Volume 8 Chapter 13 The conflict intensifies

What surprised us was that even when we got under the trees, the sound that came from above was still that same rustling, electromagnetic noise. There was no other sound, and there was no movement. And when I heard it here, I always felt that there was more than one sound. Could it be that this was not the sound of a walkie-talkie?

After entering here, all judgments were uncertain. I always felt that I had not grasped the key.

“Those long worms are so fucking calm!” The fat guy whispered to me.

The best-case scenario I had in mind was that the snakes would be so stunned by our actions that they wouldn’t be able to react, and we could pass by without incident. But I felt that this was a bit too greedy. Although the canopy was completely still, I could already feel an indescribable commotion rising all around me. I don’t know if it was just my mind playing tricks on me, or if I could really sense the danger.

We are already quite close. If these snakes are really so intelligent, they are still not moving, so they must be very cautious.

This kind of caution is something we can take advantage of, because we have nothing to lose. If these snakes suddenly change their minds and want to kill us, then we won’t even have the ability to resist. This kind of strategy of taking advantage of the opponent’s careful character and secretly planning is called stealing chickens. I used to think that only humans could play the trick of stealing chickens, but I never thought that this time we could also steal the chickens of snakes. This year, the weasels should be depressed.

We remained silent, lurking and slowly approaching, not daring to speak, not daring to make any big movements, and even more not daring to stay. The sound was getting closer and closer, and my sweat was dripping down my face like rain. The clearer the sound, the more I couldn’t concentrate.

This feeling made me panic. The fat guy noticed that I was not right and immediately pinched me to reassure me. I turned to look at him and found that he was also sweating all over.

But after he pinched me, I felt better. At this time, the sound was right above our heads. We looked up and watched it, afraid that it would fall directly on us.

We walked forward. Unconsciously, we walked a little faster. We walked out about ten meters like puppets. Just when I felt a glimmer of hope, suddenly, the sound from the tree canopy stopped.

At that moment, the three of us froze, but the fat guy reacted the fastest, pushed me and let me run. I couldn’t catch up and fell to the ground. I got up and was about to run, but then something happened that made me speechless.

I heard a slight tremor in the canopy of trees around me, and then someone above called out in a faint voice, “Who is it?”

We were all stunned, looking at each other, wondering what was going on. How could someone speak?

“Could it be someone from the Third Master’s gang?” Pan Zi suddenly became excited. “Damn, it’s not a snake. I said there was nothing wrong. We really scared ourselves.” He immediately called out to the tree, “It’s me, Pan Zi. Who are you?”

There was no sound from the tree for a while. After a long silence, we looked at each other again. Pan Zi called out again, “I’m asking you, who are you?” Then he called up the torch and the miner’s lamp.

As soon as the torch went up, the canopy of the tree shook, and then the faint voice said again, “Who is it?” This time the tone of voice changed, as if it was in pain. Moreover, it was a man’s voice.

I felt that there was something wrong again, but it was impossible to leave at this time. Pan Zi said, “I’ll go up and take a look.”

He bit the torch and started climbing the tree, while the fat man took up his gun to provide cover. I took out my knife and kept a sharp lookout, covering the fat man. Pan Zi’s movements were extremely fast. He climbed halfway up the tree in a few moves. At this time, the tree canopy shook again. He didn’t hesitate and immediately accelerated his pace. He rushed into the canopy in a few steps. I didn’t have time to look around, and turned my face upwards.

I originally thought I would immediately hear Pan Zi’s cry, but all of a sudden there was no movement. My nerves began to tighten, and I looked at Pan Zi’s torch moving among the leaves and found that there seemed to be no signs of a fight.

After a moment of silence, the fat guy was also very confused, so he turned to look at me. I thought to myself, “It’s no use looking at me, I don’t have X-ray vision. After another moment of silence, Pan Zi still didn’t move.

This was a bit abnormal. I was sweating coldly, thinking to myself, ‘Could this be a snake trap? Pan Zi wasn’t killed in seconds.

The fat guy shouted softly, ’Pan Zi!”

There was still no movement, so the fat guy cursed under his breath, handed me the gun, and was about to go up again. I hadn’t taken it yet when suddenly my face and the fat guy’s face both felt cold. Something was dripping from the tree. I touched it and it was blood.

“Damn it!” The fat guy was scared and didn’t give me the gun. He threw the torch in his hand up into the canopy and fired the gun.

