There was a back door to the canopy we were in, and this was the usual place for the guys to go to the toilet.
With a plan in place, Researcher Ann deliberately turned up the diesel generator to maximum power as a way of masking the noise of us moving the vat.
"Turning it up that loud? Is it ready yet, can I go in?" Hearing the roar of the generator, Chen Jiansheng shouted from outside.
"No! Not yet!" Researcher An shouted, "It's halfway through, the instruments need to be running at full power, we'll call you when we're done."
Chen Jiansheng then muttered something from outside, not clearly heard.
Just then, two strange cries came from nowhere, "Gu .... coo ...." The sound sound sounded like some kind of bird, and also a bit like a chicken crowing.
"What
"Sister Hong? Sister Hong?" Seeing her frozen, I called out twice in quick succession.
"Guess it's chickens or something, nothing," Sister Red digressed and pointed to the water tank, "Never mind the uselessness, let's get started."
The action began.
Pouring out the water stored in the tank, pulling back the leather curtain on the back door and putting a shovel in the tank.
Then a few of us started to turn the vat outwards, as it was heavy it was a bit of a struggle to lift it, so we had to turn and roll it out a bit.
There was a smell behind it, so Li said, "Watch your step, if you see a toilet paper ball, walk around it, don't accidentally step on it. The researcher was a little embarrassed to hear this, and she smiled sarcastically.
I prayed that the thunder would not stop, because if it did, my solution would not work.
The tank was very heavy and it didn't take long for us to walk around! If we had to walk for another hour or two, we'd all die here, not to mention being caught by the gang!"
I looked around and decided that the conditions were OK, so I told them that they didn't have to walk, they could do it here, and I pointed to a clearing in the middle.
After briefly clearing the debris and seeing the right spot, I went straight down to the shovel and dug. It was also good luck with the earth, and I spent more than an hour digging a dirt pit as I alternated with the white coat, Li Jing, working on it.
The pit was not too big and not too small, just big enough to accommodate the water tank we had rolled all the way over.
As we worked together to push the tank into the dug pit, Researcher An wiped his sweat and whispered, "Is this really going to work? Don't end up with us working for nothing and ending up getting caught back."
Sister Hong was not happy to hear this, she frowned and said, "A line of work is like a mountain, don't talk nonsense if you don't know, just say something auspicious if you really don't know how to talk."
Sister Hong was open and spirited, An researcher was timid, she just wanted to save her own little life, she was said by Sister Hong a couple of times and didn't get angry, her pretty face was red and she didn't dare to talk back.
"Go on Yunfeng, since the head has taught you, I believe you." Sister Hong looked at me and cast an encouraging glance.
Nodding, I took a deep breath, admonished them to never talk to influence me, and then jumped straight into the water tank.
A hole was dug in the earth and the tank was buried underground.
This tank can be interpreted as an echo collector, its principle is somewhat similar to that of the humble bamboo tube sound transmission device, the difference is that the medium of the bamboo tube sound transmission is a wire, while the medium of the water tank collecting echoes is the ground. The louder the thunder, the clearer the echoes coming from below the ground.
In tomb raiding circles, this is called "listening to thunder."
Rumour has it that in the old days, powerful thugs were able to "hear the wind and hear things", but to be able to hear the wind and hear things, one cannot do so without a lot of training.
There was silence all around.
"Boom!" Spring thunder rang out.
"No, it's not enough, please God give a face for more," I said as I squatted in the tank listening carefully to the echoes of thunder coming from the ground and mentally praying for more thunder.
"Rumble, rumble, rumble!"
An Fellow and the others up there may not have felt much, but my ears twitched back and forth and a smile curled the corners of my mouth.
Seeing that I had opened my eyes, Red looked at me expectantly and asked how it was going.
Crawling out of the tank and trying to remember a direction where the thunder came from, I bent down and used a small wooden stick to set up a triangle on the ground, the tip of which was pointing southwest at a forty-five degree angle.
I looked at the triangle I had set up with the stick and pointed to a spot and said, "The echoes are different in that direction and most likely lead to the ground."
Sister Hong nodded and said, "That way we have a general idea in mind, so we don't run around like headless flies," she turned her head to look at An Fellow and asked, "What, you already know the way, do you two want to go on your own or come with us, but I can say in advance, Yunfeng and I still have to go find someone to save. "
Researcher An was deep in thought, and in turn, Li Contended quickly made his decision.
"Little An and I still have to make a trip back to find Old Xu, so since we know the general direction, we won't join you, and to say something auspicious, if we all get out safely, you are welcome to come and play in Hong|Port in the future, and you can find me at No. 36, Times Square, Causeway Bay."
With that, we said a few words of courtesy to each other, and Li left me and Hong a torch for us to use for lighting, and then the four of us parted ways here.
The two of them were going back to look for their companion Lao Xu, and Sister Hong and I were going to look for Big Brother and the others. I sighed in my heart, hoping that both sides would get out alive.
...
"Sister Hong, are you sure this is the right place? How come no one is guarding it and Big Brother and the others are being held here by the little old man's gang?" I asked as I looked in front of me.
There is a round stone cover on the ground, remove it to see a ladder, it seems that the people who came here before climbed down the ladder, what makes me feel strange is that there is no one around here to guard, not a figure in sight, it can be said to be unguarded, how to look not quite like a secret place to keep people, to put it badly it looks like a bigger rat hole....
"Yes, this is it, I noticed it earlier when I was separated from the boss and they stopped here then." Sister Red looked convinced of her memory.
I said well then, now that it was unguarded, let's go down and have a look, and with those words I bit into my torch and climbed down the ladder first, with Sister Red close behind me.
After stepping on the ground, I looked up and shone my torch upwards. The ladder could be seven or eight metres high, and the rocks on the walls of the cave did not look like they were newly quarried.
I asked Hong which direction I should go, and she pointed firmly in the left direction and said to go that way.
I was a bit surprised to see how certain she was without hesitation, so I asked, "Sister Hong, how do you know this, have you been down here before?"
She shook her head, "No, I just guessed, I always have to pick a direction anyway, I call it a woman's sixth sense, sometimes it's really accurate."
I thought to myself, "Well, as for whether your so-called sixth sense is accurate or not.
We'll see if it's accurate or not.
After following the path pointed out by Sister Hong and walking a few dozen metres by torchlight, I found a film plastic bag on the ground with a logo, the kind used for instant noodle packs on supermarket shelves.
Without turning my head, I frowned and said, "Be careful, Sister Hong, there might be someone around here."
Strangely enough Sister Hong didn't answer behind me.
"Sister Hong?" I turned my head to look.
The light around me was dark.
It was empty behind me now, not even half a shadow of Sister Hong!
She had disappeared! Obviously she was following me just now!
I wanted to shout out Sister Hong's name, but I didn't dare because I was afraid that there were people from that group around here, and the sound transmission effect was very strong in the confined space, so I didn't dare to shout.
I was so nervous that my forehead was sweating, and I kept calling out Sister Hong's name in a low voice. No one ever responded.
Suddenly, I shone my torch.
I saw that there was a person with his back to me in the northwest corner, and this back was motionless, looking at the clothes it should be Sister Hong.
