Volume 8 Chapter 30 The quagmire

This fall was completely unexpected. Compared to the fall while trekking in the jungle, I didn’t even have time to react before I rolled down the cliff. In the chaos, I reached behind me and tried to grab anything to stop myself, but all I could feel was the bare, mossy rock face. My hand slipped right through it, and then my knee hit the rock. I lost my balance and fell to the bottom of the cliff.

Fortunately, the cliff was not very high, and there was water and mud at the bottom, so I was not fatally injured. However, I found that the water was very fast, and it immediately dragged me downstream. I immediately floundered a few times, grabbed something underwater, and with great difficulty stood up, only to find that the miner’s lamp was hanging halfway up the cliff. It was already out of reach.

After a while, I felt that there was no broken bone anywhere, so I looked around. I couldn’t see clearly, but I could only feel that I was standing in a swamp, with my feet stuck in the mud. In the area illuminated by the miner’s lamp, I saw that the rock face I fell on should be part of a ruin.

I was wondering why there was a cliff behind the tree. Where was the person who was talking just now? Was he lying on the tree like a gecko?

So I yelled, but there was no reply. It seemed that the person was trying to lure me to fall. I suddenly remembered the sound I heard during the day, and I thought to myself, “It’s over. I really have a little auditory hallucination. Could it be that the forest here is disturbing my nerves?

After a few more flops, I swam to the edge of the cliff, grabbed a protruding rock to stabilize my body, and then the extremely faint light reflected by the stone wall began to climb up, but unfortunately the moss was too slippery and there was nothing to use as leverage.

I tried several times but kept slipping down. I tried changing sides, but the only place I could go was down the rock wall to the swamp, where it was dark. But the water was so fast here, and there were either wells or steep faults nearby. If I lost my footing, I would probably be sucked into the whirlpool of the well or washed down the small waterfall, and I would either die or be badly injured.

After hesitating for a moment, I realized that I was actually trapped in this situation. I could either wait until dawn or wait for someone to rescue me. I absolutely refused to wait until dawn, so I immediately raised my voice and shouted for help.

They might be not far away. It was so quiet here, so I shouted louder and louder, hoping they could hear me.

But it was not to be. After shouting for a long time, my throat was hoarse, but there was no response at all. It was so quiet that I could not even hear the slightest sound.

I really couldn’t shout anymore, and I was depressed. I thought to myself, “How can I be so unlucky?” I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. I looked at my watch to see when the fog would probably clear up. After the fog cleared up, the visibility would increase, and the light from the miner’s lamp would be able to shine further, so maybe I could find a way to climb up, or I could find something underwater and smash the miner’s lamp down.

I looked at the watch and, based on yesterday’s experience, the fog should not last for more than a few hours. The time was bearable. I touched the protruding rock on one side to maintain a more comfortable position. I looked around and thought to myself, “I can’t see anything. How am I going to pass the next few hours?”

My feet were in the mud, which made me feel very uncomfortable. This feeling was definitely not good. I still remembered the story that Pan Zi told me. At this time, I also felt that the mud in my feet was being eaten by worms. I lifted them out from time to time to touch them, but found that it was just an illusion.

This illusion made me uneasy. I tried to climb up the rock as far as I could, to get my feet out of the water, but I failed every time. I mustered up my courage and touched the rock wall to move to the side, my feet touching it, hoping to find something underwater that would let me step out of the water. Or maybe I could step on some branches or debris, which I could use to smash the miner’s lamp.

As I moved my feet, I did indeed step on something, but it wasn’t a branch. That feeling made me alert.

It was fine, like human hair.

I started to sweat. I had an extreme aversion to hair. For a few weeks after returning from Xisha, I would feel nauseous whenever I touched my own hair.

I immediately pulled my foot back. I didn’t dare to stretch it out again, but when I moved my foot, I kicked something again. This time it was soft. I suddenly realized that there might be something big and heavy in the mud here.

Out of caution, I turned on the blue light on my watch and shone it into the water. This blue light was originally designed to allow people to see the numbers on their digital watches in the dark. The light barely penetrated the water, so I had to squat down and sink the watch into the water.

Then I was stunned. Under the ghostly blue light, I saw a person buried in the mud, buried in the mud, with hair dancing like water plants in the waves.

My hand trembled as I moved it, and I realized that it was a corpse, and a fresh one at that. Although it was completely covered in mud, I could see that it was wearing a military uniform, much like the fat man’s.

Then I realized that something was wrong. I turned the watch in my hand and thrust it forward, and I discovered that the mud in front of me was full of corpses, all of them sunk in the mud, their limbs intertwined, like a mass grave after a massacre. And all of them had just died recently.

I pulled the corpse in front of me out of the mud, and found that it was dead and heavy, like it was filled with lead. I saw at once that the various equipment on the man’s waist was exactly the same as that of the fat man and Pan Zi.

I was shaking, and suddenly I understood what was going on—Uncle San’s team was here!