Volume 8 Chapter 2: Disappeared

I thought to myself, “This is bad!” I hurriedly looked around, but there was no sign of her anywhere. I panicked and wondered what had happened.

I called out to Fat Boy and Pan Zi to come and take a look. They were dumbfounded when they saw her, and Fat Boy yelled, “Who the hell did this?” We all looked around in a panic, but we didn’t know how many times we had done this.

However, there was complete silence, no one was there, and no sound of any wild animals could be heard. I immediately felt a wave of fear, and there must be no one else in the ancient city of Xiwangmu. There were no footprints of wild animals near the sleeping bag, and we all knew that it was impossible for anyone to move the corpse. Could it really be a corpse that had risen from the dead?

Thinking of the previous mysterious dream, I couldn’t help but feel dry in my throat, and I thought to myself that it couldn’t be a nightmare come true.

The fat guy and Pan Zi had seen the world, and they didn’t panic. Instead, they immediately squatted down and looked for the sleeping bag to see what was going on.

As soon as the sleeping bag was opened, Pan Zi gasped again.

He saw that the sleeping bag was full of mud marks from snakes, and the bottom of the sleeping bag was also full of them. The marks were so messy that it was obvious that there had been an extremely large number of snakes crawling here. I touched it, it was slimy, and the marks were very fresh, obviously just left.

The fat man’s face changed drastically, and he exclaimed in surprise, “Fuck, could it be that kind of snake that moved the corpse away?”

Pan Zi obviously didn’t believe it, “This is impossible, how could a snake carry away such a heavy corpse?” But his face also changed, obviously the marks here showed that the fat man was right.

My spine went cold and I couldn’t speak. If this is true, this is too strange. I have always had a special fear of pheasant necks. On the one hand, it is because of its toxicity, and on the other hand, it is because of the miraculous legends about this kind of snake. In many legends, the behavior of this kind of snake is very strange. What impressed me the most was that the snake’s revenge was very strange, but they actually moved away Ning’s body. This is really incredible.

“Of course not one, but look at how many there are now. Elephants can carry them away.“ The fat man opened the entire sleeping bag and saw that it was full of snake prints. The area where the sleeping bag touched the water had turned into a muddy mess.

”But what do the snakes want with the body?” Pan Zi asked again, looking at the fat man. Indeed, it was clear that Ning’s body could not be used as food. Snakes are not animals with claws. It would be very difficult to open the sleeping bag and transport a corpse. Snakes aren’t ants, so why would they need a corpse?

“Then you’d have to ask the snakes,” the fat man said after a pause. “But snakes are very pragmatic, they wouldn’t do it for fun, there must be a reason. I didn’t expect this woman to die in peace, but it’s in her character.

I thought to myself, my mood became depressed. Just now, this series of events, each one had no beginning or end, and all of them were confusing. This feeling was really bad. I thought I was a little out of control, and I said to myself, “How can I be bullied by snakes?” I thought about it and picked up the miner’s lamp and said to them, “We’ve only been here a few minutes, and the body must still be around. Let’s go find it.”

Before I could even stand up, Pan Zi grabbed me and said, “Find a dick, hundreds of snakes, you’re looking for death.”

“But! She can’t be buried in a snake nest.”

The fat guy grabbed my miner’s lamp back, and Pan Zi patted my shoulder. ”Xiao San, you have to be open-minded. A person is alive, and when they die, they’re just a thing, a stinking shell. We can’t possibly bring this woman back, and this is also her own choice of destiny. There’s no need to fight for a corpse.”

The fat man also said, “That’s right, dead is dead, it doesn’t matter where you die, but if I die one day, you can burn my body, don’t let the snakes get it, who knows what they want with a corpse.”

I listened and was also discouraged. I sat down on the ground, scratched my scalp, and felt very uncomfortable.

The fat man looked at the marks and said, “The snakes here are really evil. How many snakes do you need to move a corpse? At least a hundred, and you think there are only so many here. How many of these snakes are there in this entire forest? I’m afraid it’s not wise for us to stay here. If they come back, the three of us probably won’t be able to resist for more than a few minutes. By then, if we meet Ning and she sees us dead, she’ll laugh at us again.“

”Actually, I don’t think we need to be so scared. They didn’t bite us when we were asleep.” Pan Zi said, “I’ve encountered many snakes in Vietnam, and I’ve been bitten twice or three times. I’m familiar with snakes. Generally, snakes don’t attack people on their own initiative. It was an accident when Ning was bitten. It may be that Ning disturbed the snake by messing with the water in the waterfall.”

