SES Chapter 148 Part 1

Chapter 148

Mu Dai hesitated. She felt bad letting him sleep on the damp ground, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to invite him up either. When she glanced over, Luo Ren had already placed his tactical pack beneath him, sitting cross-legged against the cave wall. Within moments, he was completely still—fast asleep, it seemed.

He could even sleep sitting up.

Watching him for a while, Mu Dai suddenly felt a wave of melancholy. She curled up on the rope bed, which was too narrow to stretch out on, and felt like a small animal caught in a net.

Before long, she drifted off.
What felt like “morning” to her wasn’t truly morning—the cave had no real day or night. From the dim light alone, it was impossible to tell the time.

When she opened her eyes, she found Luo Ren crouched beside the rope bed, studying her thoughtfully.

Mu Dai jolted upright, startled. “What are you doing?”

Luo Ren frowned. “Mu Dai, did you know you snore in your sleep? And you drool?”

“What?”

The blood rushed straight to her face. That kind of humiliation—worse than her stomach growling from hunger—was unbearable.

She could never admit it. Not even under threat of death.

“You’re lying!” she snapped.

Luo Ren chuckled, pinching her chin lightly. “You’re right. I’m lying.”

Then he stood, stretching his arms above his head. “Come on. Get up, move around a bit, then breakfast.”

Mu Dai climbed down reluctantly, doing a token stretch before going to him for food. He handed her a small square of chocolate—again.

It didn’t taste great, but down here, it was the only luxury in the entire cave.

She slipped it into her mouth, unwilling to bite down, letting it melt slowly on her tongue.

Luo Ren wrapped up the rest and put it back in his pocket.
“Did you eat?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, glancing at the time on his phone—8:00 a.m.

They couldn’t just sit here all day doing nothing.

“Have you thought about how to get out of here?” he asked.

Mu Dai looked up at the cave ceiling. “I could try climbing again.”

“Climbing?” He remembered the fall from yesterday. “Even if you could climb right now—which you can’t—that trapdoor above isn’t something you can just push open. It’s part of a mechanism.”

“I can check it out once I’m up there,” she argued. “None of us got a close look before. Maybe there’s a way to open it.”

“‘Maybe’?” Luo Ren gave her a look. “If you can’t find a way to open it after all that, what then? Climb back down again? You think that’s fun? It’s a waste of energy.”

He scanned the cave, his eyes pausing at the lowest point along the wall.

“That night when it rained the hardest—did the water fill the whole cave?”

Mu Dai nodded, pointing to the high ledge where she’d slept. “I was up there, and even then, the water nearly reached me.”

“But it drained quickly?” Luo Ren asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” she said, recalling that she’d wanted another sip of water after the rain but found it had already seeped away.

Luo Ren picked up the machete she’d left by the wall and tapped the blade against the ground. A metallic clang echoed.

He moved around, testing several spots, until he crouched at the low point and motioned for her to come over.

“Over there,” he said, pointing. “That side’s solid—solid rock. The water couldn’t have gone through.”

Then he turned his machete over and struck the low point again. Another metallic ring.

Mu Dai frowned. “This part’s stone too.”

Luo Ren turned on his flashlight, bringing it close to the ground and brushing away some dirt. “Not one solid piece. There are gaps between the rocks. That means there’s soil beneath. Otherwise, the water wouldn’t have drained.”

“So… what does that mean?” she asked.

He leaned back, twirling the flashlight idly between his fingers. Its beam flickered across the cave wall.
“This cave goes deep. Based on the mountain’s height, we’re probably near the surface already. If there’s soil underneath… it might mean there’s a passage.”

“A passage?” she repeated. “You mean like a tunnel?”

He smiled. “Exactly. A man-made tunnel.”

Mu Dai laughed incredulously. “You’re joking, right?”

But when she saw his expression, her smile faltered. “…You’re serious?”

“You think I’m joking with you?” Luo Ren said, hanging his pack on a protruding rock. He propped the flashlight to keep the area lit, tested the machete, found it unwieldy, and switched to his dagger. Working it between two stones, he began scraping out the packed earth, soon opening a narrow seam.

Mu Dai watched doubtfully. “You really think you can dig us out? That’ll take years.”

She was about to add more discouraging words, but he shot her a glare, and she bit her tongue.

The cave was filled with the steady clinking of metal against stone.
The rocks were tightly wedged together; the first one would be the hardest to remove. Luo Ren circled it with the dagger, loosening the edges until it finally shifted a little.

Mu Dai rested her chin on her hands, watching. “Looks like a tooth growing out of the ground—you just can’t pull it, no matter how hard you try.”

Sweat beaded on Luo Ren’s forehead, but her comment made him laugh despite himself. “You sit there while I do all the work, and you’re composing poetry now? Come here.”

The crevice was too narrow for his hand, but hers were smaller. Following his direction, she reached in and felt around—wet soil, deep and sticky.

The dagger wasn’t long enough, so the machete returned. Luo Ren jabbed deeper, striking stone again.

That shouldn’t be right. If it were all solid rock, how had the water drained?

He scraped along all four sides, then pried once more. This time, the stone shifted with a dull thud, and the seam next to it disappeared. Luo Ren’s eyes lit up.

“That means it’s loose,” he said, grinning. “Let me show you how to pull this tooth.”