Thankfully, the music classroom was designed at a rising elevation. The puddle stopped on the lowest level. They wouldn’t need to step in water after they walked up the stairs. The splashing sound almost drove them nuts.
Zhou Taifu shook the water out of his shoes and looked around. He subconsciously lowered his voice, “This place is too big. We won’t have time to search every nook and cranny.”
“Just try for now. We’ll discuss further if we can’t find anything.” Xu Wen didn’t want them to split up. The darkness consumed everything. They started with the left-hand side. There were a lot of props placed there. They should be for the rehearsal. They didn’t want to move everything everywhere, so they left them there.
When they realised that they had less than thirty hours to the third rehearsal at midnight, they moved a lot faster. They found nothing after a quick search. They continued to move forward. Xu Wen used her phone as a flashlight, and Zhou Taifu borrowed a small flashlight from Feng Lan. She had it around her keychain. The light was weak but it was smaller than nothing.
Zhou Taifu moved around carefully. There were a lot of electrical wires on the ground. They were extremely colourful, looking like some absurd spiderweb.
He kept his gait light to prevent tripping. Ten minutes passed, but the two had only managed to search a small area. Their progress was so slow.
“This won’t do.” Zhou Taifu straightened himself. “We need to split up a little to cover more ground.”
Xu Wen had no better choice. She could only nod and answer, “Then, you better be careful. Call me if there’s anything, and.” She said seriously, “There are a lot of hidden corners in this room. Be careful around those spots.”
Zhou Taifu nodded. “Okay. We’ll stay within ten meters of each other.” Just as Zhou Taifu was about to turn to the other side to continue the search, Xu Wen suddenly shouted at the door. “Miss Feng!”
A few seconds later…“Miss Xu…” Feng Lan’s reply came from the door. Based on her voice, she was extremely scared. “Please… Can you hurry up? This place is so dark.”
Xu Wen felt better hearing Feng Lan’s reply. She made a signal at Zhou Taifu, and the latter left to search the other side of the classroom. The pair were racing against time. Slowly but surely, they didn’t pay attention to the distance between them, and the distance between them grew. The strange atmosphere corroded their minds. They became more agitated. Zhou Taifu rolled up his sleeves. He moved a suspicious-looking cupboard, but in the end, he found nothing. The cupboard was fine. So were the drawers of the cupboard.
A sudden sound of friction grabbed Zhou Taifu’s attention. He looked around. Other than Xu Wen’s phone which was flickering, nothing was out of place.
“What sound was that?” He frowned.
As he resumed his search, he heard it again. It caused him to almost jump. It was not the sound of a door axle but the sound of a rope being stretched to its limit. As a former mercenary, he was good at assassination. He once used his hands and a rope to strangle someone to die. When the person struggled in his arms, the rope made this exact sound. He didn’t become flustered. He turned to Xu Wen and asked in a loud voice, “Did you hear anything?”
The light from Xu Wen’s side shook. Then, her voice replied, “No.” Hearing her even tone, Zhou Taifu sighed in relief. “Be careful.” He looked around and warned his lover. The place was dimmer than before. The earlier silhouettes had dissolved into shadows. Zhou Taifu took out a pack of cigarettes. He bought it when he bought the soy milk in the morning. He was not addicted to cigarettes, but he had a fascination with them. It was thanks to the mosquitoes of the rainforest. The older soldiers there rolled their own cigars and added a type of shredded leaf to the tabasco. One puff would make a person keep their eyes open for a whole day.
He once asked his senior the name of the plant. The old soldier smiled through his rotten teeth and said it was a local leaf called Sang Jiji. It was also known as Death Grass. The plant only grew in the soil where a lot of corpses were buried, and the corpses needed to be fresh. The soldier grabbed his hand and said that he once saw the grass grow out of a dead man’s arm.
Zhou Taifu shivered then.
The plant started as a small bud. Then, it absorbed the nutrients from the corpses’ blood and flesh. A mature plant could be 20 centimetres tall. It was bloodred, making it visible from afar.
“We’re smoking the flesh of the dead,” The old soldier put away his smile. He stared down the distance. His eyes contained something Zhou Taifu didn’t understand. “Kid,” The old soldier said without looking at him, his voice ruined from years of smoking, “Listen to me. Leave this place while you still can. Don’t ever come back.”
“But… I have only gotten half of my pay.” Zhou Taifu made an excuse. “I’ll return home to marry and live a peaceful life once I’m done with this latest mission.”
The old soldier saw through his lie. He sighed and said nothing. The rough cigarette burned between his fingers. The flame was as red as blood. His nostrils filled with the scent of blood. After the soldier finished smoking, he stood up and left without saying anything. He carried the AK 47 that had broken for who knew how many times already. His pants were so dirty that no one could tell their original colour anymore. The pant legs squelched noisily against the muddy ground.
As Zhou Taifu stood up to leave, he saw from the corner of his eyes there was a slab of stone the old soldier was sitting on earlier. He took a closer look and released it was a gravestone. It was carved with local language. The carving had been corroded by time.
Zhou Taifu was unfamiliar with the local language. He could only read some of them…
“Those… with bloody hands… will never return.”
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