All the soldiers were reminded countless times by the instructor before shooting that the gun barrel must not point at anyone. They have also heard of incidents where accidental discharge resulted in fatality, even with an unloaded gun as the firing pin can still cause harm. Therefore, looking at the dark gun barrel, I immediately felt uncomfortable and raised my hand to block it. At the same time, I shouted at him, "What's going on? Put the gun down and don't let it accidentally discharge and kill me."
"He didn't care at all, saying 'It's fine, I took out the bullets and put the safety on.' Then he handed me the gun."
"I grabbed the gun and looked at the magazine, which was indeed gone. I felt puzzled and wondered when he had unloaded it. His movements were so quick. I asked him, "What are you doing? Why do you want to risk your life for the antenna? It can't even get us out of here.""
"He again unstrapped his own weapon belt and attached it to the rifle strap, saying, 'Captain Tang and the others came down to find this antenna. If they are on the same path as us, they will definitely find this antenna and come over to check it out. If they're not on the same path, I will verify first. After we find them, we can just go back instead of doing it again.'"
"I thought it made sense," he continued, "and besides, we are engineers. You may have more academic knowledge, but there are certain details of engineering construction that only we know. Let me take a look at the placement of this antenna, and I might be able to guess where Captain Tang is right now."
"Seeing him speak with such conviction and his past clever performances, I feel it's reliable. At this time, Wang Sichuan also jumped over and came to my side, asking me what's up. Always getting sidetracked, what's fun around here?"
"I explained to him that Ma Zaihai had already tied one end of the armed belt to his own waist belt, then let me hold the gun barrel, and he began crawling towards the bottom of the concrete mound under the antenna protrusion and the outer wall of the dam. The concrete mound was like an irregular bowl attached to the vertical wall of the dam, and the angle of the antenna protrusion gradually became difficult to step on as the arc extended. Therefore, it was harder to climb towards the bottom, and once reaching a certain angle, it was like the body had to hang in the air."
Fortunately, the horse was very agile in the water, and I only needed to hold onto the gun barrel and help him swing over a few places. Soon, he arrived at a spot where we couldn't see. After a while, he exclaimed, "Got it!" and I heard the sound of something hitting the antenna.
After knocking for a while, he let us climb down too. I pulled it, but the other end seemed to be fixed by him, so I stuck the gun on the antenna beside me and climbed down along with the gun strap and holster. Wang Sichuan followed closely.
"After going down for about ten meters, I could see the damp cave walls, washed smooth like wax. I didn't have time to observe carefully, but I noticed a one-meter square window at the junction of the bowl-shaped concrete casing and the exterior wall of the dam. Cables extended from the concrete casing and were connected to the window. An armed belt was tied to the cable."
"The horse sat in the small window by the sea and said to us, 'Behind this is the telegraph room.'"
"Wasn't the telegram room discovered in that cave by Old Tang?" Wang Sichuan asked.
"I looked at the machine and it was too small to be the broadcasting machine for the entire broadcasting room. It is impossible for the broadcasting machine and antenna to be so far apart from each other. Once a battle occurs, the cables are likely to be cut. The main broadcasting room must be located near the antenna," he said. "In the design of the underground bunker, besides the main control room, only temporary command posts will set up small telegraph machines. Therefore, the cave Tang Captain and his men found should be a temporary command post. It will only be used when the dam is attacked, and telegrams are usually sent and received in the main broadcasting room."
"Hey kid, why didn't you say anything just now?" said Wang Sichuan.
"To tell the truth, Captain Tang said he was looking for an antenna, but I feel that what he really wants to find is this central telegraph office. He has far more experience than me and doesn't need me to remind him," Ma Zhuhai shrank towards the window and made room for me to crawl over.
"I have already found a telegraph office and confirmed that the telegram was sent from that transmitter. Why do we need to search here?" I asked.
"I'm not sure either, but generally speaking, the central dispatch office is actually the headquarters. It may have something to do with this," he said.
