Global Collapse

Chapter 906 Your friend Gu Mian is currently on a separate mission
"Or are you going to go down?" Gu Mian took out a rope and pretended to tie one end of it to the fortune teller.

The fortune teller quickly waved his hands and backed away, saying, "No, no, no, you go down, I'll just take a look from up here."

Gu Mian acted swiftly, quickly chiseling iron nails into the ground near deep space, tying one end of the rope around them in a knot, and then securing the other end to her waist.

The fortune teller looked at the iron nail driven into the ground with great concern. Everyone had witnessed Gu Mian's seemingly endless luck. She doubted whether the nail could support Gu Mian's weight, and also worried that the rope might suddenly break when Gu Mian went down.

She wondered if she should text the fat guy in the apartment to tell him that his dear doctor might be about to undergo freefall.

While the fortune teller was worrying, Gu Mian had already made preparations.

Gu Mian knew, of course, that the iron nail alone wouldn't be enough, so he had Gui Gu and Xiao Qiao hold onto the rope on the ground. That way, even if the iron nail couldn't support the rope, at least there would be two people to back him up.

He gave the high-powered flashlight to Guigu, who was near the edge of the pit, so that he could help illuminate the area below. Gu Mian himself took the fortune teller's low-powered flashlight and went down. The small caves were too small, and using a high-powered flashlight to explore them would easily blind him.

"Be careful." Guigu, who was acting as a light source above, carefully controlled the angle of his flashlight to avoid shining the light into Gu Mian's eyes.

Gu Mian placed his feet on the rock wall and pulled himself down the rope section by section without much effort. After sliding down for a short while, he felt his left foot slip into thin air. Looking down, he found that his left foot had entered the cave closest to the ground.

It's the one the fortune teller said had a ghost inside.

Guigu adjusted the angle, trying to let the flashlight beam shine into the cave beneath Gu Mian's feet: "Be careful, we've reached that cave."

Now, Guigu always begins every sentence with the words "be careful," clearly showing his deep concern for Gu Mian's safety.

The fortune teller moved a short distance along the edge of the pit, attempting to see deeper into the cave from other angles. However, with the high-powered flashlight on Guigu, the area illuminated from his position was limited; she could only see a small portion of the cave entrance illuminated.

At this moment, Gu Mian had already slid down and landed on the ground at the entrance of the hole.

The opening wasn't large, about two meters wide and high, enough for three people to walk side by side. As soon as Gu Mian landed, he quickly took out the flashlight from his waist and shone it inside. He had thought these caves would be very deep, but to his surprise, as soon as he turned on the light, he saw a wall blocking his way.

It turned out to be a dead end.

The fortune teller's flashlight could only shine for about five meters, which meant the cave was less than five meters long. Gu Mian could see the entire cave at a glance, and he quickly surveyed the whole place but didn't see the ghost the fortune teller had mentioned.

"Well? Did you see a ghost?" The fortune teller, unaware of what was happening below, asked Gu Mian from above.

Gu Mian shone her flashlight on the walls on both sides. The surrounding walls were dark and uneven, but traces of human excavation could be seen. These small holes must have been dug by hand.

He tapped on the wall, thinking that the texture of the wall was very hard and that digging these holes would take a lot of effort.

There were signs of habitation in the cave. Gu Mian noticed that the ground in the northeast corner was flatter than the rest of the area, as if someone had often slept and rested there, smoothing out the ground.

Except for the flattened area in the northeast corner, the entire cave has a very wild, battle-damaged style, without any embellishment.

Gu Mian found it strange that there were so many man-made caves underground in Lianhua City, and that there were traces of people living in them. This was highly suspicious. However, these caves might not have existed here before; they might have formed along with the Upside-Down City.

When Gu Mian witnessed the formation of the Upside-Down City in Paradise World last time, she didn't pay attention to the large hole in the ground, and she didn't know if the scene under that Upside-Down City was the same.

The diviner had returned to the ground above the cave where Gu Mian was, and her voice came from above: "What's the situation inside?"

Gu Mian moved two steps to the edge of the cave so that the three people above could hear her voice more clearly: "A dead end less than five meters long, it looks like it was carved out by hand, but there is nothing inside. The walls and the ground are not very smooth. Only one corner of the ground is slightly flat. I suspect that someone lived in this cave. That person slept in that spot and smoothed it out."

