Chapter 67 Swamp Demon’s Domain (Part 2)

When I woke up, I immediately sat up and hit my head on someone’s chest. I let out a startled yelp while A Ning almost fell out of the tree from the force of my blow.

As I instinctively grabbed her, I finally came to my senses and found that I was leaning against the tree, holding onto my belt which was almost unfastened. Off to the side were the partially excavated snake bones. It was still raining, and there were miner’s lamps hanging on the surrounding branches, their light stinging my eyes to the point that I couldn’t even open them.

When my eyes finally adjusted, I could see that everyone was giving me strange looks. Poker-Face and Pan Zi were sitting under a waterproof tarp that had been set up over the snake bones while Fatty was sleeping beside me, snoring as loud as thunder. A Ning was rubbing her chest, obviously in pain from where I had hit her just now.

It was only at this time that I realized that I had been dreaming. I breathed a sigh of relief and touched my forehead, finding that it was still wet—I didn’t know whether it was cold sweat or yesterday’s rain.

When did I fall sleep? After thinking about it, I suddenly remembered that I had called the others down to help dig out the snake bones, but after having been entangled in at least ten years’ worth of vines, the bones and vegetation were like a solid mass that couldn’t be penetrated. After digging for a long time without getting any results, we decided to take turns working and resting. I was so tired after the long journey here that I ended up falling asleep when I sat down. As it turned out, what I had thought was A Ning’s saliva dripping onto my face in the dream was actually rainwater.

I smiled awkwardly, stood up, and wiped my face before going over to continue helping them dig. But as I approached, Pan Zi asked teasingly, “Little Master Three, what were you dreaming about just now? Why were you taking off your pants?”

I waved him off, telling myself that while there was a perfectly logical reason for it, it was too difficult to explain. I suddenly thought of the story of the builder and the train,⁽¹⁾ and realized that such situations didn’t only happen in jokes.

I glanced at my watch and saw that I hadn’t been asleep for long. My whole body was wet and I had only fallen into a light doze, which made it easy to have nightmares. But even that small amount of sleep was enough to make me feel better. Still, the dream was a bit strange and felt all too real… Some people say that dreams are a reflection of a person’s subconscious. I suddenly remembered some of the psychological things that Lao Yang told me before and wondered if I was subconsciously terrified of A Ning. Maybe that was why the plot of my dream turned out that way.

I looked back at A Ning and saw that she was leaning against the tree trunk, resting with her eyes closed. Even though she looked exhausted, her usual aggressive aura seemed to have lessened a lot, making her appear more feminine. At this time, her distorted face from the dream overlapped with the one in front of me, suddenly making me afraid.

I turned back to see how much progress the others had made, only to find that there hadn’t been much. The vines were so entangled around the bones that after cutting through them, all the bones had ended up breaking. Rotted and mineralized scales the size of palms could also be seen scattered among the vines, looking like ancient paper money.

Laughing at myself, I took a deep breath and asked Pan Zi what they had found and why they didn’t dig up the rest.

Pan Zi picked up a nearby miner’s lamp and held it closer to the snake bones, saying that it was impossible to get the human corpse out. First, the bones were so badly degraded that they broke as soon as they were touched, and second, they had found something else.

I looked down at where the light fell and saw that deep inside the tangled cluster of snake bones and vines were objects that looked similar to chicken legs, but they were black and covered in a layer of rust. I squatted down to take a closer look and found that they were actually three old-fashioned grenades tied together and fused into one from all the rust.

Around the body was a blackened bandolier,⁽²⁾ which the deceased must have worn to carry these things.

I sucked in a sharp breath and carefully pulled back, not daring to move around recklessly. “Fatty discovered them first,” Pan Zi said to me. “If not for his keen eyesight, we would have been blown sky-high by now.”

“Who the hell was this person?” I asked in surprise. “Why was she carrying such things?” Even if Chen Wen-Jin and her team needed such equipment, they should have brought explosives instead of grenades. Old-fashioned wooden-handled grenades ⁽³⁾ like this were weapons used for actual combat. They were designed to kill people, not be used for engineering blasting.

“Do you remember when Dingzhu-Zhuoma told us that in 1993, a group of armed nationalist separatists fled into the Qaidam Basin, but disappeared after the militia chased them deep into the Gobi?” Pan Zi asked me. “I think this skeleton belongs to one of those people. Maybe she was a female bandit, or a relative of one. I bet they disappeared at that time because they strayed into this swamp. Since over ten years have passed and none of them appeared again, they must have all died here.”

<Chapter 66><Table of Contents><Chapter 68>

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TN Notes:

(1) Per Baidu: A lady called a builder to say her bed shook every time a train went by. The builder didn’t believe her, so he went to her house. When he arrived, the lady suggested that he lie down on the bed and experience how it shook when the train passed by. Just as the builder lay down, the lady’s husband came back. Seeing this, he asked sharply, “What are you doing lying on my wife’s bed?” The builder replied, “Would you believe me if I said I was waiting for the train?”

(2) My google results kept coming up with the Sam Browne belt but that didn’t seem like something you’d carry grenades on so I went with bandolier.

(3) They’re stick hand grenades (Stielhandgranate is the German term for them). They have a long handle attached to the grenade proper, providing leverage for longer throwing distance. Looks something like this:

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I’ll be out of town the next few days so not sure when the next update is. Still keeping the poll open til Monday, but duplicate votes will be deleted (you know who you are 😉). Thanks to everyone who’s voted so far! Most are leaning towards continuing to vol 5 but things can always change. Til next time~~