Late at night, everything was silent. Luo Kai struggled to open his leaden eyelids. He struggled to sit up. The prolonged hunger made his body feel like it no longer belonged to him. Even the slightest movement was extremely difficult.
There was a commotion in the dark and oppressive space. It was a huge rat. Luo Kai wanted to catch it, but he was powerless. The only thing he could do was to guard the rat hole and prevent it from escaping. He had to compete with the rat to see who could live longer.
The cold rock wall behind him made Luo Kai shiver involuntarily. It also dispelled his sleepiness. He had to work.
He groped around and found the rat hole under his butt. He used all his strength to lift up the stone slab above. The rat hole had been dug to the size of a person. He carefully slid down and covered the stone slab again. He tried not to make any noise because he was escaping from prison!
In the dark and damp tunnel, Luo Kai's eyes lit up with a little green light. The surrounding environment gradually became clearer. This was the night vision that evolved from being in the dark for a long time. He weakly gasped for breath for a while. He took out a polished awl from his elbow and began to carefully dig the soil.
Digging a hole to escape from prison. This kind of scene that he had only seen in movies before was actually happening to him. Only when he experienced it did he know how difficult it was. The key was that his body was now tortured by hunger. This matter squeezed out his little physical strength. But if he didn't do it, he would feel so painful that he wanted to commit suicide every time he woke up in the silence of the night.
Luo Kai didn't know which prison this was, nor did he know why he was locked up here. He only knew that he was still alive. He had survived a plane crash at an altitude of 10,000 meters.
But sometimes, living was more painful than death. This was a stone room of about 30 square meters. Strictly speaking, it was a prison cell. He hadn't eaten a full meal for more than 300 days and nights. Every day, a burly jailer would throw a piece of moldy cornbread and stinky seaweed to every prisoner here. Then, he would shake his fat ass and leave in a language that Luo Kai couldn't understand.
In the beginning, Luo Kai tried to communicate with the jailer, but the result was an incomprehensible scolding and three days without any food or water.
What was even more terrifying than the hunger was the indescribable loneliness. There was no one here to communicate or speak, because everyone was like him, constantly struggling between life and death. They didn't have the energy to do anything, including talking.
The initial fear and impatience slowly turned into numbness. He once saw a rat that accidentally broke in and was trapped here for a period of time. It gnawed at the hard granite wall with its sharp claws and fangs. The rat clearly knew that it was committing suicide. But if life really had a soul, perhaps after death, the soul could pass through the cage that imprisoned life.
Luo Kai sometimes thought that it was a miracle that he was still alive. Perhaps he was no longer a "human"!
In the dark and damp underground, some water droplets had already seeped into the wall. Luo Kai leaned over and greedily sucked on them. The sweet water droplets nourished his dry body and soul, restoring some strength to his body.
He carefully scraped the soil in the tunnel with an awl, and then collected the soil into his only intact rag bag. The jailer would come to check on him every day. Once he was found with wet soil, he would be finished.
The prison guards here had no humanity at all. Their favorite thing to do was to torture the prisoners. Every time a new prisoner arrived, there would be a few days of painful wails outside the iron gate. Every once in a while, there would be a prison guard dragging a shriveled corpse away. He didn't see any prisoners being released. This was undoubtedly a death row prison. In the near future, he might become one of the corpses.
Luo Kai had been digging here for more than a hundred nights, but he had only dug five or six meters. He was too weak. Panic and hunger had been eroding his will and body. He didn't know where the tunnel led to, nor did he know how long he could hold on, but he still struggled to dig every night. Maybe the rat that committed suicide had moved him, or maybe it was the yearning of human nature for freedom. More likely, he was looking for hope for himself.
Until now, he hadn't figured out where he was or whether he was still himself. Judging from the jailer's dark skin and the salty sea breeze blowing in from outside the iron bars, this place seemed to be somewhere along the coast. However, the jailer's accent didn't belong to any language family he had ever heard.
What puzzled him the most was his own body. The arms and legs of this body were obviously much thinner, and the original big belly had disappeared. Once, with the help of the reflection of urine, he found that this body's face was very similar to his face when he first entered high school. There was also a crescent-shaped birthmark on his abdomen.
Strictly speaking, this body wasn't his present body. It was more like him when he was 16 or 17 years old. Maybe he had traveled to another world, or maybe he had returned to the past. But it didn't make any sense now, because he was lingering on the edge of death every day.
…
When dawn was about to arrive, Luo Kai carefully lifted the stone slab and slowly climbed up. In the darkness, a pair of small bean-like eyes stared at him from the corner of the thatch pile. It was the big rat.
Luo Kai slightly bared his teeth at it, with a cruel and bloodthirsty taste. For a person who had been in a state of hunger for a long time, any living creature could be used as food. However, he didn't have the ability to catch agile rats, even in this small cell.
Hunger for a long time and the lack of sunlight had caused him to suffer from severe malnutrition and osteoporosis. He couldn't do anything strenuous.
He covered the stone slab again, and then slowly crushed the large pieces of soil in his pocket. He carefully stood up with the help of the wall and sprinkled the soil bit by bit through the iron bars that were the size of a human head. The wet and cold sea breeze outside the window seemed to freeze his arms.
After doing all this, he began to sweat, even though the cell was bitterly cold.
Luo Kai tiredly gathered the thatch and the mattress around his feet and fell into a deep sleep.
Sleep seemed to be the best relief in these days of suffering.
He began to dream again. In his dream, he had a harmonious family, a dignified father, a loving mother, and a somewhat fierce but extremely good sister. His life was simple and happy …
"Kuang … kuang …" A violent kick on the door woke him up. Luo Kai opened his sleepy eyes.
The prison guard's big face with a hideous scar looked at him through a small hole in the iron door. There was a trace of doubt in his cold eyes, as if he was surprised that Luo Kai was still alive.
Then there was an angry shout. These days, Luo Kai already knew the meaning of this shout. "Get up and eat!"
He struggled to crawl to the front of the iron gate. Today's food was the same as usual. A piece of moldy cornbread the size of a baby's fist, a piece of salty seaweed ball, and a bowl of thin porridge. This was the daily food for every prisoner. It was already a miracle that they did not starve to death after eating this much every day.