Mid-way Withdrawal

The Gate of Fear

"Raise your hand if you agree to keep going!"

Li Bai took the lead for once and called for a show of hands.

After the less determined people left, those who remained raised their hands without much hesitation.

"Let's keep going!"

Li Bai gestured toward the unknown depths of the tunnel and led the way again.

After walking for nearly another hour, Li Bai suddenly stopped. The rescue team seemed to have reached a relatively spacious area, large enough to hold more than a dozen buses.

They looked up at the arched ceiling, which was as high as a four- or five-story building.

"See anything?"

The police officer walking third came forward and looked at the ground with Li Bai.

"Lucky us. Those two are still alive. They left us a signal."

Li Bai took a couple of steps forward and picked something up from the ground.

It was a one-yuan coin.

If they had the leisure to toss coins, things probably weren't that bad yet.

Jiang Yue, an assistant with the archaeological team, came over too. Seeing what Li Bai held, he asked in confusion, "Why didn't they head back?"

One of the officers beside them said, "If I had to guess, they were running for their lives."

His surname was Zhan. The other veteran officer was surnamed Hu. Both were officers with the Xingqing City Public Security Bureau, assigned specifically to protecting cultural relics. They also had some wilderness survival experience and had rescued plenty of people in the Tengger Desert and Helan Mountain.

"I found some too. Two of them!"

Officer Hu had found two coins nearby as well, one worth one yuan and the other fifty fen.

They had probably been in such a hurry to escape that they'd tossed them aside