Chapter 145: The Ancient Videotape

Achu's long hair, soaked in blood and matted, was now caked with a thick layer of mud and dust, looking just like a mop drenched in wet cement.

Yet she never cared about her appearance, her eyes glaring fiercely at the room before her.

This was the first time Li Tianque had ever seen such intense emotion in her usually ethereal eyes.

Achu's gaze was locked intently on the interior of the room, as if a raging, molten fire were burning within her eyes.

This unstoppable, blazing inferno seemed determined to consume all things, to burn away everything within its line of sight to ashes.

What could possibly be inside this room to make Chu display such an expression?

Could it be an enemy?

Filled with burning curiosity, Li Tianque eagerly looked into the room.

Unfortunately, not a single scene of what Li Tianque had imagined appeared.

The room before him was as ordinary as ordinary could be:

It was furnished with simple furniture—two rows of rusted iron shelves and two crooked square tables.

On the iron shelves sat eight rows of small iron boxes, painted with a striking coat of red lacquer. Whatever material this red lacquer was made of, it had managed to retain its vibrant color even after all these years.

Although the surface of the red paint was covered in a layer of dust, it hadn't peeled off at all, suggesting some sort of anti-corrosive property.

Similarly, the waterproofing in this room was superior to that of the other rooms in the building; the interior was very dry, without the slightest hint of dampness.

The two televisions on the square tables were wrapped in thick plastic sheets, and the items beneath the tables were wrapped in the same manner, though it was impossible to make out what was inside.

However, based on what Chu had said earlier, Li Tianque guessed that these must be audiovisual equipment, such as video recorders or computer towers capable of playing videos.

There was nothing remarkable to be seen in the room, yet Chu's expression remained furious.

Li Tianque was somewhat baffled; he simply couldn't figure out why this roo......

Li Tianque placed the first box on the floor and discovered that these boxes had no locks and could be opened directly.

He opened the box and found the videotapes that Chu had mentioned.

Yet, when he opened the cassette cases, he discovered that every single one of these tapes was completely empty!

Li Tianque proceeded to take down the other boxes one after another, and all of them were exactly the same—filled with nothing but empty cassette cases.

Without pausing, Li Tianque continued to rummage through the videotapes in the iron boxes.

In the dim light, repeating the same motion over and over began to make him feel dizzy.

Soon, Li Tianque's vision was swimming, but after searching through every single cassette case, he failed to find a single one that wasn't empty.

Just as Li Tianque was about to report his findings to Chu, she somehow managed to spot a special case and pulled it out from among the rest.

Li Tianque hadn't noticed anything different about this case, but Chu gave it a shake.

A thumping sound echoed from inside the box.

Clearly, there was something inside this videotape case.

"Huh? I actually missed one. How did you spot that?" Li Tianque asked, somewhat surprised.

Chu ignored Li Tianque and eagerly opened the box.

Sure enough, a videotape lay inside.

This must be the recording she wanted to watch...

Li Tianque's curiosity was also ignited, and he wanted to see what was actually on this videotape.

Yet Chu acted like a magician deliberately drawing out the suspense. She weighed the videotape over and over in her hands, looking at it from left to right, but hesitated to insert it into the video player.

After about three minutes, she finally seemed certain of something and began feeding the videotape into the player.

Because the VCR hadn't been used for so long, the flap of the cassette slot was stuck, and the tape jammed in the opening before it could even go in.

Chu pried at the slot cover, but there was no response whatsoever.

Without further ado, she simply pulled the tape back out and then forcefully snapped off the flap of the cassette slot.

The crisp snapping sound made Li Tianque's heart skip a beat. In such a dim room, when a taciturn woman beside you suddenly and violently breaks something, probably no one could remain entirely calm.

Chu shoved the videotape in quite violently and began adjusting the television.

Something even more unexpected happened to Li Tianque: he never imagined that this television would actually be a color TV!

If he remembered correctly, color televisions had only begun appearing in the mainland in the mid-1970s.

Yet this sanatorium dated back even further than that; even if they had just newly emerged, getting one in such a remote place must have been extraordinarily difficult.

Although the television could still be turned on, the image on it was extremely blurry, and the screen was covered in static snow.

It took a long time for the VCR to read the tape before it slowly began to play the content.

Having been dismantled, the already limited functions of the VCR had been stripped of its fast-forward capability.

The two of them simply watched the opening credits play out bit by bit, freezing from time to time in front of a string of English letters.

Li Tianque absolutely loathed this feeling, finding it just as agonizingly laggy as trying to stream a video on a terrible internet connection.

Clearly far more anxious than he was, Chu had her face practically pressed against the television screen, which looked rather eerie.

Time trickled by slowly.

After lagging for a full ten minutes or so, the mottled screen finally began to properly display the contents of this mysterious videotape...