"Scared the hell out of me Sister Hong, why didn't I call you back?"
She was still standing there, as if she hadn't heard me.
I walked quickly to her front and held up my torch.
She was so pale and dull-eyed that she didn't even react to the torch! I shone my torch at her and didn't even blink!
"Gu ..... Goo ....."
At this time, a few bird calls suddenly came from the darkness in front of us, the calls were almost identical to the ones we had heard before, and Sister Hong said that they might be mountain chickens or something like that, telling me not to pay too much attention to them.
At that moment, a few flames emerged from the darkness ahead, these flames were big and small, far and near, like ghostly fires floating up from hell.
I pulled my sister Hong, and subconsciously took two steps back to run, but she was standing very firmly, I couldn't even pull her ...
The fires are getting closer and closer to me as well.
A few faces gradually emerged from the darkness.
I was so worried about these people, I thought, "This is the end, I have to die here, our team will be wiped out.
There were five of them, three of them holding three burning torches.
The head of the small skeleton, the tall middle-aged man Jian, Chen Jiansheng, and two others, a man and a woman, whom I didn't know.
The little skeleton head had his hands behind his back and his face was expressionless. Chen Jiansheng, on the other hand, was holding a torch, a smile on his lips, staring at me like a pet.
The woman was tall, dressed in black, with pale yellow pupils in her eyes. What was even more noticeable was the untethered pure white owl standing on her left shoulder. The owl's pupils appear as a yellowish vertical line. The woman's eyes were very similar to those of an owl. I locked eyes with her and felt nothing but fear in my heart; her eyes were too cold.
Chen Jiansheng held up the torch and looked at me and laughed; "You're quite capable, we underestimated you before, you managed to run out of the snake pit, you seem to have some skills at a young age, it's not in vain that we went to all the trouble to catch you."
Looking at Chen Jiansheng, I took a deep breath and asked, "Sister Hong what's going on, what's going on with you guys, how did you find my trail."
"Goo ....." The owl standing on the yellow-eyed woman's shoulder let out a low hoot. Sister Hong's body actually moved when she heard the beast's cry!
The little skeleton head looked at me and said, "Little doll, let me introduce you, this is Miss Wen Yun, the heir of Bird Mouth Gold of the Eight Little Sects, Bird Mouth Gold is good at training owls and wild yaoi, as long as a person swallows the finger child gold before, Miss Wen Yun can control the basic actions of this person through the bird's cry, this is also considered a kind of strange techniques in the old society, the same as the old sea dog's enchanting incense. "
I was shocked and angry! So it seemed that Chen Jiansheng and this group had known about my plan for a long time!
Chen Jiangsheng had deliberately pretended not to know, just as I was pretending to be a white coat and asking for Sister Hong as a test subject!
In other words, from the first time Sister Hong entered the tent bag, she had already been force-fed and swallowed that what's-his-name's finger gold, and Sister Hong had already been controlled by this woman who was playing with the owl .....
No wonder, Red Sister deliberately said she knew where Big Brother and Third Brother were being held, and when she first came down, Red Sister pointed very firmly to the left that way, before eventually leading me here, to this group of people.
It was a case of catching a turtle in a jar.
It looked like the An researchers' gang was in danger too.
I thought I was a monkey trying to turn the sky upside down and imagined that I could save everyone by myself, but in the end I realised that I was inexperienced in the jungle and that the other side was playing with me like a monkey. The only thing I couldn't understand was that since the other side had already discovered my plan, with their manpower they could have just caught me, but why did they go to such lengths to lure me here?
I looked at the little skeleton with his hands behind his back and asked through clenched teeth, "Why? I'm sure you're not just trying to play a trick on me by going to all this trouble in the dark, are you?"
"Play you?" The little skeleton head shook his head and laughed, "Kid you think too highly of yourself, you're just a small fish, you're hanging on the hook as our bait, we're just fishing for the big fish behind you."
"What little fish fishing, I don't understand a word you're saying, it's done, kill or be killed as you wish!" With a bad feeling in my heart, I had a vague guess as to what the big fish he was talking about was.
"Ho," laughed Chen Jiansheng, "the boy has some guts, but I see that .... Just pretending to be a pussy, ah."
At these words, he turned his head to look at the little skeleton head with a pinched face: "My lord, when will the big fish bite, I don't know whether the big fish are now under the surface of the water or above the surface of the water, as I see it, with your divine four-inch flying dagger, my lord, these big fish will definitely die without a body if they dare to emerge from the surface of the water!" M..
"No need to patronise me," said the little skeleton head with a frown; "if my guess is correct, there is at least one person of my equal rank on the opposite side, I hope it is not Wei Wentong or Beggar Liu ..."
Chen Jiansheng exclaimed, "My lord, didn't Wei Wentong die of cancer more than ten years ago! I heard that Beggar Liu also got Alzheimer's and has long been partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair!"
The little skeleton head shook his head with a bitter smile, "Thirteen years ago, since the vice president took control of the real power, the large Changchun Society nearly fell apart, some of them either retired into the folklore or left the organization on the pretext of illness to retire to their hometown, although you are a descendant of Bai Chun point, there are still some things that you know too little about ..."
Chen Jiansheng listened and fell into silence, not saying anything. From the expression on his face one could see a few moments of gravity.
The little skeleton head looked up at the darkness and muttered, "I hope the things in the underground palace are useful and can keep the Vice President Lord alive for a few more years, otherwise, the Jianghu ..... will be uneventful again."
I saw a few people lamenting in front of me, and when I saw the opportunity, I suddenly turned around and ran away and started running all the way!
I didn't even look behind me, I threw myself on the ground and ran for my life!
I knew that if I climbed up the ladder before these people and covered the lid, I might still have a chance of survival!
Thirty metres! Ten metres! Five metres!
I was about to reach the ladder when suddenly I heard the cooing of an owl and the sound of fluttering wings from behind me.
Even if a man can run fast, he cannot outrun a bird with wings.
The owl landed unerringly on my left shoulder.
I looked back ..... In the darkness, the woman's eyes seemed to be glowing yellow.
The owl turned its head to stare at me, its yellowish vertical lines of pupils in Lee, imprinting my entire face.
And I.
I didn't dare to move.
This cavern was like a dungeon, with a lid over it.
Just now I had a very strong feeling that if I dared to move a little, the white owl would immediately peck my eyes out.
After the little skeleton's group left, this
Sister Hong told me that she still remembered what had happened before, and that she had tried to resist, but her body would not listen to her.
Sister Hong and I sat on the floor with our backs to each other and she told me something about the owl woman.
She said that she had been forced to swallow a small packet of something earlier, and that the packet was what was known as fingernail gold.
My arms hurt and I was still cold and hungry, so I forced myself to ask, "That owl is white, what is the stuff wrapped in the finger's gold, how can it control a person for good reason, is it more powerful than that old sea dog's enchanting incense?"
In the darkness, Sister Hong said feebly, "Yunfeng have you heard of a man called Partridge Whistle?"
"Partridge Whistle? The grave robber who can learn all the bird calls in the world?"
