Volume 8 Chapter 24 Dawn Transfer
We carried him back into the tent, and I immediately checked his injuries. To my relief, I found that the place he was bitten was his wrist, with two blood holes, but the wound was not deep. Obviously, he had shaken off the snake in an instant when he was bitten. This kind of wound would appear. I may not be able to imagine how thrilling it was yesterday.
Fatty told me that he had immediately cut the artery, sucked out the venom, and cut a cross to bleed it out, but some of the venom must have entered. This snake is so poisonous that it turned blue immediately after being bitten. Fortunately, the little brother was quick and pinched the snake’s head in that instant. The snake did not completely bite down, otherwise the little brother would have been reimbursed.
I gave the bottle a shot of serum and massaged his temples. His breathing eased, and when I pinched his hand, I found that the overall swelling was not severe. I told the fat man that it should be fine. The things on land are no more poisonous than those in the sea, but he can’t move again.
Pan Zi was still lying there, and we put the bottle away. We looked at the two of them lying there, and we had a headache. It was their fault. If I had died earlier, this place would really be completely different from the places we had been to in the past. These two people were experienced and they still got into such a mess.
Then I asked Fat Boy what had happened yesterday.
The fat guy said it was more or less the same as my guess. He said that when they were on guard duty yesterday, they gradually found that they couldn’t see. The fat guy remembered what I had said and realized that the fog might really be poisonous. He immediately went to look for a gas mask, but couldn’t find one. He was about to go blind.
He and Mian Youbing first used mud to wet a towel and covered their noses with it. This really worked. Later, they found a few in one of the tents and were just about to put them on when Mian Youbing, whose eyesight was not good, was bitten by a snake hiding in his backpack. Fortunately, he reacted very quickly and immediately pinched the snake’s head in mid-air, but he was still stung and his hand immediately turned blue.
However, because the amount of venom injected was limited, Mian Youbing did not die immediately. They dealt with it briefly. At this time, the fat man heard me calling, and immediately brought a gas mask to me first. Outside the tent, he found that at some unknown time, a large number of chicken-crowned snakes appeared from the gaps in the surrounding buildings. These snakes all hid in the gaps, neither coming out nor going in. He saw that all the gaps were full of red scales, as if waiting for something.
So he immediately came back to give me a gas mask, and then returned to take care of the suffocated oil bottle, carrying him back. On the way, he saw a strange sight.
Countless chicken-crown snakes came out of the gaps and gradually coiled together to form a huge “snake tide,” like a mass of mollusks, marching rhythmically and extremely fast, like the huge schools of fish in the sea…
The fat man said, “This must be how they transported Ning’s body. I still can’t figure out how they did it. That snake tide felt like a whole creature.”
I was surprised and said, “Then why did they destroy it like this?”
The fat man said, “They must have known we were here, but because the tent was covered in mud, they couldn’t find us. These are animals after all, and they finally resorted to this method.”
I was shocked. The fat man immediately said that we couldn’t stay here any longer. They would definitely come back tonight, and we had to leave. The farther away from here, the better. He asked me if I could see clearly. I nodded, and he told me to immediately collect the food and supplies here, and pack them after counting them. We’ll decide where to go at noon, when we see how they two are doing.
I smiled wryly, but I knew this was something that had to be done. But now I didn’t know if the snakes had gone, so I took a break and waited for the sun to come out before starting to turn over the ruins of the tent and drag out everything that could be used.
The most important thing I collected was food. I found a large amount of compressed biscuits, all of which were piled in a bag. Later, I was lucky enough to find a can in one of them.
When they had a car, Aning and the others also brought canned food, but because they had to explore the road, the cans were too heavy to carry outside the canyon. Since entering the forest, they had been eating light compressed dry food all the way, and their lips were blistering. I didn’t expect that Uncle San and the others had brought this good stuff. It was really hard work, but it wasn’t like Uncle San’s character to bring such a cumbersome thing.
Field rations are very close to normal food. They are usually high-protein canned beef, canned tuna or canned glutinous rice and soybeans. These things are filling and don’t make you hungry.
I was busy asking the fat guy if he wanted any. The fat guy shook his head and said, “How can you bring this? But we can eat all of this right away. I looked at the types of canned food and salivated: ”Holy Mary, your uncle’s mother is really a man, with good taste.”
I continued searching for dry food and other things, as well as containers, as we needed something to carry water in.
When I pulled out a backpack, I found a photo of his family inside. I had never seen this person before, but he was a middle-aged man in his early thirties. His wife was holding a child and leaning on him, and the photo was very rustic, with simple clothing.
I felt a bit sad, thinking to myself, “I wonder what happened to this person. If he died here, what would happen to his wife and child? People in this line of work are used to death and dying, so why bother to delay others?
I also thought of Ah Ning dying on the road, as well as Old Wu and those who died in Devil City. I thought of myself and couldn’t help but laugh at myself. Damn it, if I hadn’t come with the team, I would be in my shop right now, surfing the internet and blowing air conditioning.
After collecting all the items, I was thinking of a thousand things while I was counting them. It was already noon when I finished packing everything into the bag. The fat guy wanted to leave immediately, but the situation of both Mian Youbing and Pan Zi was not good. Pan Zi had been in a daze and hadn’t eaten anything. We fed him water through his lips. Mian Youbing was conscious but physically weak and couldn’t stand up. However, the cyan color on his hands had faded.
This was very troublesome. We couldn’t possibly carry two people and so much stuff far away from here.
Muyoubing pointed to the temple on the side and said weakly, “Go inside, away from the water source!”
We thought so too. The gaps between the stones were full of water, connected to the swamp, no wonder the snakes came out of the gaps.
There was no other way now, so we first moved the things inside.
The temple was completely collapsed, only one large shape, and we didn’t even know where the door was. We just found a corridor to go in, and found that the space inside was still quite large. The building should have had two floors, but the lower floor was badly damaged. The upper floor still had the original structure, made of black stone, not very high, but with many very delicate stone pillars. Originally, there was no way to get between the two floors, but now the collapsed debris had become a steep slope.
We climbed up and entered a basically intact stone room, where we could see the camp below. After we had finished unloading the things, we carried Pan and Mian Youbing over. But by now he could basically walk.
The sun was like a curse, and I felt that time was passing very quickly. The fear and nightmares of yesterday had not yet subsided, and when I looked back, the sun was shining in the west again, and dusk was approaching.
During the day, there was basically no rest or stopping. I watched the shadows of the trees grow menacing, and I felt an invisible pressure pressing in.
Despair. There was a voice in my head asking, “After two nights, can you continue to endure it tonight?