At that time, there were a total of 23 people on the exploration team, divided into 4 groups of 4 people each, with the remaining people serving as a backup support team. Each group was equipped with half a platoon of engineers to provide cover and carry equipment.
"At the time, there was no fixed number of students in a class."
Here it is translated to English: Here we need to distinguish that the exploration team belongs to a special technical branch, under the Geological Exploration Engineering Brigade, while the engineering troops belong to the army branch and are managed under two different systems. Relatively speaking, we are naturally more comfortable than the engineering troops, as we do not have many restrictions during ordinary times within the unit, and we all hold military ranks.
The technical personnel were still part of the regular military formation back then, and we also received strict training when we enlisted. However, despite that, it is impossible to maintain that kind of physical condition after several years of high-intensity work. Having engineering soldiers around is still very necessary, especially for cave exploration where the rope weight is heavy, and encountering underground cliffs or geological fissures requires a lot of energy. Having more people to carry the rope can allow us to go further in the early stages.
In addition, obviously they also brought some things they arranged themselves. New soldiers who are regularly trained can carry a load of 20 kilograms and march more than 30 kilometers. Although I don't know what they are carrying, they still look relatively relaxed based on their expressions.
At that time, I was thinking about Old Cat's words and wanted to mix into the part of the reserve team to observe the situation first. Unfortunately, the grouping was based on age, and I was one of the younger ones and was placed in the second group. Wang Sichuan and two people from Shaanxi were also in my group, one named Pei Qing and the other named Chen Luohu.
"These two people are not strangers to me. We were comrades during the oil conference in Karamay. We have bumped into each other frequently in the local area, although we are not from the same unit. Whenever we meet, it's usually when we're walking towards each other, and we only exchange greetings with no substantial conversation. This time, we finally had a meaningful conversation."
Pei Qing is a youth with a pure white face that looks very young, but with scattered grey hairs giving him a bitter and resentful appearance. He is somewhat proud and reputed to have a high level of education. Pei is regarded as a technical expert in his unit, and he rarely speaks. It is said that he is also a flirt.
Chen Lu Hu is the complete opposite of him. He is a grassroots worker who speaks unrefined Mandarin. Sometimes we tell jokes and he laughs uncontrollably, and he always talks about his life and his hunger. He is very interesting, but unfortunately, he is a bit cunning and has a lot of hidden thoughts. He is the kind of person who works in a government agency, and we don't really like to deal with him.
Five people from the Inner Mongolia Engineer Brigade Company 6, Platoon 4 worked with us in the engineering team, including a Deputy Squad Leader whose name sounded like "Kang Mei" and four soldiers who were unfamiliar to us. They were all quite young and there was no introduction at the time. We greeted each other and acknowledged their faces.
In terms of weapons, the deputy squad leader wore a Type 56, and the other four carried Type 54 submachine guns with plenty of ammunition. Wang Sichuan told them it was too exaggerated, as there may still be wild beasts in the southern caves, but here, there are only bats. The temperature inside the cave is too low for cold-blooded animals to survive, and bears or similar animals are unlikely to climb into such deep caves. The only concern is warmth and oxygen, but the engineers do not seem to be very concerned about these aspects.
"Of course, these soldiers couldn't listen to us. We refused to carry guns ourselves and only strapped on our belts. Equipment was classified and assigned to each person. I brought along geological tools like shovels and hammers and felt lucky that they could be used for self-defense without being too heavy. Wang Sichuan carried a few pieces of utensils which made a lot of noise and caused dissent within the organization."
After being fully prepared, we were lowered down one by one from the cave entrance via a pulley system. The experience was unforgettable for me as it took quite some time to descend over 200 meters, slowly swaying back and forth like a swing. It was truly a test of my endurance. I would have preferred to rappel down with a rope rather than being lifted down like that. To be honest, climbing cliffs is quite commonplace for me, and descending over 200 meters is not too deep. When I was in Shandong, climbing steep cliffs was much more challenging than this.
Because the entire trumpet hole is twisted, there is still sunshine at the beginning, and it starts to darken at 30 meters down. The direction of the cave changes, and after going down only five or six meters, it enters a pitch-black state, at which point lights can be seen shining from below.
"I quickly glanced at the rocky wall and it was clearly made of Ordovician limestone. Evidently, this cave is a compound cave that likely possesses characteristics of both solution caves and structural caves."
Soon I descended to a point where I could see the view below. The bottom of the cave was the size of a standard football field and was completely filled with water, which flowed slowly. This was indeed an underground river, but it was a common sight in karst caves and I was not surprised.
"I also saw many temporary iron shelves below, I don't know if they were left by the Japanese at that time, or if we built them ourselves. Several large kerosene lamps and items that had been transported down earlier were stacked on the shelves, and the engineering troops were taking things out of them. They were all folded skin rafts, one by one. Some of them had already been inflated and were floating on the water."
The water seems shallow, many people are standing in the water wearing rubber shoes. Wang Sichuan went down first, even lit a cigarette, and stood on one side shining a flashlight on the inside walls of the cave.
"I descended to the bottom of the metal frame, and out of professional habit, my attention was immediately drawn to the situation in this hole. I turned on my flashlight, and together with others, looked around the rock walls."
A few years ago, when I first started working, I felt that caves had a very special charm, especially the unknown mystery, which always made me feel like I had come to a place that did not belong to the human world. Our exploration often compared caves to the veins of mountains, where we traveled through them. Sometimes, you could clearly feel a strange breath, and you just naturally realized that the mountain was alive.
"But now, I look at it as if I were a gynecologist looking at gynecological diseases, only looking at the areas that I should be looking at."
I have encountered a similar cave in Shanxi before, which is commonly known as a sky hole. It is said that these holes were created by the heavens themselves and most of them are incredibly deep. However, this particular cave is much more complex than the usual sky holes.
Lava composite caves are complex caves formed by the simultaneous action of geological structures and water erosion. They have both the terrain orientation of a thousand gullies and the bizarre rock formations, as well as an extremely complex cave system. To put it simply, the orientation of a typical water-soluble cave is relatively stable. If you take a leather raft down the underground river, there won't be any major problems. However, geological structure caves are likely to have absurd faults. You may float downstream to a certain point and suddenly encounter a hundred-meter underground waterfall, where there is no chance of survival. We generally avoid exploring such caves in depth.
However, this time there's no way to escape. I turned to remind the engineer to tie a stone to the anchor in the ditch to increase the weight. But when I looked back, I found that Chen Luohu had already done these things.
"I jumped into the water, which only reached my knees, it was chilly. There were two caves on each side, with water flowing from one side and out the other. As I was looking, I walked up behind Wang Sichuan and saw him concentrating on one side of the rock wall."
When I walked past him, he noticed me and gestured for me to look over there. I also shone my flashlight over and found that the rock wall he was looking at had traces of polishing, as if it was covered with a layer of wax.
"Then he used a flashlight to point out several places with similar marks for me to see. Immediately, I felt very strange and looked at him. I gave him a look, meaning to ask him, 'What do you think?'"
"He whispered, 'This is a phenomenon of glassification. There may have been a severe explosion in this cave.'"