Chereads / The Final Exploration / Chapter 44 - Chapter 43

Chapter 44 - Chapter 43

At that moment, the three of us, including myself as deputy squad leader, were all frightened to the core and stood still in place.

I was actually half-doubting just now, whether I saw the Japanese military uniform just now was my own illusion. At that time, I was kicked by someone, and the whole thing took only a few seconds, so it's unlikely that I could see clearly.

Unexpectedly, not much time had passed when suddenly I saw so many Japanese people. It was as if we had passed through a time tunnel, and that disgusting yellow coat made me feel like I had stepped into the resistance era.

Immediately I realized something was wrong, these Japanese people looked familiar, as if I knew them.

Upon closer look, I instantly saw one of the Japanese officers peeking out at me, and to my surprise, it was Old Cat!

I was still surprised when Pei Qing and Wang Sichuan came out. Wang Sichuan took me by the arm and was surprised when he saw the ice on my body. He asked the deputy squad leader what had happened to me.

I was pulled over and immediately stripped of my clothes and hung by the bonfire. The bonfire was so big and warm, my tears came down, and I didn't know why I was crying.

Now thinking about it, the sense of security of encountering a large group is really great.

"At that time, a few of us were ragged while the old cats were all in neat Japanese military coats, especially the old cat who was wearing a dark-colored officer's uniform, matched with his expression that was neither yin nor yang, just like a Japanese staff officer in a movie. After I was wrapped in a sleeping bag, I looked at him and we both burst out laughing. Then the people beside us also laughed."

"I asked what the hell was going on, you bunch of old ghosts. When did you all turn coat and become Japanese devils?"

Pei Qing said, "Don't misunderstand good people. We are members of the Guerrilla Makeup Squad, and we laughed while speaking."

Upon careful questioning, it was discovered that these clothes were all found in another warehouse. Pei Qing said that their route was too cold, and they weren't sure why. Later, they searched a warehouse and dug out these clothes. At first, no one dared to wear them, but later they couldn't stand the cold and put them on. The whole outfit was like a Japanese Kwantung Army unit, which made them laugh even more when they saw themselves in the mirror.

"When I parted with them, I remembered to ask how they had arrived here and whether they found the source of the telegram."

"When I asked this question, the faces of several people darkened. Pei Qing sighed and nodded, saying that he had found it, but unfortunately, the person was already dead."

"He gestured as he spoke, describing their process to us briefly."

"We need to rearrange our thoughts here because Pei Qing and the others only briefly described their experiences. It's been so many years and it's too difficult for me to fully remember the contents. I've already forgotten many details. Perhaps Pei Qing didn't explain everything in great detail at the time, but that's not important."

"They drift along the cable towards the depths of a waterway called "Number 6 River" (named by the Japanese, which will be explained later), which is the main stream and tributary in geographical relation to "Number 0 River" where the dam is located."

"After we separated at the underwater cave, they kept drifting inside as Old Tang predicted. In the stretch after the underwater cave, the cable and underwater rails meant that this area was once a hub of Japanese activity. The terrain and surroundings flattened as we moved forward without obstacles. There were increasing signs of Japanese activity, becoming more diverse."

After drifting inward for about 40 minutes, the riverbed of the underground river began to slope upward, and the water became increasingly shallow. Soon, they encountered numerous shallow sandbanks protruding from the water's surface. As they proceeded further, the sandbanks became more and more abundant and eventually merged into a vast expanse of rocky riverbanks, marking the end of the dark river.

"At the beginning, there was also water on the Yanhe Beach, but the rafts could not travel on it. They had to wade through the water. Pei Qing and others discovered that "No. 6- River" was hanging on the top of the dark river mountain, and it began to split from here."

"The riverbank is a slope. They walked up quickly to a dry area and climbed to the top of the riverbank. Behind the riverbank was a huge karst cave, which was quite flat but messy. Various cables hung on the stalactites that had fallen down, and the ground was covered with piles of things covered with waterproof canvas. They lifted the canvas and found desks stacked with documents and communication equipment, among which the cables left a deep impression on him, ranging from thick to thin, scattered all over the ground and top. There were also temporary beds and many wooden boxes of supplies. They found their Japanese military uniforms inside."

