Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 20 Fortune
Sa Qi led Su Mengfan straight forward, and walked down a passage that formed a certain angle with another corridor. This passage became narrower as it went forward, and there were brand new doors everywhere.

Thatch did not run quickly through this passage, but often stopped to listen.

The floor here is covered with wooden boards, and there are forbidden words on the walls: "Please be quiet!" These words are the same as the entire library, and they are all yellow.

Various rooms and abandoned offices can be seen through the open doors.

Sometimes rustling can be heard behind the closed door, Su Mengfan once thought he heard footsteps.He looked at his partner's expression and knew that it was useless to talk about it.

The two hurriedly left here as quickly as possible.

Then, just as Thatch had said before, a doorway appeared to their right, leading to another stairwell.

Compared with the dark walls, it is brighter here.

Because there are windows on each step of the staircase, the fifth floor reveals the patio and some outbuildings, as well as the charred frames of some craft equipment.

But Su Mengfan couldn't check the courtyard for a long time, because at this time, two gray protruding creatures walked out from the corner of the building where he and Saqi were.

They walked slowly across the patio, as if looking for something.

Suddenly, one of the creatures stopped and raised its head.

Su Mengfan felt that it seemed to be looking straight at the window where he was standing.

Su Mengfan stepped back and squatted on the footrest.

He didn't need to explain to his partner what was going on, his partner understood.

"Librarian?" He whispered in panic, squatting down too, so as not to be exposed to the projected sight from the street.

Su Mengfan nodded silently.

Thatch then wiped the plexiglass on the gas mask, as if doing so would help dry his worried forehead.

Then he calmed down and dragged Su Mengfan up the stairs quickly.

Going up and up, there was another set of winding corridors... Finally, he hesitated and stopped in front of a few doors.

"I have no memory of this place," he said in bewilderment. "This is supposed to be the entrance to the copy of the card catalog, but no one said that there are several doors here."

He mused, then jerked uncertainly on the handle of one of the doors. It was locked, as were the other doors.

He shook his head in confusion, as if he didn't believe it was true, and pulled the door handle again.Su Mengfan also tried, but of course it was in vain.

"They're locked," he said, despair in his voice.

Sa Qi suddenly trembled, Su Mengfan looked at him worriedly, and took a step to the side just in case.

But Thatch just laughed.

"Why don't you knock on the door?" He suggested to Su Mengfan, smiling with tears in his eyes, "I'm sorry, this is probably a sudden madness."

Su Mengfan also felt trembling all over.

The nervousness accumulated over the past hour began to release, and it exploded as much as it was controlled before.

They giggled foolishly, and they stood with their backs to the wall laughing for a full minute.

"Knock!" Su Mengfan repeated, covering his abdomen, still regretting that he couldn't take off the gas mask to wipe away his tears.

He walked to the nearest door and knocked on it three times with his knuckles.

A second later, there were three loud echoes from the other side of the door.

Su Mengfan's throat immediately dried up, and his heart began to beat wildly in his chest.

Someone was standing behind the door, listening to them laughing, waiting, is that...?
Thatch gave him a frightened look and backed away from the door.

From the other side, someone knocked on the door again, the sound became louder and harder.

Then, Su Mengfan followed the method in his memory, backed away from the wall, and kicked off the lock on the door next to him.

He hadn't expected it to work, but the gate fell to the ground with a crash, and the steel mechanism of the lock fell away from the rotting gate, taking bits of wood with it.

The room behind this door was unlike any other room or corridor in the library they had passed through before.

For some unknown reason, this room was very damp and depressing.

Through the light beam from the flashlight Jane, they could see a small wall covered with strange-looking plants.

Thick stems, lush oily leaves, a strong mixed smell that even invades their anti-virus filters, the ground is covered with tangled roots, trunks, thorns, flowers... Some of the roots extend to hidden or broken in a flowerpot or flower bucket.

Familiar vines coiled together and supported a row of cupboards, identical in appearance to those in the great vestibule, but completely rotted by the high humidity.

This becomes apparent when Thatch tries to open one of the drawers.

"It is a copy of the card catalog," he said to Su Mengfan with a sigh of relief, "We are closer to the truth."

They heard another knock on the door behind them, and then someone turned the doorknob carefully, as if trying to see if it worked.

They pushed aside the vines with submachine guns and were careful not to trip over the roots that lay everywhere on the ground.