During the conversation, I had already squeezed into the small window. It was called a small window, but it was not really small. Inside, there were many cables, which were unevenly distributed in the narrow space, making it cramped. Each cable was as thick as a wrist and twisted together, like a monster's tentacles. Wang Sichuan shouted from outside for us to be careful not to get electrocuted.
"We climbed about five to six meters inside and reached the end where there is a wall with electrical cable holes. The cables are sealed with cement inside the holes. Ma said that we are currently in the external maintenance passage while inside is the internal maintenance passage. This wall is the first sealed wall, probably because the external air quality is problematic."
I said don't give us an engineering class. There's a brick wall here. Can we even get through it?
"The horse didn't say much in the sea, picked up its own water bottle and began smashing the wall. Soon, the wall cracked open: 'For the convenience of maintenance, this kind of partition wall is generally made of white gray, which looks very solid, but can be peeled off with your fingernails. At most, there is a layer of iron wire mesh inside, which can be cut open directly.' As expected, the wall was knocked through, 'There isn't even any wire mesh here, there must be no mice inside the fortress.'"
"We spent more than ten minutes widening the gap to a size that we could pass through. We continued further and, using the same method, broke through two more isolation walls. There were ventilation holes between the isolation walls to prevent the accumulation of toxic gases, as with the settling tank, they were very narrow and could not allow entry for a person."
Finally, we entered the end of the cable channel. All the cables were plugged into individual cable boxes and transformed into small wires going downwards. Ma Hai pointed to the iron cover beneath him, grabbed one of the cables and kicked the cover open.
After flipping over, it was pitch black underneath. When I shone my flashlight, I realized that we were inside the ceiling of a room. There were several chairs and tables below us, and they were piled with stuff.
The horse jumped into the sea and after swimming around, didn't find anything. Wang Sichuan and I also jumped in and looked around. The room was very different from the ones we had seen along the way.
"This is a square room, approximately the size of a basketball court, with things placed on all four sides."
"At first glance, there is a row of old and large instruments. They are iron boxes taller than humans, with red and green indicators and switches on top. They are very solid and huge, placed against the walls. The metal surface is already mottled with rust, but compared to the rusty mechanical parts outside, the rust here is relatively mild. It seems that these iron box instruments have undergone anti-rust treatment."
One side of the wall features a gigantic iron plate, which displays a cross-section diagram of the entire dam using various colored lines. However, the diagram is quite basic, complemented by symbols and many indicator lights. Beneath the iron plate is an iron box with many buttons, resembling a control panel.
In the middle of the room, there are four long writing desks arranged neatly with telephones and stacks of documents, thickly covered in dust.
The reason why it feels different from the rooms seen along the way is because there are precision instruments here, unlike the large-scale machinery and concrete components seen all the way, either a cold storage or a warehouse, cable ducts, here is finally like a technical personnel waiting area.
I asked Ma in the sea what these things are used for, and Ma in the sea explained them to us one by one. He said that the large iron box equipment should control the dam's equipment, and the iron box is full of Japanese, so he does not know the specific purpose, but there must be pressure monitoring, water level monitoring, control of the dam's gate circuits, and control of each generator inside. The cross-section of the dam on this side should control the internal pipelines of the dam, and these diodes represent the opening and closing of the pipelines. However, there are too many things involved in the entire dam, and he cannot say what these pipelines are specifically.
In short, he knew what these things were, but he didn't know how to use them. What he could be certain of was that this was the control room of the dam, or at least one of the control rooms.
Unexpectedly, we did not see the expected transmitter and did not find any doors leading to elsewhere in this room. It seems to be sealed.
The horse shone a flashlight at the ceiling and followed the path of the electrical wire. He looked from the ceiling to the wall, then from the wall to the floor. Finally, he pointed to a thick iron plate on the ground, with a wrist-thick pin, and flipped it over. The iron plate turned out to be a very solid trapdoor, revealing a vertical ladder and what appeared to be another room below.
"The hidden door is difficult to find even after conquering this place. It would take a long time to locate the control room," Ma said at sea. "This is how Japanese military architecture is designed."