"Yes, that's the man."
"This kind of profession is all about the old leather line, their identity is not only as grave robbers, the men are called partridge whistles and the women are called partridge women, there are already few people in this profession and even fewer female partridge women, there are only a few, the one we just saw in Yunfeng is a real partridge woman, I didn't think before that there would be such a young partridge woman now."
The leather line means the old days of conjuring, and according to Red, there were many people in the leather line in the past who had real skills.
The more familiar Pi Xing that people have come into contact with nowadays are things like the Three Immortals returning to the cave, swallowing a sword and an iron ball, and holding the tip of a gun at the throat. All these tricks were only inferior in the old leather trade.
The Partridge Whistle and the Partridge Woman, one of whom could learn birds and the other could drive them away, contained many untold secrets that ordinary people could not understand.
In the old days of the last century, the leather trade fell apart and some people chose to continue to sell their art on the streets, while others were influenced by foreign art troupes and eventually chose to join circus troupes to perform abroad, the most famous of which were the Red Lady and Zhu Liankui.
When Zhu Liankui performed for Empress Dowager Cixi at the Pihang, Cixi was so pleased to see him that she ordered Sun Tianying to reward him with a small yellow fish.
Sun Lian Kui had a total of four major skills, namely, spitting out a hundred zhang, fishing with an empty rod, shredding paper, and flying water in a big bowl, the last of which was Zhu Lian Kui's masterpiece.
In 1898, Zhu Liankui made his debut with the circus in the United States of America, where he shocked the entire foreign magic community with his Oriental magic trick of flying water in a big bowl. Since then, all of Zhu Liankui's performances were often full, and all foreigners were enthralled.
At that time, several major theatres in foreign countries were competing for Zhu Liankui, and all of them wanted to own this mysterious magician from the East.
The major theatres offered Zhu Liankui an exorbitant weekly salary, and he finally chose the Boston Grand Theatre, which offered him a weekly salary of $1013, which, you know, was a hundred and thirty years ago ..... At that time, the price of a concubine could have been paid for five dollars!
In the circus of the same period, there was another master juggler called Cheng Liansu, this person claimed to have completely cracked the secret of the big bowl of flying water, and he even put down a battle cry to Zhu Liankui.
That winter, this amazing magic duel from the mysterious East made the headlines of foreign tabloids.
As snow fell that same year, foreigners filled the theatre to see this duel.
The time came as promised, and Zhu Liankui and Cheng Liansu met and exchanged a salute, clasping their fists and each saying "Brother Zhu, Brother Cheng".
At the beginning of the showdown, both sides started by showing their skills in order to ignite the atmosphere, which was called a debut.
Cheng Lian Su's masterpiece was "shooting a live man", but to everyone's surprise, an accident occurred not long after the showdown began.
It is said that a black bird flew into the venue from nowhere, some witnesses said it was a crow, others said it was another bird, at first no one paid any attention to the bird, but to their surprise, the bird suddenly flew to the barrel of Cheng Liansu's gun and pulled the trigger with its claws!
A shot rang out!
Cheng Lian Su fell to the ground and died!
The duel was a natural result of the failure of the performance, and Zhu Liankui won without a fight. His big bowl of flying water trick became even more of an unsolved mystery.
...
"Shot dead by a bird?" Understanding this historical background, I asked in surprise, "Sister Hong, could it be that you are saying that this Zhu Liankui from over a hundred years ago was the Partridge Whistle?"
I could not see Sister Hong's expression in the darkness, so I heard her say, "Although Zhu Liankui also came from the leather trade, he himself did not know how to play with birds and was not a partridge whistle, but I heard my father, Chen Xiaohei, talk about it, and my father said that Zhu Liankui had a concubine, who was surnamed Ye and had been a partridge woman before she married Zhu Liankui, only that after she married, she washed her hands of the matter. "
After I thought about all these things, I frowned and said, "Sister Hong, is it possible that Cheng Liansu of the circus was really able to decipher the secret of the big bowl of flying water, that is, Zhu Liankui was afraid that his secret would be exposed, so he sent his concubine, a partridge woman, to kill Cheng Liansu with a bird, creating an accident in which the gun went off? In that case, could it be that the woman who kept the owl beside the little skeleton head just now was surnamed Zhu? Is she a descendant of Zhu Liankui and this concubine surnamed Ye?"
My father said before he died that Zhu Liankui was a man of great righteousness, and he would never do such an unscrupulous thing. You should be able to guess the truth."
I went through the whole story and had an answer in my mind.
Perhaps Zhu Liankui also wanted to have a real contest with Cheng Liansu to see who was the first in the skin line!
But his concubine, the partridge woman, perhaps afraid that her husband would lose the competition, or perhaps for some other reason, ended up secretly using her bird-driving skills to kill Cheng Liansu.
After the death of his only rival, Zhu Liankui was so disheartened that he eventually repudiated the Partridge Woman. It is not easy to judge the rights and wrongs of Zhu Liankui and the Partridge Woman, but perhaps the two masters of the leather trade were sympathetic to each other, and Ye Partridge Woman did it to protect her husband. But what is certain is that Cheng Liansu is not at fault, this man has become a victim.
I asked again, "Sister Hong you ate the Partridge Woman's secret recipe for Finger's Gold before, will you still be controlled by that woman in the future?"
Sister Hong patted me on the shoulder and sighed, "Yes, but not now, if the Partridge Woman wants to control me, there must be a gap between the last time and the time she took it. "
"Can get out!"
"We can definitely get out Sister Hong, you have to have faith in yourself!"
Probably too tired and in a low mood, Sister Hong sighed and said, "For so many years, I've been mixed up in different tomb-robbing gangs, and although I don't want to admit it in my heart, I actually know it myself. My father didn't pass on my grandfather's skills to me, he said that a girl can't spend all her time dancing with swords and guns, my father said that now that life is better, those side ways of the old society are no longer useful, I should find a good family and raise a family."
At this point, Sister Hong suddenly looked agitated.
His teeth clacked together.
"If father had passed grandfather's coal sabre to me! He wouldn't have died so miserably! That's right! I'm only a woman! But if I had grandfather's skills, if I could use the Coal Sabre. I would have gone north with my sword and killed the Northeast! Kill the Changchun Society! Kill all those old bastards! Kill all those people who harmed my Chen family back then!"
After all the excitement, Sister Hong was sobbing uncontrollably.
In the year that I had known her, I had never seen her cry before.
In the darkness, Sister Hong buried her head and cried, the upper half of her body trembling and undulating slightly.
At this moment, she was no longer Chen Hong, the notorious wind|fluid mole on the road, she was just a wounded woman.
And I was just a teenage boy more than ten years younger than her. I had no skills, I was a teenager in the business, and I had never been exposed to the so-called jianghu that she talked about.
In the darkness, I hugged Sister Hong gently, hoping to give her some comfort.
Sister Hong's grandfather was Coal Horse Glasses Chan, I thought in my head. What did this man really look like?
Was he an anti-Japanese showman with round-rimmed glasses and a large coal-horse sword?
