Chapter 168

The rest of us jumped down. The pit blown out by the mortar was shallower than the one we had dug, but it was bigger like a pan. After Liu Sang was kicked in, he felt around and then lay down on the ground while shouting at us, “Come on! Come on!” We suddenly heard a lot of strange crackling sounds coming from the forest around us. I felt frightened when I thought of what Liu Sang had said just now. Maybe I should believe him in times like these! As I thought this, I also knelt down and lay next to him. Then, I saw Baishe quickly follow until the four us were lying in a row.

The pit was about arm deep, so it felt very weird as we lay inside of it. If someone were to take a picture of us from outside of the pit, we would definitely look like fried dumplings.

“Are you sure this will work?” I asked Liu Sang.

“Stop talking nonsense. If we make it out of this alive, call me Dad.” Liu Sang didn’t even want to look at me. As soon as he finished speaking, I felt as if that darkness was passing over us.

Let me explain this feeling in detail.

Since we were lying flat on our backs, we could see the moonlight penetrating through the tree canopies and lightening the sky. Although it was very dark out, we could still see a little. When that thing floated above us, all the moonlight was blocked in an instant.

I could feel a very slight airflow moving my hair. That thing must’ve been very light, so only a little airflow was needed to change the direction it moved in. After about fifteen minutes, that thing obscuring our sight finally drifted away, revealing the moonlight again. But within a few minutes, another mass blocked our sight again.

When these two things passed by, I felt an obvious difference in the way my hair moved. The first thing felt as if the airflow passed about two arm-lengths away from me, while the next thing was almost at the upper edge of the pit. Liu Sang covered his nose and mouth. My nose instantly felt itchy and I felt like I needed to cough.

Then I heard—no, not heard; it was more like felt—my own body making a crackling sound. It was my hair being corroded away.  In the next second, I felt a sharp pain on my skin.

Damn, these fog clouds are corrosive.

Liu Sang started picking up the mud next to him and smearing it on himself. I already had a lot of dried mud on my body, but I quickly copied him anyways.

The four of us smeared so much mud on ourselves that we looked like mud monkeys. The black clouds continued to pass by in front of us. Some took thirty minutes to pass, while others only took three minutes. It didn’t take me long to realize that there had to be a wind gap in one direction of this forest, which was where the poisonous fog was coming from. But it was too dark for us to figure out which direction the wind was blowing in.

In the end, all the poisonous fog was practically stuck to the surface of the pit. My face and hands were all corroded and leaking fluid—just like those snakes from before—and I could barely breathe. Just taking a single breath was like inhaling pepper, which made my lungs ache terribly. Liu Sang carefully piled mud all around him and never stopped.

As I copied him, I found that continuously putting the mud on my skin could help relieve the sharp pain. So, the two of us kept slathering mud on our bodies, just like dying fish in the mud.

You know, it’s very difficult pouring mud on yourself when you’re stuck in a pit, but it’s easy to pour mud on other people. We tried to slather ourselves in mud for a long time to no avail, so I eventually clenched my teeth and started pouring mud on Liu Sang. Soon, there was a lot more mud on him than before. He was slow to react, but he immediately started pouring mud on me when he saw what I was doing.

As the two of us continued throwing mud at each other, I turned my head to look at him and he turned to look at me. We couldn’t actually see anything in the dim moonlight, so it probably just felt like the two of us were staring at each other.

The poisonous fog slowly got farther and farther away from us and the sky gradually began to lighten. By this point, my hands were reflexively throwing mud, my body was freezing, and my skin felt like it had been turned into swollen tofu skin.

When we finally rolled out of the pit, a mouthful of blood came gushing out of my nose and mouth and I immediately fell to the ground. Liu Sang tried to help me up, but his hands had no strength after throwing mud all night. He used his back to support me and keep me from falling back down. When Kan Jian came over and held me up, I saw everyone’s skin in the dim light. It was all corroded and covered in blisters.

“Disfigured,” Kan Jian said quietly. “Boss, can we recover from this?”

I touched my face. It hurt like hell and there was still blood dripping out of the corners of my mouth. I tried to stand up again, but found that I couldn’t.

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