Guigu's puzzled voice came from above: "Was the cave carved out by man?"

After saying that, he paused for a moment, and Gu Mian thought that during that pause he might have been calculating how many such caves were in his line of sight.

Clearly, Guigu quickly gave up the calculations, as there were simply too many caves below, and this was only a portion of what they had seen. A significant portion of Lianhua City had risen into the sky, and the edge of the resulting crater was extremely long; even if Gu Mian drove the hearse around the perimeter, it would still take half an hour to complete a single loop.

“If the walls below were all filled with these kinds of holes, it would be an enormous undertaking,” Gu Mian heard Gui Gu say.

“Right now, the ground above us is defying the laws of physics and flying backwards, so finding a few small holes underground is nothing compared to that,” the fortune teller said logically. “I’m more concerned about the traces of human habitation in the caves that Gu Mian mentioned.”

Then the fortune teller changed the subject and asked Gu Mian, "Didn't you find any people or ghosts inside?"

Gu Mian stood at the edge of the cave and looked up: "No, not a single human hair."

From where he stood, he couldn't see the three diviners directly above him; he could only see the upside-down city suspended above the deep pit.

Looking up from below, the pit opening resembles a well opening, while the Upside-Down City is like a giant, pixelated dark cloud forcefully squeezing the sky to the edge of the well. The sky is compressed like a curved blade, and Gu Mian feels like a frog in a well, looking at the sky from below.

"That's strange. What was that face I just saw? People and ghosts don't just disappear in such a short time, do they?" The fortune teller's mutterings came from above. "And Xiao Qiao also said there were people down there."

Looking up at the sky, Gu Mian suddenly realized something: "Wait, there's one more place I haven't checked."

overhead.

He did not look at the top of the cave.

The walls inside were pitch black, and it was easy to miss what was above unless you looked specifically. Thinking this, Gu Mian took a few steps back, turned around, and shone her flashlight on the wall above her. The cave ceiling was also uneven, and there were no spider-like ghostly figures crawling on it. However, when her gaze moved to the top of her head, Gu Mian noticed a dark hole directly above her.

To see more clearly inside, he adjusted the angle of his flashlight and shone it upwards, revealing a colorful face.

"What was Gu Mian doing down there? She just said there was a place she hadn't checked and went back in." The fortune teller looked at the trembling rope in Gui Gu's hand. The trembling was coming from below, and it was quite strong; she almost suspected that Gu Mian was doing calisthenics down there.

Guigu gripped the rope tightly, his palms sweating: "He must have gone to carefully check the places he hadn't checked before."

Judging from the frequency of the rope's swing, Gu Mian must be making a big move down below. He could already picture Gu Mian discovering a ghost and fighting it.

There was absolutely no sound below. Although Gu Mian didn't shout slogans when fighting ghosts, ghosts should scream and yell when they were being beaten. But it was so quiet below, as quiet as a classroom where the homeroom teacher was secretly watching.

He wanted to ask Gu Mian what was happening down there, but he was afraid that his voice would disturb Gu Mian, who was doing something below, so he kept his mouth shut and thought he would ask after the rope stopped swaying.

Gu Mian below is climbing the cave.

Yes, he climbed up the hole in the ceiling.

He had just seen the scene inside the cave with a flashlight. The face inside was neither human nor ghost, but a human head model of unknown material. The body of the head had been separated from it sometime during the day, leaving only the head hanging dry in the cave.

From a distance, Gu Mian couldn't see how it managed to stay upright in the vertical hole; all she could see were large patches of color smeared on its face. The colors were no longer vibrant, revealing a grayish-white hue beneath, and its crude eyes were also somewhat faded, making them look like the eyes of a dead fish at first glance.

Seeing a head covered in paint in a pitch-black cave is quite striking; if that head suddenly opened its mouth, let out a couple of ghostly screams, and then rushed down, it would create an even more eerie atmosphere.

To prevent it from rushing down, Gu Mian rushed forward first.

The opening was right above Gu Mian's head and just big enough for one person to fit through. He easily squeezed in by bracing himself with his hands. However, climbing vertically was not easy. Gu Mian could only use his hands and feet to support himself against the walls on both sides and move upwards in a "T" shape.

