Inside was a small, dark room. Yu Yi opened the client on her arm’s inner side and selected the flashlight mode to carefully examine the room. Although small, the room was comfortably furnished with a desk, a leather chair, and a metal filing cabinet. Yu Yi noticed a small door at the other end of the room.
She opened the filing cabinet and scanned all the letters and documents. She had scanned documents outside the study yesterday afternoon and reviewed them privately at night, finding nothing useful – just ordinary correspondence.
It seemed Tu Feibai’s important confidential documents were kept in this hidden room.
After scanning the documents, Yu Yi approached the small door, wondering if there was another secret room behind it. The door was unlocked. Yu Yi pulled it open.
Inside was a long underground staircase, dark and deep. The moment she opened the door, she smelled a strange odor. It was foul – a mix of blood, feces, and an indescribable sour, rotten smell.
Yu Yi felt slightly nauseous. She raised her arm and shone the light. The staircase wasn’t too long, with a platform at the top. The stairs turned right at the platform, leading to an unseen destination.
She stood at the top of the stairs, hesitant to enter. Then she heard low, suppressed whimpering sounds, like helpless and frightened young animals trapped in a cage.
Yu Yi turned the flashlight to bright, holding her breath and stepping down the stairs, her heart racing. As she turned at the platform, the whimpering became clearer, and the stench grew stronger.
Then she saw that beneath the stairs was a prison cell.
And those imprisoned were not animals. They were children.
Yu Yi went cold all over, slowly approaching them. Their hair was disheveled, naked, bodies covered in blood and filth. They were chained to iron rings on the wall with finger-thick iron chains.
The three or four children heard her footsteps and fearfully huddled together, trembling and whimpering.
Yu Yi tried to speak but found her throat too dry to make a sound: “You…”
Hearing her voice, the oldest child looked up at her. Yu Yi gasped and took a step back.
He wore an iron cage mask! Between the black iron bars, only one eye stared at her. Where the other eye should have been was just a dark, empty space.
