Volume 9 Chapter 4: Choose one of three

At that moment, we all saw a flash of red light, and then the man disappeared completely, very quickly. We were all stunned for a moment, as if he had been dragged in by something.

Before we could react, a scream came from the shaft, and then he fell out. Before he hit the ground, the upper body of a giant python shot out of the shaft and wrapped him in midair.

It was a python that had just shed its skin. I thought I would see a brownish-gold snake, but what I saw was blood red. I immediately realized that, damn it, this was indeed the same kind of snake!

The shooting had already started. In the narrow space, the sound of the shotgun almost deafened my ears.

The newly molted python, whose scales were not yet hard, was immediately beaten to pieces. The lead bullets were too weak, and the python, in pain and rage, slapped the man against the well wall, and he fell. Then it spiraled down the wall of the reservoir like a whirlwind, sweeping away several people with its huge body.

Uncle San’s men were terrified, and several of them ran away. Uncle San shouted, “Hold it! Don’t run!”

But the men really didn’t listen to him at all. Several of them ran into the tunnel and scattered.

Uncle San was so angry that he shouted at them. I held him back while shooting at the same time.

If everyone had worked together and fired several bursts at the python, even the Dragon King would have been destroyed, but people get confused at such moments and can’t judge the situation.

We were the slowest to retreat, and the python rushed over. I fired two shots, but the python’s head moved too fast, and I missed the vital spot. I had forgotten when I had last fired a clay pigeon, and I had become rusty at firing at such a fast-moving object.

One of the black-glasses men had already dragged Uncle San into the tunnel. Uncle San yelled at me to hurry up and get in. I immediately turned around, but before I could get halfway in, I suddenly felt a tingling sensation in my scalp. I looked over Uncle San’s shoulder and saw a large mass of black shadows surging towards us from the depths of the tunnel.

“Behind you!” I warned immediately.

They turned around sharply, and when they shone their flashlights, we saw a dozen or so chicken-crown snakes as thick as a bowl, surging forward like a tide of blood red. It seemed that the gunshots here had alarmed them.

Black glasses immediately turned around and fired a shot, sweeping the first wave away. The wind behind me also arrived. Third Uncle shouted, “Raise your hands.” I quickly raised my hands, and his gun extended from my armpit. With a loud noise, it shook the giant python behind me. Behind me, I heard the sound of Black Glasses firing his gun. He even said with a smile, “There are too many, I can’t hold them back!”

I thought to myself that this guy was really a madman. I turned around and saw that many of the well openings were beginning to crawl out red crested snakes, one after another. I loaded my gun while making room for Uncle San to climb out, while looking for a well opening where no crested snakes had crawled out, and then went to find Fatso, but found that Fatso had already disappeared. I couldn’t help but curse him for being so unprincipled, running away so quickly.

I looked one by one and finally found a well opening. I immediately climbed in and yelled at Uncle San. Uncle San and Black Glasses moved over while shooting. But it was already too late. The cockscombs were incredibly fast, almost flying through the air, and had already climbed up from the well opening where I was. They made a high-pitched gurgling sound, and I blasted them into a pulp with a shot, but the well opening was instantly surrounded by snakes again.

Uncle San told me to leave quickly, that he would think of a way, and he and Black Glasses retreated to another hole that was not surrounded by snakes. I cursed and fired another shot, then ran backwards furiously.

While I was running and reloading, I realized that I only had six bullets left. These bullets were big and heavy, and I had not brought many with me for convenience. I really have a headache with my personality. Whenever it comes to a critical moment, I always have things fall apart.

I had already experienced the speed of the snakes before, and knew that I couldn’t afford to be distracted when running, otherwise I would have no chance of survival. I gritted my teeth and began to run frantically, thinking to myself, “Mud! Where is the mud?”

After running through several forks, I saw a crack in the well shaft, which was also filled with sand. I stopped for a second and squeezed into it. The space inside was larger than the one I had seen before, and I immediately saw a large number of mud cocoon skeletons piled up.

I was saved, I thought to myself, immediately took out the water bottle, and as I heard the rustling sound of the snakes approaching, I immediately poured the water over a mud cocoon, mixing the mud on the human bones, grabbed it and quickly smeared it over my body. After I was done, I pushed the dead body into the crack, probably blocking it, and then I retreated into the depression, closed my eyes and pretended to be dead.

In an instant, the snakes arrived, and the miner’s lamp and water bottle I had dropped on the ground began to bite. Some snakes did not find me in the crack and continued to crawl forward quickly, but a few stopped, as if they had discovered something strange in the crack and looked inside.

I thought to myself, “These snakes really have intelligence. I saw a few snakes carefully crawling in and began to coil around the mud cocoons, seemingly looking for my whereabouts.

I closed my eyes and held my breath, feeling my heart jump out of my throat.

