The sudden darkness caught us off guard. In that instant, we couldn't see anything. Chen Luohu was so scared that he fell to the ground. We were all stunned for a second. Immediately, I heard Ma Zaihai cursing loudly in the darkness, obviously not saying anything pleasant. The deputy squad leader also sighed, and I could hear his bitter laughter.
Suddenly, I felt a wave of annoyance in my heart. I was already at a dead end and now with the power outage, death seemed more complete. But dying in the darkness is fitting for our profession.
After about five or six minutes, I heard a faint rustling sound, and soon after a flashlight beam turned on. The sudden light shone so brightly that we couldn't open our eyes. It was Ma Zai Hai who turned on the flashlight.
"He moved an iron chair to the bottom of the emergency light, stepped on it to inspect the burnt-out lamp holder. I knew that this emergency light wouldn't usually break, especially when it's not often used, because the structure is simple and it can stay new for decades. Ma opened the battery box under the emergency light, and found that the old wiring inside was burnt and broken."
"There are no repair conditions here, there is no solution. Ma Zaihai tried to adjust it by hand, but he ended up getting burned and yelled in pain, resulting in a scolding from the deputy squad leader for being too impulsive. As a soldier, it is not encouraged to swear at people. Ma Zaihai respected the deputy squad leader and immediately apologized."
We are all very frustrated, feeling a bit lost, this continuous blow is very demoralizing.
The only comfort was that when the lights dimmed, a very faint light shone through the hole in the window, which was almost invisible when it was on, but now it was very visible, indicating that the light in the preparation room was still on.
The vice squad leader instructed Ma to turn off his flashlight at the customs to save batteries. The flashlight had low battery and the light was dim. Ma felt frustrated and reluctantly switched to an old-fashioned emergency light, then he wanted to turn it off.
Unexpectedly, as soon as he swept past me, I suddenly felt a strange sensation. In that instant, cold sweat started to seep out from my back.
In the dark room, as soon as I swept my gaze, I seemed to have seen something that felt different from when the light was on. Although I didn't see it clearly, that thing made me break out in a cold sweat reflexively.
"What is it? I immediately shouted and asked Ma to disconnect the ocean linkage, so that he could take a look at this sealed cabin."
"The horse in the sea gave me a big scare when I shouted, but I immediately swept it again with a flashlight. This time, all of us found the problem. The deputy captain suddenly coughed violently."
Originally, in the corner where Yuan Xile used to stay, there was only a backpack left but she herself was nowhere to be found.
We immediately used a flashlight to search around several times, trying to see where she had moved to - in the corners, under the table, even on the ceiling. However, the results quickly made us start to feel uneasy: no matter how we searched, we couldn't find her. Yuan Xile had disappeared!
The light has been dim for a few minutes now. Even without counting on my fingers, I know it can't be more than ten minutes. In this ten-minute darkness, we all feel depressed and frustrated, and no one notices if Yuan Xile makes a move. But I know that under normal circumstances, she won't be able to leave this almost airtight cabin no matter what she does.
"At first, we didn't believe it at all. The lighting was also poor, so we thought we might have been mistaken. Chen Luohu took out his own flashlight, and the two flashlights were carefully aimed for more than ten minutes."
However, Yuan Xile is indeed missing.
"The sealed cabin was actually very small. After taking a look over and over again, my cold sweat quickly soaked almost my entire body."
"Really gone." Finally, Chen Luohu almost groaned as he uttered this conclusion.
"I suddenly had a splitting headache, this is simply unbelievable. In just ten minutes of darkness, a person disappeared out of thin air. It's too terrifying. The things the Japanese people are doing here are already extremely strange, and I can no longer accept this."
I hugged my head and shrank against the wall, suddenly feeling like I was in a nightmare. But even thinking about this issue was impossible for me.
"The deputy squad leader also had a pale face, and several people looked at each other, completely at a loss."
Then he and the horse squatted by the sea and went to see the only ventilation duct, which was the only place to exit.
"I am really panicked now, I absolutely don't believe that a person can squeeze into such a small passageway. This is really a strange thing to witness."
Later when I recalled this incident, I felt that Ma Zaihai and the deputy captain's actions were reasonable. Because the iron cabin was not large, we could see a large number of riveted iron walls, except for the main entrance, the only way one could leave was through the small ventilation duct opening, and just before the lights went out, we even tried to get inside, so several people at the time unconsciously focused their attention there.
"At that time, what I was thinking in my heart was Yuan Xile's figure. In that era, the physical stature of nationals, especially girls, was generally small and delicate. I didn't know who Yuan Xile was, but her physique was definitely the smallest in our area. However, it was not small enough to fit into such a narrow ventilator duct."
The horse was the first one to lie down on the sea, without any emergency lights, he could only use a flashlight with sweat dripping all over his face to shine on the ventilation duct.
We all watched in silence, the sudden horror that had just occurred did not subside but instead intensified. My heartbeat was like thunder, a feeling I had only experienced when I first stole eggs from the production team. Nevertheless, none of us expected that in the moment when Ma and Hai turned on their flashlights, Ma would suddenly scream in such a sorrowful voice.
"That was an extremely frightened scream, and then he jumped up like being electrocuted, the color of his face turned pale and suddenly fell to the ground, as if seeing something extremely terrifying."
"I was scared half to death by him. I quickly picked up the flashlight, hurriedly squatted down and shone the beam of light deep into the ventilation duct. Suddenly, my brain went blank, and my scalp was numb down to my toes. My whole body felt cold as if I had fallen into an ice cave."
"What needs to be explained here is that when the emergency light is on, we can only see the opening of the ventilation duct, but the flashlight emits parallel light that can penetrate deeply, so I immediately saw the deep part of the duct. There, I saw a severely deformed face that I couldn't even identify as a human face or something else."
Naturally, with such a distance, we cannot tell whether the distorted face is Yuan Xile or not. I don't believe it from the bottom of my heart that there is a person squeezed inside!