Chapter 22 – Holy Land (1)

Lin Che reached the wall and pressed his palms flat against the stone. It was solid and cool, and would not change no matter how much he ran his fingers along the surface.

There was no seam or depression that indicated a way back through.

He stood back and looked at it.

This was precisely the region he had seen pictures of just minutes prior during his debrief, only that the main exit had been replaced with this wall. He’d stepped into it from the outside, which logically suggested that it could be stepped through from the inside as well, but there was no portal — no refraction of air — to be found.

He turned around and looked at the corridor.

Lin Che breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.

The situation was, objectively, manageable, and he knew this himself. He had died before — multiple times under various unpleasant circumstances, and had woken up completely unharmed on the day of his wedding. Death was not a good option, and it was not one he was going to reach for casually, but it existed as a fallback if need be.

Still, he did not particularly want to die in a stone corridor in a pocket dimension before help could arrive.

He took out his phone.

Eighteen percent battery, which was a slight issue, but not the main one. There was no signal — a given — and no way to contact the outside world.

He pulled out his trusted notebook from his pocket, which he’d recently been neglecting but always kept on his person out of habit.

Entered portal approx 2pm. Exit wall solid from inside — no visible seam or mechanism. Corridor approx 40m, stone construction, light has no source. Junction visible at far end. Sounds of some kind coming from beyond the junction, unidentified.

He looked up at the corridor around him.

Structure consistent with a containment facility or zoo of some kind. Multiple sections??

He closed his notebook and placed it back in his pocket.

He started walking.

The zoo theory made more sense to him now than it had when Elder Mao had mentioned it. The corridor was wide enough for multiple groups of people to casually walk past one another with plenty of room in between, and there were occasional “openings” into rooms sealed off with now-broken iron bars.

Lin Che reached the junction, which branched left, right, and forwards. He focused on the sound and figured it was coming from somewhere ahead, and proceeded to decide to not go towards certain doom.

Lin Che turned left.

He nearly walked past the herbs, which were growing in a shallow recess in the wall on the left side — an area where a thin film of moisture just happened to gather on the stone. It didn’t feel like they were deliberately placed there, but more that the wind had simply carried seeds over and they got trapped in this corner of the room. Perhaps the seeds came from the animals’ food supply, if this really was a zoo.

There were three varieties of herbs clustered together: one broad-leafed and deep green, one with small pale flowers, and one with a reddish-brown stem and waxy surface.

He stood and looked at them for a moment, before it hit him.

Today was Saturday, and he had a shift at Hu Baolin’s pharmacy which he had absolutely not cancelled and had certainly started several hours ago.

He stared at the herbs with the blankness of a man who just remembered something he cannot do anything about.

He took out his phone, opened the identification app that Hu Baolin had shown him during his first week, and held it up. The screen flickered as it processed the images.

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Yunnan Baiyao root identified. Haemostatic properties for bruising.

He took a picture of the second variety.

Bletilla stirata. Haemostatic properties for wound sealing.

The third.

Partial match — possible Panax notoginseng variant. Anti-haemorrhagic; analgesic secondary properties.

Lin Che picked a modest quantity of each herb, leaving the roots undisturbed, and folded the leaves carefully into his jacket pocket, wrapping them in a page torn from his notebook. He wasn’t sure if any of the herbs would be useful, but they were haemostatic, and he was in an unknown stone facility that used to contain unknown creatures.

He continued down the left corridor.

***

The chamber he chanced upon was roughly circular, with the corridor suddenly widening into a space about the size of a mid-sized grocery store. The ceiling was much higher here, and there were rings fixed into the walls at large intervals designed to hold something with substantial restraining force.