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Chapter 50: Closing the Door
It was Chen Yingyao’s voice.
Hearing a somewhat friendly tone in this place was startling, and Li Xingyuan felt a flicker of relief—but it was quickly tempered by suspicion. Hadn’t Chen Yingyao been lost in the old mine tunnels earlier that afternoon? What was he doing here now?
“Secretary Chen, is that you? You…”
Li Xingyuan moved to open the door, but it was being pulled shut tightly from the outside.
“No need to open it, Mr. Li,” Chen Yingyao’s voice rasped, weary and distorted by strange crackling sounds like bursting bubbles. His voice was unnervingly close, as if he were pressing himself against the door to speak. “I… I don’t feel well, Mr. Li. What are you doing down here?”
Li Xingyuan stepped back from the entrance.
Something about Chen Yingyao’s current state was deeply wrong.
He glanced at Old Liu, unsure whether to disclose their plan to the “person” on the other side of the door.
“We’re here to destroy the mine,” Li Xingyuan said firmly. “We’ll take explosives and blow this place up. We can’t let those people from Fengyuan Town eat that stuff anymore.”
Chen Yingyao fell silent. Beyond the door came the slow, viscous sound of liquid oozing through the mine—seeping into every crevice, perhaps even penetrating the iron door or deep into the surrounding rock. The sensation sent a shiver down Li Xingyuan’s spine. Was this still Earth, or some hellish facsimile of it?
“Ahh…” Chen Yingyao spoke again, his voice layered, as though issuing forth from countless throats, tongues, and mouths simultaneously. It echoed faintly from somewhere aboveground. “Destroying this place… that’s good.”
He mumbled something unintelligible, followed by a heavy, wet thud as if something dense had dropped to the floor.
“Ahh… gah… hmm, destroy it, destroy it, destroy this place…” Chen Yingyao’s voice slithered slowly upward along the rock walls. “Destroy this place, Mr. Li. First close that door, then destroy this place—or else it won’t mean anything.”
“That door?”
Chen Yingyao’s voice went silent again. From beyond the door, the noises grew louder—muffled impacts of flesh colliding, slick things growing out of slicker ones, snapping bones and violently healing wounds. Then Chen Yingyao resumed speaking, his voice calm yet exhausted: “Yes, the door. Deep in the tunnel. It leads to—”
Suddenly, Chen Yingyao uttered a word so complex and alien it seemed dredged from the farthest reaches of space. Its syllables carried an eerie chill, resonating with an unearthly timbre impossible for human vocal cords to produce—a sound akin to Ubosalas, if one ignored the haunting, star-born whispers vibrating within it.
Li Xingyuan’s body trembled involuntarily. He didn’t know what the word meant, but every cell in his body did. They spasmed and whispered among themselves, yearning to pass through the doorway and return to whatever realm the word represented.
But the light within his skull—the relentless, vigilant light—clamped down on his spine, quelling the rebellion spurred by parts of his mind outside conscious control. It drove back the insurgent forces lurking deep within his bloodline, forcing them back into submission until they awaited further commands from his brain.
Li Xingyuan exhaled sharply. Simply hearing the word had drained him, making even breathing feel laborious.
“Close that door, Mr. Li,” Chen Yingyao repeated, his voice now coming from above. He slid along the rock face, clinging to the ceiling of the tunnel, moving constantly. “You must close that door, Mr. Li, or else something will—”
He fell silent once more. Outside, the sounds intensified—horrific, guttural noises resembling a diaphragm stretched taut by rushing air, then violently compressed.
Cautiously, Li Xingyuan asked, “Or else something will come over?”
“No, Mr. Li,” Chen Yingyao replied softly, his tone dreamlike, as if a seer entranced by incense gazed into a crystal ball to deliver a cryptic prophecy. “Something will pass through. We’ll all pass through—all things, everything—but it shouldn’t be now.”
Chen Yingyao let out a sharp scream, followed by a series of broken, stifled sobs. Then his voice returned to something resembling normalcy: "Mr. Li, don’t ask too many questions. You can close that door—you have the ability. I know it. They’re already on their way. Once I realized you’re planning to seal the door, so did they."
"Who are 'they'?"
The question didn’t need to be voiced; Li Xingyuan’s mind already conjured images of the frenzied townsfolk devouring the black liquid.
"I’ll clear the path for you," Chen Yingyao said. "Have Old Liu prepare the explosives—he’s with you, I can see him. Follow me, and go close the door."
With that, his voice began to move forward haltingly, as if he were ‘walking’ toward some deeper location.
Li Xingyuan glanced at Old Liu, who met his gaze in return.
"Mr. Li, you plan to..."
"I’m going with him further in, Old Liu," Li Xingyuan interrupted. "You set up the explosives—prepare the detonation cord. If I’m not back in ten minutes, blow the charges."
Old Liu remained silent.
"If I don’t make it back, remember to head to the research institute at Jiangcheng University. Professor Chen has something there—a beam of light. He said—it might save humanity, perhaps." With that, Li Xingyuan pulled open the iron door. Chen Yingyao was nowhere to be seen. The black liquid on the ground left no trace, but the door was slick with viscous slime, as though an enormous black slug had slithered over it.
Li Xingyuan raised his eyes toward the direction Chen Yingyao had gone—the deeper tunnels ahead plunged into utter darkness. Was there truly a door waiting there, or would it turn out to be something far worse—a gaping maw of blood and teeth? No, if this was indeed a trap, even such a monstrous visage might feel merciful by comparison.
Was this a ploy to separate Li Xingyuan from Old Liu, picking them off one by one? Or...
Li Xingyuan shook his head, pushing those thoughts aside. Without another glance at Old Liu, he began to walk slowly into the depths below.
The mine tunnels grew narrower, the air warmer and damper. The fetid stench of the liquid thickened—it smelled oddly like... amniotic fluid? The word surfaced unbidden in Li Xingyuan’s mind. As he pressed onward, he soon found himself having to sidle through the tight passages, turning sideways just to fit.
Was he still in Fengyuan Mine? Or had he crossed into some other place entirely? Li Xingyuan felt the warm, sticky liquid seeping through his miner’s helmet, clinging to his hair.
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