If this man was still alive, he would have been much older than the little skeleton head. The little skeleton head himself said that Coal Horse Glasses Chen broke into the fortress with a single sword and killed the commander of an entire unit of the devils by himself.
If this master was still alive.
I think he would not have allowed his junior to be imprisoned and suffer this indignity.
So far this matter involves a lot of people, the little skeleton head when introduced said, he said the owl woman is what small mouth gold heir, is not surnamed Zhu, but surnamed Wen called Wen Yun.
The partridge woman, who was in her twenties, was also an amazing talent in the past, and it seemed that the little skeleton head had gathered a lot of experts around him this time.
At that moment, the dungeon cover was lifted from above.
"Get down!"
"Be honest, if you still dare to run, hey, see what happened to your friend just now?"
Ann was cloaked as she was pushed down the ladder, followed by the man above throwing down a snakeskin sack.
The sack was rolled round in shape, I don't know what was in it, and it rolled a few times after it hit the ground, rolling over to Fellow Ann.
"Bah." The man spat at our side and re-covered the lid.
"How are you, are you hurt," I was a little worried when she was pushed off the ladder that high, and ran over to help her busily.
Ann the researcher kept repeating the words, "We shouldn't have run, we shouldn't have run, we shouldn't have run."
"Yunfeng you talk to her, she's scared." Sister Hong shook her head straight after looking at Researcher An's appearance.
I knew this woman was timid so I gently reassured her, "Look, it's me, don't be afraid, where did your two companions go?"
Five minutes later, her eyes cleared a little.
With a trembling hand, she pointed to the snakeskin sack that had been thrown down from above.
Glancing suspiciously at the sack, I carefully walked over and untied it.
It was still wrapped in a plastic bag, and I touched it with my hand first, and could only feel it as a round ball-shaped object.
"What the hell is this?" Bracing myself against the mouth of the cloth bag, I fixed my eyes on it by the faint light.
"What is it Yunfeng?" Seeing that I was frozen, Red asked.
Stomping back two steps, I stammered and shouted in horror, "Human ..... Human head!"
"It's that old Xu's head!"
It was probably my words that irritated Researcher An, who couldn't stop shaking her head in pieces at the moment, "It's our turn soon, it's our turn soon, it's our turn next ..."
"Where's Li Jing!"
"Dead, dead, all dead," Ann Fellow sat cross-legged on the floor in pain, her eyes horrified like she had seen something frightening.
"A living, breathing human being, who was fine a few hours ago ....." My mind went back to the white coat, Li Jing, a man who had made a pact with me that if we all got out alive, I should look for him at Times Square in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.
Little did I know that a few hours later, it would ...
Sister Hong asked Researcher An in a deep voice: "I ask you, who killed these two men, the little skeleton head? He went to all that trouble to find you guys to come over, and he went to all that trouble to bring over so many medical instruments, and yes, you were afraid to escape, but even so, you were of great use to him, so how could they kill?"
"Could it be that ....." Sister Hong looked at Researcher An and asked suspiciously, "Could there be another reason for their deaths?"
"You must know something!"
"Speak up!"
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know anything, I didn't see anything, I beg you not to ask ..." Researcher Ann kept pulling her hair, a big one.
In the darkness, Sister Red got up.
She walked over to Fellow Ann and crouched down.
"Look up at me."
Researcher An raised his head with confused eyes.
"Snap! Snap! Slap!" Sister Hong slapped her three times in a row with full force.
The slaps were so loud that it hurt for me to hear them. The corner of An Fellow's mouth was bleeding from the slap.
Sister Hong said in a cold voice, "Are you awake yet? If that's not enough, I don't mind helping with a few more slaps."
The corners of his mouth were bleeding from the beating, and Researcher An cried out, "It's medicine, it's a corpse, a corpse that bit Lao Xu, a corpse soaked in water."
"Speak clearly! What medicine! What's the corpse! Whose corpse is it!" Sister Hong snapped unrelentingly.
I subconsciously reached for my trouser pocket and a cold touch came.
Pulling something out, it was a glass bottle containing a light blue liquid.
"Medicine? Is that the kind of medicine?" I asked, holding up the bottle.
Seeing the pale blue liquid inside the small glass bottle, An Fellow's pupils instantly dilated and he kept nodding as his body trembled.
I frowned and asked, "Didn't you say this stuff was useless, or a half-finished product, and something about it being impossible to achieve with the current technology."
"No, it's not, we were wrong, the teacher was wrong! The teacher should never have sent us to Shunde!"
She pointed to the glass bottle in my hand and said in a trembling voice, "That, that's not from the human world, that's from a demon!"
"What's that? A demon?" With her companion dead in front of her, I thought she had become irritated and started talking nonsense.
Seeing that Hong and I didn't think anything of it, Ann Researcher suddenly acted like she'd gone crazy, and she took advantage of my inattention to violently snatch the glass bottle out of my hands!
"Don't come any closer!" She shouted, holding up the glass bottle.
As her movements rose and fell, those pale blue liquids inside the glass bottle shook from side to side, feeling like they might spill out at any moment.
"Back off! I'll show you all with your own eyes! You'll see it and you'll know I'm not crazy and that I'm telling the truth! You have to believe me!"
"Don't you get excited! Put the bottle down first and we'll believe you!"
Researcher An didn't listen to any of the persuasion as she walked to the sack containing Lao Xu's head.
Opening the sack, researcher An's hands trembled and trembled as she brought the head of Lao Xu out flat in the sack ...
Although the light was bad, I could still see clearly that Old Xu's mouth was bleeding and his eyes were bulging out, dead!
A beautiful young woman in her twenties, with her hands held high, was holding a recently dead human head, a horrific and bizarre scene!
Ann used her teeth to uncork the glass bottle, she peeled back Old Xu's upper lip and put three drops of a pale blue liquid into his mouth.
Time passed.
Researcher An held the human head in the flat end and said with a trembling voice, "Look, you guys! See if what I said is true!"
As soon as her words left her mouth, a scene ensued that made goose bumps explode all over my body!
I saw that Old Xu's eyeball had suddenly moved! It was a dead man's head!
The dead Old Xu's eyes were only the whites of his eyes, and Sister Hong and I could really see that Old Xu's white eyeballs were moving up and down, back and forth, like a newborn baby, taking a curious look around him.
The whole process lasted less than three minutes, and then resumed as before. The head didn't move a muscle and the eyes wouldn't turn, no different from the previous one.
"Believe! We believe it! You hurry up and put this thing down!"
An Fellow's hand loosened and Old Xu's human head rolled to the side with a grunt.
Hearing is believing and seeing is believing, it was just three drops, three drops of that pale blue liquid!
What would it be like if someone drank the whole bottle, it's hard not to ... The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the whole bottle.
The researcher was about to give me back the glass bottle, just kidding, after seeing that scene, how dare I carry it around with me! What if I accidentally fell and the bottle broke?
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down, what was happening in front of me was beyond my knowledge.
I looked at Ann Research and asked, "What else, I remember you saying something about a corpse earlier, what was that about?"
"No, no, not a corpse."
She looked around with panicked eyes and said fearfully, "It's not a corpse, it's a demon, dripping thick water, long hair, very short, no clothes, like a little old lady."
