Act 1 Chapter 37

  "14...13...12" The countdown continues, I and the mountain bear are waiting, waiting for the final moment to arrive.

  "Brother!! Look, what is that?!" The mountain bear, who was leaning against the wall and ready to rush out, seemed to have seen something in front of him and walked stupidly to a wall. I followed his voice and looked over. What I saw was the paint on the wall had been shaken off, revealing the cement and white powder inside, and on top of it, there was a big handprint.

  "What's with the handprint?" Seeing Shan Xiong dazedly covering his hand over the handprint on the wall, he asked this question in puzzlement.

  "This is my handprint!!! I personally stamped it on there!!!" The mountain bear's voice was filled with an ecstatic feeling.

  "Fuxing Road, Fuxing Road, damn it!! How did I not notice?! I'm so fucking stupid!!" Shan Xiong muttered to himself as he searched for something on the ground. At this time, the reading of the seconds outside had already reached 5.

  "What's wrong? What are you looking for?" Hearing the sound of the countdown outside, feeling that the final moment was getting closer and closer, he quickly walked to his side and asked this question.

  "No more nonsense, let's find the entrance to the basement quickly!" Upon hearing Mountain Bear's words, I knew that we had a chance to escape. Hurriedly, I began searching with him for our last opportunity.

  "Over here, over here!!" Just as I was struggling with Wajin, the mountain bear suddenly shouted loudly beside me. I turned my head and saw him forcefully lifting up a wooden board that was covering the ground. He quickly walked over, and what I saw was a staircase, level by level. Although it was covered in dust and half of it was sealed off by spider webs, to me, this was the road to hope for both me and the mountain bear.

  "Don't blame me, it's because you didn't seize the opportunity. Prepare..." Just as the voice from outside grew louder, I and Yamakuma had already entered the underground room. Yamakuma turned on his flashlight and pulled me to run deeper into the room. "Are we waiting for the result there?"

  BOOM! The tank outside finally fired, and the ground above us started shaking, causing me and Mountain Bear to stumble. BOOM! Just a few seconds later, the second shell hit the ground above us, and after a choking cloud of smoke, I turned around, using the weak light of my flashlight to see that the path we came from had been sealed off by a large amount of concrete debris that had fallen from above.

  "Don't look back, just ahead." As I stopped in my tracks and turned around to take a glance, I found that the mountain bear hadn't followed me. It turned its body around, grabbed my hand with one swipe, and pulled me along as we continued running forward.

  BOOM! Another shell exploded just as we reached the edge of the underground room.

  "It's here, as long as we open this manhole cover, we'll have a chance to get out." The mountain bear shone the flashlight on a manhole cover under our feet and excitedly told me.

  "How do we open it? We don't have any tools?" Standing beside him, staring at the iron manhole cover on the ground, I asked Mountain Bear this question in puzzlement. "It's made of cast iron, can't be opened without tools. Even if we could open it, the sewer tunnel is so narrow, how are we supposed to get through? Not to mention the methane inside." These doubts were only spoken in my heart and not voiced out loud, I didn't want to disappoint Mountain Bear.

  "I'll try~" The mountain bear handed me the flashlight and then squatted down, inserting his fingers into the two holes in the well cover, gripping it tightly. As he let out a low growl, I could see that the veins on his forehead were bulging and sweat was slowly dripping down.

  Damn it, damn it! Why, why!!! We were so close, just a little bit more and we could have made it out alive. Why did you give us hope only to cruelly take it away?! The bear's angry roar echoed through the air, as if cursing the heavens for their injustice.

  "I'll go to the far point, I'll give it a try." Walking slowly to the side of the well cover, I slowly took off the sniper rifle from my back. "If there's a bouncing bullet, let me absorb the excess kinetic energy." With determination in my heart, I loudly told San Xiong about my decision.

  "What's wrong? You're not strong enough, how did you open it?" The puzzled mountain bear asked me this question.

  "I can try to blast it open with a bullet." I said slowly, releasing the safety on my sniper rifle as I did so. I took a step back and aimed the muzzle at the well cover on the ground.

  "Although the anti-material rifle is very powerful, if the angle is not right, there will be ricochets!!" The mountain bear also knew that in this narrow space, if there were to be a ricochet, it would likely kill me, who was standing closest.

  "Where are so many idle words, go to one side." After finishing speaking, I stood directly in front of the mountain bear, without giving him a chance to circle around me, and directly pulled the trigger.

  The dull and muffled gunshot reverberated in the small room, and I was pushed back a big step by the recoil, just as I was about to fall. Shān Xióng caught me and asked, "How is it?" Lifting my head, I couldn't see his expression in the darkness, but I could sense his concern from his tone.

  Gently nodding at him, the self standing in front now can feel the gentle breeze blowing from below, cool and comfortable. I know that the well cover has been thoroughly shattered. "Special bullets are indeed different." Yama Kuma said while shining his flashlight at the dark hole beneath his feet.

