the tunnel, burning the giant rats that kept rushing up, and 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes passed, and the fierce flames kept devouring the giant rats. ”

"Five men?" Su Mengfan wondered.

"Well, it's the people we went to the All-Russian Exhibition Hall station before, I didn't see them before, they should have gone out or died.

After all, I also inquired about this accident many years ago, and it is difficult to determine whether they are still alive or not.

And the two children may have died, after all, it is not easy for the two children to survive in the current environment. Cage shrugged.

Su Mengfan followed Cage's words and nodded. But based on the auditory hallucinations next to his ears just now and the accident that Cage talked about, Su Mengfan felt that he had grasped a clue about his memory.

When I had the opportunity, I made a special trip to the All-Russian Exhibition Center station and asked if anyone in the know.

And after the story was told, after everyone saw that Su Mengfan had no big problems, they raised the speed and continued to move forward.

Su Mengfan shook his head and put this matter aside for the time being.

The silent atmosphere once again made it difficult for Su Mengfan to calm down, and in this terrible environment, there must be few people who could not think nonsense except for the cultists with a high degree of faith.

Listening to the creaking sound of the hand-cranked car, my mind inevitably became impetuous.

The pipeline here is not damaged on the route from Alekseevsk to Riga, but on the face of it, it is not any different.

But there was something that belonged only to it – a special smell, a vent in a tunnel, or a special mood.

An atmosphere that belongs only to this one tunnel, and so it gives this tunnel a personality that makes it different from all the others.

Su Mengfan remembers being told that no two tunnels in the subway system are the same. This extreme sensitivity has been honed over many years of travel, and only a few people have this ability.

That person calls this a "listening tunnel", and he himself has such a "sense of hearing" that he can be proud of.

Therefore, he often said to Su Mengfan that the reason why he was able to survive so many adventures was because of this "hearing".

Although many others have been in the subway system for many years, they don't have this ability.

Some people have indescribable fears, some people hear voices and movements, but slowly lose their thoughts, but everyone agrees:

Even if there are no ghosts in the tunnel, it is certainly not clean and empty.

Something unseen and barely touchable slowly dripped slimy on them, filling their souls with its presence, almost like cold, heavy blood dripping from the veins of a giant stone monster.

Now, the voice of the manager of the Riga Station base faded into the distance behind him, as the officer tried in vain to see if something was rapidly thickening in the darkness ten paces away.

Su Mengfan began to understand what the person meant by "feeling for the tunnel".

Su Mengfan knew that beyond the vague boundary of existence, where the firelight could illuminate, where the red firelight and the trembling light and shadow intersected, there seemed to be more people, other people—but at that moment, he didn't dare to believe that it really was.

It seems, ten paces away where the firelight can illuminate, life comes to an abrupt end, and there is nothing but death and a black void in front of them, and when you shout, there is only a dull echo pretending to answer to deceive you.

But if you sit down, no longer pricking up your ears to listen, no longer looking into the depths of the tunnel, but try to withdraw your gaze into the darkness, to become one with the tunnel, to be a part of the beast.

Or when a cell of this huge tissue is there, there is a sound from the outside world that is isolated from the outside world, penetrating your fingertips and passing through your auditory organs.

Slowly but directly into your head with a simple melody – an unearthly voice coming from the depths of darkness, vague and incomprehensible......

It is not the kind of disturbing or irritating noise that flows from the rupture of the tunnel pipe between the Alekseevsk and Riga stations.

No, it's a strange thing, it's clear and distant.

He seemed to realize something from the melody of the tranquil river, and suddenly he understood the essence of the phenomenon—not with reason but with intuition awakened by the noise coming from the broken pipe.

The sound of running water from the pipes was like an anesthetic to him, slowly filling the tunnel, but they were rotting inside the pipes, infected by something, and boiling with anxiety.

So they burst through the walls of the pipes when the pressure was too great in the pipes, and the rotten things poured out on their own, pushing themselves into the world, and with a little apology, they made all the living beings sick and mad.

Suddenly, Su Mengfan felt that he was already standing on the threshold of figuring out something important, as if he had been wandering in the darkness of the tunnel for the last hour.

At the moment when his consciousness was vague and weak, the curtain of mystery that stood in front of all sane beings was lifted at once, and this curtain obscured their knowledge of the true nature of this new world, which had been dug into the belly of the earth by previous generations.

Realizing this, Su Mengfan felt scared, as if he just wanted to know the secret of the door, and peeked through the keyhole on the door, only to find an unbearable bright light shining through, almost burning his eyes.

If you open that door, the light will burst out uncontrollably and burn to ashes the creature who dares to open this forbidden door. In fact, this burning light is knowledge.

All these thoughts, feelings, and worries twisted into a whirlwind, whipping Su Mengfan like a whip, and he was not prepared for this at all.

So he flinched out of fear – he said to himself: no, it's all just fantasy.

He didn't hear anything, he didn't realize anything. It's just a game of his imagination playing with him.

With mixed emotions of relief and disappointment, he noticed for a moment that a surprising yet indescribable sight appeared before his eyes.

The sight suddenly dimmed and melted into the air, and his mind once again fell into the haze that had been entangled with him for so long.

Afraid of this knowledge, he took a step back, and the curtain of mystery fell again, and perhaps, never again, it would ever be opened for him again.

The storm in his head came and went, leaving him with a deeply shocked and exhausted mind.

Su Mengfan shuddered as he sat there trying to figure out everything—where fantasy ended and reality began—not understanding if there was a real part of those feelings.

Gradually, gradually, his heart was filled with resentment. He was so close to the truth of the matter, so close that he was only a stone's throw away. But he didn't have the courage, he didn't dare to fully plunge into the tunnel space.

Now he spent his whole life wandering in the dark, because he had been too timid to meet the light of true knowledge.