I knew that this was just a comforting remark. I didn’t believe it. I could tell from Pan Zi’s face that he didn’t believe it either. It’s easy to say that ordinary snakes are okay, but that kind of snake looks evil and is not a good kind.

I put the miner’s lamp in the position where I originally wanted to put it, and looking at the empty sleeping bag, I felt very sad. The fat guy, however, adjusted the direction of all my miner’s lamps to shine on the surrounding water surface, saying that he wanted to be on guard.

Fatty’s behavior made me immediately worry about Mung Oil Bottle again. This guy won’t have an accident, right? If it were in an ancient tomb, I would definitely not worry, because that’s a place he’s familiar with, but as Fatty said, snakes are unreasonable creatures.

We thought about it again, and we didn’t know what to do, so we just continued to wait for Mung Oil Bottle. We couldn’t sleep that night, and the three of us sat back to back, watching in all four directions.

It was actually getting late, and it was only a little while before dawn. As the morning light began to shine, the oppression that had lasted all night began to ease, and we all relaxed a little.

We looked at the swamp again, and it wasn’t as scary as it had been at night. The rain had stopped, and there was no sound of rain. The only sound was the sound of water flowing, and it was still strangely quiet. The rainforest in the distance was pitch black, and it seemed that whether it was dawn or not had nothing to do with the world deep in the rainforest.

Seeing that there was no news from Mung Yubing, I began to feel anxious again. I rarely feel like I’m about to lose someone at any time, but now I feel like someone here could die at any time. This is probably because the death of A Ning has broken some of my preconceived notions.

Although Pan Zi and Fatso were also a little worried, they were much better than me. Fatso said that the worst that could happen was that he would die, leaving me speechless.

We ate something, and Pan Zi waded back to the mouth of the canyon, picked up some branches and dried them, and built a bonfire and made a pile of firewood.

I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said that we had already passed the canyon, knew the basic situation, and that it had been a few days. If there were no accidents, Uncle San and the others should have arrived at the canyon entrance soon. Although it had rained a little yesterday, the Gobi outside had been exposed to the sun for several days, and it was still unclear whether the underground river was still there. He wanted to make a signal smoke here to indicate our location and let Uncle San know that we had already entered and the route we took.

After Pan Zi finished talking, he took out a yellow substance from his bag that looked like a pill and threw it into the pile of charcoal. Soon, a thick cloud of smoke rose. He told me that this was a distress signal used in times of shipwreck. He had a comrade in the army who had gotten him some paratrooper supplies, and these few balls could smoke for three or four hours.

I asked if I could tell Uncle San that there were poisonous snakes in the canyon.

Pan Zi shook his head and said that the different colors of smoke represented different meanings, but they were all simple meanings. The yellow smoke meant that there was danger ahead, so we had to be careful when moving forward. For more complex communication, we had to wait until Uncle San saw the smoke and gave us a response before we could figure out how to convey it. Uncle San and his men were higher up than us, so they should be able to see it easily. We had to pay attention to the direction of the canyon’s exit at all times, or whether there was a signal smoke response on the four walls.

This is a very effective method of long-distance communication. I looked at the smoke rising into the sky and suddenly felt a sense of security. If Uncle San had arrived and joined us, things would be much easier. They were strong and healthy, and I thought that at least I could sleep soundly at night.

Pan Zi didn’t refill the fireball every two hours. After the first fireball went out, there was no response, and the smoldering oil bottle didn’t come back. We didn’t care, and waited until the afternoon. When the second fireball was about half burned, suddenly the fat man yelled, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! There’s a response!”

I was looking at the sky at a boring 45-degree angle, and immediately jumped up and looked at the cliff with Pan Zi. At first, I couldn’t find it. The fat man yelled, “Over there!”

I turned around a few times before I saw a column of smoke rising from a distance, slowly floating up into the sky. The smoke was actually red, and at first glance, it looked like a huge chicken-crowned snake emerging from the canopy of trees far away.

I let out a cheer, and my reflex was to laugh, but the smile froze halfway through, and almost at the same time as the cheer, I immediately realized that something was wrong.

Because the smoke was rising not from outside the canyon, but from the center of the basin where we were, deep in the swamp.