Volume 7 Chapter 42: Snake Swamp Ghost Town (Part 1)

Two minutes later, Ah Ning stopped breathing and died in my arms. The beautiful and unpredictable face in the messy short hair was frozen in a look of surprise. We surrounded her until she finally stopped breathing and calmed down. Time seemed to have stopped.

Suddenly I felt everything stop. I was sad and wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. My chest felt like it was blocked by something.

It all happened so fast.

Although the journey was fraught with danger, and I expected someone to have an accident, I never thought that this woman would die, and that it would be so easy and so sudden. It happened without warning, and then the person who was just talking died so suddenly. And it was really dead, and we didn’t even have a chance to save it.

At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing, thinking that I was dreaming. How could this woman die? She was so strong, beautiful and cunning. She had a weak appearance but a heart of steel. Although I didn’t like her, I sincerely admired her. If anyone was going to die, everyone here was better than me, and I should have been the easiest to die.

But she was really dead, right in front of me, so easily, so real, so casually.

I suddenly felt like I had been reduced to my original state. Although the events were dangerous, we had all survived them, even when I went out alone in the Qinling Mountains, I barely survived. I once thought that after these events, people like us had become very powerful, with considerable experience. As long as we were together, we could handle most dangers, even if we were to die, it would be in the most dangerous place in the ancient tomb. But now, Ning died so easily from a snake. I suddenly realized that it was not right. Humans are inherently fragile creatures. Whether it is Muxiuping, Pan Zi, or me, in such a place, we will still die if we die. No matter how good your skills or experience, it is useless.

This is the law of reality, not a plot in a novel or movie. As long as we encounter such a thing, we will all die. Even Muxiuping would have died if he had stood by the waterfall!

I looked up at the dense jungle in front of me and immediately felt a sense of fear and despair. I wanted to run away, to escape from this place.

At this moment, the sky finally brightened, and the sun shone down from the side of the canyon, lighting up the surroundings. The front was filled with steam, and the curtain of water splashing from the waterfall, under the sun’s rays, formed a white mist that enveloped the dense rainforest.

The scenery was still beautiful, but the beauty was gone.

Pan Zi is a person who has seen through life and death. Although he also looked sad at this moment, he was much more composed than we were. He was seriously injured and could not say much, but he told us that this was an accident, although it was very sudden, and we had to accept it. We didn’t know if there were any more of those snakes here, so it was not advisable to stay here for long. We should go and find a cleaner place to think of another way.

I thought of the snake that Mung Oil Bottle had just killed, and I felt a little sorry for it. I turned to look at the snake’s corpse floating on the water, but I found that the corpse was gone. This kind of snake is said to take revenge on things that kill its kind, but it never dies, and it is very strange. It is really dangerous to stay here. Thinking of the tragedy of Ah Ning, I couldn’t stay here either.

I couldn’t bear to leave Ning’s body here, so I picked it up and carried it on my back. The fat guy helped Pan Zi up, and the rest of us didn’t dare to go into the jungle anymore, so we waded along the edge of the canyon.

No one could talk anymore, and the fat guy couldn’t sing his mountain songs. I didn’t even know why we were still going forward. My mind was blank.

We walked forward in a daze for more than ten minutes, but we couldn’t find a dry place to rest. The sun was getting higher and higher, and the coolness from the heavy rain the night before was gone. Everyone had reached their limit. They were too tired. After a night of running, fighting, climbing trees, dying, and escaping, even an iron man would have run out of strength. What was even more deadly was that as the temperature rose, the humidity here became very high. The fat man couldn’t stand it the most, and he was gasping for breath. In the end, it was Pan Zi who had to help him.

Just as I was thinking about whether to suggest a break, suddenly a downward slope appeared in the valley ahead. The rainwater stream on the ground became very fast, flowing down the slope. We carefully waded down the stream, only to see the exit of the valley appear in front of us.

The trees thinned out and we were in a black swamp, which was more than 200 meters long. Then it slowly became denser and denser, and behind it was a large area of waterlogged rainforest, all of which was not very high but extremely lush, with intertwined roots and unfathomable depths.