They speed through the mysterious evil garden hidden deep in the library.

There was another door at the other end of the hall, which was unlocked.They walked down the last corridor and stopped.

They felt it right away when they got to the document library, the smell of dusting in the air, the library breathing peacefully, the faint whisper of billions of pages.

Su Mengfan looked around.

It looked like he could smell the smell of old books, a smell he had particularly enjoyed as a child.

He looked at Sage inquiringly.

"Yes, we have arrived," Sage replied in the affirmative, and then continued in a hopeful tone, "Huh?"

"Hmm...it's eerie here." Su Mengfan admitted.He didn't immediately understand what his partner was expecting.

"Do you hear the book we are looking for?" Sage added. "From here on, its voice will be clearer."

Su Mengfan closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.

There was nothing in the mind and it kept echoing, as if it were an abandoned tunnel.

Standing like this for a while, he began to listen again to the faint voices that filled the library, but was unable to hear anything that represented a voice or a call.

What's worse is that he can't feel anything, even if someone has said that what Su Mengfan and those employees mentioned is something that feels completely different, it doesn't help.

"No, I can't hear anything," he said, spreading his hands.

"It doesn't matter," Sach sighed after being silent for a while. "Let's go to another floor to have a look. There are 19 floors here. We'll keep looking until we find it. It's best not to go back empty-handed."

They stepped out into the service elevator, went up a few floors, and stopped to try their luck again.

On this floor, everything they saw was exactly the same as when they first arrived. Medium-sized rooms, glass windows, a few desks, plants that they had seen many times growing on the ceiling and corners, and two corridors leading to different rooms. Direction, there are countless bookshelves on both sides of each narrow passage.

The ceilings in the rooms and corridors are relatively low, just over two meters high.

After seeing the unusually wide vestibule and main reading room, it seemed difficult not only to squeeze through the floor and ceiling, but also to breathe.

The stacks are densely packed with thousands of different books, many of which appear to be completely untouched and in a very high state of preservation.

This suggests that the purpose of building a library is to preserve a microclimate inside even if people abandon it.

Seeing such a huge wealth, Su Mengfan once forgot the purpose of coming here.He rushed into one of the bookshelves, looked at the spines, and ran his hand reverently.

Thatch thought at first that his partner had heard what he had come here to hear, so he didn't interfere.

But then he finally understood, he grabbed Su Mengfan roughly, and dragged him to move on.

There are three, four, six corridors, one thousand and one two stacks, and thousands or more books, through a little yellow light, presented in the completely black document stack.

The next level, the next...it's all in vain.

Su Mengfan couldn't feel anything that could be said to be a voice or a call, nothing special at all.

He recalled, did the employees who came to Hayabusa Station really think that he was a natural son, born with special abilities, a destined person?

Then, he had his own judgment on the illusion—an hallucination.

He's starting to sense something in the last few floors, but it's not what he's expecting, and it's not what the employees want.

It was a vague feeling, a sense of someone's presence that reminded him of the nauseating horror of being in a tunnel.

Every floor they walked seemed to be completely abandoned, and there was no sign of {the librarian] or any other creature, and even so, he kept trying to turn around.

He had the crazy feeling of being watched intently by someone among the bookshelves.

Thatch touched his shoulder and shone the flashlight on his boots.

Thatch didn't know much about tying his shoes, a long lace trailing on the floor behind him.

"I'll tie my shoelaces, you go ahead and have a look, maybe you'll hear something eventually." He squatted down as he whispered.

Su Mengfan nodded and walked forward slowly step by step, looking back at Sa Qi every second.

Thatch was struggling to tie his shoelaces.It's not easy to tie slippery shoelaces while wearing thick gloves.

When walking forward, Su Mengfan first shone the flashlight on a row of bookshelves stretching forward on the right hand side, and then quickly moved the beam to the left, trying to grab and bend over the rows of dusty and time-covered books. Waist gray shade.

After about 30 meters away from his partner, Su Mengfan suddenly and clearly heard the rustling sound from the two rows of bookshelves in front.

He was already holding the submachine gun in his hand, and then pressed the flashlight to the barrel of the gun.

He guessed someone was hiding somewhere in the corridor.

He saw two rows of bookshelves, filled with volumes of books, all the way to the top and melting into the distance.

There was no one. The beam then swept to the left. Maybe the enemy was hiding there. In the opposite direction, there was still no one.

(End of this chapter)