Chapter 165 Raining Snakes

I held my breath and listened. Sure enough, I heard the rustling sound of branches moving. In Liu Sang’s words, what his ears heard was almost the same thing as what our eyes would see. He pointed to the place where the sounds were coming from and mouthed, “Grab your weapons.”

I silently touched my knife while Kan Jian carefully put the rubber bands on his slingshot. The way he used his slingshot was very systematic. In case of poor lighting at night, his slingshot would have three rubber bands on it so that dozens of marbles could be shot out in an umbrella shape. He argued that at night, the eyes of wild animals would shine when they were illuminated by a flashlight. No matter how big the beast was, their weakest point was revealed in the darkness.

When I thought of this, I realized that we were all holding flashlights in our hands. We turned them off one by one until only the frosty moonlight was left illuminating our surroundings. Liu Sang silently felt behind me. I listened to the noises in the forest, but it didn’t sound like people walking. It was more like something was falling from a tree, going through the canopy, and falling into a bush.

The sound gradually came towards us, and I soon felt something brush past my bangs and fall right in front of me. Then, more things began falling all around me.

There were more and more sounds, just like rain. After that thing fell to the ground, I had a bad feeling and wanted to move, but Liu Sang pressed me down. I made a quick decision and turned my flashlight on.

When I looked around the woods, I was completely stunned. I happened to see something falling from the tree canopy and realized that it was a snake. Then I looked around some more and saw that a lot of snakes were falling from the tree canopies.

But after the snakes fell, their movements were very relaxed. I looked up and saw a huge slender shadow floating above the canopy. When it touched the canopy, more snakes fell down.

“What is it?” Kan Jian cried out in surprise. “UFO?”

That slender thing changed into a ball again and again, just like a jellyfish. Liu Sang was also stunned and wanted to study it, but I grabbed him and started running. That thing looked like a mass of extremely dense flying insects. If we hesitated any longer and encountered this kind of thing, we would definitely suffer a lot of damage. As a result, the best thing to do right now was to run.

As I ran, I took off my coat. Dozens of snakes fell, one of which landed on my head. I immediately flung my head back and the snake fell onto my hand. I shook my hand and the snake fell to the ground. I used my knife to cut off the snake’s head and then wrapped the snake’s body in my coat to take along with us.

I ran for a long time, but the shadow didn’t catch up. We stopped to catch our breath and I opened my coat, only to find that the snake had shrunk. I threw it away quickly. There appeared to be something inside the skin that was eating the snake’s flesh quickly.

Kan Jian pointed his slingshot at the snake’s corpse but I told him that it was useless. I then took out a fire stick (1), uncapped it, and told Baishe to give me his hair spray. Baishe wondered how I knew he had it. I told him that he was the kind of guy who showed off his good looks so shamelessly and his hair was styled every day so he had to have hair spray with him. When the two things were put together, they became a flamethrower. I told Kan Jian to get ready and then cut the snake’s body open with my knife.

There was nothing there, but Liu Sang immediately took a step back. Kan Jian was so frightened that he used our homemade flamethrower to instantly burn the whole snake to a crisp.

My coat was a goner, so I left it and stood up to look in the distance. The silent shadow in the moonlight was no longer visible, but the tree canopies all around it had the same silhouette so it was impossible to find it. If it was a swarm of insects, then it wasn’t surprising that there weren’t any birds here.

When I voiced my thoughts to the others, Liu Sang shook his head, “It’s not a bug. I can hear the movements as long as it’s a bug, but there was no sound when that thing flew. It’s definitely not a bug.”

“Then what is it?” Kan Jian was angry at Liu Sang for always contradicting me.

Liu Sang didn’t speak, but suddenly started walking back. I quickly caught him, “What are you doing?”

“It’s condensed poisonous gas,” he said. “The water vapor rises during the day, so this thing should be at a high altitude during that time. That’s why the birds died out. The atmosphere then drops at night, but some snakes are on the ground and some are in trees, so they don’t die. The spies built the bunker underground because this thing probably drops to a very low height when the temperature is at its lowest before dawn. If that’s the case, we’ll all die here. We have to find a place to dig a hole and bury ourselves right now. Let’s go back and get the equipment.”

<Chapter 164><Table of Contents><Chapter 166>

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TN Notes:

(1) Not a good English equivalent but it’s kind of like an ancient Chinese car cigarette lighter. It’s a tight paper roll made of very rough earthen paper that’s ignited and then blown out. Although there’s not a flame, you can see the red highlights burning faintly, just like in the ashes. There are phosphorus and some oxygen-prone substances in the fire stick. When the temperature is high and you blow on it with your mouth or quickly shake it, it will come in contact with the oxygen and react violently and burn. Info here.

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I love you guys, so you’re in for a treat. I got through ~20 pages today but don’t get used to it lol. I also decided to see what all the fuss was about with “Word of Honor” yesterday and let’s just say that I’m already caught up with the english subs (╥_╥) Waiting is hard, but at least they sub 4 episodes a week lol