Chapter 4

Summer in Siberia actually has high temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius, but that is in the southern regions. Within the Arctic Circle, it is still so cold that one must wear winter clothes to move around outside.

However, people accustomed to this weather can go out in long sleeves and long pants. Several young people returning from the city are walking through the Siberian research base that was abandoned not long ago.

The scope of the research base is not large, and the group finished walking through it in about an hour.

Teapots, teacups, gas stoves, desk lamps, floor lamps, searchlights—it can be said that those who evacuated only took the important things, and all other daily necessities were left behind.

Don't look at these daily necessities as quite inconspicuous for the Red Empire, a manufacturing powerhouse; for their small village in the Siberian Arctic Circle, which lacks materials, these are all hot commodities.

And those filing cabinets, wardrobes, and cupboards—most are made of wood, and a few are made of iron.

The sturdier wooden cabinets can replace the old cabinets at home. The ones that are already wobbling can be chopped into firewood for the winter. The iron ones can be processed separately.

They even found a few long and short guns, as well as a jeep that wouldn't start.

What is even more surprising is that they found a food warehouse. Although it wasn't a warehouse full of things, flour, canned goods, and other items filled nearly half of the warehouse!

Especially since the internal power supply, heating, and other equipment are still perfect. Even without looking at the materials left behind, the research base itself is very valuable.

It's a pity that no documents could be found; it's as if those things were all taken away.

If it weren't for the mess everywhere inside the base and the traces of people rummaging through boxes and cabinets, one would suspect whether the personnel in the base had left temporarily and would return later.

Various signs made the young people have some ideas about this base, rather than just focusing on the materials left behind.

As the search operation entered the depths of the base, a very special door appeared before their eyes.

Because they didn't see any warning signs or conspicuous red characters, it indicated that there should be no fatal danger behind this door.

The young people looked at each other and decided to open this door. Naturally, they looked at the rotating wheel valve on the door, this device that looked like it was for opening the door.

Sure enough, the wheel valve controlled the several door bolts above and below the door. And the time since the base was abandoned was quite short, so the wheel valve hadn't rusted, and it didn't take much effort to turn it.

When all the bolts were retracted, the large iron door was opened with a harsh creaking sound.

What came into view was a bright, large room with pure white as the keynote; there were no dead corners in the room. The iron-gray, shiny steel washbasin and toilet were the most conspicuous parts.

Besides that, there was also a... person? lying in the middle of the room.

"Why is there someone here?" "Is this person dead or alive?"...

Countless questions were spoken from the mouths of the young people, all talking at once. Obviously, no one had the answer.

The reason why everyone acted like this, unsurprisingly, only shows their nervousness.

After all, finding a person suddenly in a base that was assumed to be empty, no one wouldn't panic.

So they could only keep asking questions, hoping someone could answer, to alleviate the tension.

But who would have the answer?

When the cycle of constant questioning without answers gradually stopped, everyone looked at each other.

Finally, someone bold walked up to take a closer look at the person lying on the floor in a strange posture in the room.

This person was quite tall, but looked emaciated, obviously malnourished. The skin was a bloodless, pale white, and the almost bald hair looked black. The eyeballs couldn't be seen clearly because they had rolled back, leaving only the whites visible.

The chest had no obvious rise and fall, but there was no pungent stench around.

After checking the breathing of the person on the ground and touching his neck, the final result just made him shake his head.

Seeing this action, everyone knew that this person couldn't be saved.

"What should we do? Leave him here?" someone asked.

Everyone showed a look of disgust at this opinion. One of them said: "I still want to use this place as a secret base. Leave a dead person inside?"

In the end, the leader, who was also the boldest young man, said: "Come over and help, carry him out and bury him. It can be considered as putting an end to the matter here."

In the Russian and Western worlds, of course, there is no concept of "letting the dead rest in peace." But to dispose of a corpse, the lowest-cost and cleanest way is, of course, to dig a pit and bury it.

Cremation requires collecting fuel, and burial requires a sturdy enough coffin or a specially opened grave to put the dead. These are all more troublesome than digging a pit to bury someone.

If it were just abandoned, with current hygiene concepts, one could naturally think of bad consequences like stench and plague. So digging a pit to bury it is the most labor-saving.

In this world that is so fantastical that rumors of mutants, vampires, werewolves, and zombies are everywhere, the dead are actually the least scary kind. As long as he doesn't crawl back up.

So once the decision to bury the corpse was made, the young people didn't shirk. Two people on the hands, two on the feet, and two supporting the waist, they were going to carry the person out and find a place to bury him.

As for the tools for digging, they had them ready at hand. Although it wasn't to the extent of everyone having one, burying a corpse wasn't a big problem; it was just a matter of how deep to bury it. If buried too shallow, it's easy for wild beasts to dig it up and eat it; burying it too deep is a waste of effort.

It's just that this dead person was heavier than imagined, and six big men carrying him really made everyone pant for breath. So much so that when they walked out of the underground research base, they didn't notice that the corpse exposed to the sun had undergone slight changes.

In the summer in Siberia, sunlight is a very precious existence because it can bring warmth. So the route the group took didn't deliberately avoid the sunlight; they just walked in a straight line as much as possible toward the small woods outside the research base.

The ground of the research base was a place disguised as an ordinary settlement. This ensured that satellites or any high-altitude reconnaissance means would absolutely not be able to see the trickery of the place.

When the base was in operation in the past, the vehicles entering and leaving wouldn't use military trucks or expensive cars that shouldn't appear in such places.

So according to this layout, naturally there would be a small church and a cemetery that a village must have. The young people intended to bury the person there.

Even if the government people came back, they wouldn't count whether there was an extra pit in this cemetery, which didn't know if it was for disguise or truly in use.

However, what they didn't know was that under the scorching yellow sunlight, the suspected corpse in their hands was regaining vitality.