"At first glance, the room below seemed unremarkable. But I still had other things on my mind and was prepared to act quickly. As I was about to head down, Wang Sichuan grabbed my arm and said, "Wait, there's a problem.""
"What's the situation?" I asked.
"On one side, Wang Sichuan was very interested in the cross section diagram of the dam on the iron plate, pointing and asking, 'You see, those two vertical indicator lights at the corners of the dam, do they represent the sinking caisson that we came down?'"
The horse looked towards the sea and saw two indicators that were bigger and of a different color than the others. He took a deep breath and nodded, "Yes, it should be."
"Then, the switch to control this cargo hold should also be here?" he asked.
My heart trembled as I knew what he was thinking.
Wang Sichuan approached and used a flashlight to illuminate the densely packed buttons on the iron box instrument. Each button had a Japanese label underneath, but I knew that was not what he was interested in. When he got near the buttons, he waved me over and I saw that the dust had been recently wiped off, as if someone had used the buttons not long ago.
"Interesting," Wang Sichuan said. "Are there still Japanese people here?"
"Wang Sichuan thought of what happened to us in the sunken chamber. There was no operating device inside, so who activated the sunken chamber to make us descend to the bottom of the dam? I don't think it was done by any remaining Japanese soldiers. Firstly, we didn't see any traces of life all the way here. Secondly, there was dust everywhere, but the dust on the control panel had been wiped off, indicating that people didn't often move around there."
"I explained to him: "It looks like someone has come here recently and pressed a button to operate something."
"I looked at the ground, expecting to see footprints, but since we've been wandering around, everything is indistinguishable now."
"Wang Sichuan thought about it and felt it made sense: 'Then who could it be? He must have arrived before us. Could it be the woman from the last exploration team that we have not found yet?'"
"I can only assume it's her for the time being," I said, "I really can't think of any other possibilities."
"The Horse said on the sea route, 'This doesn't make sense. We were able to come in from the outside because we broke down the barrier wall. Other than the cable port, the only way in and out is through that door. So this person must have come up from below, so it's unlikely they stumbled onto this place by chance. Unless they already knew the structure of this dam.'"
Indeed, I continue to analyze: "After she arrived here, she may have relied on this iron plate to find the control instrument, and swept away the dust on the instrument panel, read the labels and found the button to control the sinking box. She knew that the machine under the iron plate could control the sinking box, so she did not search for each one, but instead swept away the dust to find which button to start and stop - these details tell us that she must have followed some guidance, with a clear purpose, but not familiar with the details."
"It seems that whoever this person is, their background must have some issues. They might even be a Japanese spy," I said. "One of the members of the first exploration team was shot, and it could have been done by this spy. The failure of their exploration mission may also be due to enemy sabotage."
All three people nodded, Wang Sichuan said: "This woman's whereabouts are unknown, but now we have discovered traces of her activities. Maybe she's nearby, wouldn't it be easy for us to encounter her?"
"The gun of Ma Zaihai is still hanging outside, and I suggested bringing it back for self-defense. Ma Zaihai said we cannot be sure if we can get out from below, so we might have to turn back. If we bring the gun back, it would be difficult to climb back here. Therefore, I abandoned the idea. Wang Sichuan said that we have to be extra careful now."
Continuing the search, Ma Zaihai climbed down from the ladder first and confirmed that no one was below before we followed.
Below is a room that is almost twice as large as the one above. There are six transmitting machines along the outside wall facing the dam, with telegrams scattered haphazardly on top of the machines. The rest of the room is filled with iron tables and files covered in dust.
This should be the command center of the dam. A huge underground fortress map hung on the wall, identical to the one seized by Lao Tang but bigger. Wang Sichuan also saw a microphone on one of the long tables next to the wall, which should be the broadcasting station.
"The surrender letter of the Japanese emperor at that time was probably read out here, and after the reading, the retreat began," Wang Sichuan said, trying to get Ma Zaihai to activate the broadcast. However, after adjusting for a while, the power indicator didn't even light up, so it seemed to be completely damaged."