At the end of the cave, there are numerous branches, some of which are piled with objects and others are deep and bottomless with unknown destinations. However, a large number of cables still extend into these branches, indicating that there are devices inside that require electricity.

Pei Qing said that according to the overall layout analysis, the end of "No. 6-Chuan" is the communication hub of the entire dark river cave project, which is the wiring center of the old-fashioned telephone system. This wiring room is directly powered by the small hydropower station in the sinking cave where we came from, and it is quite hidden. During the war, it can ensure a certain level of secrecy.

From the situation inside, it appears that the Japanese did not destroy the documents, but instead covered them completely with canvas. Obviously, when they withdrew, the Japanese did not think they would never return. This contradicts everything we had seen before and it's really hard to understand what happened in the last moments of this underground base and what orders they had received.

After a hasty observation, they started following the cable to locate the source of the telegraph for the Dianxi plunge pool power station. Old Cat believed that it was highly possible that survivors from the first exploration team were waiting for rescue at this location, so he blew the alert whistle.

But the bleak whistle did not receive any echo, and in the end, Lao Tang and the telephone soldier checked the line. They finally found the telephone cable among countless plugs. They pulled the cable all the way and discovered that it extended all the way to a fork in the cave leading deeper inside.

"Old Tang led people inside and went about 20 meters deep into the forked cave when he smelled a rotten odor. Then he saw a dispatch room with an automatic dispatch machine inside, and there was a pile of things covered with canvas next to it. After Pei Qing lifted the canvas, he found three dead bodies below."

"These three dead bodies, two men and one woman, one of the men is an old man. They were all wearing Japan's tan-colored overcoats, but underneath, they were dressed in the same uniform as us in the People's Liberation Army. All three bodies had begun to rot, and the entire reporting room was filled with a slight stench of decay."

After turning over the corpse, Pei Qing found that these were three unfamiliar faces. Judging from their clothing, they should be the survivors that Lao Mao identified. Unfortunately, they were already dead and had been sacrificed for some time.

The search team was very frustrated. They carried the bodies out of the reporting room. Pei Qing stopped the automatic telegraph machine that was still sending messages. Later, he tried to find out the cause of death of these three people. After examining the bodies, he found black lines on the gums, similar to the bodies we saw in the water hole. It seemed that they died of poisoning.

Old Tang believed that perhaps they had been poisoned with a chronic toxin and did not die immediately. After one of them sent a telegram, they waited here but in the end, they did not make it. Old Cat shook his head and said it was impossible.

These three people were all covered under the canvas. If what Lao Tang said is true, then definitely one person survived as all three bodies were covered.

At that time, the number of personnel in the composition of an exploration team was not certain, but it could not be too many, especially when the exploration area was unknown. We can anticipate that the number of personnel in the exploration team should be between five and ten. Under the circumstances at that time, unless it was a super large-scale exploration mission, there would only be this many people.

"So the number of deaths in the first expedition team, which Old Cat and his group do not have the information we possess, was statistically three people at the time, plus the surviving Yuan Xile, the survivor mentioned by Old Cat, and the young warrior we saw. There should be a few people who have not been found yet. Old Cat is quite worried and is continuing to search the surrounding caves while also discussing countermeasures with Old Tang. However, they were speaking in a secretive manner and Pei Qing could not hear them, so she does not know what decision they made at the time."

The cave system deep inside was quite complex, and the search at that time was quite difficult. Most of the engineering soldiers brought by Old Cat were also new recruits. Old Tang was a softie, and while everyone respected his technical skills and fighting ability, he didn't have the charisma to inspire others to take risks with him. So his soldiers ran around everywhere, but found that the caves were all unfathomably deep, some even going straight down vertically. In the end, they all retreated back.

They ended up trapped there and no amount of cursing could change that. The old cat himself was an eccentric person and had no solution at the moment, so we had to make do with what we had. Meanwhile, I was already tumbling into the giant, dark river "Number Zero-Chuan" under the leadership of stubborn deputy squad leader and reckless Wang Sichuan.

