The entrance to the basent was an iron door. Ludmila gestured, and two team mbers took cover on the side, their guns aid at the door, while she slowly pulled open the door bolt with her right hand clad in a tactical glove.
Squeak... A harsh tallic scraping sound made everyone's ears ache as the rusty iron door slowly swung open. A chill wind rushed from the doorway, mixed with a thick scent of blood.
Upon seeing the scene behind the door, Ludmila and the team behind her couldn't help but frown.
Before them lay a deep and dark arched passage, wide enough for three people to walk abreast, over two ters high, and sloping at a gentle grade heading underground.
Along the passageway, at intervals, dim electric lights twinkled, the light revealing that the passage stretched farther than the eye could see.
Based on the slope, the passage was probably tens of ters long just by itself.
This passage was clearly not a so-called 'basent' but a road, and the real basent should be at the end of it.
"Boss, sothing's not right!" a Capitan of Moran's team said in a simple and honest tone.
Ludmila nodded, her expression unusually serious. She had been relaxed and natural in the battle against the mob outside, but now her face was stern.
This passage might be plain, but it wasn't sothing that a group of ordinary citizens forming a mob could have built in a short ti. According to normal architectural knowledge, the end of this passage wouldn't be a simple small basent, but potentially a vast space or even an entire underground complex!
"Boss, shall we inform headquarters?" the Moran team Capitan suggested.
Ludmila thought for a mont and shook her head, "No need for now. We haven't found any valuable clues yet; it's just an underground passage. Besides, headquarters is short-staffed, and they wouldn't send more people just for this."
"There's another team stationed in the province. Should we request support?" the Capitan asked.
There was another reason; rcenaries were different from regular armies. Each division, each commander, even every small team competed with each other. Asking for help would be tantamount to admitting their own strength was inadequate. Ludmila wasn't willing to admit defeat to other commanders without encountering any substantial danger.
"Chekhov, you take a pair to stay here, guard the retreat. I'll take a team down, and we'll keep in contact at all tis, ready to support each other," Ludmila snapped her fingers, sidestepped, and like a nimble cat, slipped into the passageway.
Six Moran rcenary soldiers followed her, weapons in hand, entering in single file.
"Stay alert, defensive positions!" the Capitan in charge of the rear, Chekhov, ordered softly. The seven team mbers remaining outside the passageway swiftly dispersed, occupying strategic positions around the entrance to keep watch.
"Boss, the periter is set up, how are you guys doing?!" Chekhov adjusted the communicator by his mouth and asked in a quiet voice.
The signal from the communicator wasn't great, as it crackled with static, but Ludmila's intermittent reply was just audible, "Proceeding deeper, safe for now, keep in touch..."
"Understood," Chekhov said.
Ludmila led her team deeper, down a passageway built of large bricks and stones, gloomy and damp. Further down they went, the walls beca more wet, sticky to the touch, seemingly covered with a layer of moss.
The lights in the passageway flickered uncertainly while the rhythmic sounds of the rcenaries' tactical boots echoed through it.
The passage was long, taking a good fifteen minutes of walking; the direct distance must have exceeded a mile, until finally, they reached the end of the passage.
And before them was yet another iron door.
Yet this iron gate was not left open. It was firmly secured with a chain that was as thick as a child's arm and a heavy padlock that locked the gate shut.
Ludmila was stunned. If they were only holding hostages, why would they need to go through all this trouble? Even if they needed to lock it, why was the first iron gate unlocked while this one was locked?
Under the illumination of the tactical flashlight, both the iron gate and the chains and shackles locking it were coated with a layer of pale blue rust, especially the padlock, which was mottled with rust, looking as if it hadn't been opened for a long ti.
Despite the nurous doubts, having co this far, whether it was to rescue people or out of curiosity, they couldn't just turn back and leave.
"Open it," Ludmila stepped aside from the iron gate and whispered to a team mber behind her.
The team mber nodded silently and took out a high-temperature welding torch designed for breaking through doors, beginning to work on the rusted chains.
A blue fla, thousands of degrees hot, sprayed from the welding torch, quietly lting the steel of the lock as it turned to droplets of molten tal and fell to the ground.
It wasn't long before there was a light click as the lock broke apart from the middle, and the team mber who broke through signaled Ludmila with a nod and an "OK" gesture.
Even without the lock, the gate was extrely heavy. It took two male team mbers to push it open, with fine iron filings sprinkling from the seams and covering the ground.
"Chekhov, we've found another iron gate at the end of the passage. We've managed to break through and are about to enter..." Ludmila said into the communicator.
"Received... be careful..." Chekhov's voice ca intermittently.
Behind the second iron gate, it was pitch black with almost no light, except for several small red dots flashing like alarm lights at varying distances.
Despite wearing a tactical mask with so evolved air filtration functions, they could still sll the thick scent of blood in the air.
Including Ludmila herself, seven tactical flashlights were turned on, their beams barely illuminating the path beneath their feet.
A team mber leaning against the wall spotted a handle on the wall that looked like a master switch and pulled it down with force.
Pop, pop, pop, pop... a series of switch-flipping sounds echoed, and overhead lights began turning on from nearest to farthest, clearly illuminating the surrounding environnt.
The corridor they now faced was wider than the one they had descended through. The difference was the presence of many rooms along both sides, resembling dorms in a college, but each room had an iron door at its entrance.
"An underground prison?"
Peering into the nearest room through the barred window on the iron door, Ludmila saw a space of about twenty or so square ters, with an operating bed positioned in the center. In a corner of the room were racks covered in dust, and two oxygen cylinders leaned loosely against the wall.
A large white cloth covered the operating bed, adorned with big brownish patches.
Similar brown-gray spots could be seen on the flaking walls around the room.
According to Ludmila's experience, those were long-dried bloodstains.
Just as Ludmila was about to break into the room to investigate, the low exclamation of another team mber ca: "Boss, what is this in here?"
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