Chapter 23

A—A-Shan? Everyone’s jaws dropped. Wei Yuan had said it so easily, so casually. Not only was Jiang Shan dumbstruck; the others were too. A-Shan already? Did that mean he had fully accepted her as a teammate?
Regardless of how the others felt, Wei Yuan had already moved to the storage entrance and looked in. A dark passage, the smell of decay inside.
“The situation in the storage is unknown. A-Shan and I going down is best.” Wei Yuan added.
The words carried another meaning—something more.
But Zhang Zheng and the other two didn’t catch it. The man who had been in the passenger seat especially looked like he wanted to say something.
Zhao Ying cut in before he could: “I think Wei Yuan’s right.”
Their eyes exchanged another round of silent communication. Zhao Ying was blinking hard. She glanced at Jiang Shan.
She hadn’t expected Wei Yuan to offer to take Jiang Shan into the storage.
In that moment she didn’t know if she was relieved or something else.
“Give me your flashlights,” Wei Yuan said.
At “flashlight” Jiang Shan’s heart moved. The others quickly pulled two flashlights from the truck; with Wei Yuan’s own that made three old-style torches.
Jiang Shan watched them in silence.
Wei Yuan—no suit, in a wheelchair—and Jiang Shan—a “survivor” whose situation was unclear. The pair was anything but ordinary.
Wei Yuan stopped at the entrance. His gaze stayed on the passage. “A-Shan, come help me.”
There were a few short steps inside; he had seen them. Wei Yuan couldn’t go down directly.
The whole way he had hardly been a burden. He seemed used to life in a wheelchair, and the others seemed to respect him—at least they did what he said even when they didn’t want to.
Jiang Shan had said nothing, but she had already sized up the five of them. Wei Yuan, in his wheelchair, seemed to be the one leading the team.
She took hold of the handles at the back of his wheelchair and slowly went with him into the dark storage.
She didn’t look back at the “No entry” sign.
Only when Jiang Shan and Wei Yuan had completely disappeared inside did Zhang Zheng turn to the others with a complicated look. “Is that girl’s ‘head’ not right?”
What was that “no entry” thing about?
As she walked into the storage with Wei Yuan, Jiang Shan thought: perhaps she should at least have warned that kind woman who had looked after her.
She even had a vague feeling that the woman hadn’t really wanted to go that night—if Jiang Shan had urged her once more, maybe she would have stayed at the hotel to rest like her.
Inside the storage, Jiang Shan pushed Wei Yuan deeper. A light flicked on—Wei Yuan had turned on his torch.
To be honest Jiang Shan still didn’t know what these people were afraid of. She could see their nervousness, their avoidance—she wasn’t stupid. She could see their fear of unknown places, like this underground storage.
The reason she had agreed to come down with Wei Yuan was that she wanted to understand too.
Fear of the unknown ran deeper than fear of the known.
So she wanted to know what was behind all of this.
To Zhang Zheng and the others, after these few days Jiang Shan had seemed dull and slow—not very bright. They had even begun to lower their guard—or to think she wasn’t so terrifying after all.