Chapter 110: Chapter 88: The Secret of the Hidden Chamber

Four dead at once?

If it wasn’t Kai who did the killing, something must have happened inside the building!

Combined with the moist soil falling from the cracks at the top, Gu Ji couldn’t help but think of the water covering the floor he saw in the underground fire control room these past two rounds.

One of the causes of a land subsidence is the extraction of underground fluid resources.

Such as oil, natural gas, underground water, and so on; in the 1920s, land subsidence was induced in urban areas of Hu Province, Jingzhou, and other places in the Xia Kingdom due to concentrated extraction of groundwater, and the North China Plain also experienced large scale ground subsidence due to the groundwater depression funnel.

Gu Ji could not yet determine the specific cause of this natural disaster.

If it really is related to fluids, then falling into a pit means there’s a high chance of encountering groundwater flooding!

“Creak…”

As he was analyzing the crisis, a few faint cracking sounds reached his ears.

“Mr. Bai, be careful!”

Sixth Master raised his head and shouted, immediately pulling Bai Maoliang aside with a rush.

And Gu Ji seemed as if he had eyes on top of his head, not even bothering to look, he just slightly twitched his outer ear and smoothly stepped back to dodge.

Boom!

A huge rock fell from the ceiling above, followed by a massive amount of black, moist soil that quickly formed a mound half a person high.

Bai Maoliang got up in a panic and immediately looked at Gu Ji.

“Wa Xueming, is this place going to collapse? We have to leave quickly!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bai, this is just the deformation of the concrete structure caused by secondary building vibrations. The ceiling is full of dense rebar, which has strong tension, it won’t collapse anytime soon…”

As Gu Ji spoke, he bent down again and pinched up a handful of the freshly fallen soil, noticing it was even more moist than before.

About fifteen minutes later.

Rapid footsteps came from the fire escape stairs, and a henchman leaned on the door frame shouting:

“Bad news, Mr. Bai, water, the basement is full of water, it’s already flooded up to the sixth floor of the building!”

“What!?”

Bai Maoliang’s face changed, from wolves to tigers, having just dealt with a warlord faction, they now faced flooding.

They hadn’t even found a way out yet; if the water keeps rising, won’t they be drowned alive?

“Wa Xueming, what do we do now, is there a way to get out quickly?”

“There is, but it depends on whether Mr. Chen’s team has gathered the tools…”

Gu Ji answered, his eyes fixed on the countdown timer in the upper right corner.

When he went to the underground fire control room, the water had just covered the platform; four hours later, it has reached the fifth floor, simply calculated, it would take nearly a day to flood the top floor.

Assuming the backflow speed stays the same.

“Do you know the speed of the water rising?”

“Well… I don’t know, Kai just told me to come up and report ahead of time.”

“Go down and make a mark, use your phone stopwatch to see how long it takes to rise a meter, and report every half hour!”

“What are you standing there for! Go quickly!”

Seeing the henchman standing there scratching his head, Bai Maoliang got anxious and kicked him directly.

Half an hour later, the henchman came back, clearly showing a look of panic, his breathing even seemed obstructed.

“The water’s up to the eighth floor already, about 4 minutes per meter!”

“How did it suddenly get so fast? Won’t it reach here in just over 6 hours?!”

Sixth Master was also startled, his heart tightening as if a cold snake climbed up his spine.

Gu Ji looked up, staring at the fractured ceiling, the speed of the water far exceeding his expectations; the secondary land subsidence had accelerated the backflow.

Cold sweat appeared on Bai Maoliang’s forehead, like an ant on a hot pan, pacing back and forth in the office with increasing speed, occasionally asking Gu Ji questions.

But Gu Ji’s answer was: without tools, they could not estimate the time needed for self-rescue.

“Why hasn’t Chen Jianhe come back yet!”

“Here! Here!”

Just as Bai Maoliang was on the brink of an outburst, a chaotic sound of footsteps finally came from the corner of the building.

The chubby, large-eared Chen Jianhe led a group of high-ranking officials and employees into the room, their hands full of various construction tools.

It was fortunate this guy was the real estate department manager, otherwise it would have been really hard to find these things quickly in the debris-filled building with such poor lighting conditions.

“Mr. Wa, do you think these things are useful?”

“Yes, bring over a big table.”

Gu Ji picked up several steel pipes, took two of them, passed a wire through the hollow interior, connecting them, then wrapped tape around the joint a few times to secure it.

Once the employees brought over the table.

He stepped onto it, coming under the crack.

Seeing the crack filled with occasional falling dirt, Bai Maoliang’s eyelid twitched nervously.

“Wa Xueming, what are you doing, don’t collapse the roof!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bai, I’m just testing how deep we are buried.”

Saying this, Gu Ji inserted the pipes into the soil, Pan Xinli saw him struggling and jumped on the table to help.

With the sparse dirt falling, the two steel pipes were finally inserted entirely into the ground, “Pass me two more pipes.”

Chen Jianhe blinked in a daze.

“Mr. Wa, you’re not thinking of using these pipes to go all the way to the ground, are you?”

“Any problem with that?”

Gu Ji answered while wrapping tape, this was the simplest method they could achieve at present.

“I, Chen Jianhe, may not have much education, but even I know from digging foundations that the firmness of the soil depends, generally speaking, the thicker the soil layer, the greater the bulk density of the soil, and the harder and denser the soil becomes.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep