Chapter 50 Escape

I can’t describe the feeling in my heart at that time as I saw him sitting there quietly in front of me. 

I didn’t know what was going on in my head. There had to be countless thoughts surging, but I couldn’t feel anything at all.

I was stunned for a moment, before I finally came to my senses and moved, immediately feeling his wrist with shaking hands.

I was terrified of touching a completely cold body, so it took almost all my strength to stretch out my hand.

Fortunately, there was still some body heat, but the pulse was so weak that I could hardly feel it.

I turned to look at Fatty and found that he had a big hole in his stomach, his intestines were hanging out, and his pulse was extremely weak.

The wounds on both of their bodies were still bleeding, and they were all scratched up, an obvious result of those things’ long claws. The wounds were very dense, making it easy to see how fierce the struggle had been.

Excessive bleeding, heart failure, and death were practically irreversible. I felt some despair, helplessness, chagrin, and regret. All kinds of indescribable feelings burst up together, and tears almost burst out of my eyes.

I don’t know how, or even where the courage came from, but I pushed all these feelings aside for the moment, and suddenly calmed down.

I was startled by my sudden calmness, as if I had another self in my heart that was temporarily rejecting my desire to cry. I didn’t know if other people would have the same reaction as me when experiencing this moment, but at this time, my mind suddenly became very clear.

They hadn’t died yet, so naturally, I couldn’t just leave them. But I couldn’t watch them die here, either. I had to try my best to do something.

I stood up and began thinking about what to do. First, I found the incense ashes and smeared it all over their deepest wounds to temporarily stop the bleeding. Then, I stuffed Fatty’s intestines back into his stomach bit by bit.

I don’t want to describe that kind of feeling. After finishing, I took the diving suit, tore it into several pieces of rope, tied it to the wooden frame that was off to one side, and made a towing stretcher to tie them up.

“Even if you die, you’ll die aboveground.” I clenched my teeth.

After I finished, I took the flashlight, picked up the bayonet that was tossed to the side, and then looked around. The ground was full of a green liquid—maybe those things’ blood— and more bloody bodies. It was a complete mess, and I didn’t bother looking too closely.

I searched the surrounding rock walls again to find the hole Poker-Face had mentioned, and suddenly froze—there were still shadows in the rock wall, and more than what we had seen just now. But they were much smaller and had to be the figures of children.

After staring at them for a while, my hair stood on end, and I didn’t dare delay any longer. I quickly dragged Poker-Face and Fatty into the hole Poker-Face had mentioned.

Fatty himself was extremely heavy, and with Poker-Face’s added weight, it took a lot of effort to drag them out.

Just as Poker-Face had said, there really was a passage here. Those things seemed to have corroded the jade here and moved through it slowly. There were excellent jade veins all around, and if any jade merchants were here, they would definitely go crazy.

But if these things had formed naturally in the jade, then this passage should have been closed. But after pulling hard for a while, I found that the passage was actually very long. I looked at the rock wall passage and felt like something was off. From time to time, a vague face appeared in the wall, as if the “people” in the rock were gathering to watch me crawl.

Fortunately, my nerves had been stretched to the extreme. I simply ignored them and clenched my teeth as I dragged Fatty and Poker-Face, and slowly crawled along.

Even though the passage didn’t have any bifurcations, it was still very tortuous; especially because some parts of it were vertical. I had been climbing for more than ten hours, and almost fainted before I came to the end.

I didn’t know how much time had passed after that, but the flashlight’s light was almost out when I suddenly heard the sound of water. I frantically ran forward, but my hands suddenly came up empty. I didn’t hit the ground like I thought I would, but I did almost fall.

The flashlight struggled to shine, but I could see that a fault had appeared in front of me. It seemed to be an irregular crack in the mountain.

The crack wasn’t wide, so I could keep my balance by spreading my two feet apart. 

Water was falling down from the crack above like a waterfall, so I drank a few mouthfuls, and shined the light forward. There was no passage ahead. This seemed to be the starting point of this passage, so those things might have climbed down through this crack. I shined the light up and down, left and right. Shit, the surface of the crack fault was like a hole that had been bored out, and it was the same on all sides. These things were like moths in the mountains, and there was nothing on the other side.

I put Fatty and Poker-Face down, not having the time to worry about them right now. I climbed down the holes one by one to see which one might lead to the outside.

Truthfully, I didn’t know how to distinguish between them at all, so I could only explore them one by one. Suddenly, however, I felt the wind blowing, and my heart jumped in excitement. I immediately followed my instincts, and sure enough, there was a hole with air circulation.

There’s a way out, I said to myself. I climbed back, untied one of the ropes, and then sent them down one by one.

I had been hungry for several days, and had little physical strength, so the journey was extremely torturous. In the middle, I often felt dizzy and retched when I exerted myself too much. It was a sign of extreme physical exhaustion, and I thought that I would faint at any time.

At the very least, it took another six or seven hours to complete the journey, and I crouched, dragged, and crawled in utter darkness.

I’m sure a lot of things must have happened around me during this process, because I heard a lot of strange sounds coming from everywhere. But I didn’t have any psychological fluctuations and was totally numb. If I died at this time, I would probably face my death with total numbness.

I didn’t know how long I had climbed before a light suddenly appeared in front me. I didn’t even have the energy to speed up by this point, and just kept walking and crawling. Finally, I heard the wind and the sound of water, and saw the long-lost ground.

I could hardly react, but before I could tell what this place was, I suddenly looked up and saw several people around me who looked like villagers. They dragged me out of the hole, and that was when I found that I didn’t know any of them. There was a crowd of people speaking in the Changsha dialect on a hillside on the other side of the lake.

My body was extremely weak, and I was dizzy as soon as I was pulled out. Then, a man came up to me with a group of people. I looked up at the night sky, and the area all around that was full of bright, artificial lights. Someone was holding a walkie-talkie and shouting, “Found him, Found him!”

The man who walked up with a group of people soon came into my line of sight. I looked at him from a distance and was surprised to find that it was my Uncle Two. He was quickly followed by Pan Zi, who had an anxious look on his face, but I lost consciousness before he arrived.

<Chapter 49 There Are Thirty-Five> <Table of Contents> <Chapter 51 Uncle Two>

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Updated 8/31/2020