Chapter 23 The fifth person in the incineration room

Although this chimney is large, it is actually much smaller than the large chimney in the crematorium. There is hazy starlight on the top of my head. Seeing the chimney like a skylight, I became more confident. I used a scabbard to scrape the inner wall of the flue, quickly cleared off a circle of coal ash and oil paste, and tried the friction with my feet. The flue was very narrow, and it would not be a big problem if I was supported by the waist and back and rubbed it up gradually.

But some things seem to be easier than doing. As soon as I scraped a layer of oil sludge, the flue was already choking so hard that I couldn't open my eyes. Although I covered my nose, I still felt a sense of dizziness of severe hypoxia. Moreover, the inner wall of the flue rubbed and slipped, and I couldn't use it even if I had strength here. I supported my body to prevent it from falling down, and used a scabbard to scrape oil. It was really difficult. I had less than half a step up and felt my arms and legs tremble.

I guess I couldn't hold on anymore and had to give up. Finally, I looked up and looked up, and then planned to go down. Unexpectedly, when I looked up, I saw a dark red light at some point at the entrance of the flue. I thought it was dazzled, so I closed my eyes and shook my head hard, then opened my eyes to look, but I saw a light like a torch, changing light and darkness, shaped like a ghost fire, hanging floating above.

Seeing this, I suddenly remembered that I often heard from the old man that on a dark night, if there was no light at all, a lonely light suddenly appeared, it was definitely a ghost fire rather than a light. It was exactly: "Don't walk alone in the bright moon, the lonely light is not a human." As soon as this thought flashed, the ghost fire on the top of the chimney floated downwards. I felt panicked. This was really a fucking hand of blood in the sky, how could there be any evil things? The hands and feet that supported the body slipped, lost the center of gravity to maintain balance, and fell down the flue of the crematorium.

This glance was unexpected, as if a thunderbolt had passed by in the air. Seeing the ghostly fire-like light moving from top to bottom, I slid my feet on the inner wall of the flue, and my body fell down immediately after losing support. I knew very well that it would be unlucky to fall into the furnace at the bottom of the flue. Even if I was not killed by being killed on the spot, I would have broken my tendons and broken my bones. But I didn't expect that the air flow in the chimney of the incinerator had accumulated for a long time and the flue was extremely narrow, so my body would fall very slowly, as if I was in the clouds.

The fat man happened to be guarding the entrance of the second floor of the flue, waiting for the signal after I went up. Although the flue was dark, he knew that I had made a mistake when he heard the sound. He quickly reached into the flue and grabbed it. My back was facing him, and he grabbed my collar and pulled it back.

The flue dredging port on the second floor was even narrower, and there were bricks and muds outside the iron lid. My head hit the corner of the wall, and I didn't feel any pain in the chaos. I was not a fat man who chased his heels, and I still had the intention to see whether it was a female or a male. I knew something was wrong and didn't delay it for a second. With the fat man's drag, I crawled backwards backwards backwards and closed the iron lid with my backhand. In the dark, I heard something like an iron hammer hitting the lid hard on the lid, making a buzzing echo.

It sounded like something was on the top of the flue. It was alarmed by the sound of me scraping coal ash with my scabbard. It actually penetrated into the flue. The object hit the outside of the flue dredging port and became silent. My hearts and the other three were hung in their throats. If the fat man hadn't seen the opportunity quickly, once I fell into the crematorium, even if I hadn't fallen, I would have been taken away by the thing in the flue. What was that ghost fire-like thing?

Ding Sitian wanted to see if I was injured, and then lit another match. When I saw the fire lit up, I quickly blew out the match in one breath: "I rubbed my ash ointment, do you want to light the sky lamp?" As he said that, his face felt sticky, probably because his head was broken and bleeding came out. He wiped it randomly with his hands and asked Ding Sitian to find a handkerchief to bandage it for me first.

