"I closed my eyes, my mind blank. I felt like I should have fallen, or died foaming at the mouth. Looking back, it was a strange sensation. In that split moment when death arrived, what I thoughtabout was not death itself, which surprises me even now."
Of course, I didn't actually die in the end, as you can probably tell since I'm here writing about these experiences. I wrote about this experience in such detail because it had a significant impact on my personal growth and transformation. Although it wasn't a sudden revelation, going through this experience did make me more mature. In fact, after going through this type of situation, I came to understand the cost of the composure that a person like Old Cat had cultivated through their training.
"So, what happened at that time? Why didn't I die?"
"I waited to die in the mist for more than ten minutes, and then I felt something different. It was the beginning of the cold invading my body, and my pores began to contract violently, quickly drawing away the heat."
"I thought at first that this was a premonition of death, but as I got colder and colder, and finally sneezed, I realized something was wrong. Then I opened my eyes and saw that the thick fog in front of me had thinned, and I could vaguely see what was going on. The horse was standing by the door with the deputy captain on its back, both looking puzzled."
"No poison? At that moment, my first thought was disbelief. Then I suddenly felt ridiculous. Are we always fighting with our own delusions?"
However, the fog here is very thin and extremely cold, and it doesn't feel quite right.
"The entrance was clearly quite cold. The horse, huddled up by the sea, looked at me and slowly closed the door completely. Then our flashlights shone on the space in front of the doorway."
The fog was so thick that the flashlight couldn't shine on anything except for the rolling fog, and nothing else could be seen.
The mist is indeed harmless. The deputy leader seemed to have passed out due to exhaustion. Throughout the journey, he was always the one who suffered the most from mental and physical stresses. He was also injured and now it is unclear what the problem is. Finally, he fainted.
The horse carried him on the sea, and we packed our equipment. We stepped out of the iron cabin one by one, and entered into the mist.
"I can't describe what I saw because there was fog all around us, and it was hazy everywhere. When we shone the flashlight, it only illuminated a few meters before stopping. Our flashlight was barely useable at this point. Even without the fog, it would have been difficult to see far in such low light conditions."
"The mist mostly accumulates below our knees, white and dense, and then quickly becomes thin as it goes up. When we move, the mist begins to roll, as if walking in a cloud. Moreover, it is extremely cold outside the iron door. It only takes a few moments to feel the cold, and I feel like I cannot keep my lower body still. I can only feel its existence when I move in the cold."
"This kind of cold is no longer comparable to the cold underground river water, we huddled up and looked around with a little fear."
"The cool temperature helped my thoughts recover quickly. However, I realized that the mist here wasn't the heavy grey fog we saw outside. It was just the usual cold steam found in an ice cellar. Moreover, the temperature here should be much colder than in the ice cellar because it's too cold."
"We took out the sleeping bags and wrapped them around ourselves, feeling slightly warmer. I stomped my feet, but it felt like walking on metal grates, slippery and covered in ice. The sound of my footsteps echoed, indicating that we were in a spacious room."
Where am I? I'm getting more and more confused. What should be at the bottom of the dam? Isn't it supposed to be the rotor of the generator? Why does it seem like a huge ice cellar instead?
We walked cautiously forward, the iron plates and wire mesh under our feet emitted rhythmic vibrations. As we went further, the mist became thinner and I soon saw beneath me - a wire mesh path resembling a field ditch. On either side of the path were huge square depressions made of concrete similar to pools, like a lime-burning site, but much more regular in construction. There should be ice inside the depressions, and there were shadows moving underneath - small creatures resembling calves, frozen in the ice.
"The flashlight cannot shine down at all. When I stepped on it, it froze completely. The water is at least two meters deep, and it seems impossible to know what it is."
Continuing to move forward, it gets colder and colder. After walking about fifty meters, I wanted to turn back. Even the horse was shivering from the cold. At this moment, we saw the end of the "field ditch" in front of us. We saw the same iron wall as before and a hermetically sealed door on the iron wall.
However, the door was covered with ice debris, a thick layer of it, and there were a lot of broken ice on the ground. There was also a crowbar leaning there, indicating that someone had used such a simple tool to open the frozen door in a short period of time.
