Volume 7 Chapter 46: The Snake’s Plot
We hadn’t noticed how many rows of footprints there were, but when we heard Mung Oil Bottle say that, we looked at the footprints with our heads poking out, and sure enough, we were even more on guard. Pan Zi immediately took out his own short gun and aimed at Ah Ning’s corpse.
We took a few steps back, and Mung Oil Bottle on the other side held up the miner’s lamp and shone it on the corpse, while gesturing for me to immediately wake up the fat man.
After the life-and-death struggle and the sudden death of Ning, my nerves were already unable to bear it. Now, after a few minutes of peace, my nerves were tense again, making me feel very depressed. But I wasn’t afraid, so I backed up to the fat man, took out a dagger from his body, and then slapped him a few times.
But the fat man was sleeping too hard. I slapped him a few times, and he only moved his eyebrows slightly, but he didn’t wake up. But when I hit him, I felt that his face was covered in sweat.
I felt that something was wrong. How could someone sleep like this? I touched the fat man’s forehead, but I couldn’t feel any high temperature. I thought to myself, “Am I dreaming?” I was about to strangle him, but suddenly I saw that there were also those tiny mud prints on the side of the place where the fat man was lying. And there were more and more messy than those around Ning.
I thought to myself, “This is not good. I quickly stood up and stepped back, calling out to Pan Zi.
“What’s wrong?” Pan Zi turned around, and I pointed to the mud marks and asked him to look. ‘There are some here too!’
Pan Zi glanced at Ning’s body, then backed up to me, looked down, cursed, and moved the gun over. The other guy, Mian Youping, also looked back and saw it, then backed up.
The three of us looked at the body and then at the fat guy. I thought to myself that this situation was complicated. The body was easy to deal with, and I couldn’t think about it much. Pan Zi glanced at the oil bottle, and the two of them made a gesture, apparently exchanging opinions. Pan Zi raised his gun and retreated to the edge of the rock at his feet, away from the corpse and the fat man, so that he could monitor both directions at the same time. The oil bottle handed me the lamp, so that I could shine it on the fat man, and at the same time took the dagger in my hand and walked to the fat man in a very laborious posture.
This is a half-squatting position, with the feet bent and the person leaning forward, but not completely squatting, so that they can maintain maximum flexibility in the event of an emergency. He approached the fat man, and without turning his head, made a gesture to me, asking me to move the light to shine on the footprints next to the fat man.
The atmosphere was really bad, I cursed in my heart, wondering when this kind of thing would end. I moved the light over, and at that moment, suddenly two or three unknown objects rushed out from under the fat man’s shoulders at a very fast speed, and they immediately passed the range of light.
The speed was too fast, and it was just a flash that made my eyes go. But my hand still reflexively moved directly in the direction of the objects rushing out. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good shot, and all I heard was a series of sounds of something jumping into the swamp. At the same time, there was a sudden movement on the side of Ning’s body. It was the same series of sounds of something jumping into the water, as if it had disturbed a lot of frogs on the edge of the field.
Muyoubing’s reaction was amazing, but obviously he was helpless at such a fast speed. He just turned around at high speed and gave up without even taking the first step. He hurriedly waved me over to shine the light into the water.
I rushed over and held up the miner’s lamp to shine into the water. I saw the ripples and a few water marks in the water quickly disappearing and diving into the swamp.
“What is it? A water rat?” I asked, and that was my first thought. In the 1990s, before the city was so well-developed, I had seen many of these rats.
But Mian Youbing shook his head and said with a gloomy face, “It’s a snake! It’s the kind of chicken-crowned snake.”
I was dumbfounded, looking at the series of marks left on the ground, and suddenly realized that it was indeed the mark of a snake. I had an ominous thought. It was said that this kind of snake was extremely vengeful and acted in a strange way. Now it had indeed come to my door.
At this time, I discovered that the fat man was still not awake, and I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Could it be that the fat man has already been bitten?”
I immediately went over to check on the fat guy. I didn’t know if all the snakes had gone, so I approached him carefully and pushed him. I didn’t expect that he would wake up from the push, and he sat up immediately. He looked at us and then looked at the sky, a little confused. He looked at us like we were facing a great enemy, and after a long time he said, “What the hell are you doing? Fat guy, I don’t sell my body, so it’s useless to look at me.”
Seeing him like this, we were relieved. I still wasn’t convinced, so I asked the fat guy to turn around and check him. He was even more confused when I asked him to take off his clothes, so I told him what had happened.
The fat guy was doubtful, and we didn’t have time to explain to him, so we got up and walked over to the body of Ning. I looked at the nearby swamp, which was completely black and I couldn’t see anything. The stones next to the body were all traces of the snakes leaving.
“This is really weird. Could it be that the snakes opened the sleeping bag?” Pan Zi whispered to himself, patting the body with his gun to see if there were any snakes inside.
No snakes came out, but I felt very uneasy. A nightmare-like panic spread through my heart. When we were sleeping, several chicken-crown snakes crawled up from the swamp and climbed under the bodies of Fatty and Ning. This is really weird. What the hell are they trying to do? I looked at the dark swamp and always felt that something ominous was about to happen.
Everyone else felt the same way. Mian Youping squatted down, checked out the body of Ning, and didn’t find anything unusual. He made a gesture, and told us to turn on our mine lights so that he could take a closer look at the underwater situation.
We did as Mian Youping said, and the fat guy on the side also came to help. We turned on the miner’s lamps and swept the water in four directions. After a few sweeps, the fat guy behind us suddenly exclaimed.
We thought the snake had appeared again, so we immediately turned around and looked along his light. We saw a figure in front of us in the swamp about 20 meters away, as if it had emerged from the swamp’s mud.
The light of a miner’s lamp could not illuminate it clearly, so all the lights immediately converged on it. We saw a person covered in mud standing waist-deep in the water, staring at us like a water ghost.
“What the hell is this thing?” the fat man shouted.
Muyoubing took a closer look and exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s Chen Wenjin!” He then rushed into the swamp and waded towards the man.