I recalled a scene I had seen before.
Earlier, when Chen Jiangsheng had stoned Pi San'er to death for wanting to share his money, I had seen his body corroding away inside the large leather frame.
I had noticed a dark shadow soaking in the white liquid inside the frame, and looking at the outline it had four limbs, like a person.
I suspected in my mind, "The previous golden coffin and silver coffin were lying in the second brother, no body of the tomb owner was seen, could it be, that the group got the body that was originally inside out and soaked it into the big leather frame?"
The second brother had been missing for months, and when we found him, he still had two four-legged snakes biting on his stomach, and Chen Jiansheng's group said that the second brother's blood didn't work, and this incident led to the second brother's life and death being unknown now.
The more I thought about it, the more fearful I became, and cold sweat began to break out on my forehead as Researcher An said it wasn't a corpse, it was a man with long hair and a tall
So far this matter involves a lot of people, the little skeleton head when introduced said, he said the owl woman is what small mouth gold heir, is not surnamed Zhu, but surnamed Wen called Wen Yun.
The partridge woman, who was in her twenties, was also an amazing talent in the past, and it seemed that the little skeleton head had gathered a lot of experts around him this time.
At that moment, the dungeon cover was lifted from above.
"Get down!"
"Be honest, if you still dare to run, hey, see what happened to your friend just now?"
Ann was cloaked as she was pushed down the ladder, followed by the man above throwing down a snakeskin sack.
The sack was rolled round in shape, I don't know what was in it, and it rolled a few times after it hit the ground, rolling over to Fellow Ann.
"Bah." The man spat at our side and re-covered the lid.
"How are you, are you hurt," I was a little worried when she was pushed off the ladder that high, and ran over to help her busily.
Ann the researcher kept repeating the words, "We shouldn't have run, we shouldn't have run, we shouldn't have run."
"Yunfeng you talk to her, she's scared." Sister Hong shook her head straight after looking at Researcher An's appearance.
I knew this woman was timid so I gently reassured her, "Look, it's me, don't be afraid, where did your two companions go?"
Five minutes later, her eyes cleared a little.
With a trembling hand, she pointed to the snakeskin sack that had been thrown down from above.
Glancing suspiciously at the sack, I carefully walked over and untied it.
It was still wrapped in a plastic bag, and I touched it with my hand first, and could only feel it as a round ball-shaped object.
"What the hell is this?" Bracing myself against the mouth of the cloth bag, I fixed my eyes on it by the faint light.
"What is it Yunfeng?" Seeing that I was frozen, Red asked.
Stomping back two steps, I stammered and shouted in horror, "Human ..... Human head!"
"It's that old Xu's head!"
It was probably my words that irritated Researcher An, who couldn't stop shaking her head in pieces at the moment, "It's our turn soon, it's our turn soon, it's our turn next ..."
"Where's Li Jing!"
"Dead, dead, all dead," Ann Fellow sat cross-legged on the floor in pain, her eyes horrified like she had seen something frightening.
"A living, breathing human being, who was fine a few hours ago ....." My mind went back to the white coat, Li Jing, a man who had made a pact with me that if we all got out alive, I should look for him at Times Square in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.
Little did I know that a few hours later, it would ...
Sister Hong asked Researcher An in a deep voice: "I ask you, who killed these two men, the little skeleton head? He went to all that trouble to find you guys to come over, and he went to all that trouble to bring over so many medical instruments, and yes, you were afraid to escape, but even so, you were of great use to him, so how could they kill?"
"Could it be that ....." Sister Hong looked at Researcher An and asked suspiciously, "Could there be another reason for their deaths?"
"You must know something!"
"Speak up!"
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know anything, I didn't see anything, I beg you not to ask ..." Researcher Ann kept pulling her hair, a big one.
In the darkness, Sister Red got up.
She walked over to Fellow Ann and crouched down.
"Look up at me."
Researcher An raised his head with confused eyes.
"Snap! Snap! Slap!" Sister Hong slapped her three times in a row with full force.
The slaps were so loud that it hurt for me to hear them. The corner of An Fellow's mouth was bleeding from the slap.
Sister Hong said in a cold voice, "Are you awake yet? If that's not enough, I don't mind helping with a few more slaps."
The corners of his mouth were bleeding from the beating, and Researcher An cried out, "It's medicine, it's a corpse, a corpse that bit Lao Xu, a corpse soaked in water."
"Speak clearly! What medicine! What's the corpse! Whose corpse is it!" Sister Hong snapped unrelentingly.
I subconsciously reached for my trouser pocket and a cold touch came.
Pulling something out, it was a glass bottle containing a light blue liquid.
"Medicine? Is that the kind of medicine?" I asked, holding up the bottle.
Seeing the pale blue liquid inside the small glass bottle, An Fellow's pupils instantly dilated and he kept nodding as his body trembled.
I frowned and asked, "Didn't you say this stuff was useless, or a half-finished product, and something about it being impossible to achieve with the current technology."
"No, it's not, we were wrong, the teacher was wrong! The teacher should never have sent us to Shunde!"
She pointed to the glass bottle in my hand and said in a trembling voice, "That, that's not from the human world, that's from a demon!"
"What's that? A demon?" With her companion dead in front of her, I thought she had become irritated and started talking nonsense.
Seeing that Hong and I didn't think anything of it, Ann Researcher suddenly acted like she'd gone crazy, and she took advantage of my inattention to violently snatch the glass bottle out of my hands!
"Don't come any closer!" She shouted, holding up the glass bottle.
As her movements rose and fell, those pale blue liquids inside the glass bottle shook from side to side, feeling like they might spill out at any moment.
"Back off! I'll show you all with your own eyes! You'll see it and you'll know I'm not crazy and that I'm telling the truth! You have to believe me!"
"Don't you get excited! Put the bottle down first and we'll believe you!"
Researcher An didn't listen to any of the persuasion as she walked to the sack containing Lao Xu's head.
Opening the sack, researcher An's hands trembled and trembled as she brought the head of Lao Xu out flat in the sack ...
Although the light was bad, I could still see clearly that Old Xu's mouth was bleeding and his eyes were bulging out, dead!
A beautiful young woman in her twenties, with her hands held high, was holding a recently dead human head, a horrific and bizarre scene!
Ann used her teeth to uncork the glass bottle, she peeled back Old Xu's upper lip and put three drops of a pale blue liquid into his mouth.
Time passed.
Researcher An held the human head in the flat end and said with a trembling voice, "Look, you guys! See if what I said is true!"
As soon as her words left her mouth, a scene ensued that made goose bumps explode all over my body!
I saw that Old Xu's eyeball had suddenly moved! It was a dead man's head!
The dead Old Xu's eyes were only the whites of his eyes, and Sister Hong and I could really see that Old Xu's white eyeballs were moving up and down, back and forth, like a newborn baby, taking a curious look around him.
The whole process lasted less than three minutes, and then resumed as before. The head didn't move a muscle and the eyes wouldn't turn, no different from the previous one.
"Believe! We believe it! You hurry up and put this thing down!"
