796: Chapter 787 Miracles Are Just Like That 796: Chapter 787 Miracles Are Just Like That After the initial euphoria of escape subsided, Gao Yang quickly grew afraid.
Gao Yang was sure he didn’t have claustrophobia, but in the utterly dark and quiet cave, aside from the faint sound of footsteps, Gao Yang could hear even his own heartbeat.
He couldn’t suppress the fear that began to rise within him.
It wasn’t nervousness, it was fear, an inexplicable terror.
Gao Yang couldn’t help but turn on his headlamp several times.
As long as there was light, and after seeing the scene in front of him, his panic would immediately be greatly relieved.
But Gao Yang couldn’t keep the light on all the time, so as soon as he turned it off, he would plunge back into fear.
The cyclical changes in his emotions made Gao Yang extremely angry.
He hated that he had braved great storms before, yet now was losing to his own fear.
It didn’t make sense.
Reasonable or not, if a person could completely control their emotional changes, they would be divine.
Unable to curb his fear and unable to keep the light on, Gao Yang, after wallowing in his misery for quite a while, suddenly slapped his forehead, realizing he had overlooked something very important.
Gao Yang opened his backpack, took out the infrared camera, turned on the headlamp, and after illuminating the camera and switching it on, he laughed involuntarily upon seeing the monotone but cave-representing colors appearing on the digital camera’s screen.
Gao Yang’s fear wasn’t of darkness, but of the unknown, so after turning on the camera, even if he turned off the headlamp, Gao Yang’s mood was able to remain very stable.
Gao Yang didn’t know how deep the cave really was.
It could be a few hundred meters, maybe a thousand meters, possibly even several thousand meters, or tens of thousands of meters for all he knew.
The cave curved slightly, and when too far away, Gao Yang couldn’t see if there was any light behind him, but when he finally heard noise and commotion as people entered the cave, Gao Yang immediately quickened his pace.
The footsteps behind him were urgent, so Gao Yang simply started to run.
The enemy must have known he was in the cave.
In this straight tunnel, there was no cover to utilize.
Having no choice but to fight forcefully before finding a fork in the road to escape, Gao Yang hoped he could find another way out.
There was no feeling of stuffiness in the cave, and even after walking for a long time, there was no sign of impaired consciousness, which led Gao Yang to believe that there must be other tunnels inside that connected to the outside world.
Since the cave was curved, there was no need to worry about being immediately shot at by pursuers, so Gao Yang decided to turn on his headlamp again and started to sprint with all his might.
After not running for very long, Gao Yang’s headlamp finally illuminated an irregular-shaped cavern.
Rushing toward the cavern, as he was about to enter the big cave, Gao Yang slowed down.
When he reached the end of the lava tube leading into the cavern, he stopped.
He had seen an object that shouldn’t be in a cave.
Before him stood a statue.
The cavern wasn’t very large, about five to six meters high, and a statue roughly three meters tall stood at its center.
Gao Yang involuntarily glanced around the cavern and discovered at least two uneven holes in the walls.
Both holes were quite small; the widest one was about two meters in diameter, and the narrowest was less than one meter.
After taking a quick look around the cavern, Gao Yang swallowed hard and quietly approached the statue.
The statue faced away from the entrance.
Gao Yang moved in front of it, looked up, and immediately froze.
The statue was strange and abstract.
Gao Yang couldn’t discern what material it was made of, but he noticed the eyes of the statue twinkling.
The seated statue had an abstract form, a large mouth, large ears, and a large nose, but the eyes seemed small in comparison to the other features.
However, the key issue was that when the light shone on the eyes, they began to sparkle.
Especially noteworthy was that, a bit above and between the two eyes, there was what looked like a vertical third eye, which emitted a red glow when illuminated.
Gao Yang’s attention was captivated by the eyes of the statue.
Undoubtedly, the eyes of the statue were inlaid with diamonds; the two normal ones were white, and the pupils in the middle black.
As for the third eye, it was entirely red.
The statue’s head bowed slightly, its gaze directed down to the ground.
When Gao Yang looked up at it, it felt like he was making eye contact with the statue.
Gao Yang held the camera in one hand and his rifle in the other.
Then, he slung the rifle over his shoulder and covered his mouth with his hand.
Although Gao Yang had found traces of human activity in that terrible pit he fell into when entering the cave, he had not expected to find a statue in the cave, let alone diamonds.
Although the formation of diamonds cannot be separated from volcanoes, Gao Yang did not find any traces of diamonds in the cave.
While using diamonds for the eyes of the statue made sense, Gao Yang had never imagined he would encounter diamonds as long as and as thick as a thumb, and moreover, red in color.
Gao Yang felt as if the statue’s eyes were watching him.
He lowered his head, no longer gazing at the statue, then covered his mouth with his hand and started turning in circles on the spot.
