Chapter 99: 97: Tunnel Secrets

97: Tunnel Secrets

After the misunderstanding was cleared up, Drake did not leave immediately, but instead sensed something unusual from the clues described by the Enforcers.

There were no surveillance cameras installed near the tunnel, but this was not because they did not want to install them; rather, for some unknown reason, whenever a camera was aimed at the tunnel, it would always malfunction and break within a short period of time for inexplicable reasons.

At first, everyone thought it was some ill-intentioned idiot doing it on purpose, so they even specifically sent people to stake it out, but strangely, even though the people staking it out watched for a whole day, they did not see anyone damaging the cameras, yet the cameras still broke for no apparent reason.

After this happened a few times, the losses were too great, so they simply stopped installing surveillance equipment near the tunnel, but they increased the intensity of patrols on this street.

"Have you investigated the specific reason why the tunnel cannot be used?" Drake asked the two Enforcers in charge of the missing teenager case out of curiosity.

The middle-aged Enforcer shook his head: "There is no definitive answer."

The young Enforcer raised his hand weakly, "However, there are a few theories about this tunnel."

"What theories?" Drake asked curiously.

The middle-aged Enforcer frowned and looked at the young Enforcer, seemingly dissatisfied with the young Enforcer's intention to express imprecise remarks, but seeing that Drake seemed very curious about it, he did not stop him.

The young Enforcer said: "This tunnel used to be an Air Raid Shelter, and there was a fork leading underground, but later the world was at peace, the original Air Raid Shelter was no longer needed, so it was filled in and rebuilt, becoming the tunnel it is today."

"I have heard of such a thing." Drake still remembered that the teenager yesterday had also mentioned it to him briefly.

The young Enforcer suddenly put on a solemn and mysterious expression, and said in a low voice: "But there is something you don't know; before this Air Raid Shelter, this place was actually a mass grave."

Drake's eyebrows twitched, signaling the young Enforcer to continue.

"It is said that a long time ago, a very serious infectious epidemic occurred near here, and many people died because of it. At that time, there were no means to treat the epidemic, so in order to deal with the corpses and those infected, the government and the uninfected people living here at the time buried those infected people and the corpses together in this mass grave.

Through this method, the epidemic was indeed effectively controlled, but this did not mean that everything was worry-free.

After the mass grave was filled in, for some reason, people passing by the vicinity of the mass grave could hear miserable wails, as if ten thousand ghosts were howling, which was very eerie, and later some people even saw phantoms of the wronged souls who had been buried alive underground back then.

This kind of thing continued until one day later, when it suddenly disappeared." The young Enforcer told the story with cadence, not at all like the serious and solemn impression his profession usually gave people; he was better suited to be a storyteller.

Drake sighed: "The matter isn't over yet, right?"

The young Enforcer saw a hint of impatience in Drake, realized that his habit of talking too much had flared up again, smiled awkwardly, and continued: "Yes. When it reached the modern era, with countries standing tall, heroes rising together, and the period of world war, this mass grave that had been peaceful for hundreds of years was dug up again because they needed to excavate an Air Raid Shelter to let the public hide from the flames of war.

But who knew whether their actions destroyed some kind of seal, or angered those calmed souls once again; what happened back then came back with a vengeance, and even serious deaths occurred.

The workers who dug up the ten thousand corpses in the mass grave were scared out of their wits by the terrifyingly dead-looking skeletons. Some were too timid and accidentally fell from the excavated hole into the corpse pit, their bodies pierced by the sharp, twisted skeletons within. Some died on the spot, while others died later from unexplained and untreatable wound infections; without exception, they all died.

But the deaths of a few workers did not stop the government at the time from completing the construction. They insisted on excavating the Air Raid Shelter, and after transporting all the corpses from the mass grave out one by one, they threw them into the sea, hoping that the terror and strangeness would drift away and sink into the vast ocean, and then they continued the work.

After several twists and turns, the Air Raid Shelter was built, but when it was actually put into use, the mysterious power lingering in the Air Raid Shelter did not leave.

When the war broke out and enemy forces air-raided this city, all the people who hid in this Air Raid Shelter, without exception, were driven mad or killed by the mysterious power in the Air Raid Shelter. After the people at that time learned of this horrifying rumor, no one ever went down into this Air Raid Shelter again.

And just like before, the Air Raid Shelter stopped its mischief one day, and people took the opportunity to block it up and transformed it into the tunnel it is today, to be used as an ordinary road."

After listening to the young Enforcer's strange story, Drake did not rush to criticize or deny the authenticity of the story, but asked: "Has no one ever thought about blocking this Air Raid Shelter completely?"

Why keep a tunnel at all?

The young Enforcer spread his hands and said: "I don't know about that either. It seems it was said that an expert gave advice, saying that just as one cannot cut off a person's path, one should leave a margin in doing things, so they had to leave a breath for the 'good brothers' underground, and thus they opened this tunnel."

Drake fell silent. It was not that he did not believe in the theories of Feng Shui exploration, but what the young Enforcer said sounded too metaphysical, making it hard for him to be convinced.

"Alright, stop misleading Mr. Drake's train of thought." The middle-aged Enforcer could not listen anymore, couldn't help but pat the young Enforcer on the back, and then looked at Drake with a slight apology.

Drake smiled upon hearing this and said: "No, don't say that; actually, this has helped me broaden my thinking."

This statement was not false. Although the bizarre story told by the young Enforcer might contain a large amount of distortion during the process of information dissemination, this did not mean that the content was meaningless.

The matter of the mass grave might be true; at the very least, he immediately associated the terrifying, vicious, and infectious epidemic mentioned in the story with the Jiaoren Disease he was suffering from.

If it were Jiaoren Disease, then for the people of that time, it would indeed have been helpless, as this is a "disease" that even modern technology and medicine cannot detect or cure.

Drake also did not know whether Jiaoren Disease was a "disease," a special "evolution" of humanity, or an atavistic "degeneration."

But in any case, Jiaoren Disease would make him deviate from the category of normal people, and he did not want to become that kind of monster that lost its humanity and reason.

It was also because he thought that the mass grave might be related to Jiaoren Disease that Drake could not help but re-examine this tunnel.

Beneath this tunnel, there might be secrets hidden regarding those fish-men and the big fish.