Those few seconds felt like a year. Suddenly I felt a chill in the back of my neck and cold sweat broke out all over my body. I suddenly realized that I had been too hasty and had forgotten to smear mud on the back of my neck.

I cautiously opened my eyes and sure enough, I saw a black and red-colored chicken-crown snake coiled around my shoulder, and it was interested in coiling around my back.

I thought to myself, I’m going to end up like that fat guy.

Just as the snake was slowly approaching my neck, a strange sound came from the skeleton next to me, and the snake immediately looked up in that direction.

Almost at the same time, something even more terrifying happened. The skeleton next to me suddenly moved, and its hand pressed against my neck, covering the part of my body that was not covered in mud.

My scalp went numb. I glanced at it and realized that it wasn’t the hand of a skeleton, but a human hand covered in mud. I looked more closely and saw that behind the dead man next to me was a person covered in mud.

Who was it? I couldn’t see clearly, and I thought to myself that I wasn’t the only one who knew about the mud.

I didn’t know what to think. I was neither happy nor unhappy. I just felt that the atmosphere was very strange.

The chicken-crowned snake looked in that direction for a long time, but couldn’t find what it was looking for. It looked very confused, and made a few cooing sounds, searching around my neck. I felt the snake’s tongue touch my neck several times, but it just couldn’t find it.

I didn’t dare to move, so I just stood there for more than ten minutes. Then suddenly the snakes were attracted by something outside and all of them quickly chased after it. This one also swam out.

I didn’t dare to move for a long time after they disappeared, for fear that they would suddenly come back. It wasn’t until I felt the hand that was covering my neck move that it seemed like a signal. I was so weak that I collapsed.

I was about to turn around to see who it was when I suddenly heard a female voice whisper, “Don’t turn around.”

I froze for a moment, but then I turned around, and the person next to me immediately covered my eyes. I subconsciously touched someone’s collarbone, and I found that the person was not wearing any clothes. Then my hand was slapped, and I heard the woman say, “Close your eyes, don’t look, take off your shirt.”

I was stunned, and before I could react, my shirt had been stripped off, and I could hear the rustle of clothes being taken off. It seemed that the person was putting on my clothes.

When the hand covering my eyes was removed, I saw a woman sitting in front of me. She was very petite, and wearing my clothes like a coat. When I looked at her face, I recognized her at once.

“Auntie Chen Wenjin!”

In front of me, it was actually Wenjin!

I was so surprised that I couldn’t speak, and I asked in a disjointed manner, “You weren’t caught?”

Wenjin straightened her clothes and looked at me and laughed. “What do you mean by ‘caught’? What do you think I am?” She looked completely different from the look she had when we were chasing her. After that, she used the bones covered in mud to block the entrance of the mud well, and then used the kettle to dig up the mud and seal the gap. I saw that the material tied to the bones was actually her clothes and bra.

After she finished, she came back to look at me and laughed. She touched my hair and said, “You’ve grown up too.”

I looked at her, almost unable to react, wanting to say something, but my mind was blank.

It was a bit too dreamlike. I had only seen her in photos before, and now she was smiling at me, and she was smiling so beautifully.

She looked at me, and seeing me looking at her, she asked, “What? Can’t you react?”

I nodded, thinking to myself, “How could I possibly react? This should be a middle-aged woman with wrinkles all over her face, who disappeared in a strange underwater tomb more than twenty years ago. For so many years, she has been doing something extremely secretive, affecting the nerves of countless people and creating countless mysteries. Now she is standing in front of me, looking at me with a playful smile on her face, but with mud all over her face. Her eyes and skin are obviously a few shades younger than mine, so how could I react?

She smiled and said, “When I saw you grow up so much, I couldn’t react either. I thought it had been more than 20 years. At that time, you still wet the bed, and I even washed your diapers. You were so funny then, much cuter than you are now.”

When I think about my childhood, I immediately look at the gap. I suddenly feel incredibly strange. Uncle San tried so hard to find Wenjin, but here, just a dozen meters away, I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but I saw Wenjin and even talked to him. If Uncle San had followed me a little faster, he and Wenjin would have met.

“You’ve become much lovelier…” I blurted out, scratching my head. ”Wenjin… Auntie, it’s been a long time… I really don’t know how to react. Should I cry now? Right, I have so much to ask you… We miss you… What happened in the end—shit, what am I saying?”

Seeing that I was incoherent, Wenjin made a soft hand gesture, listened outside, and smiled softly, saying, “Who said it’s been a long time? Didn’t we have tea together not long ago?”

“Tea?” I was stunned for a moment, thinking to myself that when I saw her before, she was in the swamp, and I didn’t see her holding a teacup.

Wen Jin wound her hair around her head, made a Tibetan hairstyle, and then wiped the mud off her face with her sleeve. I was stunned when I saw it: “You! You! You are the daughter-in-law of Ding Zhuoma!”