Volume 8 Chapter 9 Bracelets

The two of us immediately got moving and started climbing the tree.

The trees here are relatively easy to climb, with many footholds, but you need to be extremely careful. The tree trunks are covered in moss and other plant matter, and if you don’t have a good foothold, you can easily slip. Once you slip, you could fall all the way down.

We were very careful, taking one step at a time, as if we were climbing a tree full of landmines. It was hard work, but we finally reached Pan Zi.

Pan Zi was at the top of the tree canopy, where the branches were relatively sparse, and the mist was thinner. The tree was very tall, and above our heads was a wispy moon in the mist. Perhaps because this was a plateau, the moon was particularly bright, and it was able to shine down so much light through the mist. In the obscure white light, we could see the surrounding trees, but we could never see clearly. Everything was ambiguous in the mist.

We went up and asked Pan Zi what was going on. He whispered, “There seems to be someone in that tree over there.”

“Where?” asked the fat man. Pan Zi pointed in a direction and made a gesture: “About 20 meters away, on a branch.”

“How can you see in the dark? Is it that kid?”

“I couldn’t see him either, but I noticed him moving just now.” Pan Zi frowned and made another gesture to tell the fat man to keep quiet. “There are leaves blocking the view, so it’s not very clear, but it shouldn’t be that kid.“

”Are you sure you’re not just anxious to see your third uncle faint?”

Pan Zi didn’t have time to pay attention to the fat man’s accusations, and waved his hand: ‘I’m not sure, you see for yourself!’ He said, pushing aside the dense branches, and pointed to the distant tree canopy for us to see.

At first glance, I only saw a large, dense canopy of trees. My eyes are slightly nearsighted, and they are fine in normal light, but in such ambiguous light, it is easy to get eye strain, so after looking for a long time, I couldn’t see anything. The fat man’s eyes were sharp, and he saw it at once. He whispered, “Fuck, there really is a person.”

Pan Zi handed me the binoculars. I looked in the direction of the fat man and sure enough, I saw a shape in the gap in the tree canopy that looked like a human figure. It seemed to be peeking at something, its body hunched in the canopy, making it hard to see clearly, but I could clearly see the person’s hands, which were covered in mud. In the dim light of the moon, they looked like animal claws.

Who could it be?

I asked, “Could it be that Wenjin, the girl we saw in the swamp last night, that little brother didn’t catch her yesterday?”

Pan Zi nodded: “It’s possible. That’s why I asked you to keep your voices down. If it really is her, she’ll hear the sound and run away again.”

I handed the binoculars to the fat guy who was clamoring to see, and said to Pan Zi, “What should we do? If she really is Wen Jin, we have to catch her.”

Pan Zi looked at the terrain around him and nodded: “But it’s a bit difficult. It’s more than 20 meters from here to there. If she runs away when she hears a sound like last night, we won’t be able to catch up in this environment. She’ll be out of sight in a few runs. The best way is to sneak up to the tree and block her in. Moreover, we have to hurry up—he looked at the sea of trees on the side. ”Now the fog is almost gone, and we can’t waste too much time. After catching her, we have to hurry to the third master’s place.”

I thought about it and said yes, there was no time to hesitate, we had to do it first. Thinking about it, I patted the fat man and tried to pull him down from the tree.

The fat man waved his hands and said, “Wait, wait.”

“Don’t look, I’ll let you see her when we catch her.” Pan Zi shouted softly.

The fat man still looked, moving while looking. Pan Zi was impatient and angry, and went up to grab the fat man’s binoculars, but he pushed him away. “Wait! Something’s wrong!”

We were stunned for a moment. We all knew that the fat guy was sharp-eyed, so when he suddenly said that, we couldn’t take it lightly. Pan Zi and I exchanged glances. At this moment, I heard the fat guy take a deep breath, put down the binoculars, and curse. He immediately gave me the binoculars: “Sure enough, look carefully. Look at that hand.”

I quickly took it and looked carefully. The fat guy said beside me, “Look at the wrist, behind the leaves, look carefully.”

I squinted and looked at the man’s wrist. I used up all my eyesight and sure enough, I saw something. The moment I saw it, my heart skipped a beat, as if I had realized something. The next second, I understood.

It was Ning’s copper coin bracelet!

Because of my previous experience in the Devil City and that strange dream, I had an extremely deep impression of that copper coin bracelet, so even in this kind of light, I was sure that I could not have been mistaken.

“Damn it.” I sucked in a breath of cold air.

So, the “person” in the tree in the distance was actually Ah-Ning’s corpse.

Pan Zi noticed my change in expression and immediately passed the binoculars to me. He didn’t have a deep impression of Ah-Ning, and only after I reminded him did he frown and tilt his head thoughtfully.

“Dragging the body through the dense forest and swamp from the entrance and then moving it to such a high tree is like a snake pull-up competition. These snakes are really strong.“ The fat man leaned against a branch on the side, chewed his mouth, and pondered, ‘These snakes seem to be like ants. Do you think they are social animals like ants? There is a queen snake hiding in their snake nest, and these bodies are transported to the queen snake to eat.’