"I went up to check the condition of the broken ice and confirmed that it was caused not long ago. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, did Yuan Xile really come out running as I had speculated? Did she open this door?"
"I picked up the crowbar and was about to insert it into the latch to open the door. Suddenly, I saw the latch rattle and turn by itself. I was startled and realized that someone was opening the door from behind."
At that moment, I was startled by this sudden change, and immediately took a step back with Ma in the sea. I instinctively raised the iron rod in my hand for defense, while Ma in the sea leaned against the wall next to the door.
"The door was slowly pushed open, and just as I was guessing whether it was Yuan Xile or Chen Luohu who would come out, a big black-faced man peered out from inside. He looked at us, and then we, including the owner of the big-faced man, were all stunned."
"I spent a full minute before recognizing the black face that popped out of the door as Wang Sichuan. It wasn't because I was slow to react, but because his change was too drastic. He looked like he came out of a slaughterhouse, with blood clots all over his face and his forehead skin flipped up. Plus, his face was unnaturally black."
He looked at us, seemingly unable to react, and after a long while, he shouted, "Lao Wu, you didn't fucking die!"
I went up and hugged him tightly, tears immediately streaming down my face. Ma Hai also recognized Wang Sichuan and burst into tears. Wang Sichuan was probably injured as he let out a cry of pain when I hugged him tightly.
"For me at the time, Wang Sichuan not dying was really great, like winning a lottery. However, it was not dignified to shed tears. I quickly stopped crying and wiped my tears with my sleeve. I looked at him and asked him what happened."
His body was not much better than his face, his clothes were burnt, and when I hugged him, I smelled a burnt odor. He yelled and said that he had stepped on an electrical cable and almost burned it down in the electrical room.
The situation afterwards was similar to what we experienced, but he should have climbed to the other side of the dam where there was a three-story cement tower with a searchlight on top, probably used for illumination. From the top of the tower, a bridge led to a metal door on the dam. Inside was an electrical room that was similar to what we saw, but different in that the room he entered seemed to be a transformer room filled with numerous old and large cables whose insulation had frozen and cracked. He never imagined that these cables were still conducting electricity after so many years. With one step, he was directly knocked down.
At that time, he described it very interestingly, saying that he first smelled the smell of grilled meat, then felt himself floating up, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and then he was directly bounced and fell to the ground. It should have been very painful, but at that time his mind was only on the smell of the grilled meat. He was too hungry.
"I looked at the thickness of the cables that Wang Sichuan was drawing for me and once again felt incredulous. In my mind, this was just a temporary dam, and only a small generator set was needed to meet lighting or other needs. However, it is clear from Wang Sichuan's illustration of the thickness of the cables that the power of the generator here is quite high."
This makes me wonder, why does this place need so much electricity? Where does the excess electricity go? However, there are too many strange things here, and I don't have time to think about it in detail.
Wang Sichuan was lucky not to have been electrocuted. From then on, the dam flood warning and other events were the same as what we experienced. There was also an iron wall in the power distribution room. After being electrocuted, he felt nauseous and vomited. He was in a chaotic state for a long time and had to rest in the iron cabin. Afterwards, he went through some more events until now, when he opened the door and met us.
After listening, I patted him and marveled at how lucky he was to have a sturdy body. If it were me, I would have been completely burnt and would have died much sooner.
Several people sighed again. To be honest, after seeing Wang Sichuan, I suddenly relaxed. In the current small group, I am not at ease with new recruits like Ma Zaihai, and the deputy squad leader is a wounded soldier who obviously has a sense of responsibility but weak adaptability. I am actually the person in charge of this group in disguise, and the invisible pressure is huge. But now that I've met Wang Sichuan, I feel he can share a lot of my pressure and responsibility, so my mood improved suddenly.
Wang Sichuan met us and naturally felt happy. After asking about our situation, I explained everything in detail. When he heard about Yuan Xile's story, he was shocked and found it hard to believe because we were talking about something so incredible. However, in this situation, he had no choice but to believe us.
"I don't know how to explain it more clearly, because the truth is, I am just as ignorant as him about the affairs of Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu. So I told him that the most important thing now is to figure out where we are exactly."
