Road to becoming the wealthiest: Starting From Treasure Hunting in the Cabinets
Chapter 694 - 440: Surprises and Scares_3

Chapter 694: Chapter 440: Surprises and Scares_3

"It won’t be easy to come back up later," Elijah remarked after glancing around.

"Right," Sean Knight quickly said:

"You guys should secure a rope to the edge, make sure it’s firmly fixed, so when we return, we can pull ourselves up with it."

Elijah and Douglas Cooper immediately took out a rope from their backpacks, compared the terrain on both sides, chose a relatively easy-to-climb spot, and drove a rope into the hard bedrock of the cave wall mixed with soil, then tossed the rest of the rope down following the water.

Sean caught the rope and took out a military shovel from his backpack, driving it straight into the wall nearby before winding the rope around it.

"Alright, come down!" Sean waved to the other two.

Elijah and Douglas jumped down one after the other.

Sean glanced deeply at the pit carved by the rushing water, then waved his hand:

"Let’s go find Lincoln Harrington!"

The three of them walked quickly, and Douglas couldn’t help but say:

"I don’t know where Mr. Patrick is now. I wonder if he would try to climb upstream like us..."

"I guess he would," Elijah replied.

"There are two possibilities: One is that when he fell, he would try to climb back up from where he fell.

The other possibility is that he can’t climb back up and would follow the current upstream or downstream."

"If he went downstream, that would be troublesome," Douglas worried.

"It’s unlikely he went downstream. As we’ve come this way, there’s simply nowhere one could exit downstream," Sean analyzed further, "So going upstream is the only possibility."

Douglas looked up at the cave ceiling, which was now two to three meters above their heads. Climbing up would be very difficult.

"Who’s there?"

Suddenly, someone shouted in the distance.

The three of them halted and then burst into ecstatic fury!

"Mr. Patrick, it’s us!" Douglas reacted the fastest, yelling as he rushed forward.

About thirty to forty meters ahead, where the river channel suddenly narrowed, and the water grew turbulent, a figure could be seen at the calmer section further upstream.

"Mr. Patrick, you’re alive! That’s fantastic!"

Douglas, ignoring the turbulent water, plunged right in, wading forward.

"Be careful!"

Sean followed and quickly reminded Douglas.

However, it was too late. As Douglas waded through the water, with a sudden splash, he fell entirely.

There was a small bend here, with a nearly two-meter-deep pit underneath, completely concealed from the surface!

Fortunately, the pit was not large. After Douglas was submerged, he was quickly washed back up by the water.

In the calmer waters below, which were only a little over a meter deep, Douglas quickly steadied himself. At the same time, Lincoln hurried over and pulled him out.

The two embraced each other.

"I can’t believe you’re still alive!" Douglas exclaimed with excitement.

"You guys came down after all!" Lincoln patted him hard, "I knew you would follow the river upstream to find the entrance!"

By that time, Sean and Elijah had also come across the rapids to Lincoln’s side.

Lincoln’s clothes were covered in water and mud marks. When he fell, he hadn’t brought his backpack, so he didn’t have any extra clothes to change into.

"Are you starving?" Sean took compressed dried food, chocolate, and pickled vegetables from his backpack. "Here, take this for now, and I’ll make you some self-heating rice."

"I’ll do it!" Douglas came to his senses and said, "Mr. Patrick, you’re amazing! Come on, sit down and rest a bit, have some food, and tell us about your situation."

Elijah took out some clothes from Lincoln’s bag and asked him to change: "You’ve really suffered this time."

Perhaps it was because he had been stuck in the subterranean river for a long time, Lincoln was more talkative than usual. As he changed his clothes, with chocolate still stuffed in his mouth, he mumbled:

"When I saw the deer get caught, I was excited and wanted to go and grab it. But before I could, two big fish came over to steal it, and I wasn’t happy about it."

After swallowing the chocolate, Lincoln finished changing and continued:

"The fish were quite nimble and tried to drag me under the water. I had a knife and managed to gut one of them, but the other two fish ambushed me and dragged me under the water. Somehow, I got stuck in the mud, and the deeper I struggled, the deeper I got."

He sighed, sat on the river channel, and took a slow bite of the compressed dried food:

"At that time, I thought I was done for; but after sinking to the bottom, I fell through. I was suffocating initially, but when I fell, it actually woke me up!"

The other three secretly rejoiced at their luck. If Lincoln had not fallen, he might have indeed died there.

"All I could think about was climbing up, but without any tools, it was impossible. Then I thought, since there’s an underground river and air down here, there must be a way up."

"Here, have some hot food!" Douglas had already prepared the self-heating rice and handed it to Elijah:

"You must be starving from the past two days, right?"

"Not too bad. There are fish in the river, not many, but enough to fill our bellies," Elijah smiled, "Just not very tasty when raw, and I’m not sure about parasites."

Looking at his disheveled hair, exhausted expression, and considering the psychological turmoil of not knowing whether they could leave during their journey, it would have been tough for ordinary people to endure such an ordeal.

Holding the hot rice in his hand, Lincoln was eating very slowly, savoring the taste:

"I used to think this food was just alright, but now it tastes so delicious, I’ll remember it for a lifetime!"

"Alright, stop being sentimental," Douglas had calmed down, "After this experience, you’ll have to be more careful. Of the three of us, you were the most cautious, and I was surprised by this accident."

"It’s a blessing in disguise, I suppose," Sean interjected, "Otherwise, we might have encountered those people!"

"What people?" Lincoln put down his chopsticks and asked, "Are there more people up there?"

"Yeah, and there might be more than one group of them."

However, Lincoln simply chuckled:

"I’m not afraid of them!"

Once someone had been through it all and faced death like Lincoln, they tended to view life and death with indifference!