He fired three shots in a row, and the loud noise was like thunder in the silent forest. The entire canopy shook, and in the flickering light, I saw countless snake shadows stirring in the tree trunks.

I was shocked, but it was too late. I saw countless red lights coming down from the trees like lightning, and hundreds of blood-red crested snakes covered the entire tree trunk like bleeding. And they poured down and rushed straight at us.

“Fuck, this is a snake nest!” The fat guy yelled, and fired two more shots at the snake group, but this amount of attack power was really not worth mentioning for so many snakes. He grabbed me and yelled, ‘Run!’

At this point, there was no way to take care of Pan Zi. I knew in my heart that it was bound to be a bad omen, so I had to run back immediately. I could only hear the sound of rustling behind me, like a waterfall, rushing after me.

Following the route we had taken, we dashed out a dozen meters. Looking back, I saw that in such a dense jungle, the snakes could not move very fast. Then these crested snakes were like lightning in the vines and weeds. We stopped almost immediately, stood up, and all made an attacking gesture, ready to bite.

The king of the crested snakes really flew low to the ground. I thought to myself that I was definitely going to die this time. The fat guy saw that I was still holding the torch, so he immediately snatched it from me and swung it hard, forcing the snakes back. At the same time, he threw the gun to me and yelled, “Load the bullets.”

I went to catch it, but I missed and the gun fell to the ground. I bent down to pick it up, and a crested snake suddenly darted to the gun, scaring me so much that I immediately retracted my hand.

The fat guy almost vomited blood, waved the torch and rushed over, flicked the snake back, then hooked the gun belt with his heel and threw it to me.

I caught it this time, immediately pulled the barrel, and filled it with bullets. I had only filled two bullets when suddenly my neck felt cold. Before I could see what it was, the fat guy’s torch had already swung over, and the flame whistled past my ear, knocking the snake out.

At the same time, my hair caught fire, burning me so badly that I screamed. The fat guy had already taken the gun and fired two shots at the approaching snakes with one hand, blowing off the heads of two of them. But then the snakes behind them immediately covered up the dead ones.

The fat guy wanted to shoot again, but he had no bullets after pulling the trigger twice, so he cursed, “Damn it, you only loaded two rounds!”

I yelled back, “You were so fast that you got two rounds, which is not bad!”

At this point, we had already forced ourselves up against a huge tree, with no room to retreat. The fat guy was holding a torch, waving it around in vain, and could only force the snakes to retreat temporarily. But I knew that as long as the fat guy showed any weakness, we would be finished.

Just when the fire was about to burn our eyebrows, suddenly a spark burst out of a tree on the side, and a ball of fire whistled through the woods and shot into the snake group in front of us. Then it exploded, and the hot, strong light burned my eyes so much that I couldn’t open them. Fortunately, I reacted quickly, otherwise I would have been blinded.

“Signal flare!” I wondered. Before my eyes recovered, another one flew from a distance and hit us right under our feet. I squinted and saw only a white light. My feet were burning hot, and when I touched them, I realized that my pants and the fat man’s pants had caught fire.

The flare was not an offensive weapon, but the high temperature when it burned was used to ignite fuel tanks during a surprise attack. The power was enormous. If it had hit us directly, we would have been half-cooked steaks in no time.

The bright light burned for 50 seconds before it went out, and it took a long time for my eyes to open. I couldn’t see anything, and I didn’t know if my retina had been burned. When I looked in front of us, I saw that most of the chicken-crown snakes had already died. The high temperature ignited the bushes and vines beneath our feet, creating a sea of fire in front of us, and the smell of burning was everywhere. The remaining chicken-crown snakes all retreated.

It all happened so quickly, and it was a close call. I looked at the situation in front of me and almost collapsed.

The fat guy put out the fire on his trouser leg and wondered who had saved us. The bushes on one side shook, and Pan Zi fell out from inside, holding a flare gun in his hand.

I was overjoyed: “You’re not dead!” I saw Pan Zi covered in blood, seemingly seriously injured.

I hurried over to help him up. He struggled to get up and said to us in a dying voice, “Run!”

I was stunned.

Suddenly, a huge black figure stood up in the bushes behind Pan Zi, grabbed Pan Zi’s leg, and dragged him into the bushes like lightning, while Pan Zi screamed loudly.