I felt increasingly strange; evidently, there was a hidden door here. Someone had used a cabinet with its bottom removed as a cover to block it. Once the cabinet was opened, the hidden door could be seen. This method wasn’t particularly clever, but its advantage lay in its convenient setup and ease of access.

But how could such a structure exist here? It seemed this sanatorium was not simple at all. What had this place been used for in the past? What lay beneath the concrete stairs?

Looking at the key in my hand, it was clear that the other party had sent me the key to this room number, intending for me to discover the hidden door. Therefore, there should be answers below.

I wiped the cold sweat off my forehead, stepped into the cabinet, and reached for the hidden door. Immediately, a strange smell wafted up from below. I turned my head to let the strongest odor pass, then adjusted to it and shone my lighter downwards.

The stairs were deep and winding, clearly quite long, and I couldn’t tell whether they led to the second floor or the first.

Looking at the staircase, I remembered it was already midnight, and I was inside a haunted house, having discovered this hidden passage that seemed to have been set up at some unknown time. I couldn’t help but feel a bit scared; however, I was someone who had been through tough situations, and knowing that outside were the streets and salons made me feel somewhat reassured.

After hesitating for a moment, I steadied my nerves, cautiously holding the lighter in one hand, and bent down to enter the doorway, descending the stairs.

Having come this far, the thing the other party wanted me to find must be down these stairs. I couldn’t back down now. Since I was in Golmud, I naturally needed to see what their true intentions were.

After just a few steps, I felt an indescribable chill emanating from the darkness ahead on the stairs, cold enough to send shivers down my spine. I exhaled, noticing white vapor coming out of my mouth; the temperature down here was indeed very low.

From the light of the lighter, I could see that both sides of the stairs were bare concrete walls, made of yellow cement, the kind used for military supplies in the 1960s. Some faded slogans painted in red were barely discernible, only a few outlines remaining. At the top of the stairs, I could see dangling electrical wires wrapped in cobwebs, looking like snakes.

Compared to the green bricks and tiles of ancient tombs, these things felt much more familiar. I kept reminding myself to relax as much as possible. Even so, I still felt that something might poke its face out from the dark corner of the stairs below, and the chilling sensation was no less than what I had felt in the ancient tomb.

I quickly descended the first segment, the stairs turned a corner, continuing downward, and my footsteps echoed, sounding eerie. I gauged the height; I was already on the second floor, the one sealed off by concrete. However, there were no doorways here, and the surroundings remained enclosed by cement. Clearly, the exit was not here.

It seemed unrelated to the second floor, I thought to myself, taking a deep breath of the foul air and continuing down another level.

The situation remained the same; there was still no exit on the first floor. The stairs turned another corner and continued downward, still pitch black and bottomless.

“This is the underground,” I thought to myself. At that moment, a thought crossed my mind: Could this staircase lead to the basement? Could this place have been an underground military shelter in the past? I remembered that there is a famous 704 Mansion in Hangzhou, built under the guise of a sanatorium, but inside it has deep and mysterious structures. It is said that there are also large buildings underground to deal with emergencies.

However, looking at the appearance of this hidden door, it didn’t seem like that. The hidden door was just a simple doorway; if it were specifically designed as an entrance to a military shelter, there should at least be an iron door, right? As I walked and let my thoughts wander, I continued to descend. I couldn’t tell if the temperature was dropping further or if it was just the cold sweat making me feel this way, but suddenly I felt an intense chill, my teeth began to chatter, and I gritted my teeth and went down another level. The staircase stopped here, and the exit was right in front of me. I cautiously stepped out and found that there seemed to be a very large space outside.

I lifted my lighter and shone it around the exit, discovering that this was a cement-reinforced basement, very rudimentary, filled with dampness, and the ground was covered with blue bricks, with empty surroundings all around.

This could not possibly be a military shelter, I concluded. Looking at the cement and the blue bricks on the ground, it resembled a cellar hastily built by a rural production team. The craftsmanship here was too crude; it couldn’t have been constructed by a professional military engineering unit.

What is this place? Could it really be a cellar? Did the muffled oil bottle bring me here to check if his pickled cabbage was seasoned yet? I found my own thoughts amusing as I walked toward the center of this cellar. After just a few steps, I vaguely saw a huge shadow lying on the ground in the middle of the basement, looking very strange.

I walked toward that shadow, and when I illuminated it with my lighter, I froze. In the center of the cellar stood a gigantic, pure black ancient coffin.