Based on his description, I feel that this dam should be a symmetrical structure with a "sinking box" elevator on both sides, indicating that there are underwater machine rooms on both sides of the dam where motors are installed. Even if there are at least two motors on one side, one main and one auxiliary, there are four in total, which was a lot for the time since China's industry was extremely backward and there were hardly any electric lights. This amount of electricity could support a whole town.
When talking about the horse in the sea, he said that such a large dam should be built from both sides and then meet in the middle. He heard about this method when he followed the Soviets.
Wang Sichuan was puzzled and asked us where we were currently located on the dam.
"I thought the deepest point the diving box could reach would be at the base of the dam, where the motor is encased in concrete. However, when I just walked over to take a look, it was obviously not the case. There was a huge space outside that looked like a giant ice cellar, but I don't know what is being frozen inside."
However, Wang Sichuan is not our savior. Although he can relieve a lot of pressure for me mentally, he hasn't brought much change in terms of business. But with him around, I did feel much calmer. I started to contemplate what to do next.
"All the people here are injured, dizzy, and those who are not hurt are cold and hungry. This is not an exaggeration, but the situation we were in at that time. If it were young people nowadays, they would have collapsed long ago. The fatigue and hunger that I am talking about were bearable for us back then, but for our current standard of living, it would be considered as severe overworking. The situation around us was also unclear. Looking back, our guesses and speculations were uncertain. Who knows if this is actually the bottom of the dam or if we are already in hell."
My first thought when I calmed down was that we had to go back to the dam. The poisonous gas would eventually dissipate. Think about where we found Yuan Xile, so close to the entrance of this underground river. We should be able to make it back there too, as long as we don't lose our sanity like she did. The chances of us reaching the entrance will be high.
"My idea is, since the sinking box can sink down, it naturally can also rise up. At that time, I asked Wang Sichuan how he activated the sinking box, but he couldn't explain it. At that moment, I realized that I had neglected the question of how this sinking box was activated. Any elevator has a switch, but the bare iron walls inside the box clearly did not have such a visible device."
Of course, there is also another possibility, which is a more plausible one. Similar to the lifting machines used in old large mines, the switch is located outside the lift and is operated by a dedicated person. The reason for this complicated setup is that at that time, miners generally had no human rights. To control the activities of miners or the then-called "bao sheng workers" and prevent them from running away, such measures were necessary.
"But if that's the case, then who pulled the descending switch? The thought made me break out in a cold sweat. Could there be others here at the dam besides us?"
"It's really creepy, because if this person exists, then he must be able to see us, but he didn't show any signs of contact with us. Instead, after we entered the iron compartment, he quietly sank us to the bottom of the dam. What is his intention?"
"If we cannot solve this problem, then the other possibility, I don't want to admit it. But if we can't move up, how our outcome will be, I don't need to say it."
We hesitated for a long time inside the iron cabin. In the end, it was Wang Sichuan's words that reminded me. He said that based on what I had just said, the only materialist explanation for Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu's disappearance is that they ran into the huge ice cellar outside. But they didn't enter this No. 2 iron cabin. Therefore, they should still be outside. We can't just leave them behind.
Wang Sichuan's sense of responsibility is the most admirable virtue in my life. It is probably because of this quality of not leaving anyone behind that I feel secure. However, at the time, I did not think it was right to go and look for Yuan Xile. It wasn't that we abandoned them, it was that they abandoned us.
"But if the iron cabin cannot ascend, no matter how we think, the only thing we can do is to search the space beneath the dam outside. Check if there is a way out."
"Wang Sichuan's final argument that convinced me was that the behavior I described of Yuan Xilei indicates that she must have experienced what happened here. And given that her mental state is not clear, her recent behavior may very well have been a repetition of her last escape attempt. If we can find her, she might be able to lead us to safety!"
"This makes a lot of sense, so we decided to follow Wang Sichuan's advice and search for both Yuan Xile and Chen Luohu at the same time to see what this place really is. And then we will make further plans."
"At this time, the deputy team leader was still unconscious, and we knew that he couldn't withstand the cold in this state any longer. Leaving Wang Sichuan to take care of him didn't seem appropriate, so we asked Ma Zaihai to stay and went with Wang Sichuan ourselves. With fewer people, we could move faster."
"After agreeing, we roughly ate something, tightly wrapped ourselves in sleeping bags, concentrated a few flashlight batteries, and officially set off."