  "My specialty, can there be a problem? Isn't this the sewer?" He himself hadn't smelled the stench and methane from the sewer through his nose, asked San Xiong this question.

  "Did I say it was a sewer?" The mountain bear's body had already gone down, hearing my question, he put his head up again and threw me a sentence.

  "You didn't say that, what is this thing?" I asked him as I followed the mountain bear and started to climb down.

  "This is an underground flood discharge channel." The bear at the bottom of the mountain replied to my question while shining a flashlight around, "It's very big." Judging from the echoes coming from all directions.

  "How did you find this place?" We used a compass to determine the direction and walked forward while I casually asked Xiongmao this question.

  "Did you also see my handprint on the wall in the ruins outside?" Now we've reached a corner, I stopped and casually took out a grenade from my body, removed the safety pin, stuffed it into a corner, tied a fishing line to the ring, carefully pulled it to the other side of the passage, and secured it. The mountain bear helped me with the flashlight and asked me another question.

  "Did you see that? Does it matter?" He carefully applied camouflage paint to the fishing line while casually responding to Shanyin's question.

  "That building, I was also present during its construction. The marks on the wall were left at that time. In the basement, there is an observation well that leads to an underground flood discharge channel. I participated in the construction of this channel." Carefully wiping off the paint, I looked up and saw Shan Xiong gently stroking the smooth concrete wall of the channel. As he stroked the wall, he answered my question.

  "Alright, if they come, this will be enough for them to drink a pot of. After setting up the bomb, I stretched my waist and exercised my slightly stiff muscles, and by the way, told Mountain Bear that my bomb had been set up."

  "When I first came here, I was just a migrant worker. I didn't think that I would come back again, and even less did I think that the place where I once shone so brightly would now be in ruins." Just a few steps away, Shan Xiong's sighing voice reached my ears. I could hear the exhaustion in his voice that he couldn't hide.

  "Take a break." I said, and sat down, pressing my body tightly against the cold corridor wall, feeling the chill it brought me.

  "En." The mountain bear who was speaking sat down beside me, casually pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tossed one to me.

  "Yeah... I really didn't think that the place where people once envied and wanted to live forever would become a living hell." He muttered this sentence while lighting up a cigarette in his mouth.

  "Never mind, the more we talk about it, the harder it is to bear. Let's talk about what we plan to do after the war ends." Yama Kuma took a big drag on his cigarette and spoke out words that he wanted to change the subject. I knew he was also feeling unwell in his heart.

  "Can you sleep till dawn now?" I didn't shift the topic to our life after the war as he thought, but asked him an unrelated question.

  "Sometimes it can, but most of the time, as soon as there's a slight movement, I wake up." The mountain bear answered my question with a puzzled expression.

  "I'm worse than you, every night, under the pillow, if I don't press the gun, I won't be able to sleep. Or else I like to hug the gun and shrink into the corner of the wall. Even so, I still can't sleep soundly, even the chirping of insects outside can wake me up, more than 10 times a night, it's simply unbearable."

  "What does it have to do with us what we do after the war is over?" The puzzled Yama Arashi finally couldn't help but ask this question.

  "I don't know what will happen to you, but I know myself. I'm completely unable to adapt to a life of ease and comfort, I've grown accustomed to war, if I were to become complacent, I wouldn't be able to bear it, I think that at that time, I would collapse." Slowly speaking out my words, still staring at the cigarette butt in front of me, watching the faint red glow it emits.

  "Where is there a person like you, after the war ends, living with your brother, you will adjust." The mountain bear was softly comforting me, I knew he also had a hard time adjusting.

  "Is that so? But can we hold on until the war is over? One bullet, one shell, and our dreams will be shattered." I continued to speak slowly, slowly shattering the mountain bear's hopes, and also slowly letting my own heart sink to the bottom of the icy sea.

  "Get out of my sight!! Have you ever spoken like that before?! Throw away those ridiculous ideas!!" The mountain bear finally couldn't hold back, stood up and kicked me to the ground. His roar kept echoing in this place, constantly...

  "Sorry" fell to the ground, with his face stuck to the cold ground, muttering my apology in his mouth.

  "No need to say that, as long as you can cheer up, let's go, we still have a long way to go." Seeing my depressed look, Shanyin pulled me up and loudly said his encouragement in my ear, while I tried hard to put on an encouraging expression for him.

  "It's about right, let's go. After another half hour of walking, we can reach an exit. It's outside the city, I don't know if it's collapsed or not. If I find out who abandoned us, I'll beat him up so badly that even his mother won't recognize him!!" Shan Xiong was walking in big strides in front of me, casually spouting his heroic words.

  "When the war is over, maybe I'll go to Ouyang's grave and kill myself." The words slipped out of my mouth as I quietly followed behind Shan Xiong, of course, he couldn't hear me.