My chat group members are all legendary criminals.

Chapter 33 The Robin Doesn't Sing in the Night

Mia opened her eyes groggily, only to find herself in complete darkness.

She felt her face pressed against something hard, and someone pressing down on her.

"Oh! Shit!" she screamed, pushing the person off her.

Lu Yiming was woken up by being nudged and sat up, rubbing the back of his head.

"You pervert! Where's your towel?!" Mia shouted.

Lu Yiming looked down and realized that the bath towel was gone.

Holy crap! I'm never sleeping naked again, I've really missed out.

"Turn your head away quickly..." He coughed twice and reached for the towel to tie around his neck.

The two then looked around.

It was pitch black, the air was full of dust, and it was difficult to breathe. You could reach out and touch the wall.

"Cough cough..." Mia took out her phone; the screen was cracked, but thankfully the flashlight still worked.

The white light illuminated the darkness, revealing a hollow skull face! Directly facing them.

"Ah!" Mia was so startled that she dropped her phone and crashed into Lu Yiming's arms, desperately grabbing the bath towel.

"Damn it!" Lu Yiming covered his face with his fig leaf, thinking to himself: With this kind of guts, what kind of cop are you?

He picked up his phone. By the light, he could see that what lay before him was a narrow path less than two meters wide and three meters high.

Behind them was a winding wooden staircase, two stories high, from which they had tumbled down.

The passage ahead was dark and bottomless.

Lu Yiming held up his phone and shone it on the stairs. "Judging by the height of the stairs, we've tumbled down to the basement."

"Is the entrance to the secret room on the second-floor master bedroom, but the secret room itself is on the basement level?"

"...What should we do?" Mia's voice trembled.

"Let's take a look first."

Lu Yiming cautiously approached the white skeleton.

Under the light, the skeleton appeared yellow and cracked, its surface covered with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

He crouched down and began to examine it carefully.

"This is a Germanic woman who has been dead for more than 20 years."

"How did you know?" Mia asked, peeking out from behind him.

"Completely skeletal, yellowish-gray in color, and cracked. This indicates that the person died more than 20 years ago."

"A wider pelvic bone indicates a woman." As he spoke, Lu Yiming picked up a tattered piece of underwear with his finger. "Besides, isn't it obvious?"

"Pah, you filthy scoundrel. And how did you figure out that they were Germanic?"

Lu Yiming pinched the skull. "The large angle of the lower jaw and the shovel-shaped molars are due to the dietary habits of the Germanic people."

Although Hannibal's anatomical skills were outdated.

But his medical skills also improved by 1, making it easy for him to see through this basic information.

"What was the cause of death?"

Lu Yiming squatted down and felt a small metal head in the thick dust; it was a deformed bullet.

He turned his skull around and pointed to the hole on it for Mia to see.

"Shoot him."

He shifted the skeleton slightly and pulled out a hardcover notebook from beneath the bones, as if it were something he had deliberately protected before his death.

Upon opening it, I found it filled with random numbers; it must be a codebook.

Tucked inside the book was a shriveled cicada specimen.

The entire notebook contains only one line of text on the title page: "Die Nachtigall singt nicht im Dunkeln."

What does this mean? Lu Yiming was completely confused.

Mia glanced at it and said, "That's German. It means—a robin doesn't sing in the night."

"You also understand German?"

"That's right, let me tell you, I've been doing this since I was little..." Mia started to boast, but Lu Yiming didn't listen to a word she said.

Lost in thought, he pondered: a codebook, a robin, and a cicada.

This woman was most likely the original owner of the house, but why would she build a secret underground room? And who killed her?

"How long has this house been empty?" Lu Yiming ruthlessly interrupted Mia's boasting.

"After we moved to Fremont, we bought this house intending to rent it out."

But the tenants all say it's haunted, and it's been vacant for over ten years now.

Mia replied irritably.

"You dare rent me a haunted house that's been uninhabited for over a decade?"

"Haha...didn't you want something cheap?" Mia chuckled nervously.

Lu Yiming ignored her and put away his notebooks and specimens. His phone only had a dozen bars of battery left.

Apple phone batteries still don't last long.

"A knocking sound." He pointed to the ventilation duct above his head. "The sheet metal in the ventilation duct of the sealed room is loose and is banging against each other, which sounds like knocking."