"I don't have much experience in leading troops. After so many years in the military, I know what kind of person can lead soldiers well. A true officer should be as stubborn as a deputy squad leader in executing orders, as brave as Wang Sichuan, and as cunning as an old cat. Such people are really few and far between."

"I don't know how long they repaired there. If it wasn't for Lao Tang finding the problem in the telegraph room, Lao Mao might have declared the mission a failure and come back to meet us. Then we wouldn't have met in this crane warehouse inside the dam, and we wouldn't have had that ridiculous scene just now."

Actually, when Pei Qing told me the whole process, I already felt that there seemed to be some "unexplainable" parts. But you have to understand that Pei Qing was using heavily accented Mandarin to tell the whole story at that time, and Mandarin education had only been popularized for a few years. I wasn't sure, anyway, the effect hadn't appeared yet. Pei Qing spoke quickly and I didn't have the energy to understand every detail while listening. However, this "unexplainable" part was discovered by Old Tang, who was a "nail spirit," when they were collecting the body.

"The problem lies in that telegraph office."

During the resistance war, although the telephone system was rudimentary, it was able to achieve short-distance communication. The wireless telegram was mainly used for long-distance communication, and its application range was quite strict. The transmitting machine had to be located on a high point, so it was generally suitable for the plains. In mountain valleys, signal transmission was quite difficult due to the surrounding mountains. If it was already so difficult in a valley, imagine the difficulty of communication in even more complex caves.

So why is it strange to install a transmitter at the end of this dark river in the cave?

Mr. Tang discovered that it was indeed a regular transmission room. Japanese decoding guides and a large amount of telegram information were all here. They speculated that the antenna of this automatic transmission machine must not be here, but on the ground, to be used to communicate with other fortress telegraph stations.

Immediately a question arose: if this is true (in fact they all thought it must be), then is it just a coincidence that the automatic signaler transmitted the message over the telephone lines? Is it possible that the person who sent the signal at that time also realized this possibility and his intention was to transmit the signal to the ground, and we heard the telegram from the telephone line completely by accident?

"If so, has this signal been intercepted by someone? Has the 723 command center on the ground known that there is danger in this hole for a long time?"

At that time, Pei Qing raised this issue to Lao Mao and asked if Lao Mao knew many things that they didn't know before they came down. He directly questioned Lao Mao. This way of dealing with things may seem unlikely now, but it was quite normal in the interpersonal relationships of that time.

The old cat ignored him. He said he didn't know who did it. If the antenna was really connected to the ground all these years, with wind and rain, it might have been broken a long time ago.

"It's a bit like playing tai chi to say so. While they were arguing, Lao Tang and the telephone operator were playing with that automatic telegraph machine. Just as Pei Qing was about to continue accusing, Lao Tang, who was wearing headphones, stopped them and took off his headphones to let them listen."

The automatic distress signal transmitter not only has the function of transmitting distress signals, but also has the function of receiving distress signals. In order to verify whether the onshore antenna mentioned by Lao Mao was damaged, Lao Tang turned on the machine's distress signal receiving function. Unexpectedly, they immediately heard a rapid series of electrical code from the headphones.

"I was quite surprised to hear this. Although intercepting telegrams through a transmitter is not difficult, especially during the era of encrypted codes, when there was no hopping transmitter, intercepting telegrams often required considerable frequency tuning preparation. If you open the receiver and receive the telegram immediately, it means that the transmitting and receiving frequencies of this transmitter are the same as that of the other party's transmitter. This possibility is very small, unless the two machines had agreed beforehand."

Pei Qing did not think of this, he believed that the telegram must have been intercepted by a surface antenna in the country, which indicated that the transmitter antenna was definitely useful.

"Lao Tang and the phone technician had discovered the problem. The technician listened for more than ten minutes but found that the encoding method was completely wrong and impossible to decipher. Then they checked the Japanese decoding book and found that the frequency of the electronic code in the headphones matched the Japanese encoding."

"Note that this is military code. Even if a telegram from Japan's mainland can be sent to Inner Mongolia in China, it will only be civilian code, not the same as the encrypted Japanese telegram. This quickly became a bad situation: the automatic telegraph machine in the Kwantung Army's base telegraph room, 1,200 meters underground, can receive Japanese military encrypted codes, but they do not know where the code is coming from."

