Chapter 33: The Strange Cave
Early the next morning, everyone was woken up by Wu Lao Gui’s loud and boisterous voice. Who could bear to be in a dream when a voice with a northeastern accent suddenly exploded in their minds, yelling, “The wolves are coming! The wolves are coming! No, the wolves haven’t left! The wolves haven’t left!” Ah?
So, we almost opened our eyes at the same time. Chengxin glared at Wu Laogui, and Lao Zhang, probably in a bad mood, waved his pipe at Wu Laogui, but of course it was a miss.
Only I woke up happily, because as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Ruoxue in my arms, tightly holding onto one of my shoulders. I had fantasized many times about waking up in the morning and seeing Ruoxue the first thing I saw, and now I had fulfilled that wish in the snow-covered ice and snow surrounded by wolves.
So I didn’t have time to get angry with Wu Laogui.
When everyone woke up and washed up, I walked out of the tent and saw that the wolf cubs had not retreated at all, as Wu Laogui had said. I guess they were tired from staying up all night against the north wind to guard us. Most of the wolf cubs were lying down, but when they saw us coming out, they started to stand up with their teeth bared.
“Chengyi, have you made a decision?” Chengxin asked me.
“Well, let’s go in.” I replied succinctly. As long as I wasn’t cornered, I didn’t want to give up on this operation.
“Well, then let’s go in.” Old Zhang’s expression didn’t change at all, which touched me a little, even though I knew that Old Zhang was like that.
Since we had decided, there was no need for any more nonsense. We packed silently, and after ten minutes, we had packed all our luggage and stood at the dark hole.
The hole was not big enough for a person to stand in and enter, and for someone my height, it was difficult to enter even crouching down. Old Wu also said, “This hole is not straight, it is downward, you have to crawl in.”
I climbed in, but I couldn’t help but get angry at the thought of that position. I gave the wolf cubs the finger and yelled, “Wolf cubs, you watch carefully. If you have the guts, follow me in. If you don’t, don’t just stand there and bark like dogs.”
The wolves responded to me with a series of woofs. I spat and scolded, “You’re hopeless, you still only know how to bark like a dog.”
Wu Laogui followed behind, nodding eagerly and saying, “That’s right, that’s right.”
Ru Xue laughed, “Pupu,” and Lao Zhang also smiled. Cheng Xin’s laughter was even more hearty. Without any more nonsense, I took out my flashlight and threw my luggage into the hole on my back, then I entered the hole first.
The cave was dark and narrow, so narrow that only one and a half people could crawl in, making people feel a sense of suffocation and pressure.
What made people feel even more uneasy was that the darkness in the cave seemed like something real. Even the light from the powerful flashlight couldn’t penetrate very far. However, I still sensitively discovered that the traces in this cave were not quite right.
Because this is definitely not a natural cave, but something that has been dug out. Most people would think of tomb robbers, but the tomb robbers’ caves are also neatly lined on the surrounding walls, showing the traces of a shovel, but the traces of this cave are very strange, like sharp claws.
What kind of animal is half as wide as a person? A fat pangolin? I couldn’t imagine it, so I just kept crawling forward.
However, after crawling for a few minutes, I found it difficult because the further I went into the hole, the steeper the slope became. In addition, the soil was slippery, so I had to hold on to the edge with great effort to prevent myself from sliding down.
It was not convenient to talk in the cave, so we could only crawl in silence. Fortunately, the air in the cave was very well ventilated, so it was not difficult to breathe. According to basic common sense, this cave should not be a dead end, and ventilation means there is an exit.
Wu Laogui was not restricted by this. The benefits of being a spirit also came out. It floated in front of him, occasionally turning around proudly, blinking its eyes and saying innocently, “Hurry up, hurry up.”
No one had the energy to argue with it, so it floated proudly, disappearing in a puff of smoke!
After just a few minutes, I heard Wu Laogui’s scream. I was very worried and yelled, “Lao Wu, are you okay?”
Wu Laogui’s voice didn’t come back for a long time, and I didn’t care about stabilizing my body. I simply changed my position directly, lying half in the hole and letting myself slide all the way down. The speed suddenly increased a lot, but unexpectedly, human calculations were not as good as God’s calculations. When I got inside, there was a corner, and I immediately hit the corner. Due to inertia, my head hit the other side, and I was dizzy for a while. When I opened my eyes, I saw Wu Laogui floating in front of me, which made me break out in goose bumps.
Not for anything else, just because Wu Laogui’s face was also covered with pimples, so dense that I was embarrassed to say that I had a phobia of density!
“Chengyi, are you okay?” The worried voice of Chengxin came from behind.
“It’s okay.” I shouted back to my brother, then yelled at Wu Laogui, “What are you doing with your face like this? You’re a ghost, how can you grow a bag?”
Wu Laogui said innocently, “Do you think I want to look like this? If I don’t look like this, it’s not enough to express my feeling of being numb. I’m expressing that I have goosebumps!”
“What the hell?” I didn’t understand.
“You’ll know when you go in!” Wu Laogui pointed to the hole in the corner.
I didn’t want to waste time arguing with Wu Laogui, so I climbed into the hole with a few doubts. Just one glance, and I felt my scalp tingle. I couldn’t help but curse, “Fuck!”
There were no monsters in the hole, and there was nothing terrifying about it. It was also a simple straight hole that went downwards at a glance. The only difference was that the walls of this hole were covered with densely packed holes of different sizes. The largest ones were probably as big as a pinky, and the smallest ones were probably as big as a fingernail.
Looking at this scene, the goosebumps I saw on Wu Laogui just now had not subsided, and the hairs on my arms stood up again. I felt so itchy that I wanted to get rid of all these little things, but I couldn’t describe the feeling.
“Chengyi, what’s wrong?” Chengxin’s voice came again, and obviously he heard my expletive.
I took a deep breath, suppressed the discomfort in my heart, and shouted at Chengxin: “There’s no specific danger, just be prepared for it when you come in here!”
Sure enough, Chengxin was shocked when he came in. It was okay for Ruoxue, who was relatively calm. People who have long dealt with insects have long had resistance to dense things.
“This…” Ru Xue looked at the scene in the cave and suddenly said something, but didn’t say much. After all, where is the place to talk in a cave like this?
We continued down the path, but all the way down, I tried to look at my hands, and the goosebumps on my body didn’t go away. After crawling in the cave for a while, if it were a straight line, how deep would I have to crawl to the bottom? But the slope of the cave was already very small at this point, but there were many twists and turns, making me suspect that the cave was simply endless.
So, I continued to move forward in silence for another ten minutes, when Wu Lao Gui’s voice came from ahead again: “Hurry up, come here, you’ll be out soon. But what the hell is this?”
From the sound of Wu Laogui, I knew that we were not too far away, but I was already fed up with the little holes. I quickly picked up the pace and climbed another 30 meters of winding distance, finally reaching the entrance. But I didn’t pay attention and fell.
Before I could catch my breath, Chengxin, Zhang, and Ruoxue fell one after another, and Chengxin’s body fell on top of me, almost spitting out my old blood.
“What? I’m sorry, I forgot you can’t float.” Wu Laogui’s apology was not sincere at all. I looked up and saw that the hole to where we fell was at least more than a meter high. I was too lazy to argue with Wu Laogui again, because as Wu Laogui said, what the hell is this? A pair of eyes on the ceiling were staring at us!