The old sheepskin said to me: "I don't ask your baby to climb the black hole, but your baby insists on climbing the black hole. Thanks to your baby's life, your baby has a fortune."

The fat man said to the old Sheepskin: "What's the luck? If I hadn't just been quick-eyed and quickly pulled him back, from then on, there would be no such figure as Hu Bayi in the revolutionary team."

I said when is it now, comrades? Let’s not spend the money on the old debt. Although death does not belong to the working class, I probably don’t think the things in the smoke are good. There is no hope of going out of the smoke. But we must not be discouraged. According to my opinion, one plan cannot be done, so we will use another plan. We can only go into the basement in the dark. The situation below is unclear. We can only take one step at a time and respond to changes in the same way. No matter what happens next, we must prepare for the carriage, horses and cannons in advance, and the lame man climbs the mountain and is difficult to climb every step.

The corridor was pitch black, and it was hard to move without candles, but we were reluctant to use the remaining matches no matter what. At that time, everyone was poor and would never burn clothes to light them, because no one knew when we would see the light outside again. Fortunately, it was inside the building, and it was quite feasible to walk towards the basement by touching the walls and the railings of the stairs.

The four of them rubbed to the end of the stairs step by step, and there was no more stairs down. Then I asked Ding Sitian to scratch a match to see the terrain. The underground of this building was indeed a corpse-burning room. There were several corpse-pushing corpse-pushing cabinets in front of us, and several cabinets for disinfection and corpse-removing stinky items. On the white wall beside the cabinet, there were two sets of equipment similar to chemical protection suits. Maybe it was worn by the corpse-burning workers here. There was a huge furnace beside the wall, and two cold cast iron doors were tightly closed. The space on the bottom was extremely large. As soon as we reached the burning stove, a match had already burned into ashes. We didn't even have time to see if there were any undestroyed bodies of the victims in the burning room.

The incineration room was quiet and cold, and the air seemed to be frozen. In such a gloomy and cold environment, we were all over our hearts. Ding Sitian pulled my sleeves and asked, "Listen to my uncle about fighting the Japanese in Shanxi before. The Japanese killed the people, either not burying them or buried them in the pit. But have you ever thought about why the Japanese devils here used a stove to burn the body to ashes after killing people?"

When she asked me, I thought that the girl was curious and had to ask everything, so she answered casually: "Does this still need to ask? The Japanese must have wanted to destroy the corpse and traces. Your uncle has been the Eighth Route Army in Shanxi? I ​​haven't heard you mention this." But then I thought, it was wrong, and I never thought of this layer. I heard that the Japanese were the most stingy and couldn't bear to use a big bowl for dinner. It seems that there is no need to spend manpower and material resources to build a secret corpse burner in this wilderness. If there is no need to destroy the corpse, why burn the corpse? Unless there are some corpses...

I think it is very likely that something deadly happened in this "Hundred Eye Cave". Is it a plague? It is not very similar. The murals that summoned the dead souls of thousands of years, the ancient bronze boxes transported from the Xing'anling, and the secret crematorium built by the Japanese water supply troops. Is there any connection behind these incredible events? Where did the people here go? Did they surrender in the defeat? They were destroyed by the Soviet army? Or were they missing like the herds and wild geese? What is that invisible and shadowable thing that can swallow life? Is it the same as the dragon-shaped black shadow in the crypt mural? What is the use of the stone buried in the crypt? Is the female corpse in the mural poked away by the Japanese? Who closed the iron gate of the building outside and wanted to trap us here? The room closed with bricks, the gate that can only be opened from the outside? There are too many questions, but these things cannot be guessed by imagination alone.

I know very well that hearing sounds is worse than seeing them in person, and seeing the scenery is worse than observing the shape. Perhaps there will be some clues in the underground burning corpse, but the top priority now is to take everyone out of this building first. These companions are my most important comrades-in-arms, and one is the poor and lower-middle peasants that we should combine. They have unconditional trust in me, and I will do my best not to let them have any accidents.

