They held their breath and waited.
But half a minute passed.
Nothing happened.
The door showed no sign of opening.
No alarm sounded, either.
Xiong Gang tried pushing and sliding the door, but it remained firmly in place.
He pressed the button several more times.
Still, nothing happened.
"Is this thing just for show?" Xiong Gang asked, baffled.
"Maybe they put it here to throw us off! There must be some mechanism we haven't found!" Refusing to give up, Han Xiao raised his flashlight and searched hard around the doorframe.
Song Ning spoke from behind them. "If they put the button beside the door, it must serve a purpose! I'm worried the people ahead of us deliberately damaged the circuit and disabled the switch!"
"But Boss must have come out this way, too!" Han Xiao said, moving his flashlight around. "If he came through here, he'd never have damaged-"
"Wait!" Song Ning suddenly called.
"On the ground! Han Xiao, shine your flashlight into the corner by the door!"
Han Xiao immediately trained his flashlight on the corner.
All three focused on that spot and fell silent.
There was a pool of dark red blood on the ground by the corner of the door.
A moment later, Han Xiao dipped a finger into it and held it beneath his nose.
"Fresh blood," he said hoarsely. "Less than a day old!"
The air grew heavy again.
Gu Zheng had indeed gone through this door.
But getting out hadn't been easy for him.
He might well have been injured.
There might even have been a fight here.
The realization made their hearts clench, as though something heavy were weighing them down.
They had known what to expect.
Pursuing criminals alone was dangerous in the extreme.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have come all this way