An Fellow's hand loosened and Old Xu's human head rolled to the side with a grunt.
Hearing is believing and seeing is believing, it was just three drops, three drops of that pale blue liquid!
What would it be like if someone drank the whole bottle, it's hard not to ... The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the whole bottle.
The researcher was about to give me back the glass bottle, just kidding, after seeing that scene, how dare I carry it around with me! What if I accidentally fell and the bottle broke?
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down, what was happening in front of me was beyond my knowledge.
I looked at Ann Research and asked, "What else, I remember you saying something about a corpse earlier, what was that about?"
"No, no, not a corpse."
She looked around with panicked eyes and said fearfully, "It's not a corpse, it's a demon, dripping thick water, long hair, very short, no clothes, like a little old lady."
I recalled a scene I had seen before.
Earlier, when Chen Jiangsheng had stoned Pi San'er to death for wanting to share his money, I had seen his body corroding away inside the large leather frame.
I had noticed a dark shadow soaking in the white liquid inside the frame, and looking at the outline it had four limbs, like a person.
I suspected in my mind, "The previous golden coffin and silver coffin were lying in the second brother, no body of the tomb owner was seen, could it be, that the group got the body that was originally inside out and soaked it into the big leather frame?"
The second brother had been missing for months, and when we found him, he still had two four-legged snakes biting on his stomach, and Chen Jiansheng's group said that the second brother's blood didn't work, and this incident led to the second brother's life and death being unknown now.
The more I thought about it, the more fearful I became, and cold sweat began to break out on my forehead. Ann the researcher said it wasn't a corpse, it was an old woman with long hair, very short height and dripping thick water .....
I was sweating because I suddenly remembered someone.
Before I went down to the tomb, I was at the Star Hotel that day to spend my birthday with Li Jing, and later I ran into Yao Yumen and a few men in suits.
I remember very clearly that the silver needle on the compass kept on shaking and the needle kept pointing behind me.
I still remember her saying something.
Yao Yumen smiled then and said, "Yunfeng, there's a toothless old woman standing behind you, watching you eat."
I didn't dare tell Red about this incident that happened in the first place.
I secretly shook my head in denial, it was impossible. Yao Yumen's remark should have been just a joke at the time and didn't mean anything else, so maybe I was overthinking it.
A few people rested for a while, and perhaps An Fellow was too nervous from the collapse of her nerves, and it wasn't long before she fell asleep against the wall. For the world outside, I had no idea whether it was day or night.
Dazed, I too fell asleep against the wall, feeling asleep for what felt like a long time, when suddenly the sound of movement came.
It turned out that the watchman, afraid that we would die of thirst, had unloaded a bucket of water downwards with a rope, with a wooden ladle floating in the bucket.
"Sister Hong, Fellow An, come here, there's water! Let's drink some water!" I was so thirsty that I didn't care, I just scooped up a ladle of cool water and gurgled it down my throat.
I wasn't afraid of the gang poisoning me, they wouldn't have to go to all this trouble if they wanted to kill me, and since they were keeping us, it must be useful to them, and of course Sister Hong knew that.
But An Fellow didn't think so, she looked fearfully at the clear water in the bucket and shook her head desperately, "No, I can't drink it, the water must be poisoned."
"It's okay, look I've drunk so much and I'm fine, look at your dry mouth, Researcher An you really need to drink some water." I scooped up a ladle of water and brought it to her mouth.
"No drink!" I don't know where she got all that strength from, but he just knocked the ladle away. The ladle hit the wall and all the water spilled.
"You ....." I was furious and anxious.
She immediately realised it was her fault and buried her head between her legs and kept sobbing like a lost little girl.
"Hey," I sighed, and most of the anger that had just come up had subsided, putting myself in her shoes, she had seen her companions die and was now left all alone, a timid girl after all.
"If you don't want to drink, you don't want to drink," I picked up the ladle and looked at Sister Hong, "Sister Hong, do you want to drink some more?"
"Is there something on the wall?" I looked at Sister Hong who was staring at the stone wall with unblinking eyes.
I can't say it's a stone wall either, this hole in the ground was built in the same period, it's possible that this used to be a small martyrdom pit and for some special reason it didn't end up being used.
Sister Hong suddenly got up and she walked over to the wall and gently slid her hand over it. This area was just about wet with water, water from the ladle from earlier.
Puzzled, I walked over and fixed my eyes on it.
The triton was rapidly absorbing water, and I could see, faintly and indistinctly, the outlines of several human faces! And all of these faces had their mouths open and their eyes closed!
I was startled and rubbed my eyes hard to see.
The more I looked at them, the more they looked alike.
As soon as the water dried up, the outlines of the faces were no longer visible.
"How ..... What's going on," I gulped and shuddered, "Sister Hong, what just happened, did we see things wrong?"
The first thing you need to do is to get up and pick up a bucket of water and use the ladle to scoop up the water and pour it on the wall one by one.
The triple clay wall had absorbed enough water this time. Soon, hundreds of human faces emerged from the entire wall in front of me! The faces were so dense that I couldn't tell if they were male or female, but they all had the same facial expression, their mouths were open and their eyes were closed, and they were all pointing at us.
Researcher An was so frightened that he kept shouting and screaming.
"Useless things! Shut up!" Sister Hong was furious, she turned around and kicked Researcher An several times, I was busy pulling Sister Hong back and pleading for Researcher An.
Then Sister Hong picked up a small pointed stone from the ground and she suddenly turned around and asked me if I could pee now.
I said with a bitter face that I had just drunk the water and now I hadn't peed. I was a bit embarrassed and asked Sister Hong what she meant.
She shook her head and said, "Yunfeng, I suspect that this place is not an abandoned and useless martyrdom pit, those martyrs should all have been made into stuffed bean holes and cast into these walls."
Seeing that I was puzzled, Sister Hong took a deep breath and explained, "It's just a guess now, you might be able to tell if you pee a bit into the wall later, I've seen this situation once before, the stuffed bean hole is what it was called during the Shang, Zhou and Warring States period, after the Spring, Autumn and Warring States it was called a buried soul pillar, nowadays people call it a life pile."
"Beaten life pile?"
Sister Hong said I did know this term, and nowadays this phenomenon still exists, but it is rare.
The so-called "life pile" is actually an extremely evil and horrible construction technique handed down from ancient times.
In order to appease the anger of the spirits and expel the wandering spirits, the head of the household would bury people (especially children) alive under the foundation of the building, thus ensuring the successful completion of the house.
The person who was buried alive was called a "living pile" and would be buried there for thousands of years after his death, never to be reborn.
There is a term for this nowadays, which means that people will die if the bridge is built. If you don't believe me, you can look up the history of bridge construction. According to legend, a famous bridge project was set to withstand a range of 50 deaths.
It is said that when the bridge was first built, some people walking on the bridge at night could hear the cries of men and women behind them, but when they looked back, there was nothing.
The decision to build the Haizhu Bridge was made when the warlord Chen Jitang, who was in charge of Guangzhou at the time, was extremely superstitious and believed in all kinds of evil spells and magicians, and had to divine the fate of everything, no matter how big or small. He kept a dozen Taoist fortune-tellers in his family, and it was not clear whether those Taoists were really capable.
