Chapter 37: Explorers from Earth?

Sitting about ten meters away from the cave entrance, Xu Xin held Coco, quietly waiting for the red gas to dissipate.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go in, but the smell was simply unbearable for humans.

Moreover, Xu Xin was worried that the gas might be toxic. Although Xu Xin's body was only slightly weakened from vomiting dinner, with no other issues, who knew what serious effects inhaling too much of it might have on the body.

It was better to be cautious.

Gradually, red gas stopped flowing out of the cave entrance, and the surrounding red color dispersed in the wind.

Xu Xin walked to the entrance and looked inside. A faint red gas still lingered in the cave, but it was much thinner now, much better than when it first came out.

After all, the cave had no ventilation, so it was unrealistic to expect the gas to dissipate completely. This was already the best outcome. Xu Xin sighed and asked Coco, "Are you still coming down with me?"

Coco's body stiffened, hesitating for a moment, but still nodded its little head and jumped onto Xu Xin's shoulder.

This little one. Xu Xin patted its head, tied his clothes over his face, gritted his teeth, and entered the cave.

A faint red mist floated in the tunnel inside the cave, but Xu Xin was surprised to find that the red gas didn't fill the entire passage, only lingering in the upper part of the cave space.

He tried bending down, and indeed, the air lower down, though still carrying a trace of that strange stench, was now within his tolerable range.

"It seems this strange gas is lighter than air, which makes things easier. The foul-smelling gas inside that iron door should have already dissipated!" Xu Xin moved forward in the cave, bent over, quickly reaching the position of the opened underground iron door.

Looking inside, there was a square iron passage just wide enough for one person to go up and down. Iron ladders were fixed to the walls, extending downwards to an unknown depth.

The ladder was also covered in rust. Xu Xin felt a bit nervous looking at this passage, but he still stepped onto the ladder and began to climb down.

The passage was very long, and Xu Xin climbed down step by step. The only sounds in the entire underground well-like passage were his footsteps and Coco's occasional whimpers from his shoulder.

The little one was also a bit scared, its four limbs tightly gripping the clothes on his shoulder, afraid of falling off.

"This passage is way too long! Am I really going to reach the bottom of the earth?"

The passage was so long that Xu Xin felt his arms starting to tremble. But there was no choice; having already climbed halfway, he couldn't give up and climb back up.

He continued climbing down.

After an unknown amount of time, just when Xu Xin felt he could barely hold onto the ladder anymore, he finally entered a room.

After climbing down another four or five meters, Xu Xin's feet touched the ground.

"Finally made it!" Xu Xin stood on the ground, massaging the muscles in his arms. "Such a long iron passage, how much iron must have been used to make this!"

While muttering to himself, he turned around and began to survey his surroundings. However, the first sight made his pupils suddenly contract as he drew in a sharp breath.

The entire room was empty. Three of the four walls were standard iron plates without even a single window, and only one wall had a door that looked extremely thick and solid. The door was circular, somewhat like a vault door.

What he saw at first glance was a human skeleton in tattered clothes leaning against the wall.

"Someone has been here before!"

Xu Xin was shocked. In this underground depth of the wilderness, having an underground room like a vault was one thing, but to find a skeleton in this room!

Who was he? Could it be a survivor from before? Or a native of this world?

Xu Xin carefully examined his clothing. Although the clothes were extremely tattered for some unknown reason, he could still see that it was standard wilderness survival gear.

Walking closer, Xu Xin saw a dirty bundle next to the skeleton. The bundle was made of animal hide, and who knew how long it had been in this underground place. Most of the outer skin of the bundle had fallen off, looking extremely worn.

"Excuse me, brother." Xu Xin silently muttered, and opened the bundle.

A musty smell came from the animal hide bundle.

The contents were quite mixed. Xu Xin poured everything out of the bundle and began to count what was there.

"A completely rusted and disassembled multi-functional knife, an empty lighter, and a small flashlight, these are all tools from Earth! This person must have come out for wilderness survival, with such complete tools." Xu Xin muttered to himself, "But the question is, why would someone bring tools from Earth to this world?"

Coco jumped down from his shoulder and pawed through these items with its little paws.

There was even packaging from compressed biscuits that had been eaten.

He picked up the lighter and flashlight. Although the writing on them was somewhat blurred, and the flashlight's exterior had even cracked, Xu Xin could still see the names and logos engraved on the product surface, all in text he couldn't understand.

He had some exposure to European text, and these letters should be Greek.

He then picked up the packaging of the compressed biscuits. Although he still couldn't understand the text on the packaging, he could see the blurred production date, which was April 1980.

The shelf life of ordinary compressed biscuits is about three years. If this person hadn't eaten expired compressed biscuits, it meant he had been dead for nearly 40 years!

40 years ago, someone had already come to this world!

The moon in this world changed from full moon to new moon within a day, and the moon was much larger than in his original world. He knew this was definitely not his original world, even if he now saw products from Earth here, it still didn't change this thought.

Xu Xin now felt a chill down his spine. What kind of secrets was this world hiding?

Could it be that forty years ago, someone had already been sent to this world? But how did he have things brought from there?

Looking at this room again, the more Xu Xin looked, the more it seemed like a prison.

But even prisons have toilets and beds. This place was completely empty, except for the ragged skeleton in front of him, just a very thick-looking iron door, and the passage at the top that looked like a ventilation shaft that could be opened.

There was no diary or similar item in this animal hide bundle for Xu Xin to reference. He looked at the skeleton again, finding nothing of value except for the tattered clothes, which disappointed him.

Come to think of it, who really keeps a diary anyway.

"Yin!" Coco suddenly called out, looking at the iron wall behind the skeleton.

"What's wrong?" Xu Xin followed Coco's gaze.

On the iron wall behind the skeleton, there seemed to be some inscribed text, but it was blocked by the skeleton, with only a small trace of the engraving visible.

Xu Xin gently moved the skeleton.

Who knew that with just a slight push to the side, the skeleton would topple over, falling to the ground, bones separating and scattering all over the floor, startling Xu Xin to jump back.

The skull, after falling to the ground, rolled around on the iron floor, coming back to face Xu Xin, with the front of the skull facing upwards directly at him, the deep hollow eye sockets seeming to stare straight at him.

"Hiss—!" Xu Xin drew in a sharp breath.

He never used to believe in ghosts or spirits and wasn't afraid of skeletons, but since coming to this world, his worldview had somewhat collapsed.

At least the science he knew could not explain why he woke up in this world, why plants grew so rapidly, or why eating a fruit could give special abilities.

In this world, anything was possible, including this skeleton suddenly coming to life.

However, it didn't come to life, just seemed to be staring straight at Xu Xin.

The iron room was very quiet. Xu Xin, suppressing the strange feeling in his heart, looked towards the wall that now had nothing covering it.

A string of text was engraved on it, probably carved with a knife, with streaks of purplish-black stains around it that looked like dried blood.

But what left Xu Xin speechless was that the text carved on the wall was the same as the text on the flashlight and compressed biscuit packaging, all strange letters.

Xu Xin had only studied English as a foreign language and had some exposure to Spanish. He couldn't understand other European languages at all, let alone Greek, the second hardest language in the world.

"Yin?" Coco tilted its little head, glanced at the text on the wall, and unable to understand anything, turned its gaze to the skull on the ground.

"This is so frustrating, finding a clue but not being able to understand it." Xu Xin sighed, turning his gaze to the heavy door.

Whether this underground exploration would yield any results now depended entirely on what was behind that door.