Reborn in the end of the world, I scavenged in the empty city and bought for free

An hour after entering the cave, the group of people who separated from Fan Yong and insisted on turning back finally groped forward in the darkness for nearly an hour before returning to the black cave entrance from which they came. Looking at the cave that was dozens of meters high, one of them handed the torch that was about to burn out to the person next to him, and walked to the rope and pulled it hard.

"The rope is pretty strong, so it should be no problem to get up there."

There are two ropes for descent at this time, which can accommodate two people at a time, but there are four people in total. This means that only two of the four people have the opportunity to go up first. Whoever goes up first will have a greater chance of being rescued. After all, no one can be sure whether some man-eating monster will jump out of this damn cave the next moment if they stay in this damn cave for any longer.

The man holding the rope naturally knew what everyone was thinking at the moment. After all, everyone had the same idea. But if they were deadlocked here because of this matter, it would only waste everyone's time. However, selfishness is human nature, and besides, these people are just strangers in the same community. Their relationship is at most nodding acquaintances. It is impossible for them to sacrifice for each other. Therefore, there must be a good way to decide who should go up first.

"How about this, we don't need to waste time talking, let's just play rock-paper-scissors. Even though it seems like a stupid method, it's best to let luck decide it right now. Otherwise, no one will be right if we talk about other things. If you three agree, we'll start now. If you don't agree, none of us will leave, and we'll just die here." The man bit his cheek hard, staring straight at the three faces opposite him, whose expressions could not be distinguished in the dark.

"Okay, let's do it and leave it to luck!" One of them broke the deadlock first, with a determined tone in his voice.

The other one saw that two people had already agreed and could only smile bitterly: "I agree too."

At this point, three people had already agreed. The last person sighed, "You all agreed. What else can I do? Okay, it's decided."

The person who first proposed "Rock, Paper, Scissors" was very lucky and won easily. The other person was the least hopeful at first, but he didn't expect that he would be able to go up. He was so excited that his eyes were wet for a while.

The two men tied the ropes carefully around their waists. The man who had proposed the idea said, "We'll pull you up after we get up there, but it may take some time. Also, you must step on a place with footholds to get up, otherwise we won't be able to pull you up if you slide down."

In fact, the person who went up first was at a disadvantage, as he had to rely entirely on his own strength to climb the rock. The two people who fell behind were relieved when they saw the dark rock wall, and thought that perhaps it would be better if they were not the first to go up.

The first two people who went up had no experience in rock climbing, but Fan Yong had carefully screened the list of people when they signed up. At least the men who came out this time were basically young people with strong physical strength. Moreover, one of them was an outdoor air conditioner installer before the apocalypse, and climbing up and down was a common thing for him. He was also used to such heights and was even very professional when tying safety ropes. The other one was a salesman before the apocalypse, but he had the habit of long-distance running and his physical strength was pretty good. Therefore, the two of them climbed smoothly at the beginning.

But the cave is too long, more than 30 meters deep, which is equivalent to the height of five or six floors. When going down, it would be easier to slide down smoothly due to gravity, but now you need to climb up, which is equivalent to carrying a heavy load, plus you have a backpack weighing at least ten pounds, so it is relatively difficult to climb up.

Although he had experience in climbing, the man who went up first still found it a bit strenuous. He was already out of breath after climbing about one floor, but he still gritted his teeth and persevered, because a layer of cold sweat broke out on his forehead after the effort.

"Brother Zhou, it's too difficult to climb up. Can't we think of other ways?" The man who started climbing at the same time fell behind by about two or three meters due to lack of experience, and asked while looking up.

The man took a deep breath, then shook his head and said, "What can you do? If there was a way, I would have done it long ago. The best way right now is to go up quickly. Only by going up can we get the remaining two people up."

"But this is too tiring, and there are too few footholds near the rock wall." The man continued to complain while looking for the next foothold.

The man called Brother Zhou carefully pressed his body as closely as possible to the rock wall. Only in this way could he climb up along the rock wall.

The only lighting equipment for both of them was a head-mounted flashlight, so they had to grope their way slowly in most situations. As time passed, the two had been climbing for nearly fifteen minutes. Brother Zhou was fine, having already climbed up a little over half the distance, while the other person had only climbed one-third of the way up before he began to struggle and could only temporarily cling to a protruding rock wall and gasp for breath.

"Hold on a little longer, we'll almost succeed. If we give up now, none of us will get out alive." Brother Zhou noticed that the man seemed a little discouraged, so he immediately shouted at him.

Perhaps it was the yell that cheered the man up a little. He adjusted his mindset and continued to crawl forward.

The two people waiting below were obviously more anxious than the people above. First of all, the only tool they had was a rechargeable flashlight with insufficient power. They would need it when climbing, so they had to turn it off temporarily. Therefore, the only tool they had was the torch that was about to burn out.

"Hey, are you two ready?" One of them couldn't help but shout upwards. In fact, in their field of vision, they could only vaguely see two blurry black shadows, and everything else was pitch black.

At the beginning, the two people who were afraid of climbing would give appropriate responses to the people below, but after climbing for a long time, they were exhausted and gradually became unwilling to talk. Instead, they concentrated all their energy on climbing, so no matter how the two people below shouted, they just turned a deaf ear to them.

The two people below became a little panicked after realizing that no one responded to them.

"Why didn't Brother Zhou and the other two respond? Could it be that they have already gone upstairs?"

"That shouldn't be the case. The rope hasn't been lowered yet. The person should still be climbing and hasn't gotten out yet."

"Then why didn't you respond?"