The reflection in the mirror was caused by steam and light seeping through the hollow space behind the full-length mirror. The blood was from rusted water pipes mixed with the water.

"So there are no ghosts? It's just because the house is too old and has a secret room?" Mia blinked and asked curiously.

"At least for now. We can't rule out the possibility that someone is hiding here."

Mia bent down to pick up the Glock that had fallen to the ground, checked the magazine, and clicked it into chamber—a perfectly executed movement.

"Don't be afraid, my gun is very steady. I'll protect you, you keep the light on."

Lu Yiming's lips twitched: "I just said there might be someone, and probably..."

Before he could finish speaking...

"Whoosh!" A dark figure darted out from the shadows and skimmed along the wall!

"Who?!" Mia hissed, raising her gun and firing.

boom! boom! boom!

The bullet hit the wall, sending sparks flying.

"Aren't you supposed to have a steady hand?!" Lu Yiming pressed down on her gun.

"It runs too fast!" Mia shouted defiantly, her face slightly flushed. "Chase it!"

Helpless, Lu Yiming could only hold up his phone and follow behind.

I already had a guess as to what the dark figure was.

The passage was winding and twisting, and after running forward for several dozen meters, the space suddenly opened up.

This is a small room of ten square meters.

The dust was thicker, and the air was more stuffy. Several dilapidated wine cabinets stood against the wall.

"Cough cough..." The ashes were stirred, and the two coughed violently.

Lu Yiming scanned the liquor cabinet with his phone. A dark figure darted out again, lunging straight at Mia!

Mia instinctively reached for the trigger.

"Don't open it!"

Lu Yiming activated his full perception and grabbed with his left hand.

"Meow—" came the mournful meow.

He grabbed a pure black wildcat by the scruff of its neck, and it struggled frantically.

"It's a cat?" Mia was still in shock.

"A stray cat in heat makes a sound like a child crying."

Lu Yiming scratched the cat's belly, and the previously agitated wild cat immediately closed its eyes in comfort.

"Don't worry, I'll take you to uninstall QQ tomorrow."

Mia rolled her eyes and looked at the wine cabinet. "All this trouble just to store a few bottles of wine?"

She opened the cabinet, picked up a bottle of wine, blew off the dust: "Romanée-Conti 1945."

Lu Yiming didn't know anything about wine, so he shook his head.

"It's not very valuable. My husband has a whole cabinet of them." Mia put it down and checked the rest.

Lu Yiming looked around and kicked a metal object.

Looking down, I saw an old-fashioned hand-cranked generator with aging wires still attached.

He gripped the handle and shook it vigorously a few times.

crunch--

After a few sounds, several old tungsten filament lamps overhead lit up.

The light was dim, but it was still clear enough to see.

The room was simply furnished with three wine cabinets and a set of table and chairs.

Lu Yiming discovered that in addition to red wine, the cabinet also contained many rusty canned goods, compressed biscuits, and other emergency food items.

Looking at the date, it was produced in 1980, which is more than 40 years ago. Eating it would probably allow you to ascend to heaven immediately.

After another inspection, all that was found was red wine and food.

He shook his head in disappointment, having expected gold bars.

He then discovered a round iron door hidden behind the wine cabinet.

Pull it open forcefully, and a stench from the sewer wafts out. Behind the door is an even narrower slide, and you can faintly hear the sound of water.

"Holy crap, this is connected to Fremont's sewers!"

"It stinks!" He quickly closed the door, pinched his nose, and shut it.

"Come and see what I found!" Mia shouted excitedly from the other end.

She rummaged through the liquor box and found a metal box with a rusty lock, so she simply shot it to pieces.

Open it up, and inside is an old-fashioned telegraph machine, with earphones and a telegraph key next to it.

Inside the box were several tattered sheets of telegram paper, covered with scribbles and dots.

Lu Yiming walked over, picked up the telegram, and looked at it, but couldn't understand it at all.

"This must be the real purpose of building this secret room."

1980, German Woman, Hidden Chamber, Underground Passage, Telegraph Machine, Codebook, Cicada Specimen, Cipher Poem.

Lu Yiming put down the telegram paper and looked at Mia, who was fiddling with the telegram machine.

"The person who built this secret room was very likely a former Nazi intelligence agent who had infiltrated the United States..."