sbdcsierra Chapter 419 Cave!
Chapter 419 Cave!
Zhong Yuemin's ears were extremely sharp, and he immediately caught the faint sound—it was Yang Qing's voice!
"over there!"
He perked up and pointed sharply in the direction the sound came from.
"Yang Qing! Hang in there! We're coming!"
Without thinking twice, he raised the torch high with one hand and instinctively placed the other hand on the entrenching tool at his waist, then stumbled headlong toward the direction of the cries for help.
Zhang Haiyang, Ning Wei, and others followed closely behind. Zhong Yuemin rushed forward, thrusting his torch forward with all his might. In the flickering light, he saw that Yang Qing and Liu Qian were trapped deep in quicksand.
The yellow sand had already reached their chests. The two women were pale and struggling to breathe. Their hands were futilely clawing at the air as their bodies continued to sink slowly at a visible speed. Grains of sand kept slipping off the edge of the quicksand, threatening to swallow them up completely!
"Liu Qian! Don't be afraid, I'm here to save you!"
Seeing the girl he admired hanging by a thread, Zhang Haiyang felt his blood rush to his head and rushed forward without thinking.
"Stop! Don't move!"
Zhong Yuemin reacted extremely quickly, grabbing Zhang Haiyang's arm tightly with such force that he almost stumbled.
"Are you fucking crazy?! This is quicksand! Do you want to get stuck like them?!"
He sternly stopped the impulsive Zhang Haiyang, then turned and growled without turning back:
"Ning Wei! The rope!"
Ning Wei remained absolutely calm throughout, and upon hearing this, he quickly handed over the bundle of climbing rope that he had been carrying on his shoulder.
Zhong Yuemin quickly wrapped one end of the rope around his waist twice to make a secure knot to prevent it from slipping, while holding the other end firmly in the hands of Ning Wei and Zhang Haiyang.
"Hold on tight! Listen to my command!"
Zhong Yuemin gave a brief instruction to the two people behind him, then carefully lowered his body, trying to maximize his contact area with the sand, and crawled slowly towards the center of the quicksand like a lizard.
Every movement was made with extreme care, for fear of exacerbating the flow of quicksand.
"Yang Qing! Liu Qian! Listen up, don't move! The more you struggle, the faster you'll sink! Relax your body, lean back as much as possible to increase the area of contact with the ground!"
As Zhong Yuemin approached, he spoke to the two women in a calm voice, trying to soothe their emotions as they were on the verge of collapse.
Upon hearing his voice, Yang Qing forced herself to calm down and, following his instructions, tried her best to lean back.
Although Liu Qian was so frightened that tears streamed down her face, she gritted her teeth and imitated Yang Qing's actions.
Zhong Yuemin finally climbed to the edge of the quicksand. He reached out and first grabbed Yang Qing's wrist, who was slightly closer to him.
"Ning Wei, Haiyang, slow down, pull!" he roared.
Upon receiving the order, the two people behind him began to steadily and slowly exert force backward.
The rope tightened instantly. Zhong Yuemin used his waist and abdomen to pull the two people out little by little, using the tension of the rope.
With tremendous effort, Yang Qing's upper body finally escaped the quicksand. Zhong Yuemin and the two men pulling the rope behind her worked together to drag her to safety.
Yang Qing collapsed onto the solid sand, panting heavily. Her whole body was covered in sand, looking utterly disheveled. She gasped for breath, feeling a sense of freedom she had never known before. She was finally out of danger.
Without even catching his breath, Zhong Yuemin bent down again and reached out to Liu Qian, who was almost exhausted from fright. "Grab me!" he shouted, pulling her out.
A few minutes later, Zhong Yuemin frowned and reprimanded the two girls. He didn't care whether they were in charge or not; as the team's safety officer, how could he explain to the leaders of the Northwest Military Region if something happened to these women?
"This is the Gobi Desert, not a city park. Every inch of this land could hide deadly things. Before we set off, I repeatedly warned that no one was allowed to leave the group's sight or act alone. Did you all just ignore me?!"
He grew increasingly agitated as he spoke, his finger trembling as he pointed to the area of quicksand that had just swallowed them:
"If we hadn't arrived quickly, even a minute later, you two would already be buried alive by this damn sand!"
Yang Qing had never seen Zhong Yuemin so angry. Knowing she was in the wrong, she instinctively lowered her head, her hands nervously twisting together like a child caught doing something wrong by their parent. Her voice was barely audible.
"I'm...I'm sorry...we...we didn't expect there to be quicksand here...next time...we'll never do it again..."
As she spoke, she suddenly seemed to remember something, abruptly raised her head, and added urgently:
"Oh right! When I sank in just now, I felt like I stepped on something hard, it hurt my soles, it didn't feel like a rock..."
"A hard object?" Zhong Yuemin frowned, his anger subsiding slightly as his attention was diverted.
Wang Ye, who had been listening intently, immediately grasped the information. He adjusted his glasses and said to the team members around him:
"Dig! Be careful, start digging from the side, avoid the center of the quicksand, and see what's down there!"
Upon hearing this, everyone immediately sprang into action. Several team members, armed with entrenching tools and under Zhong Yuemin's command, carefully began digging at a relatively solid spot on the edge of the quicksand area.
The sand was loose, and digging was not difficult, but everyone was extra cautious, fearing that it might cause a larger collapse.
Not long after they started digging, a strange sight appeared. As the sand at the edges was cleared away, the quicksand in the center seemed to have found a flood outlet and began to slowly flow and sink downwards with a soft rustling sound.
In just a few minutes, a dark, irregularly shaped pit, more than a meter in diameter, suddenly appeared before everyone's eyes!
The sand and soil at the edge of the pit continued to slide down, and it was bottomless, as if it led straight to the dark underworld.
A cold wind, carrying the stench of earth, decay, and something resembling rot, blew eerily from the cave, causing the onlookers to shiver, furrow their brows, and cover their noses to avoid it.
Without saying a word, Wang Ye threw the torch in his hand into the dark pit.
The torch traced an orange-red arc in the air, fell for a few seconds, and then hit the bottom of the pit. The flames burned steadily at the bottom, illuminating the limited space below.
“About seven or eight meters deep,” Wang Ye estimated, squinting. “The torches haven’t gone out, so the air down there is fine.” He said decisively, “I’ll go down and take a look.”
Immediately, a team member brought a rope, carefully tied it around Wang Ye's waist, and cautiously descended into the cave.
Zhong Yuemin did not stop him this time. He knew Wang Ye's identity as a member of "Bureau 749". His initiative to go down into the cave must have been for a reason.
Without a word, he took a Type 56 assault rifle slung across his shoulder from a teammate next to him, checked the chamber with a clatter to make sure it was loaded and the safety was off, then tied the rope around his waist and followed closely behind...