So afterwards there were often rumours among the people that many mentally retarded fools, both male and female, had been buried by Chen Jitang in the concrete of the foundations of the Haizhu Bridge, and that these fools had been used to drive the birth stakes.
Sister Hong said that there was an evolution of this evil technique that had been passed down to us, and that it was first called stuffing bean holes.
After waiting for less than an hour, I felt the urge to pee, so I asked Sister Hong where she wanted me to pee.
She said that child's urine and vinegar were acidic and could soften the clay, so I did as she said.
When I was at school, there was a wall between the boys' and girls' toilets, and some mischievous boys in my class would pinch that piece and push it higher, just like a high-pressure water gun. This often ended up in a screaming tirade from the girls' toilet next door. Afterwards, they would shout through the wall, "What, you don't like it? You can pee on me!"
There's a joke that says that when the wind was blowing, you had to pee three feet, but now you're dripping wet shoes, which is a joke about how old a man is.
I was in my prime, and after Sister Hong retired, I looked at the stone wall of triple clay in front of me, and directly began to release water, the higher the water was released like a fountain, and the An researcher behind me looked dumbfounded.
But in three minutes, after the clay had been soaked in urine, it did look like it had softened.
Seeing this, Sister Hong's face was pleased and she spotted a spot and began to smash it vigorously with a sharp stone.
A lot of grey skin and mud started to fall down and a small crater was made in the wall by Red's vigorous smashing.
But it didn't last long, and soon the clay inside was too hard to smash. Sister Hong was sweating, and she turned to me, panting, and said, "Yunfeng, we have a chance to escape."
"But it's all up to you."
"Huh?"
"No way," the triple earthen wall wasn't even sure how thick it was, and there could be martyrs buried in it, really .....
How can I have that much child urine, how many ladles of water would I have to drink!
I'm a human being, not a sprinkler.
Sister Hong worked on me for a little while, and I was finally convinced.
There is an old saying that if you work hard enough, a mortar and pestle will sharpen a needle. Sister Hong kept emphasising my importance in a serious manner, which made me drift a bit.
This is the biggest weakness of the soil, which may involve some chemical knowledge. Those who are interested in this area can buy some soil from the grave robbers and take it home and bubble it with vinegar to see if it will soften.
I didn't understand this at first, but Red told me it was probably because child urine is weakly acidic, while adult men's urine is weakly alkaline.
I kept drinking water, using the ladle, and when my stomach got bloated I leaned against the wall to rest, and as soon as I felt the urge to pee, I rushed to drain the water.
As soon as the soil softened, she started to pound it with rocks.
The broken earth that fell from the wall was piled stealthily into a corner and then covered simply with a sack. Old Xu's head was also buried in the mound, otherwise a human head could have scared people to death if they saw it unnoticed.
I don't know what the criteria for water poisoning is, anyway, I don't drink water except to sleep or put water against the wall, I feel like my whole body is swollen from drinking water.
Maybe two days passed, or maybe three.
That day, suddenly I heard the stone lid ring.
"Hurry! Hurry!"
Seeing that someone was coming from above, I shouted in a hurry.
Sister Hong and Researcher An got up immediately and they immediately used their bodies to block the hollows in the wall and the small mound of dirt in the corner, something we had rehearsed over the past few days and had muddled through several times before. We knew that the man who delivered the food would not come down, he would only look up at most, as long as he saw all three of us there.
The food was all white buns, so dry and cracked that it was clear that we would not die of hunger.
I shouted upwards, "Hey man, can you bring over a bucket of water again, it's all gone."
"Jeez," the guy shifted down with his torch, he looked at the bucket which was already at the bottom and cursed loudly, "You're all fucking cows! It's only been a few days and you've all had two fucking buckets of water! Even cows can't drink as much as you can!"
With a ghost in my heart, I explained loudly, "Brother, that girl has recently had diarrhoea, so she might have dysentery, and if she doesn't drink more water, she'll die of dehydration!" I pointed to the pale Ann researcher leaning against the wall.
"Fuck! I told you, no wonder I could smell so much piss when I opened the lid, tie the bucket to the rope and back off! Get away from it!"
"Got, got," I immediately tied the empty bucket to the rope and stepped back to keep my distance.
The ladder had been pumped out a few days before and the bucket was yanked up little by little, followed by the lid on top being closed.
After waiting less than half an hour, a bucket full of water was brought down on the rope. The man was quick, and I thought to myself that perhaps this man had been given a confession and did not dare to let anything happen to us. After all, people can't die of hunger after three or two days without food, but they can die of thirst if they run out of water.
"People go far away should," then Red and I looked at each other.
The wall wasn't as thick as we thought it would be, and as we worked on it regardless of night and day, the crater in the wall gradually grew larger and larger.
Sister Hong tapped gently a few times, listening to the sound of this piece all different from the others, it should be opened soon. Sister Hong also said in confusion, "Strange, how is it different from what was expected, I thought I would dig up the bones of the former martyrs, how come there is nothing."
I advised Sister Hong not to think too much about it, after all, there are so many things going on now, we don't know where this wall leads to, don't want to open up the opposite side of the underground dark river or cliff, if that would be the end.
The group must not know about this either, which means that behind this wall could be a new, undiscovered location. We'll have to see what it is to find out.
A few more hours passed and a small breeze poured in.
"It's through!" My face beamed with joy; a breeze blowing in from outside meant it was through.
Smashing away the last layer of earth, a black hole half a metre long appeared in the wall, a slight cool breeze blew in and Red struggled to probe out.
"Why, how did this happen ..."
"What's wrong Sister Red? What's going on outside, did you find something?"
Sister Red's face was cloudy as she said in a deep voice, "Drill through first before we talk, keep staying here for the longest night, I've probably counted the time, there's still more than three hours before they come down to deliver the food, in that time we need to stay as far away from here as possible."
"Who asked you to follow us?" Seeing that Researcher An was ready to run away with us, Sister Hong said with a raised eyebrow.
Researcher An pinched the corner of his shirt with both hands and said in a small voice, "I .... please take me with you, I don't want to die yet, I promise, I promise I won't hold you back."
"Coward," said Red, twisting her face to the side in displeasure and not speaking again, looking like she was leaving the decision up to me.
Ann Fellow was draped in hair and her face was dirty, and she just looked at me pitifully.
"Sister Hong, why don't we just take her with us and run?
"Okay," Sister Hong said, pointing at her, "it's okay to follow us, this time you'll drill through first."
Sister Hong had beaten her before, and Ann knew in her heart that she was being used as a guinea pig. She looked into the dark hole in the wall and was scared too, but she was more afraid that we would leave her behind and didn't dare say anything more.
We pushed behind us and let Researcher Ann go through first.
After waiting in place for five minutes, the words came across Researcher Ann, "I'm fine, the ground is a bit thin here, you guys come over too."
I was the second to go over and Red was the last.
"No, why is there so much mud here," as soon as I landed I felt something was wrong, looking around, everywhere was muddy, people had trouble walking on it, it was like stepping in mud at the bottom of a river.
