The unknown terror felt like a noose tightening around her neck, making it hard for her to breathe.
“Leo! Where did you go?” Domingo finally couldn’t hold back and shouted.
She saw the flashlight beam moving farther away. Near the Iron Gate, there was at least a power switch for the water pump, with a faint red light flashing. But beyond the Iron Gate lay an unknown depth of passageways.
Leo walked through the deep passage with the flashlight, only a small light visible.
Chloe also called out, “Leo, don’t go any further. That area hasn’t been excavated yet; we don’t know what’s in there!”
Chloe’s words were not out of fear but purely out of concern for Leo’s safety.
Domingo moved closer to Chloe, just like she used to during shows when they reached areas where the lights couldn’t illuminate well.
Chloe, like a big sister, put her arm around Domingo’s shoulder.
At that moment, Leo’s voice came through, “Wait a moment, I think I see something.”
There was a hint of excitement in Leo’s tone.
Chloe’s grip on Domingo’s shoulder tightened, “What did you find?”
“Wait,” Leo’s voice echoed from afar, amplified by the long passageway, as if it were thousands of meters away.
Then there was a knocking sound on the wall.
Soon after, the sound of wading through water was heard again as Leo returned.
The water pump had been working for several hours by then. Although some water had accumulated on the ground, most of the area revealed a gray-black surface with some rotten wood lying around.
“I found something. Do you have a hoe or something?” Leo pointed the flashlight downward, the light bouncing off the ground and illuminating their chins and eye sockets, like a scene from a horror movie.
With Chloe’s classical look and Domingo’s long hair, if a fourth person suddenly appeared, they might think they were three ghosts from a tomb.
Domingo grabbed Leo’s hand and directed the flashlight beam to the wall beside them, restoring their appearance to normal.
“I have a duckbill hoe,” Chloe pulled out a small hoe and handed it to Leo. “Do you need my help?”
Leo took the duckbill hoe, weighed it, and felt it was light but suitable for the wall. “Follow me; I’ll show you something.”
Domingo held Chloe’s hand as they followed Leo into the passageway.
The passageway was along one wall of the Iron Gate and extended to an unknown depth.
After discovering the Iron Gate, all the experts’ attention was focused on it, and no one spent much effort exploring the passageway.
They only knew that this passageway was a dead end, extremely long and deep, so they planned to excavate it later.
“Fortunately, the water here has made the wall somewhat loose over the past few days. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be easy to dig through,” Leo said as he walked.
“Is there a hole in the wall?” Chloe exclaimed.
Although they hadn’t thoroughly explored the passageway before, she remembered clearly that the walls were made of large bluestones cemented together with lime mortar, making it impossible for there to be a hole.
Domingo became excited and said, “I’ll go get the camera crew. This must be another entrance. I want to document this historic moment.”
“Forget it. It would take too much time to go back and forth. Besides, would you dare go back alone without me?” Chloe pulled Domingo’s hand to keep her moving forward.
Domingo looked back at the long, dark passage behind them and shivered involuntarily, not daring to mention going back again.
After walking several hundred steps, Chloe estimated they were in the middle of the passage when Leo stopped ahead.
He shone the flashlight on the wall and swept it around before stopping at a spot about two people high.
Domingo and Chloe looked up together and saw that the bricks on the wall had formed a trapezoidal crack, neat as if cut by a knife.
Chloe exclaimed, “Damn! How did we miss this?”
The crack in the wall was such an obvious clue that had been overlooked, partly due to the focus on the Iron Gate but also due to carelessness.
While Chloe was still blaming herself, Leo said, “This crack probably appeared in the past few days. Look, there’s some water scale in it.”
Leo shone the light on the crack and slowly swept over it.
Chloe and Domingo saw clearly that instead of gray-white mortar, green algae-like plants filled the crack as if painted with a green brush.
“But how will you get up there? We should go back and get a ladder,” Domingo suggested, looking at the wall about two people high. To reach that trapezoidal crack, she would need to run and jump from ten meters away to barely reach it.
Although Leo was much taller than them, he would need both women to bend down as stools for him to step on to reach it.
Not wanting to scare them by revealing his ability to float, Leo smiled and squatted down, patting his shoulder. “Who wants to go up?”
Chloe and Domingo exchanged glances. Chloe was taller and wore jeans, making her more agile than Domingo in her flowing dress. Naturally, Chloe went up.
Leo faced the wall and squatted down with his legs shoulder-width apart in a deep squat position. He turned his head and said to Chloe, “Alright, come up.”
“Are you sure? I weigh…” Chloe hesitated to mention her weight.
Facing the wall and unable to see Chloe’s slightly blushing face, Leo laughed, “Don’t worry. I can carry even four or five hundred pounds of pig; your weight is nothing…”
Chloe playfully slapped Leo’s shoulder. “Who are you calling a pig!”
Realizing his mistake, Leo saw the flashlight beam wobble as Domingo giggled.
Chloe took off her shoes since this part of the passage wasn’t flooded and could be stepped on directly.
Chloe’s bare feet stepped onto Leo’s shoulders. Leo steadied himself under her weight.
Feeling secure underfoot, Chloe relaxed. She held onto the wall and shifted her weight slightly. “Okay, stand up slowly.”
Leo didn’t find Chloe heavy at all. With a slight effort, he stood up while holding onto the wall.
Chloe felt like she was riding a human elevator or sitting on her father’s shoulders at a mall as a child. She quickly reached eye level with the trapezoidal crack.