"Maybe they didn't hear us? The wind is strong up there, maybe our voices can't get through. Anyway, let's just wait a little longer. It's no use for us to be anxious. No matter what, we can't act until they get up there."

The two of them waited nearly ten more minutes in this self-comforting manner, but perhaps because it was in the dark and because they were not in the mood to chat, the short ten minutes seemed particularly long.

Just as the two men remained silent, one of the men suddenly pricked up his ears and listened carefully to something deep in the cave.

Perhaps the man's sudden turn attracted the attention of another person, who asked curiously, "What are you looking at? What can you see in this pitch black?"

"No, did you hear any sound?"

"Sound? Are you talking about the sound of the wind? There seems to be some, but it's not obvious." The man was a little confused.

The other person shook his head and took two steps forward, but he didn't dare to go too far, probably only two or three meters. Then he said confidently: "It seems like someone is singing? Come over and listen."

"You're stupid, who the hell would be in the mood to sing in a cave? You might be suffering from the cold and are hallucinating."

The man did not get angry at his companion's blaming tone, but continued: "There really was a sound, and it was a woman's voice. If you want to stop getting angry, you can hear it if you listen carefully."

The companions immediately stopped arguing and instead quieted down to listen to the so-called "women's singing" in the cave.

Probably because neither of them was talking, once the cave was completely quiet, a faint sound was indeed heard. The sound was so ethereal that it seemed to come from a dream. The more carefully one listened, the more one could hear a lingering and melodious meaning.

If you were listening to this sound in a place with beautiful scenery at this moment, it would feel like being in a valley, but now you are in such a cold and damp underground cave, this sound is more terrifying than the monster appearing directly.

Just when the two people fell silent, the voice sounded again, and it seemed closer than the previous voice, and one could even hear a hint of resentment in the voice.

"Did you hear that?"

"Really, is there really someone singing?" The man obviously heard the sound, but in his mind he was thinking about what kind of possibility it was that someone could make such a sound in the cave.

"I heard that there is an advanced mutant animal that can imitate the human voice. It can sing beautiful songs to attract prey, and can even imitate the voice of any creature it has ever heard." The man who heard the voice first lowered his voice.

The other man could only hear the thundering sound of his own heartbeat at this time, and began to regret not insisting on going up. At this time, all he could think of were the horror novels he had read before the end of the world.

"Legend has it that in ancient times there were beautiful mermaids in the sea. Mermaids were best at imitating human voices, using their beautiful voices to lure people on the boat. When those people were attracted by the mermaids' singing and jumped into the sea, the mermaids would reveal their ferocious faces and bite and devour the humans."

"Damn, why are you saying this all of a sudden?" The man was scared after hearing this story. Moreover, combined with the current song, it seemed to be able to attract bait to take the bait.

"I've heard that, too, but don't you think that those who sing in the cave at night are not necessarily human?"

"Not a human? Then what else could it be?"

"Could it be those things in the cave below? Fan Yong and the others might have been eaten by them a long time ago."

"Okay, stop talking about this. Let's find a way to get up quickly. This damn place is too scary to stay in for even a moment longer."

The two people couldn't actually see each other's expressions in the dark, but they could see the trembling shoulders in the blurry shadows in front of them, and they decided immediately not to listen to this sound again.

When the two men returned to their original place, to make matters worse, the fuel for the torches was completely used up. The sudden darkness scared the two men so much that they gasped for air.

"Da Da, Da Da, Da Da"

A clear sound of footsteps sounded deep in the cave. Both of them heard it this time, and they were sure that the sound was definitely not an illusion, because the footsteps came from far away, and they could even feel a hint of panic.

The only weapons the two had at the moment were a folding shovel and a long machete that they had modified. The two could not take care of much else at this moment. They could only position themselves as best as possible, one on the left and one on the right, so that if the monster really pounced on them, they would be able to deal with it immediately.

Just as the footsteps were getting closer and were about to reach their location as predicted, the folding shovel in the hand of one of the men was about to fall.

The man who rushed out of the corridor stumbled and fell to the ground, and the folding shovel just missed.

When the woman saw the two feet, she didn't care about anything else and started crying loudly.

The two men recognized that it was a real person from the faint sound of the woman crying. One of them took out his flashlight and shone it on the woman's face. He was surprised and asked, "Qin Si?"

The woman who ran over was indeed Qin Si, but her current situation could be described as miserable. Her clothes were torn in several places, and it was not clear whether it was tears or snot on her face. There were also a lot of blood stains on her body. Her eyes, which were arrogant in the past, were now filled with fear.

"It's really Qin Si." Another person was also surprised.

After being helped up by two people, Qin Si hurriedly grabbed one person's sleeve and shouted in a low voice: "Hurry up and leave here, find a rope to climb up!"

Qin Si dragged the two people to the edge of the rock wall like a madman. Perhaps seeing that the two were motionless, he began to grope in the dark by himself.

"Where's the rope? Where's the rope? Where's the rope?" After realizing that the rope was missing, Qin Si turned around and questioned the two of them like a madman.

The two men probably didn't expect Qin Si to become like this, so they said that the other two were still climbing up.

"What? There's no rope. That's it. Hahaha. It's over. We're all going to die here today!"

"What do you mean? Tan Si, please explain clearly, what do you mean you are going to die?"

"I mean they are all dead. We are going to die too, hahaha, everyone is dead!" Qin Si's mind began to become a little unclear at this time, and there was a sharp smile in his tone.

Just as Qin Si finished saying these words, the voice that sounded like a woman's low singing seemed to have reached the entrance of the cave.