”What queen snake?” I didn’t understand at first.

The fat guy said, “Have you ever dug an ant nest? The queen ant in the ant colony is responsible for laying eggs, and the ants are responsible for feeding the queen. I think it’s right, it must be like this. The chicken-crowned snakes here probably have the same social structure as ants and bees. There must be a queen snake in this forest, and these little snakes were all born by her.

I was more and more puzzled: ”It’s true that the behavior of these snakes is incomprehensible, but your guess is definitely unreasonable. Snakes and insects are completely different species, and this possibility is very rare.

“I think this should be considered a good guess,” said the fat man.

I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to continue discussing this issue, and saw Aning’s body again. I didn’t dare to imagine what the part hidden in the canopy looked like now. Although the fat man had expressed his attitude towards life and death, what he said at this time still made me feel a bit depressed.

The three of us were silent for a while, and then the fat guy said, “No matter what they’re here for, it’s obvious that the body is here, and there must be a lot of snakes nearby. We’d better leave here right away.”

“So we’re just going to leave her here?” I felt a little uncomfortable. “Since we’ve found the body, either–”

The fat guy shook his head, and I thought about it and didn’t say anything. This really wasn’t a good idea. We couldn’t afford to provoke any of the snakes here, and besides, maybe Aning didn’t want us to see her like this. So I sighed, stopped looking in that direction, and said softly, “Amitabha, okay, I’ll shut up.”

At this point I noticed that Pan Zi had never put the binoculars down. I thought it was strange that he hadn’t seen clearly after looking for so long. On closer inspection, I noticed that Pan Zi’s hands were covered in sweat and his face was turning blue.

I was shocked and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Pan Zi put down the binoculars, looked a little strange, and shook his head and said to me, “Nothing.”

But that expression was definitely not an expression of “nothing.” I took the binoculars and looked in that direction again, but I found that there was nothing unusual. I doubted it in my heart, but the fat man had already started to climb down the tree. I didn’t have time to think about it anymore, and finally looked at the distance, then followed the fat man and climbed down.

Pan Zi went down to the tree, and his face had completely returned to normal. I didn’t know what had happened just now, but I found that Pan Zi kept looking in that direction.

He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t want to ask. I guess he was also unsure, so he just let it go. The three of us immediately packed up our things, put on our backpacks, and Pan Zi corrected the direction and was ready to leave immediately.

Just as he was about to set off, Pan Zi looked in that direction again, and suddenly stopped. At this time, the fat man also noticed his unusual behavior and asked him what was wrong. He pointed to that direction with his finger and made a gesture of not speaking.

We all stopped and suddenly heard faint voices coming from the forest in a certain direction.

Because the forest was very quiet, the sound of the voices was extremely abrupt, and the three of us were baffled. I was even sweating profusely. I listened carefully and felt that the intermittent sound was like a woman whispering.

We listened quietly, and the sound was high and low, erratic, and seemed to be the sound of the wind blowing through the bushes. However, the branches and leaves were still, and there was no wind at all. What made us shiver was that the direction from which the sound came was the direction of Ah Ning’s body.

The fat man said softly, “Damn it, what is this play? Is it that the bitch really came back to life and is haunting us here?”

I said it couldn’t be, but looked around. The mist was thick, and shadows were everywhere. It would be a waste not to be haunted here.

The fat man said, “If it’s not a ghost, then who is talking?”

I thought again of the “Wen Jin” I saw last night, and said to myself that it might not be a ghost, but that it could be this woman nearby. However, last night, she didn’t make a sound, so I actually didn’t know if she was a man or a woman.

There was another possibility, that Uncle San or his men were nearby. That would be too lucky. But this situation is really weird. Uncle San shouldn’t be making this kind of noise. I’ve encountered too many strange things before, and at this juncture, I naturally had an ominous premonition.

I didn’t like this feeling, so I said to them, “It’s so dark here, I’m sure something’s going to happen. Let’s go quickly, or we’ll be in trouble.”

After saying that, I asked Pan Zi, “You just calculated for so long. Where should we go now?”

Pan Zi’s face turned pale, and he pointed in the direction of the sound: “The problem is, the direction we need to go is the direction of that tree.”

I froze for a moment, “Over there? Are you sure?”

Pan Zi cocked his gun and nodded: “There’s no mistake. Before the fog, the last time I saw smoke was over there.”

I was depressed and didn’t know what to say. At this time, the fat man stood up and cursed, “It’s a blessing in disguise. It’s a disaster that can’t be avoided. They are blocking our way on purpose to make our lives difficult. But we are not easy to provoke. Let’s go and find out what’s going on.” He stood up and was about to go over.

I cursed in my heart and said, “Pan Zi, don’t go over. Listen carefully to what she is saying.”