Global Collapse

Chapter 77 The Killing Game (Part 7)
The fat man ultimately refused Gu Mian's suggestion to run alongside the car.

He resignedly sat down in the car seat, and then Gu Mian stepped on the gas and drove north along the road.

The rickety vehicle barely made it to the vicinity of the coal mine base. When Gu Mian saw the coal mine base from afar, the tricycle let out a wail and then met its end.

Gu Mian jumped down, holding onto the chair leg, and looked at the fat man: "It's all your fault for being too heavy."

The fat man nimbly rolled down: "I'm just chubby... chubby..."

A huge coal mine base is located in front of us.

Gu Mian saw a rather tall mountain over there. He seemed to have learned in his geography studies that coal resources were distributed near mountain ranges. It seems that these laws still apply in this game.

Several large buildings were built in front of the not-so-short mountain, and a row of iron railings partially surrounded those buildings, along with a small part of the mountain.

A huge iron gate was facing the two of them, and there seemed to be some large characters hanging on it.

It was too dark for them to see the words on the door.

"Let's go, let's take a look over there." Gu Mian lifted her foot and walked forward.

The fat man quickly pulled out his flashlight and followed. The road here was uneven, full of potholes, and it was the middle of the night; they might fall into a ditch if they weren't careful.

With the help of flashlights, the two made their way through the gate without much trouble, and arrived at the large iron gate in just a few minutes.

Gu Mian looked up and saw that the words hanging on the door read "Mining City Coal Mine Base".

There was a large building not far behind the iron gate, and Gu Mian was closer now, so she could see it more clearly.

That looks like an employee dormitory, a place where coal miners live.

The fat man stood in front of the door and exclaimed, "This dormitory building is huge! How many workers can it house..."

"After all, it claims to be the world's largest coal mining base, but I feel that this base looks rather shabby. Is this what the world's largest looks like?" Gu Mian pushed the iron gate.

The fat man shone his flashlight inside and said, "Doctor, be careful, we're live-streaming."

As he spoke, he pointed to the camera overhead.

Gu Mian shut her mouth at the right moment.

The door wasn't locked; it opened with a push, and the two didn't need to climb over the wall or break down the door.

The fat man looked at the several buildings in front of him.

There were three buildings in the view that were clearly staff dormitories, because each room had a balcony, and some of the clotheslines in the rooms had underwear hanging on them, which had been there for who knows how many years, and birds had already built nests in them.

There's also a slightly shorter building that looks like a restaurant, suggesting that these coal miners usually live on the coal mine site.

This place is not as good as described in the tourist brochure; on the contrary, it is quite dirty and chaotic.

Perhaps because it is near the mountain, there are many dead branches and fallen leaves on the ground, and grass has grown on the dirt road.

Gu Mian saw that the grass next to the dormitory building had grown almost as tall as the window.

"This place has been abandoned for so many years...cough cough," the fat man coughed twice and covered his nose. The roads here were all dirt roads, and there were coal mine piles, so there was a lot of dust. Even taking a deep breath made his throat feel a little itchy.

The fat man shone his flashlight around, as if afraid a monster might suddenly rush at him: "Speaking of which, Doctor, we need to be careful. I used to work in a mine; quite a few people have died in places like this..."

Gu Mian glanced at him: "How come you've done everything?"

Repairman, truck driver, miner—these all sound like physically demanding jobs.

"I got scammed by an old man. Actually, I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and become a teacher back then, but before I even graduated, my poor old man kicked the bucket. Anyway, let me get back to the mining story..."

Gu Mian walked forward in silence.

He didn't intend to look for any clues in the dormitory building.

There are just too many dorm buildings; it would probably take several days to search them all, room by room.

Unless he can pull out some important clue directly from the bird's nest in the crotch of the underwear drying on that balcony.

As the fat man followed Gu Mian, he muttered to himself, "Mine accidents actually happen quite frequently. I only worked in a coal mine for a few months back then, and I witnessed a pretty big mine accident."

"I had only been there a few days when I started my apprenticeship with that old man who had tricked me into it. Later, that old master went down into the mine once and never came back up."

"It's said that the building collapsed while they were digging, burying more than a hundred people alive. Later, the rescue team risked their lives to pull out seven or eight people who were about to die. The rest of the people were pulled out with pale faces."

"Back then, our factory had rows and rows of mourning tents set up. It was so crowded you couldn't take your eyes off them all. It was a blinding white expanse."

"The dead are all covered with white sheets. When their wives come, they don't know where their husbands are. They kneel on the ground and cry, crying their hearts out."

"Some of the children were too young to understand what was happening, so they kept trying to lift the white curtain, saying they wanted to find their fathers."

"There's a village near that coal mine, and most of the workers were recruited from there. The mourners from that village would go from house to house crying their hearts out until their voices were hoarse."

"Those men knew they might die at any time, so they bought insurance early on, thinking that if they died one day, at least their wives and children could still eat a hot meal with the money they earned from their lives."

The fat man sighed as he finished speaking: "They must have died with resentment in their hearts. Being buried alive and waiting for someone to come and save them, I would go crazy too if I were in their shoes."

As he spoke, he looked ahead and said, "If the conflict you mentioned really happened at this coal mine, I guess it was probably some kind of mining accident."

The two had now reached a mine.

The mine shaft wasn't actually shaped like a well; rather, it opened up like a city gate on the side of the mountain, and the entrance was quite large.

Gu Mian then looked inside with the flashlight beam. The mine shaft was angled downwards, and something resembling a train track extended out from the opening. Gu Mian had no idea what it was.

He looked at the pitch-black cave in front of him, then at the flashlight in the fat man's hand next to him.

The fat man felt a chill run down his spine: "Doctor... you don't actually want to go in and take a look, do you?"

Gu Mian turned to look at him: "Your little brain is really smart."
-
A friend recommended a dark story by someone who maliciously acts cute; it's also in the supernatural genre.

The book is titled "Bringing a Punishment to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" (winking).
Thank you to Jiuchong Shujing, Yaozai Bushengzhang, Zongranfeng, and Huini Shiwo de Xinzhong de Aya for the generous donations. (づ￣3￣)づ╭～


(End of this chapter)