"Oxygen shortage?!" Liang Yi blurted out involuntarily. As a result, his head felt even dizzier, and his body almost toppled forward.
"If you shout any louder, you'll faint, and no one will help you out," Tan Linyuan said in his usual sarcastic tone. "This is underground. The oxygen must be insufficient."
This was also the reason why Tan Linyuan had been so quiet since they came down.
To reduce oxygen consumption and conserve his strength.
When Liang Yi said he wouldn't come down earlier, Tan Linyuan didn't feel disappointed but rather relieved.
But in the end, he still came down, which meant part of the oxygen would be used up by him.
In a way, Liang Yi's presence was more of a burden than a help.
"You should go up right now," Tan Linyuan ordered. "Once I find Nan Yu, I'll take her up immediately."
"Are you sure she's here?"
Liang Yi also realized the problem and immediately regretted coming down. He turned to leave but still asked, "The oxygen here is insufficient. Be careful that she might have fainted due to oxygen shortage."
Tan Linyuan suddenly reacted.
Maybe Nan Yu wasn't missing; she just couldn't respond to him.
Before being dragged down, she must have struggled fiercely with the attackers, exhausting her strength.
It was very likely that the attackers didn't wait for her heart rate to return to normal before locking her up somewhere here.
Rapid breathing had consumed the surrounding oxygen, so she fainted due to oxygen shortage...
Tan Linyuan clenched his phone tightly. Suddenly, the phone flashed, and the flashlight went out.
Just like the saying goes, "Misfortunes never come singly." The phone was out of battery.
Going up to get Liang Yi's phone and then coming back down would waste more time.
And Nan Yu couldn't wait.
He couldn't wait.
In the pitch - black darkness, Tan Linyuan chose to close his eyes and minimize all his movements.
He had to be extremely careful to listen for that faint sound.
The sound that belonged to Nan Yu.
He almost forgot to breathe as he strained to hear her.
To find her.
To save her.
...
Tan Linyuan searched back and forth in several rooms like a man caught in a ghostly maze but still found nothing.
Finally, on the third time he entered the same room, he heard an extremely faint gasping sound, so faint that he almost thought he was hallucinating.
It was so soft that it was easy to mistake it for his own movement.
Tan Linyuan heard it.
He almost lost his composure but still remained calm. The lack of oxygen and the loss of vision made him extremely alert.
He walked step by step towards the source of that fleeting sound.
Tan Linyuan reached out to touch and determined by the feel that they were several stacked boxes.
When his phone still had power, he had shone the flashlight around quickly and didn't open them.
Because the boxes weren't very big and didn't seem large enough to hold a person.
But "not seem" didn't mean "couldn't".
He groped in the dark and opened the first box. Then he quickly felt inside. It was a pile of papers.
The second box contained a bunch of plastic file folders.
The third box felt like it contained photos.
When he lifted the fourth box, Tan Linyuan suddenly sensed something was wrong.
This feeling made him excited.
The box was too heavy.
So heavy that he was absolutely certain there was a person inside.
This thought was confirmed the moment he opened the box and felt the touch of skin.
His hand only paused for a second before he quickly felt around until he touched her lips, nose, and eyes...
It was Nan Yu.
Tan Linyuan took a deep breath and leaned over in the darkness. He whispered, "Nan Yu, is that you?"
The person in the box didn't answer him.
Tan Linyuan panicked. He urgently reached out to check her breathing—thankfully, although it was faint, it hadn't stopped.
So he lifted her out of the box and laid her flat on the ground. Then he decisively kissed her.
Saying "kiss" was a bit of an embellishment for the current situation because it wasn't really that romantic.
It should be called artificial respiration.
He breathed air into her mouth in big gulps. A few times, he himself was oxygen - deprived and his mind went blank, but he never stopped.
Until she began to show some reaction. Her fingers tightly grabbed his collar, and she "kissed" him back.
The word "kissed back" was too elegant. It should be said that she was snatching.
For a body just recovering from shock and coma, instinct was faster than thought in seeking a chance to survive.
So she instinctively snatched air from Tan Linyuan's mouth in an attempt to get more oxygen.
Their lips and teeth were intertwined, like a pair of lovers who couldn't bear to part.
She was urgent, and he was calm.
It wasn't until Nan Yu finally regained consciousness that she let go of his lips and gasped for air, but still felt it difficult to breathe.
In the pitch - black darkness, she didn't know who had saved her, nor did she know who the man was whose mouth she had just grabbed onto to snatch air from.
But she remembered the smell.
That faint sandalwood scent, so pure and cold that only one person in the world had it—
"Tan Linyuan..."
Nan Yu trembled. Her voice was so hoarse that it was almost toneless, but she still managed to say his name, "Is that you?"
He didn't answer but just gently kissed her forehead.
He was here.
...
Nan Yu wasn't just sitting there waiting for death in the room.
After confirming that the window and the door couldn't be opened, she decided to take a risk and search for the Shen family's secrets in the study.
Playing the victim and acting weak couldn't save her life. Only by having enough confidence and strength could she negotiate with the other side.
Or rather, have something to hold the other side back.
This was what Tan Linyuan had taught her.
She searched the room up and down but found nothing. It was so empty that it didn't look like a study at all.
This was strange.
If they had just moved all the important documents away temporarily to catch her, it would be understandable. But she clearly noticed that the bookshelves and drawers were brand - new.
That meant no one had ever used them.
There were no traces of any documents ever being stored in either the bookshelves or the drawers.
But before this, whenever Shen Suhai had business to discuss, he would invite the other party to the study.
Nan Yu felt something was wrong.
She did the same thing as Liang Yi: felt the walls, checked the floor and the ceiling.
Finally, she sat down on the sofa disappointedly, waiting for the Shen family's people to come.
It wasn't until she stood up again and her shoes stepped on the carpet that she suddenly noticed something was wrong.
She lifted the carpet.
But before she could open the iron lid and go in, the Shen family's people came. They also seemed to be caught off guard by her discovery of this secret.
In the end, they chose to tie her up and lock her in this secret room.
Afraid that she would escape again, they stuffed her into a box temporarily and planned to hand her over to Shen Suhai after the wedding.
But no one expected that something would go wrong during the Shen family's wedding.
If Tan Linyuan hadn't found her, she would definitely have suffocated to death in this box today.
She didn't know how much time had passed outside, nor did she know if anyone would come to save her.
The air was getting scarcer and scarcer. She felt that her brain had lost the ability to think.
In an extremely quiet environment, it was also a kind of torture for a person.
She couldn't hear any sound from the outside world.