Volume 8 Chapter 1 The Pursuit

At that moment, I didn’t know how he could be sure that the person was Wen Jin. I looked at the person’s face, which was covered in mud, and couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. But there was no time to think about it. Pan Zi called out to help! A few people all followed Mian Youbing and rushed into the water.

After a few steps, we were in the mud. There was a layer of water grass at the bottom of the swamp. I was barefoot, and the feeling of the greasy mud and water grass scraping my feet was like countless hairs wrapping around my feet. It was really numbing. After a few steps, we splashed into the deep water and started swimming.

Muyoubing swam very fast, and in a flash, he rushed to the man. The place seemed to be not very deep, and he struggled to stand up from the water. Pan Zi climbed up next, followed by me and Fatso. When my feet touched the bottom again, I realized that the place was a shallow area. I couldn’t feel what was under the water, but it seemed to be some huge rocks protruding from the swamp mud.

At this time, I was only six or seven meters away from the man. I looked at the man up close, my heart pounding, and I was extremely nervous.

Wen Jin was a key figure. She had always seemed to be a concept in legends and photographs, and now she was in front of me. I didn’t know if it was really her. However, only Fatso had a miner’s lamp, and he had just stopped moving and the light was flickering, so I couldn’t see clearly what was in front of me.

Muyoubing had already rushed over, looking especially anxious, which was not at all like his usual style. I watched him almost reach the man, and at that moment, the man suddenly turned around and retreated into the water, fleeing into the depths of the swamp on the side.

We all panicked and yelled, but the man swam very fast, splashed a few times, and then disappeared into the darkness behind the swamp. Mian Youping lunged forward to try to catch him, but he was still a beat too late.

It looked like he was only a hand’s distance away, but the man’s movements in the swamp were very inconvenient. Sometimes he could clearly feel that he was about to touch something, but he couldn’t.

But Mung Youbing is not a light bulb, so when he saw that his grasp had failed, he immediately jumped into the water and chased after the man, who was still on the water’s surface, following the ripples.

I saw this was not going to work, and I wanted to follow him, but I was pulled back by the man in front of me. The water was uneven, and I fell when I was pulled. I drank a few mouthfuls of water, and the man in front of me said to me, “Don’t chase, we can’t catch up.”

After I choked a few times, I calmed down and stood up to look. I saw that the swamp behind us was pitch black. We were half a beat too late. After we went in, we would definitely not be able to see anything, and there was no way to catch up. In many cases, being half a beat too late is equivalent to losing all opportunities. Now I can only hope that the smelly oil bottle can catch up with her.

We were exhausted, panting and looking at each other. The fat guy asked curiously. “Fuck, how did she run away? Don’t you recognize her? Were we too scary for them?”

I thought about the man’s face and wondered who was scared of whom. Pan Zi asked me, ‘Was that person really Wen Jin?’

I couldn’t see clearly, so I shook my head and said I didn’t know. Under the circumstances, I didn’t know how Mian Youbing had made his judgment. It was only a split second from the time we saw that person to the time he screamed. His eyes were too fast. However, speaking of which, there shouldn’t be anyone else in this place. The appearance of a person makes one think of Wen Jin, but if it really was her, why did she run away? Didn’t she lead us here?

“What should we do now?” the fat guy asked us. “The little guy didn’t even take his miner’s lamp. It’s almost absolute darkness in the jungle. Will something happen if he chases after him? Should we go back and get our equipment to go in and support him?”

I thought to myself that no one could say for sure. Pan Zi on the side said, “I don’t think so. That little guy is not us. I believe he knows what he’s doing. Besides, it’s not necessarily helpful for us to go in now. We’ll have to rely on him to save us.”

I thought of the way that Mian Youping rushed towards that man just now. It didn’t look like he had any sense of proportion. To be honest, I always felt that after entering this rainforest, Mian Youping seemed to have changed in some way, but I really couldn’t tell where the difference was.

We waited there for a while, but Mian Youping didn’t come back. After drying off, we got all wrinkled again. We had hardly dried off at all since we came in, and now we felt uncomfortable all over again.

The fat guy said that we shouldn’t wait in the water, but go to the dry land. There are snakes in the water here. Although snakes in the water don’t attack people very often, those snakes are too weird. It’s still dangerous to stay here.

If he didn’t say it, I would have really forgotten about the snake. Our lower bodies were in the water, and the water was black, so we couldn’t see anything underwater. Hearing this still made me feel a little scared, so I agreed and turned around to swim back to where we started.

When we got to the shore, Fatso shook his chest and rubbed the mud off while looking at the snake marks on our backpacks. I sat down next to the smokeless stove and calmed down a little. At this time, my mind was a little chaotic. On the one hand, I was a little worried about the oil bottle, and he chased into the swamp like this. I thought it was really chaotic and I didn’t know if he could get out. On the other hand, this series of events made me very uneasy.

The death of Ah Ning was actually the beginning, but at the time it was more of a shock. Now that I think about it, what was the pheasant doing sneaking up on us while we were sleeping? Almost at the same time, a person appeared in the swamp. Before we even entered the swamp, so many things suddenly came up. This is really inauspicious. This place has not yet entered, but it gives one a sense of extreme danger. Even this feeling is different from the feeling I had when I was in danger before. I always feel that this time, something big may happen.

This may also be related to the abnormal behavior of the oil bottle. Although I didn’t want to think so, I didn’t know why, but this time, next to the oil bottle, I didn’t feel the same sense of security as before, but instead felt even more uneasy.

At this time, I recalled the situation when I decided to come here before, and I really regretted it.

Pan Zi reminded me when he finished handling the clothes. I took off my clothes and went to roast them. As we increased the flame, we could see our position when the smoldering oil bottle returned. The fat man said that the small flame was a little like a spirit lamp, and don’t wait for the lonely spirits and ghosts in the swamp to be summoned. Pan Zi opened his mouth and scolded.

But the fat guy was right. It did look a bit like that. I felt uncomfortable, so I turned on the miner’s lamp again and lined up the stones in a row, so that it would be clearer to see. I took the miner’s lamp and walked over to Ning’s body, intending to place it next to her head. But when I got there, I suddenly realized that something was wrong. When I looked again, my head buzzed.

Ning’s body was gone, leaving only an empty sleeping bag.