The hole was too small, making it difficult to stretch out and move quickly. Gu Mian could only slowly incline upwards. He had his flashlight on and clipped to his waist, which allowed him to see his surroundings as he climbed. In reality, the hole was so narrow that there wasn't much to see; all he could see were the walls pressed tightly against his body.

Unfortunately, Gu Mian didn't intend to write a "Stone Wall Ode," so these materials weren't very useful.

However, he noticed that this vertical hole also seemed to have been dug by man, and the tools used for digging were much smaller than those used for the more spacious hole below.

Gu Mian wasn't a civil engineering major, but he had seen people digging with shovels. Each shovel stroke couldn't perfectly overlap with the previous one, creating height differences with the surroundings. By observing the density and shape of these height differences, one could often determine the size and type of the digging tool.

He gestured with his palm pressed against the wall: "Each of the excavation marks below is about the size of my two hands, like they were dug with a shovel, and this hole..."

He noticed that the wall his subordinate was pressing against had a series of dense scratches, each only about two centimeters apart. The shapes were far too narrow; what kind of good person would use such a narrow tool to dig a hole? Moreover, Gu Mian felt that the shapes of these stripes looked increasingly familiar.

He moved his fingers and found that they fit perfectly into the slender indentations.

Gu Mian felt that she had discovered some truth, and then she carefully observed these traces. She saw that most of these thin traces were five together, which were quite neat.

Gu Mian looked at her five fingers and roughly understood what the digging tool was—someone had dug this vertical tunnel with their hands. The direction was upward; the person wanted to dig to the surface.

Was it dug by the people living in the cave below? Did they want to escape this place?

In an instant, a flood of questions rushed through Gu Mian's mind, but unfortunately, there was no one here to answer them. There was a human head of some unknown material above his head, but it hadn't mutated or emitted any ghostly cries, so it seemed he couldn't count on it.

As Gu Mian climbed up, he noticed that the excavation marks became more and more chaotic, and the walls on all sides pressed against him tighter and tighter. The hole became narrower and narrower as he went up, which must have meant that the person who dug the hole was too exhausted to dig the surrounding area to be the same size as the bottom when they reached the top.

Further up, the messy excavation marks began to be mixed with dark red, which were probably marks left by the excavator's worn-out fingers.

The passage wasn't actually very long, but because it was vertical, it was quite difficult to climb. It took Gu Mian several minutes to reach the top.

When he reached the end, the width of the cave had narrowed considerably, and Gu Mian writhed inside like an earthworm. He felt like he didn't even need to exert any strength to support his body; the passage was so narrow that he could be stuck upright inside.

The head could still move, and when Gu Mian looked up, he saw the upside-down human head model above him. He used the light from the flashlight at his waist to examine the face on the top of his head carefully. Only when he got closer did he realize that it was actually a human head made of paper, but it was quite damaged, with a section of the bamboo weaving supporting the paper sticking out.

The space above was very small, and Gu Mian could see that the person's head was stuck there.

This head is somewhat similar to the paper figures sold in the paper craft shop. When Gu Mian was a child, he went to the paper craft shop to buy a large building to complete the "fold a building out of paper" craft assignment given by his teacher. He had also seen the paper figures in the shop when he bought the building, and they looked similar to the one in front of him.

Gu Mian tried his best to squeeze his body to one side so that his right arm could move in the narrow space. He tried to push his right hand up to the top of his head to reach the paper figure's head above.

But this paper head had been underground for who knows how long and was extremely fragile. As soon as Gu Mian touched it, before she could even exert any force, large pieces of paper peeled off its face.

Gu Mian had no choice but to grab the exposed section of bamboo and gently pull it down. It took a lot of effort to finally pull the head out intact from the cramped gap. The narrow, dimly lit passage wasn't a good place to count the spoils, so Gu Mian decided to take the head back to the cave below for a closer look.

Just as he was moving his legs to climb down, he suddenly felt that the entrance to the hole below was blocked by something.

Gu Mian looked down and saw a headless body.

Shocking! Why did the 70-year-old author suddenly update? Why are hundreds of authors screaming in the middle of the night? Welcome to today's "Approaching Science" with the hardworking, intermittently resurrected author!