After coming down, I specifically told them not to move, and sure enough, I saw messy footprints on the ground leading in two directions. When I shined my flashlight, one side was a double iron door, and the other was a dark green wooden door.
"The double-open iron gate is obviously a blast-proof sealed door. It should lead to other places outside. We don't know where is behind the wooden door, could it be the restroom?"
We walked over and opened the wooden door, inside was unexpectedly an office.
The whole room was covered in dust. The furnishings and decorations were very simple, indicating that the Japanese soldiers at the time did not bother to decorate their offices. Traces of the previous hanging decorations, perhaps Japanese swords, could be seen on the walls. In the corner of the office, there was a clothes rack with a dusty military uniform of unknown type hung on it.
The dust was everywhere marked by being turned over; leaving fingerprints, we followed it and saw nothing else except for a large number of documents.
Historians specializing in the history of the Resistance or those who understand Japanese might be able to find some clues, but unfortunately, we are neither, so we have to give up. However, based on the numerous footprints, it seems that this person is searching aimlessly for something.
"Returning to the command center outside, heading towards the iron gate in another direction."
Pushing open the double iron gates, as expected, there was a long dark corridor outside. Shining a flashlight, footprints led back and forth, obviously there was an exit here. Without much thought at the time, we hurriedly followed the footprints into the darkness.
Shortly thereafter, several forks appeared, all with footprints, and we had to choose one by one. The first choice was wrong, and it led to a power distribution room full of switches. Wang Sichuan suggested trying to turn some off, but I insisted not to, as it could have consequences such as shutting down important equipment, like the compressor in the cold storage room.
We returned to the fork and took the second corridor. Soon we arrived in front of an iron door, which was also a triple-secured door, extremely thick. Every space here could become a difficult-to-capture cover during combat.
Wang Sichuan pushed open the iron door, revealing a separate hall inside. As we swept our flashlights around in usual fashion, we all let out an astonished gasp.
"I am explaining this process of finding the correct room without getting tired because it is absolutely crucial. When we summarized it later, we were a little scared - if we had chosen the correct path at the three-way junction, the true image of the huge underground bunker would never have been known to the world."
"Many times, one choice can change a lot of things."
Behind that iron door, we saw a strange room. It felt very familiar to me, as if I had seen it not long ago, but I had no concept of it.
There is a curtain hanging on the wall in front of the room, which is approximately 5 by 5 centimeters in size. There are many low seats in the room. In the back of the room, there is a strange machine standing there.
"I didn't realize what it was until I walked up to the machine - it was a small film projector. I couldn't believe it - this was actually a film screening room."
"I only learned in the tent on the ground while watching "Zero Film" during the meeting that there could be such a small film projector in the world. Is this the cinema of this underground base? Do Japanese soldiers come here for entertainment activities?"
In retrospect, it might be true, but during that era, it was impossible for us to conceive of the Japanese people engaging in such legitimate leisure activities. This was undoubtedly a place designed to reinforce militaristic ideas among Japanese soldiers.
"I am very curious about this small projector. Upon closer inspection, I noticed heavy marks on its surface, indicating that the person who came before us was also very interested in this machine. As I carefully observed from all angles, I suddenly realized that something was not right."
There is a groove on the projector that seems to be able to hold something. I feel like I have seen this groove before, but it is different from the sense of familiarity earlier. It gives me a feeling of urgency to remember where I have seen it before, and I feel like it is crucial.
"I called Wang Sichuan over, and he gestured while the three of us tried to recall. Ma Hai immediately remembered: "The metal box! It was found on the body of the Japanese soldier woman."
"This happened not long ago. I remember it was a metal box that looked a bit like a snail's shell. When I compared it to the drawing, it was exactly the same, and then I suddenly understood everything."
"No way, are you kidding me? So you mean that iron box is stuck here, and that's actually a component of a projector? I was confused for a moment, and suddenly realized - no, wait. Oh my god, that iron box is actually a film container for a camera!"