But after taking only two steps, Gao Yang was startled, awakening from his dream of sudden wealth.
There was a downward hole behind the statue, a wide opening.
Gao slowly approached the hole and glanced down, only to discover that this nearly vertical shaft had no visible bottom.
That’s when he realized, the eyes of the statue were watching over the volcano’s magma channel.
An idea formed in Gao Yang’s mind; the volcano’s main lava tube seemed to be an exit from Hell itself.
After being startled by the abyss-like hole, Gao Yang momentarily snapped out of his dream of striking it rich.
Obtaining the diamond would be great, but it was more important to ensure he could survive to take the diamond out.
Gao Yang first looked at the other two holes in the cavern.
The wider one was too high above ground, about five meters, unreachable by him.
The other was on the ground, which he would have to crawl through, but that ground-level lava tube was too narrow.
The width of a lava tube is not constant.
The fact that a lava tube exists means it’s definitely connected to the outside, but it’s very likely that the tube could become narrower.
With geological activity that could last tens of millions of years, who knows if it’s blocked outside?
A lava tube with a diameter of less than a meter would be impossible to turn around in once entered, so the easiest hole to enter was absolutely not an option.
It seemed like a dead end, but Gao Yang had not yet given up hope because he thought that a height of five meters might not be an insurmountable barrier.
Gao had always believed miracles were not so easily found, but he felt everything he had seen and experienced was a miracle.
Now, nothing was an issue for him.
As long as he had materials to make a ladder, Gao Yang could find a way to climb into the high cave.
Gao Yang looked at the statue once again.
At this moment, he felt no compulsion to preserve cultural relics.
Who knows how long the statue had been there?
Looking at its style, Gao would believe it a work from ten thousand years ago.
However, Gao was even willing to give up on the statue’s eyes—the diamonds—if it meant not missing the chance to escape.
Gao Yang wanted to leave, and his only hope lay with that statue.
Gao had made up his mind on what to do, but the sound of hurried footsteps was approaching fast.
Whatever he wanted to do would have to wait; his first priority was to ensure his pursuers couldn’t get in.
Gao quickly changed to a full magazine, then took four magazines and taped two together to make fast-changing magazines, cocking the pistol’s slide.
After preparing for battle, Gao placed the infrared camera in the corner of the statue’s base, aimed at the passage he came through.
Checking the camera screen to ensure it faced the cave, he retreated two meters and crouched down to the left of the statue.
From his position, Gao could quickly hide behind the statue if necessary, but also conveniently monitor the infrared camera’s image.
If the enemy came in with lighting tools, they would be his live targets.
Even if they had night vision devices, he wouldn’t need to switch on a headlamp to see them.
At this moment, Gao hoped for as many enemies as possible, for a simple reason—in such a situation where only gunmanship and shooting speed mattered, he feared no one.
And the terrain ensured the enemy couldn’t rush him all at once.
The passageway could fit at most three people side by side.
Even if they came shoulder to shoulder, leaving no room, only five or six of them could rush in at a time, and if so, Gao would be even more pleased.
Gao was confident that he would not be the one to die in a shootout, so of course, he hoped for as many enemies as possible.
The more enemies, the more Gao could kill, and the more he killed, the more material he would have for making steps.
Yes, Gao planned to destroy the statue to use as a foothold to reach the higher cave.
Although Gao dearly wanted the statue’s eyes, he still very much wished to preserve the statue.
Hence, he hoped for a slew of enemies to come to their demise, the more, the better!
Once all the enemies were dead, Gao could leisurely return the way he came.
If not all were dead, as long as there were enough bodies, he would be able to build a bridge of corpses.
For a height of almost five meters, numerous bodies would be needed as a base to climb up.
Gao started praying that his enemies wouldn’t be cowards, hoping they wouldn’t retreat after only a few died.
The footsteps grew louder and louder, and Gao saw the cave being illuminated, but the slight curvature of the cave prevented him from seeing the light source.
Soon, however, at least four swaying light sources appeared in Gao’s view.
Judging by their height, the enemies were holding flashlights rather than headlamps.
Glancing at the camera to confirm the exact number of people and whether the lights were held in the left or right hand, Gao steadied his gun without movement.
At a distance of more than two hundred meters, Gao decided not to rush.
He wanted to allow them to come closer before firing.
In this absolute darkness, the enemy’s flashlights were not high-beam, and the light they provided would barely reveal a fifty-meter target clearly, and Gao suspected they might not even illuminate thirty meters clearly.
For now, the enemy still hadn’t noticed the cave, let alone spotted Gao.
The only way they might have seen him was if they were using night vision devices.
But Gao had made up his mind; with or without enemy night vision, he would wait for the enemy to come within a forty-meter range before firing.
The closer they were, the more convenient it would be to move the bodies later.(to be continued.
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