"This is really unbelievable and cannot be explained. This telegraph machine must have an antenna, but where is this antenna located?"

At that time, they speculated that there must be another secret Japanese base in the deep forests of Inner Mongolia that we were searching for, and the telegram received by the radio was definitely from there.

At that time, everyone accepted this explanation because there was no other explanation. First, they believed that the telegram could not come from underground because it did not comply with the laws of physics, so the telegram must come from an "antenna" on the ground. Second, in 1962, the ground antenna could not receive Japan's military code, and it was still using the 1942 codebook, so this code must come from another abandoned place in Inner Mongolia, also from 1942.

Because no one understands Japanese, even if they have all the codebooks, they cannot understand what the telegram is saying. The only thing the telegraph operators noticed after listening for a long time was that the content of the telegram was of a certain length and had a cyclic frequency, indicating that the other side was another automatic transmitter.

"At this point, Lao Mao had relaxed. Although he couldn't save anyone, he found this telegram and a lot of information. For him, it should be enough to justify his efforts. So they recorded all the code frequencies, dismantled the transmitter on the back, and brought all the codebooks and decoders. Lao Mao is ready to return and let the professionals decode the code to see what it really says."

While sorting through the telegram data, the old cat and his team had a surprise: a young soldier found an engineering cross-sectional drawing in the stack of data books. This crucial drawing was only partly legible, but the clear portion depicted our dam, the structure for launching aircraft, and a lot of information about underground tributaries.

With the help of this drawing, they entered the karst system from a branch cave of the cave they were in, and followed the cables for more than ten hours before arriving at the end of the dam, near a huge abyss on the brink of an underground river. Afterwards, they went through some events and finally met us here.

"Things are quite clear and organized in my mind now. Obviously, the experiences of Lao Mao and Pei Qing were quite effortless, which made me somewhat annoyed. This is because the piece of paper that led us into the sunken cave was given to me by one of them. It made me feel like I was pushed into a very dangerous situation by someone who is not responsible."

Later, I thought that our falling into the huge dark river was completely accidental. If such an accident had not happened, it would have been unpredictable where we would end up after entering the developed area of the underwater cave system beneath the waterfall.

"The things we experienced were already told by Wang Sichuan to them, even to those who might be enemies or spies within the team. At this moment, Lao Mao's face looked quite grim because of the sacrifices they encountered, and the list of known deaths was already quite long."

"Telegraph Office - Three people dead"

"Hydroelectric generator at the sinkhole - one person died"

"Hanging Warehouse - One Person Dead - Su Zhenhua Went Crazy"

"In addition to the previously insane Yuan Xile, among the first exploration team members unknown to us, we have found seven people, none of whom are normal - either dead or insane."

"I asked Old Cat, now that it's time, you should tell us something. At least you should tell me how many people are in this team."

As soon as I spoke, Pei Qing immediately agreed, and Wang Sichuan on the side, Ma Zaihai, and the deputy squad leader all helped me ask. Pei Qing was quite excited. He had argued fiercely with Lao Mao before, and now that we all stood up, he couldn't hold back even more.

Old Cat and Old Tang remained silent. Their soldiers below were definitely unaware, and if anyone knew anything, it would only be the two of them.

After a short standoff, with neither side saying a word, Old Cat suddenly relaxed, let out a sigh, and said to us, "Okay, but I can only tell you this much. You can't ask anymore. Knowing too much isn't good for either of us."

"I said, 'You can tell me, I understand. We won't mention this after we leave.'"

"The old cat smiled strangely and said, "This team entered here half a month ago, consisting of nine people - four experts, four engineers, and one special supervising officer.""

"Nine people?" Ma Zaihai took a deep breath and said, "So you mean we still haven't found two people?"

"The old cat shook its head and said to him, 'No, it is one.'"

The horse raised its fingers over the sea, counted and said, "This isn't right, nine minus seven isn't two, is it?"

Lao Mao said, "There is one more person who made it out alive."

"We were all surprised at once, and Ma Zaihai asked who it was?"

"The old cat narrowed its eyes and pointed to itself, saying, 'It's me.'"