I turned around and asked Sister Hong if she knew anything about this place.
Sister Hong mused thoughtfully, "Yunfeng, do you remember the Wooden Hill we saw when we first came in earlier?"
"Wooden Hill ..... Sister Hong you are talking about that goat intestine inscription, I know, we have also seen the mural on that wall, at that time second brother said that the two of us were close, because we smelled those old face fungus on the cypress wood, so we had hallucinations when we looked at the mural, later did not rely on that bottle of medicine to come to our senses." I recalled the scene.
"I said something wasn't right, and here it is." Sister Red surveyed her surroundings and recalled, "What I was looking at on the mural was not only the coffin, but also a muddy swamp, and, if I remember correctly, it was a total of six people who appeared on the mural."
"Is that why you just had that reaction?" I said, looking at her.
"You must be too paranoid Sister Red, have you forgotten what they all said at the time, that the old yellow cypress face can make people smell and hallucinate, that none of that is real, and on top of that, there are only three of us in total now, and you said you saw six people on the mural."
I looked around at the silence and said, "Is it possible that the other three people are around us and we can't see them?"
"Ghosts? That is."
"Don't be poor, what's the ghost or not."
I don't know, let's walk, let's get away from this place before we talk, watch your step." Sister Hong said and walked straight ahead.
It was strange to say the least, there wasn't any large amount of standing water seen on the ground, somehow the road was so muddy...
"Help ..... Help me, I don't have the strength," said An researcher who couldn't pull his feet out after only a few steps.
"Grab my hand."
I gave it a push and yanked her off her feet.
"Just stay behind me, watch my footprints and don't step anywhere else."
"Yeah, I got it."
The road was getting harder and harder to walk on, and I noticed that the mud had only just sunk to my ankles, and after only a few minutes of walking, it had now sunk to my calves.
I was worried about this situation, but now there was nothing I could do. If we stayed where we were, the gang would surely come after us again.
Suddenly! Ahead of us came Sister Hong's shout of alarm!
"Yun Feng!" She shouted desperately.
I saw that Sister Hong had stepped on the wrong place and her whole body was sinking fast!
"Quick! Help!"
I was so alarmed by this that I hurriedly greeted An Fellow and went over to pull Sister Hong with me.
It's a good thing I didn't come over, but I rushed over in such a hurry that not only did I fail to save Sister Hong, but I was trapped myself.
The three of us were sinking together, hand in hand, and soon the mud reached the roots of our thighs.
Sister Hong was sweating profusely as she shouted, "Don't move! Don't struggle!"
However, this only temporarily slowed the sinking, and as far as the eye could see, our bodies were still sinking a little.
"Quick! Do something!" Ann the researcher cried in terror.
I couldn't panic, I couldn't panic. As the only male among the three, I forced myself to stay calm because I knew very well that if we messed up, we would end up in a dead end. I was sweating profusely and looking nervously left and right as I tried to think of a countermeasure.
I tried lying backwards, while I relaxed my thighs to stop forcing myself, I tried to adjust myself as much as I could so that my weight went from sinking downwards, to lying backwards.
I soon realised that this was working and my lower body was not continuing to sink down.
I shouted at both of them, "Tuck your toes in! Lie your body backwards!"
Sister Hong and Researcher Ann immediately followed my example and began to try to get their weight to shift.
The advantage of doing this was that it increased the area of force between our bodies and the bog, but there was no way to get out of the trap yet, we could only half float like this. It would have been nice to have a root driftwood or something beside us at this point, if only there was such a thing we could have grabbed it to get out.
Unfortunately there wasn't, and then, for nearly two hours, none of us dared to move, for if we did, we would sink, and we were exhausted from holding this position.
Sister Hong spoke weakly in mourning, "Yunfeng, there's no way out, it looks like we'll all have to die here."
"No, no, no, there must be a way, we must still have a way," I tried desperately to persuade Sister Hong not to give up.
"I ..... I don't have any more strength, I can't hold on anymore," An researcher's face was pale, and just as she finished speaking, her body started to sink at a speed visible to the naked eye.
I was very anxious, but I couldn't move myself. I shouted with red eyes, but I could only watch Researcher An sink a little.
It was in the nick of time.
"Snap ...." A section of rotten wood was thrown in front of us.
I looked towards the shore and saw that not far from us was standing a thin figure, I don't know if it was a man or a woman, it looked a bit like a child, this man had a turf woven hat on his head and was wearing ragged clothes, he was looking at us and was turning around in place in a hurry. This rotten log was thrown by him.
It was too late to think about it, so I grabbed the log and laid my upper body on it. Sister Hong also joined me and immediately hugged the log.
"Hands! Quick! Give me your hand!" Researcher An's body had sunk most of the way down, and she saw with her own eyes at this moment a glimmer of life and exploded with a powerful desire to live.
Researcher An shouted and drew out her hands, and Hong and I saw our chance and grabbed her wrists, one left and one right.
"Up!"
"Sister Hong ..... Harder!" I used all my strength.
Unfortunately, the researcher was thin and light, and with the support of the driftwood, Sister Hong and I pulled her up with all our strength.
The pull caused severe pain in my left arm. I had thought that my left arm was fractured, but after a few days it had improved and didn't hurt as much, so I thought it was a misjudgement and could have been a torn ligament or bone fracture or something.
Not far away, the little short guy with the bark and straw hat saw that we were saved and immediately waved his hands and jumped and gestured at us.
Sweating and panting, Red said, "Hold on to the wood, the three of us together! I'll count to three and start pushing!"
"One, two, three!"
"Go! Forward!"
The three of us finally climbed to safety, supported by the log that had saved us, or rather, the man who had just saved us.
Physically exhausted, I bent over, hands on my knees panting heavily, while looking up and over.
"People ..... Where's the man?" It was only when I looked that I realised that the man with the straw hat from earlier was gone. The place was now empty and devoid of people, leaving only a trail of footprints on the ground.
The lower half of our bodies were covered in mud and I walked over to look at the footprints left on the ground and frowned, realising that something was wrong.
The footprints on the mud were shoeless, but that's what was wrong. The footprints left behind were clearly four toes, which was very clear to see.
Thinking of the person's thin figure like a child, Sister Hong and I looked at each other and our faces changed dramatically!
Sister Hong and I blurted out almost simultaneously.
"Mandrill!"
This footprint, and that height, where was this! It wasn't some little kid with a straw hat! It was clearly the mandrill that we had seen before!
I looked at Sister Hong with an incredulous expression and said, "Sister Hong... Sister Hong, was that thing the one that saved us? How is it possible ..."
Sister Hong looked at a row of footprints that stretched into the distance and said in a deep voice, "Yunfeng, have you noticed, that thing just now was wearing a straw hat made of tree bark, and it was also wearing rags that it had picked up from somewhere, and it was covered in rags, so if it was really a mandrill, it should not be from the same tribe as the group of mandrills with black hats before."
The row of footprints stretched all the way to the darkness ahead, and Red pointed to the ground and said, "Since this thing saved us, it at least means it has no hostile intentions towards us."
"Then we'll follow this row of footprints and follow it up to see."