While I was thinking about it, I touched the trolley for pushing the body. There were some white cloth sheets on it, maybe they were used to wrap the body before incineration, so I could just use it to "glow the shiny". I first wiped the ointment that I rubbed my head and face, changed into a set of chemical protective suits with a mask and wore it on my body, and then pulled the shrouds one by one with the other three people, and then used a knife to turn the disinfection cabinet into several wooden strips. After a while, I finally made more than a dozen simple torches and lit one of them, which temporarily alleviated the difficulty of us blind people riding blind horses.

The lighting range of torches is much larger than that of matches. Everyone felt that they were lit up. They saw emergency lights and various pipelines on the walls, not like the bricks and steel and cement on the upper floors. However, these facilities have long lost power and cannot be used. Although the basement is gloomy and cold, the air is even better than that on the ground buildings. It seems that it has a special structure of filtration and ventilation.

We had just lit a torch and were about to carefully observe the terrain so that we could get out of it. The huge incinerator behind us suddenly shook violently, and there seemed to be a huge thing breaking out of the furnace. I knew that it might be something I saw in the flue, but I don’t know what it was. Fortunately, the furnace was tied up, and no matter how powerful it was, it could not be opened. Although I only heard the sound and did not see its shape, I also felt that the sound was terrifying, which was really extraordinary. I couldn’t help but worry that the solid furnace door would be broken.

I held the torch and looked around. There was no extra portal in the burning corpse. There was only a straight passage. I greeted everyone: "Although we have fought bears in the east and slaughtered donkeys in the west, we can advance and retreat. The heroes will not suffer any loss in front of us, so we will retreat first." After that, he took the lead in entering the passage. The ground of the passage was a cement slope, which might have been designed to facilitate the push of the corpse with a rig. At the end was a thick iron gate that was completely locked, and there was no switch that could be opened inside.

We pushed the iron gate blocking the passage, like a dragonfly shaking a pillar, without moving. The fat man and I cursed in anger: "Who designed this damn place? We actually set all the switches that open the portal outside!"

This building with three floors on the ground is simply a stuffed can made of steel, cement and iron plates. The only chimney entrance that was not blocked could not be left. If we couldn't find the exit, we were trapped here. Everyone had no choice but to retreat to the burning corpse and continue to look for the exit. However, the walls were extremely strong and even with a cannon, we could not break through the walls of this building, let alone we only had an old hunting gun in our hands.

At this time, the sound in the crematorium was gone. I walked to the furnace gently and pressed my ear against the furnace door to listen. There seemed to be a huge object squirming and rubbing against the furnace wall. I made a ban on the sound of the rest of the people and led everyone to the corner of the wall to discuss in a low voice.

Although I am worried about the situation at the moment, there is no direct danger. We have enough time to discuss how to leave this ghost building. I told my three companions and others: "There is indeed something in the furnace, which seems to be some wild beast. I guess it may be a cyclop. Maybe when I was crawling out of the flue, I was alarmed by me and planned to hurt people. As a result, I was trapped in the furnace and couldn't go back. The walls of the furnace were covered with coal ash oil paste. Even if I didn't scratch it a little, I couldn't go up even if I had three heads and six arms."

After Ding Sitian's parents were assigned to work in the Natural History Museum after they retired from the army. She knew many biological habits. When she heard me that the python might be locked in the crematorium, she shook her head and said, "It should not be. Due to the limited environment, there will be no pythons in the wilderness between the grassland and the desert."

The old sheepskin interrupted and said, "I said it before, but you just don't write me. That's the Dragon Prince. We have caused a huge disaster this time. Not only did we eat the dragon son and grandson in the water, but we actually trapped the Dragon Prince inside, for fear that the iron shell would be difficult to block it..."

I thought that the poor and lower-middle peasant who was too low-knowledge of the old Sheepskin would not be able to say anything. It was simply a waste of time to play the piano and sing songs for the donkey. He was too rude to explain to him. The current situation can be said to be a city of troubled worries and had to make the worst plans. If you go upstairs and downstairs, you may not find a way out. But you can't wait here. When can you wait?

When I thought of this, I felt a little anxious, so I said to the old sheepskin impatiently: "Where is the Dragon Prince and the Horse Prince? The shoulder pole is horizontally on the ground. You don't know how to read it, why do you believe in these legends that catch wind and shadows?"

Ding Sitian advised me: "August 1, don't always say that the old sheepskin grandfather is bad. This is not superstition but simple class feelings. Our educated youth came to re-educate the poor and lower-middle peasants, not to educate the poor and lower-middle peasants. My father once said that in Chinese history, the most painful thing is the farmers. They are exploited for life, facing the loess and backs on the sky, and the old cow dies with all their strength. But in China the greatest and most endurance and endurance are also farmers. Without farmers, there will be no Chinese history."

When Ding Sitian said it, I calmed down immediately. I felt that although I had not said anything too much, I should not be treated like this. As the saying goes, a good word is warm in three winters, and a bad word is cold. However, in front of Ding Sitian, I was embarrassed to admit my mistakes, so I had to beat everyone up and said to everyone: "I haven't criticized or self-criticized these two days, so I will make up for it when I go back."

The fat man took the opportunity to sarcastically me and said, "After going back, you must take the lead in self-examination, study documents carefully, keep up with the situation, criticize your own right-wing thoughts deep in your heart, consciously transform your bourgeois worldview, and explain your historical issues, background issues, and how you have developed fame and fortune ideas and leave the revolutionary ranks, and thus embark on the road of white specialty. Don't think that you don't know what you don't explain. The organization has completely mastered your situation. Now I'm giving you a chance to explain it yourself, in order to save you from your leniency. You'd better stop and never stop yourself from the people. Historical experience tells us..."

I interrupted him and said, "If you fat man don't go to be a black pen rod for the reactionary organization, you're really wasting your fat body. Let's lock it in this cement coffin that is not clear. Are you still in a bad mood? What the hell do I say will I be self-destructive from the people?"

The fat man said, "When you can be happy, you should be cheap, and when you have to be cheap, what's the use of worrying and anxious? Aren't you still unable to get out? In my opinion, we will prepare for a protracted war. I guess in two days, the old Ni saw that we were not going back to the pastoral area, so he should send someone to find us, right? When they find this, we will be able to get out."

Ding Sitian said: "I'm afraid that he wants to hide his responsibilities for the old sheepskin. I want to buy us as many days as possible. If that happens, we have no food or drink. How long can we support us here? How long will it take for them to find this place?"

When I heard Ding Sitian say that she had no food or drink, I suddenly had an idea and came up with an idea and said to the fat man and Ding Sitian: "I have a trick. Do you still remember the fact that we roasted pigs in a brick kiln to relieve our slander? Why don't we throw the fire from the second floor and light the burning furnace again? No matter what is locked inside, the fire will turn it into oil smoke."

As soon as this was said, everyone claimed good, which showed that the person involved was confused and never thought of this method. As long as you try to ignite the crematorium again, you can not only burn the things in the furnace, but also use the flame to remove the ointment in the flue, so that you can crawl out of the flue. As long as you can crawl out of the flue, you can open the closed iron gate from outside the building.

As everyone was about to start their action, the torch in the fat man's hand burned out. In order to save the light source as much as possible, we prepared more than a dozen torches, but only one was burned out before litting the next one. I was too excited to get out of the way and forgot to continue the torch. Ding Sitian hurriedly took out the matchbox and wanted to ignite the fire. But at this moment, I suddenly heard a sound in the darkness, as if someone was walking around, and the place where the sound was made seemed to be at the furnace door of the crematorium.
Chapter completed!